HC Deb 13 November 1963 vol 684 cc160-74

2.38 p.m.

The Lord Privy Seal (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd)

I beg to move, That—

  1. (1) public bills other than Government bills shall have precedence over Government business on 17th January, 31st January, 14th February, 28th February, 13th March, 10th April, 24th April, 8th May, 12th June and 26th June.
  2. (2) private members' notices of motions shall have precedence over Government business on 13th December, 24th January, 7th February, 21st February, 6th March, 20th March, 17th April, 1st May, 5th June and 19th June, and ballots for these notices shall be held after questions on 27th November, 15th January, 22nd January, 5th February, 19th February, 4th March, 8th April, 15th April, 13th May and 3rd June respectively;
  3. (3) on Monday, 16th March, Monday, 27th April, Thursday, 18th June and Tuesday, 14th July private members' notices of motions shall have precedence until seven o'clock, and ballots for these notices shall be held after questions on Tuesday, 3rd March, Tuesday, 14th April, Thursday, 4th June and Tuesday, 30th June respectively;
  4. (4) no notices of motions shall be handed in for any of the days on which private members' notices have precedence under this order in anticipation of those ballots.
This Motion accords with revised Standing Order No. 5 which was approved by the House on 1st August this year. It proposes 20 Fridays for Bills and Motions and, in addition, four half-days up to 7 p.m. for Motions. The Ballot for Bills will be on Thursday, 21st November, and the first Ballot for Notices of Motions will be on Wednesday, 27th November, for Friday, 13th December.

2.40 p.m.

Mr. John Parker (Dagenham)

I wish to oppose this Motion. On two previous occasions, in 1957 and 1959, I queried the usefulness of Private Members' Bills under our present procedure. The whole matter was referred to a Select Committee on Procedure after, I think, the 1957 occasion when the matter was raised and one of the recommendations of that Select Committee relevant to Private Members' Bills has been carried out, namely, the proposal about the alteration of the size of Standing Committees considering Private Members' Bills and their rules about quorums and the closure.

Those changes have been very useful, but the fact remains, as any Member who attends on Fridays will know, that the Friday filibuster is still a very serious factor interfering with Private Members' time, and it is time that something was done about this problem.

There is growing criticism of our House and of Parliament generally in the country. Many back-bench Members have a feeling of frustration from time to time because they think that they have very little control over the Executive and are increasingly becoming only Lobby fodder. I willnot go into that wider question now. However, what is equally important is that private Members should not feel that they cannot make useful contributions to altering the law of the country. At present much of the time allocated to them is largely wasted because of our rules of procedure. I should have thought that it was time that we looked at this whole question once mere.

There has been a very considerable change in the character of Private Members' Bills in the present century. I think it worth while to look at the practice at the beginning of this century. From then up to the 1930s most Private Members' Bills which were introduced on Fridays were on party political subjects. In fact, they were the occasion for party political propaganda. Members introduced Bills which happened to be the favoured nostrums of their political party, and very full debates took place.

Although, nominally, Members had a free vote, in fact the Government Whips took good care to ensure that no Bill to which they objected was carried on Second Reading. At that time, if one happened to be a Labour Member who had won a place in the private Ballot it was the practice to bring in a Bill—say—in favour of nationalisation of the mines or to make some alteration to the law on industrial insurance. If one happened to be a Conservative one brought in a Bill on tariff reform or military conscription. If one was a Liberal Member, one brought in a Bill about proportional representation or one in favour of closing the public houses on Sunday in some part of Britain where they were still open. There were very big attendances on Fridays and very big votes.

However, in the early 1930s there was an occasion when an hon. Member of the Conservative Party proposed to bring in a Private Member's Bill dealing with trade union reform, and Mr. Baldwin, who was then Prime Minister and the Leader of the Conservative Party, came to the House and made a very strong attack on that Bill and asked his supporters to go into the Lobby against it, which they did. The line that he took was this. He did not think it right and proper that private Members' time should be spent mainly on party propaganda Bills.

