PROCEDURE (Hansard, 20 June 1963)

§ The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Iain Macleod)
I beg to move,

§ Mr. Emrys Hughes (South Ayrshire)
I do not wish to detain the House for long on this matter. Although I realised that the Leader of the House had not forgotten this matter, I thought that he had lost it. It is a matter to which I have referred on several occasions at business time, namely, whether hon. Members who wish to abstain from voting in Divisions should have their names recorded and included in the Official Report.
I do not wish to argue this point at length because I think it is a matter for discussion by the Select Committee on Procedure. An illustration of what I mean occurred in the House this week, though I had not anticipated such an occurrence when I tabled the Amendment a fortnight ago. Last Monday various hon. Members did not wish to vote for the Government or the Opposition but wished to abstain. That is a dilemma which sometimes presents itself to hon. Members on both sides of the House.
779 I believe that the time has come when the House should recognise, as in the case of many other bodies and Parliaments—such as in the United Nations, where it is recognised by the Government—the right of Members to record an abstention.
There are five questions to be referred to the Select Committee on Procedure. I am asking that there should be six. I do not know whether this is a controversial matter, but it is certainly a reasonable one. I suggest that now that I have drawn the attention of the Leader of the House to it—I do not want to press him, considering his present difficulties—I hope that if he is present on the next occasion when something has been referred to the Select Committee he will give this matter his kind and sympathetic attention.

§ Mr. Speaker
I should like to clear my mind on this point. Do I understand that the hon. Member does not desire to move his Amendment? I am not quite sure what the position is.

§ Mr. Emrys Hughes
I will move it Mr. Speaker, in order to get a more sympathetic reply from the Minister.

§ Mr. Speaker
As the hon. Member wishes.

§ Mr. Emrys Hughes
I beg to move, in line 6, to leave out "and".

§ Mr. Tam Dalyell (West Lothian)
The Leader of the House may recollect that some two months ago I came to see him about the possibility of morescientific advice, somewhat detailed considerations, with special reference to the Public Accounts Committee, and he mentioned just now that perhaps matters like these were not precluded necessarily from consideration. I wonder whether he would care to offer any comment about possible modifications to the scientific advice that Members get.

§ Mr. Eric Fletcher (Islington, East)
May I ask the Leader of the House one question? This Motion refers five quite different and separate matters to the Select Committee on Procedure. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether it is contemplated that the Select Com- 780 mittee should be free to deal with these five subjects in any order that it pleases, and is it contemplated that it should make one omnibus report about each of these five matters or that it should be asked to deal with each one separately and make a separate report? I imagine that after the Committee has reported, the House will then be asked to say whether or not it agrees with the report of the Select Committee, and it might be inconvenient if it made an omnibus report dealing with five discognate matters, with some of which the House is in agreement and with some of which it is not.
Will the Leader of the House be good enough to give his attention to the procedure that the Select Committee will adopt and bear in mind that it will probably be more convenient if it considered each of these matters separately and made a separate report on each one?

§ Mr. Iain Macleod
I thought that I had given the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) a reasonably sympathetic answer. I said that this is a "shopping list", for the moment, of five subjects, but that I have at least another eight or nine, that his is included amongst them, and that the question of finding the appropriate words is being discussed through the usual channels. If I may say so, the hon. Member has so recently come aboard his own boat that he must not start rocking it as soon as this. I hope that we may be able to find a suitable form of words that is also acceptable to him. I am not the least unsympathetic about this matter being put forward, although I do not agree with it.
I will only say that when the hon. Gentleman suggested that we should have what amounts to a third category of recording how we vote, or wish to vote, we have in the past always had the "Ayes" and the "Noes". If we were to have a further record of abstentions, it would presumably not stop at three, because other hon. Members might wish to abstain without their abstention being recorded, if he takes the point. They would be formal abstentions. One would, in fact, be going from the traditional system of saying either "yes" or "no" to at least four possibilities. But I admit that this is an important matter, and 781 on the assurance that I am trying to find agreement to this being discussed, I hope that the hon. Member will not wish to press his Amendment now.
In reply to the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell), I remember our conversation very well and have done some work on the subject. I hope that I will be able to see him presently about it, if he would like to discuss the matter with me. Again, on reflection, I doubt whether this is really a matter appropriate for the Select Committee on Procedure. It is a possibility, but we may be able to come closely to meeting the hon. Member's point, which is not directly related to the matter now before the House, in another way.
I must tell the hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher) that the intention certainly was that there should be one report. I am Chairman of the Select Committee on Procedure, and I would, of course, be very ready to agree to any suggestion from the Committee itself to take these subjects in any particular order. I also take his point that if any of these matters became particularly controversial it might be wise for it to be included in a separate report.
I am not quite sure whether it is within my authority to say this, but if the hon. Member will take my assurance, as Chairman of the Select Committee, that I will make a point of drawing this matter to the attention of the Select Committee, and should the Select Committee think that it would be appropriate for the House, because of diverging views in the Select Committee, to have anything up to five different reports, we shall do as he suggests. I am grateful to him for his idea.
With these assurances, I hope that we can put these small but useful matters before the Select Committee on Procedure for discussion.