NEW WRIT (ORPINGTON) (Hansard, 20 February 1962)

§ Mr. Marcus Lipton (Brixton)
I formally oppose this Motion so as to draw attention—

§ Mr. A. E. Oram (East Ham, South)
On a point of order. May I ask for your guidance, Mr. Speaker. I am puzzled as to whether this business is being taken in the right order. I was present when you, Mr. Speaker, said that it would be postponed until 3.30. But should it not have been taken before the Ten Minutes Rule Bill of my hon. Friend 220 the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman)?

§ Mr. Speaker
I have consulted the precedents in the interval. Surprisingly, it is not as the hon. Gentleman says. I am governed by at least three modern precedents in the matter.

§ Mr. Lipton
As I was saying, I formally oppose the Motion so as to draw attention to the dubious behaviour of the Government in connection with the Orpington by-election, which, in my submission, represents a denial of democratic rights. It is surprising to some people that there is no statutory requirement to fill a seat vacated between General Elections within a certain period. Nevertheless, the absence of a statutory requirement does not entitle the Government to abuse the position. The absence of a statutory requirement allows a convenient date to be selected for a by-election.
221 No one objects to a certain degree of political gamesmanship, because the selection of an appropriate day may, of course, be a material factor, but this flexibility in the absence of statutory provision has been grossly abused in the case of the Orpington by-election. Here we have a seat which was vacated on 1st October last year. In other words, almost five months have elapsed, during which the electors of Orpington have been denied the right of representation in this House.
Some of us suspect that the by-election has been deliberately delayed because the Government found themselves, for a variety of reasons, in an unfavourable situation which, perhaps, led them to think that it would be as well to postpone this by-election as long as they could. But what happened in the House yesterday shows that these political tactics have caused a certain amount of indignation in Orpington, where the period has been so prolonged that even the least intelligent Conservative voter there began to realise that he was not represented in this House.
Therefore, for the first time for many years, if not for the first time ever, we had the spectacle of a Petition being presented to his House by the electors of Orpington, asking this House to take the necessary action. There has been a gross abuse of constituents' rights to which even the electors of Orpington are entitled.
Every constituent, particularly in modern times, has come to feel that, in many cases, his only means of redress is through his elected Member of Parliament. The rights of constituents to redress through their Member of Parliament have been deliberately flouted by the cowardice of the Government to face the test of public scrutiny.

§ Mr. Ellis Smith (Stoke-on-Trent, South)
Will my hon. Friend explain to those of us who are not familiar with what has taken place in the south of England why this Motion has not been tabled before now?

§ Mr. Lipton
I was suggesting that the reason was the unwillingness of the Government to face the test of public scrutiny in Orpington because they thought that whoever was representing them in the 222 by-election would not secure a sufficiently large number of votes and that if it were held a little earlier the result would have been a damaging blow to the Government's prestige. The reason for delay is the abject cowardice of the Government and their reluctance to face the electors, which many of us regard as understandable in present circumstances but which should not by any means be so prolonged as in this case.
This delay, pushed to the limit of nearly five months, is reprehensible and, in my submission, a blatant affront to the public interest. That is why I consider that this Motion should not be accepted by the House until a satisfactory explanation has been given. I hope that the electors of Orpington will note that the Government have had to be goaded into taking action by a Petition presented to this House in deciding what action they should take when the long delayed opportunity of being represented in this House comes their way.

§ The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Iain Macleod)
I wish to make two brief points in reply to the admirable speech of the hon. Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton). The first question is whether, when a seat becomes vacant in October, there is anything unusual in the Motion for the Writ being moved about this time. The answer clearly is that there is not. There is, as the House knows, a convention, which, like most conventions, is convenient, that these Motions are in due course moved by the Chief Whip of the party which held the seat at the time of the vacancy.
In 1960, two vacancies occurred in October, one at Birmingham, Small Heath and one at Worcester. The Motion for the Writ for the seat at Small Heath, which was a Labour seat—I make no complaint about that—was moved on 3rd March. Therefore, the period which elapsed was longer than that which has elapsed in the case of Orpington. The Motion for the Writ at Worcester, a Conservative seat, was moved on 24th February, the same sort of period as we have now.
If one takes vacancies occurring in October, there were three in 1961—in 223 Orpington, Lincoln and Pontefract. The Writ for Lincoln was moved last Friday, the Writ for Orpington is being moved today and the Writ for Pontefract has not been moved so far. Nobody can say from this that there is any great discrepancy of practice between the two parties.
My only other point might conceivably appeal to the hon. Member for Brixton because he has a sense of humour. He has raised this sort of point before. He will remember that he did it on the occasion of the North Lewis-ham by-election. In this case the new register became operative on Friday and we moved almost as soon as the new register came into operation. The whole burden of the hon. Member's case when he spoke on 25th January, 1957—and he objected in the same manner to the Motion then before the House, and I think that he is remembering it now—was to say: The object of the Motion is to ensure that the by-election shall take place on 14th February, the day before the new register comes into operation. In other words, this by-election is to be fought on an out-of-date register, which will entail at least 8,000 changes."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th January, 1957; Vol. 563, c. 539.] Assuming that there is any sense at all in what the hon. Member has said, or in the Liberal Petition which was presented yesterday, they are asking that this Writ should have been moved before the new register came into operation last Friday and so have disfranchised a considerable number of the electors of Orpington.