Mr. Baldwin advised the House that it should specialise in two kinds of Bills, one the non-controversial Bill and the other the Bill which was controversial, but controversial across party lines. He believed that a lot of useful work could be done by private Members on such Bills. His advice was followed by his supporters and, ultimately, by most Members on both sides of the House. There was a change, therefore, in the character of Private Members' Bills very much to the advantage of the House in this kind of legislation.

One of the first Bills under the new dispensation was Sir A. P. Herbert's Marriage Reform Bill which introduced very important changes on a very controversial subject, namely, the law of marriage and divorce, which could not possibly have been introduced by a Government but which was introduced by a private Member and finally passed. Following that, there were many other Bills introduced from both sides of the House. Since the 1930s many useful pieces of private Members' legislation, some non-controversial and some controversial, which have been supported by both sides of the House have become law.

Unfortunately, private Members trying to get legislation through the House suffer from many great disadvantages. The Government can always put on the Whips to get legislation through. Private Members cannot do that. The Government have the advantage of being able to keep a House very easily if they have a controversial Bill which they want to get through.

Private Members do not have the assistance in drafting Bills which Government Departments have. This matter was gone into by a Select Committee and one of the proposals made by it was that private Members should have the assistance of the Parliamentary draftsmen in drafting their Bills and the Amendments which they wanted to make to other Bills. So far as I know, that recommendation has not been carried out. I therefore ask the Leader of the House whether steps could be taken to make available to private Members when drafting Bills the assistance of Parliamentary draftsmen and if they want to draft Amendments to Private Members' Bills or Government Bills.

Another thing which Members who are here on Fridays will know private Members suffer from is that the rules governing the running of private Members' business are quite unsuitable for that purpose. They may suit the Government, which, rightly, can always ensure that they have a sufficient number of their supporters here to keep a House or pass the Closure when they wish to do so, but private Members do not have that advantage.

For example, the rule about having counts between one o'clock and quarter past one is a very great obstacle to private Members wishing to keep a House in order to get their Bills through. I know that the question of the Closure was looked into by the Select Committee which recommended that there should be no change in the present practice. However, I should have thought that on recent experience this matter should be considered again. If we are to kill the Friday filibuster—and I believe that we must do so if justice is to be done to private Members—this matter must be looked into once more.

Let us look at the facts. There have been 15 Sessions since private Members' time was reintroduced in 1947. During those 15 Sessions, Mr. Speaker gave his approval for the Closure to be moved on a Private Member's Bill on 30 occasions. I am excluding votes in Standing Committees and on Motions. On only six occasions was the Closure carried. Only then was it possible to muster 100 Members to carry the Closure. That is not the way to run private Members' time on Fridays on commonsense lines. Apart from those six occasions, the Motion for the Closure was accepted nine times be- cause at the last moment the people who were filibustering climbed down and let the Closure go through without a vote. On two out of these nine occasions the Government asked them to do so.

On six out of the other 15 occasions over 50 votes were cast in favour of the Closure. On three occasions there were over 80 votes in favour of the Closure, twice there were 87 and once 83. In many cases the vote against the Closure has been small, often under 20. On one of these occasions it was only six. It is ridiculous when over 80 Members vote for the Closure and only 20 vote against it that there should be no further discussion of the Bill under consideration. I should have thought that there was a very strong case for altering the figure required to support the Closure from 100 to 50 when private Members' business comes up on Fridays.

It is argued as against this that it is wrong for a small House to be able to pass a Bill on a Friday, when many hon. Members have other business. True, many live in the provinces, or in Scotland or Wales, and most of those who attend the House on Fridays live in the London area. It is only to be expected that those interested are most likely to attend. Nonetheless I should have thought it right and proper that there should be an opportunity of going ahead with such legislation. If it should prove to be contrary to the general wishes of the majority of hon. Members, there is always the opportunity of turning down such a Bill on Third Reading. I submit it would not, therefore, be undermining the rights of the House as a whole if we were to reduce the number required for the Closure on a Friday.

