SCOTTISH STANDING COMMITTEES (Hansard, 29 April 1968)

§ Mr. Emrys Hughes
The Liberal Party has a definite grievance about its representation on the Committee. It may be undesirable to have members of that party in this House at all, and we do our best to prevent their coming here, but,, if they are elected, I submit that they represent their constituents and are entitled to have a fair representation on a Committee in which their constituents are interested. Today, we have a new element in the House in the shape of an 926 hon. Member who is a Scottish Nationalist. Some may say that it is undesirable to have Scottish Nationalists in the House, and that we should oppose their coming. However, irrespective of the political party represented by an hon. Member, he or she is sent to this House by the electors of a constituency and—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) cannot give way to three hon. Members at once. