§ Mr. William HamiltonOn a point of order. Last Thursday, 17th March, you made a statement, Mr. Speaker, indicating how you proposed to deal with an abuse of Question Time which had been brought to your attention. The abuse was that hon. Members were linking late Questions to very early Questions in the hope and expectation that they would be called to ask supplementaries.
You, in proposing to deal with this abuse, said that you would hesitate to call hon. Members for supplementary questions where a Question was later than No.50, and No.10 in the case of Questions to the Prime Minister.
I have, of course, no objection to that, except to say that this was dealing with one abuse which originated from the original abuse by hon. Members opposite.
Mr. HamiltonThe effect of the Ruling would seem to many of my hon. Friends to penalise hon. Members on this side of the House rather more than hon. Members opposite—[HON. MEMBERS: "Why."] Precisely because the Order Paper has been abused by hon. Members opposite. To give an example: on 4th May—that is, about six weeks hence—there are already no fewer than 29 Questions down to the Chancellor of the Exchequer—
§ Mr. HamiltonOf course, that is perfectly in order. I understand that. It is, however, also in order for us to tack Questions on to them since we cannot any longer put our own Questions down 567 —[HON. MEMBER: "What is the point?"] My point of order, Mr. Speaker, is this. To appear to be fair, and to be seen to be fair, I ask you that when you are exercising your discretion in inviting supplementaries you use the same kind of tactic with hon. Members with Questions before No.50 as with those with Questions after No.50, even supplementary questions coming from the original questioners.
§ Mr. SpeakerI am obliged to the hon. Member, who gave me warning this morning that he wanted to raise this point. Clearly, we cannot have a prolonged discussion about Question procedure now, or we would be trespassing on the business of the House. I would be grateful if the House would allow me a little time in which to explain how, it seems to me, as a servant of the House, I am trying to wrestle with our Question difficulties until such time as I can get guidance through the Select Committee. This is, indeed, a very serious matter.
§ Mr. SpeakerI beg hon. Members to hear me in silence. It is a serious matter for this reason. If a war were to arise between parties to pre-empt the Order Paper it would be easy enough utterly to defeat our processes—
§ Mr. SpeakerPlease may I be heard in silence?
Before the Select Committee reports, and should there be that to deal with, I would have to ask the House for additional powers for the reason I shall explain. Exactly what they would be I am not prepared to say now. It is a very difficult problem, but if I may explain why I should need them, there is nothing in our rules at present which prevents any hon. Member from giving as long advance notice of a Question as he wishes. It is, therefore, equally open to all hon. Members to put down Questions and I do not think that it would he for me to intervene if some hon. Members have done so and some have not.
Having said that, I must emphasise again what I said last week, namely, that I try to achieve a fair balance. The fact that a Question is asked from one side 568 does not necessarily mean that there should be no supplementary questions asked from the other side. These are all matters which are and, I think, must be for the discretion of the Chair.
The next problem is this. I could not ask the House for additional powers unless I had a sound basis to go upon. I do not want to be misunderstood. I absolutely accept, for my part, the conviction of the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) and his hon. Friends' conviction that we are here faced with some sort of abuse in pre-empting the Order Paper. I absolutely accept that, but I would, before I asked the House for additional powers, have to justify my request, and that is difficult.
The House will appreciate that the fact that a Question is put down very early is now, alas, in no sense incriminating, because if an hon. Member wants an Oral Answer to Question, such is the state of the Order Book that he must do that a preposterous time ahead. So I have done my best to find out what the real position is. I looked at the day after the hon. Member first raised the matter with me—namely, on 18th March—and I compared 18th March, 1965, with 18th March, 1964, and looked at the relevant state of the Order Book.
I hope that the House will forgive me if I read the figures a little slowly. I find that the distribution by the parties of early Questions for future days on that basis is as follows: in 1965, Conservative, 677; Liberal, 24, and Labour, 448. In 1964, when we reversed the seating, the figures were Conservative, 143; Liberal, 11, and Labour, 261.
If the House will do the sum it will see that it means that the proportion of total Questions down for Answer on future days in the names of hon. Members of the principal Opposition party last year was 63 per cent. and that this year the relevant proportion is 59 per cent. [Interruption.] I am not making any point, except that it does not seem to be much different. It is true that during this Session hon. Members have been putting down their Questions far ahead and are so filling up the Order Book to an unprecedented size. The practice is common to both sides of the House. It may not be thought desirable, but that is a matter which I hope the Select Committee will 569 look into. To prevent the practice would require an alteration in our rules, and that is outside my power.