One or two other points require investigation. There is the custom of hon. Members talking at great length on an earlier Bill which may be non-controversial to prevent proper discussion and a vote on an important Bill which is to follow. This is one of the points which needs to be investigated. I therefore suggest that it is time that we set up another Select Committee, not with the same terms of reference as the earlier Committee, but to look at the whole question of how to spend private Members' time rather more usefully from the point of view of the House as a whole and of private Members.

I have been a Member of the House for 28 years. I love this House of Commons. I want to see it working as an effective body and I am certain that the public outside wants to see us as an effective body doing a good job of work. We not; only have to be businesslike, but we have to be seen to be businesslike outside. I am certain that the filibuster which one so often has on a Friday does no credit to this House or to the Members who take part in it.

Irealise that some Members do not like controversial legislation to be introduced on a Friday. I think, however, that the great majority of hon. Members support the views of Mr. Baldwin on this matter and consider that one of the jobs of Parliament and of private Members, on both sides, is not only to introduce non-controversial legislation, but to take advantage of introducing controversial legislation on the many issues, like the laws of divorce and marriage, and so on, in which controversy cuts across party lines. That is the only opportunity when this kind of legislation can be brought in for discussion in the House, because the Government do not normally deal with that kind of issue.

I therefore suggest that we should not accept the Motion at this time. I ask the Leader of the House whether he will not consider setting up a Select Committee on the lines I have suggested with rather wider terms of reference, namely, as to how we can improve our procedure and assist private Members in doing their job of introducing legislation and getting it through in this House.

2.53 p.m.

Miss Joan Vickers (Plymouth, Devonport)

I support what the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker) has said, because we in this House try to make our Private Members' Bills all-party Bills. We get together and consider them thoroughly and we do not bring Bills of this nature forward to the House without proper and due consideration. In other words, no frivolous Bills are introduced by right hon. and hon. Members, on either side of the House.

I am not one of the London Members, but I take the opportunity of spending a great number of Fridays here, not only to bring forward Bills myself, but to support those of other hon. Members. This Friday procedure is getting farcical. We have what I call the Friday Members, who come along simply to yell the word "Object". Very often, they have little idea even of the Title of the Bill and more often than not no idea of its contents. I have learnt this to my own detriment.

The hon. Member for Dagenhamhas mentioned that when considering their Bills private Members are probably put to considerable financial cost. Hon. Members who, like myself, are not trained as lawyers have to approach experts and need help with the drafting of their Bills and with Amendments. When one has gone to this expense, it is very infra dig to come along here and not even get a hearing. On two occasions when I have had Bills—one under the Ten Minutes Rule and another through Second Reading—I went to the Committee stage and then had to go through the procedure of hon. Members sitting in the passage outside the Committee room in order not to give me a quorum, so that the Bill would be delayed. I got it to Committee stage, however, and I suppose I must be grateful for that.

On the second occasion, I was talked out. What was quite inexcusable was that I was talked out by the then Joint Under-Secretary of State to the Home Department, despite the fact that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) drew his attention to the hour. He replied that he still had a great deal to say and continued his speech until after four o'clock. If hon. Members take the trouble to introduce a Bill—and some of these Bills are quite acceptable to the Government, who cannot find time themselves to introduce them—we should get a fair and proper hearing. For this reason, I support what has been said by the hon. Member for Dagenham, so that it may be worth while for hon. Members to bring forward independent Bills which are apt and beneficial for the community as a whole.

I have not been a Member of the House nearly as long as the hon. Member for Dagenham, but during the period I have been here there have been a great number of Bills of benefit to the country and to the individuals concerned. In bringing forward his Bill in regard to marriage last Session, the hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) was doing a great service to many people. That is one occasion which remains in our memories.

I support the hon. Member for Dagenham. If we cannot have a direct answer from my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal today, perhaps he will say that he will look into the whole procedure and see whether we cannot get a better balance in regard to our Private Members' Bills, both those which are balloted for, and the Ten Minutes Rule Bills.

2.57 p.m.

Mr. Leo Abse (Pontypool)

I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker) has said, because unless we take opportunities such as this one today to affirm the rights of private Members, the process of the private Members' role being diminished is bound to continue. When considering the proposals put forward by my hon. Friend, one must consider them against the present background. It is apparent to all of us that over the years there has, perhaps, been a hardening of political views and a rigidity in party politics, and perhaps for this reason it becomes more important that we should create the conditions so that with Measures which are not party Measures, opportunities and facilities could genuinely be open to hon. Members who wish to bring the issues before the House.

In so many respects, the private Member is being threatened. It is platitudinous to talk today of the growth of the Executive. It is known that in the country there are fears that we are almost getting a presidential system. In the light of recent events, it is becoming clear that unless action is taken, the role of the private Member is becoming increasingly that of a welfare officer or of a minor ombudsman and is ceasing to be the role of an individual who frames part of the legislation of the country.

When the rare opportunity comes to a ballot victor—and one must consider how rare that opportunity is—it is vitally important that he exercises his right to introduce a genuine Bill, one which is being presented not to deal with an over- spill Measure, a Bill which the Government want, a piece of camouflaged Government legislation, a Measure which is the result of a worthy Committee recommending unanimously an alteration in some minutiae of the law. That is not the function of a Private Member's Bill. As long as the present rules exist, it is almost inevitable, however, that if the private Member wants to get anything done he will select something in that category, otherwise he knows that he is in danger of all his work being utterly frustrated.

What does a private Member face? Consider the obstacles as matters stand. First, he has the difficulty which overhangs the House of a certain dilettante attitude, which means that the private Member has no access to the sort of research facilities that are open to the Government. We all know that we have a rude, crude research system here and that the private Member, therefore, has to start by doing his own research.

No Department is available and no research organisation is open to the private Member, unless he chooses some blatantly propagandist party Bill, and that is precisely what we want to prevent; if we create circumstances where the private Member has no research facilities he is under the temptation to select either something utterly innocuous or something blatantly controversial, and the role of the private Member becomes diminished.

Or again, consider that he has to pay out a great deal of money. If he wants to get a Bill started he has to get the Bill drafted. This is a complicated task. We pay our Parliamentary draftsmen, rightly, very large sums of money. Is it right, is it proper, that a Member has, out of his meagre salary, to pay out substantial sums to get his Bill into any sort of shape at all? The minimum which should be done to protect the right of the private Member is to ensure that from the beginning, and not at a late stage of the Bill, there should be open to the private Member the legal resources at the disposal of the Government, so that his intentions can be articulated within his Private Member's Bill. Having to wait for this to be done until the Private Member's Bill is well on its way is not good enough.

He has to consider, too, what it will cost him. Anyone who has brought forward a Private Member's Bill knows that if he is going to be courteous, even in an elementary degree, he may be likely to have to reply to literally thousands of letters. Yet here we are as private Members still begging for any secretarial assistance, and still being expected out of our meagre salaries, which are in many cases Members' whole earnings—to have to face the sending of letters—by the thousands in many cases, as I know from my own recent experience—and having to pay for the postage involved.

All these obstacles exist for the person who has anything to do with bringing forward a Private Member's Bill. Is it any wonder that the numbers of Members seeking to bring in a Private Member's Bill constitute only half the House? Only half of us even enter into the Ballot. That is, of course, because Members know from what they have heard or from their own past experience that they have to meet obstacle after obstacle if they want to bring forward legislation of a constructive, albeit controversial, character.

Then, too, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham said, a Member finds himself in the miserable position that he cannot get 100 Members here—as I know, having submitted two Bills—and mainly because Members of Parliament cannot afford to stay an extra night. This is so. We are not paid enough to be on the job. It is indisputable that many Members leave on a Thursday because they cannot afford to stay an extra night to be here on the next day, Friday, and there is the expense which is incurred, too, for meals,, and so on. So we have this difficulty, apart from the difficulties mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham, that, naturally, Members who have constituency engagements at the weekends, and have to travel a long way away, cannot get here. So the business of making a Private Member's Bill an Act is an almost impossible task, for it is an almost impossible task for a Member to get 100 other Members to be here to support him.