§ Mr. William HamiltonI am obliged to you for that statement, Mr. Speaker. Perhaps I will be allowed to say this before resuming my seat. The percentages which you have given perhaps distort the picture. The main point at issue is the pre-empting of the Order Paper well in advance and the figures which you gave showed that in 1964 there were 143 Conservative Questions, and for Labour, then the Opposition, there were 261. Now the Opposition have 677 Questions, which is nearly three times as many.
This is the point about which we are complaining. We cannot surely be criticised for attaching our Questions to theirs when they are pre-empting the Order Paper three months in advance.
§ Mr. SpeakerI am not criticising anybody. I am, as I said, wrestling with the problem of how to get it right. I assure the hon. Gentleman that if he looks al the Questions put down for future dates he will find that the number varies as between the principal parties. Sometimes one finds days when more Labour Questions are down than Conservative ones, and vice versa. It is impossible to suppose that there is a monopoly. Of course, the question of there being many more Questions raises much wider considerations which we will have to leave to the Select Committee. There are now a variety of reasons for that.
§ Mr. HeathMay I say, Mr. Speaker, how grateful we are to you for the guidance you have given us, and for the way you have handled this difficult situation? May I also completely reject any accusations made by the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) that this side of the House has tried—
§ Mr. William HamiltonOn a point of order, Mr. Speaker—
§ Mr. SpeakerOrder. I am at present hearing a point of order. What the right hon. Gentleman says takes the form of a point of order thanking me for my statement.
§ Mr. HeathTo return to my point of order, Mr. Speaker, as the hon. Gentleman has made an accusation against this side that we are trying to pre-empt the Order Paper, I completely reject that accusation. The plain fact was that, when Questions were put down in perfectly good faith on this side, Questions of exactly the same kind were immediately tacked on to them by hon. Gentlemen opposite—
§ Mr. SpeakerOrder. It would really be quite unprofitable to have a discussion of this kind. My position is firmly that I assume, I am persuaded of, I am convinced of the conviction of hon. Gentlemen, that there is an abuse. I have stated the facts as I have discovered them. I do not accept that there is an abuse, or say anything about it. I accept their conviction that there is.
§ Mr. ShinwellOn a point of order, Mr. Speaker. On the previous occasion when this matter was raised, you replied to a statement made by my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) and myself. When I sought to express gratitude to you for having made a response to our submission, during the course of which expression there were noises from the other side, I was told by you that that was not the occasion for making speeches. My point of order is that the right hon. Member for Bexley (Mr. Heath) has made a speech in the course of which he has accused my hon. Friend. Am I allowed to reply to him now?
§ Mr. SpeakerNo, I think not. I deprecate right hon. and hon. Members from either side making speeches of that kind in this connection. All we are trying to do is find out what it is right to do in the difficulties that arise with Questions. I will watch the situation. If I have to come to the House for additional powers, I will do so, but it is very difficult to find out what the remedy may be. I think that it would be a good idea now to get on with business; we are very short of time today.
§ Mr. FellOn a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I did rise on this question on a number of occasions a few weeks ago, and I merely want now to clear up one point you made in your statement—for which we are all grateful. You 571 said that you accepted the statement of the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) that there had been abuse—
§ Mr. SpeakerNo, no—with respect, the hon. Gentleman is wrong. I was most careful not to. I said that I accepted the hon. Gentleman's belief that there was abuse. I was very careful to say that there was not one so far as I am concerned. It is just like that.
§ Mr. FellI am sorry to misquote you. Mr. Speaker—you accepted the hon. Gentleman's belief that there was an abuse. All I want to clear up is that you do not accept his belief that there was an abuse that was confined to one side.
§ Mr. SpeakerWith respect to the hon. Gentleman, it is really tangled up. I am accepting the hon. Gentleman's good faith in making a complaint. I am not accepting that he is right about the facts. I am not arguing now one way or the other. I recommend to the House that we get on with business.
§ The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. William Ross)Mr. Speaker, when the right hon. Gentleman for Bexley (Mr. Heath) was speaking, my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) attempted to intervene. If I remember rightly, you told us that the right hon. Gentleman was on a point of order. I have not heard your answer to that point of order that the right hon. Gentleman raised. Do I take it that it was not really a point of order?
§ Mr. SpeakerI do not know in the least. I think that the right hon. Gentleman raised a point of order—it is the only context in which he could have arisen—
§ Mr. SpeakerOrder. I do not propose to discuss these matters on points of order if the House treats it like this. We must not abuse our business by unsuccessful argument here about a matter which can be well looked at by the Select Committee in due course.