Because we have our Private Members' Bills business on Friday, considerable numbers of Members utilise this as an opportunity to evade participating in any controversial issue. Is this good enough? Is it any wonder that the public begin to be cynical when they find that Members absent themselves and have got a good excuse, which they would not have on a Wednesday, to be absent on a Friday, so they cannot be in any danger of offending any section of opinion within their constituencies? I think procedure ought to be adopted so that it is more difficult for a Member to evade participating upon a controversial issue. We should not have a procedure which enables him to dodge some of the major issues, albeit ones which impinge on human relationships, as we have at present.

The worst effects are undoubtedly that a cabal not representative of opinion in or outside this House can prevent decisions from being taken, and this is happening again and again and generally means that any small group, however out of touch it may be with public opinion, frustrates this House, and prevents any expression of opinion taking place. I do not believe that this is a healthy contribution to the life of this House of Commons.

I believe that what perhaps above everything else should be reconsidered is whether Private Members' Bills can be taken on Wednesdays, whether the time which is given to Private Members' Motions could be given to Private Members' Bills. I think that this would be a genuine contribution to overcoming some of the problems. It would mean we would have Members here, and it would mean, even if the Closure position remained the same, that there would be a genuine possibility of having representative opinion on any issue brought before the House.

I trust that the Leader of the House will take note of what has been said, and that these opinions will not be consigned to limbo. Already our status as Members is a shrinking status; already we are being reduced to an extraordinarily minor rÔle. Unless we look after ourselves here, we shall not deserve the respect and regard which we demand from the nation.

3.6 p.m.

Sir Harry Legge-Bourke (Isle of Ely)

I should just like to say that the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker) did me the courtesy of saying he intended to raise this matter, bearing in mind, I think, that I had bad luck with a Bill in the last Session. I would say that I think there is a case for perhaps treating in rather a different manner a Bill which is virtually an all-party, agreed Bill as distinct from a Bill which is purely a one-man Bill or a tiny minority Bill.

I think that the real crux of the question of the Closure is the question of how many Members are necessary for it. I do not know that I want to go the wholeway with the hon. Member for Dagenham and the hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) in saying we need a full Select Committee to go into the whole thing. Through our usual procedure for amending our rules from time to time gradually as the years go by, we might perhaps ask that in this Session of Parliament the Committee might very well consider whether or not in the rules applying to Private Members' Bills some distinction be made between those which are all-party Bills and those which are not.

I believe we could get that matter dealt with in the ordinary course of the Sessional procedure and thus perhaps meet the point concerning both hon. Members.

3.7 p.m.

Mr. Marcus Lipton (Brixton)

I think that the Leader of the House is now convinced by the cogency of the arguments which have been submitted to him in connection with Private Members' Bills procedure. It is quite clear, as, I think, the Leader of the House will himself admit, that the dice are very heavily loaded against any private Member who wants to introduce a Private Member's Bill, whether an all-party Measure as described by the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) or what he called a one-man Bill.

Whatever the nature of the Private Member's Bill is, it is subject to very many handicaps, and I do hope that the Leader of the House will take this opportunity to cover himself with imperishable glory by announcing that he is prepared to give sympathetic consideration to the arguments which have been brought to his notice.

The points can be summarised very briefly under five heads. We have to try to make it easier for private Members to introduce Bills—with, of course, the approval of the House. In the first case, the rule relating to the number required to carry the Closure ought to be abolished, and a simple majority ought to suffice for the purpose of enabling the Question to be put. Secondly—and I hope that the Patronage Secretary will take note of this—some of us are beginning to take strong exception to the habit which is growing of Government supporters suddenly appearing for the first time at four o'clock on a Friday afternoon and shouting "Object" without having heard a word of the debates, and sometimes at the instigation, or at least with the connivance, of the Government Whips. That is something to which both sides of the House ought to give attention.

The third point is that no permission should be given to hold a count on a Friday, because that is also a device sometimes deliberately employed for the purpose of killing a useful private Member's effort.

Fourthly, the suggestion that time for Private Members' Bills should be found on Wednesdays is worth considering, because Private Members' Motions could be dealt with just as easily on a Friday as on a Wednesday. Fifthly—this is a serious point referred to already—we do not want to see a repetition of what happened on at least one occasion when a Government spokesman rose just before four o'clock and deliberately talked a Bill out.

Colonel Sir Harwood Harrison (Eye)

rose—

Mr. Lipton

I am not prepared to give way at the moment, because I am just about to sit down. After I have sat down, the hon. and gallant Gentleman can say whatever he likes or whatever the House is willing to allow him to say.

I hope that the Leader of the House will pay some attention to the points which have been brought to his notice because they reveal an injustice and a hardship which adversely affect the way in which private Members are able to carry out their work.

Sir H. Harrison: I merely wanted to ask the hon. Gentleman whether he remembers an occasion eleven years ago, on a Private Members' Motions day, when I had the second Motion, and just as the first Motion was dying, he came into the Chamber, not having been there before, and made half-an-hour's speech which defeated my Motion.

3.10 p.m.

Mr. William Yates (The Wrekin)

I am sorry that I was not here when this debate arose. It seems to be more and more forgotten in this House that we sit here as private Members. Every now and (lien one is reminded forcibly that more and more time is being passed into the hands of the Executive or by agreement through the official channels of the Opposition. Therefore, I thought that it would not be amiss for me today to say that I hope that the Leader of the House will do all that he possibly can to be certain that those of us who willingly support the Government or the Opposition Front Bench do not forget their primary function here, which is to discharge their duties to their constituents by whom they have been returned.

I can tell the Leader of the House, whom I am glad to see in his new rÔle, that I will do everything in my power, with the one vote that I possess, to be quite certain that when it comes to a division of opinion between the rights of the private Member and the rights of the Executive, the rights and privileges and all that belongs to a private Member are sustained. I hope that the Leader of the House will bear this in mind when he replies.

3.12 p.m.

Mr. Selwyn Lloyd

I have listened very carefully to what the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker) has said. He is a very senior Member of the House and, therefore, his views deserve very serious consideration. I have also listened to what has been said by my hon. Friends and other hon. Members. I certainly hope to safeguard the rights of private Members as far as I can. I would point out that the Motion before the House is a consolidation of an advance in the rights of private Members.

Two important points have been raised during this discussion in regard to the procedure on Fridays—in regard to the Closure and the count. In a way it is a somewhat difficult matter because, on the one hand, there is the conflict between the right of hon. Members to show approval or disapproval of particular legislation and on the other hand there is the natural desire of other hon. Members to give their legislative projects an airing.

However, I promise to consider what has been said today. I am not sure whether this will bring me imperishable glory. The glory of the hon. Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton) perished quite quickly when my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Eye (Sir H. Harrison) intervened. But I will consider what has been said today and also review what has been said previously. I am quite prepared to consider the Select Committee proposal. I hope that, with that undertaking, the House will now pass the Motion.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That—

  1. (1) public bills other than Government bills shall have precedence over Government business on 17th January, 31st January, 14th February, 28th February, 13th March, 10th April, 24th April, 8th May, 12th June and 26th June;
  2. (2) private members' notices of motions shall have precedence over Government business on 13th December, 24th January, 7th February, 21st February, 6th March, 20th March, 17th April, 1st May, 5th June and 19th June, and ballots for these notices shall be held after questions on 27th November, 15th January, 22nd January, 5th February, 19th February, 4th March, 8th April, 15th April, 13th May and 3rd June respectively;
  3. (3) on Monday, 16th March, Monday, 27th April, Thursday. 18th June and Tuesday, 14th July private members' notices of motions shall have precedence until seven o'clock, and ballots for these notices shall be held after questions on Tuesday, 3rd March, Tuesday, 14th April, Thursday, 4th June and Tuesday, 30th June respectively;
  4. (4) no notices of motions shall be handed in for any of the days on which private members' notices have precedence under this order in anticipation of those ballots.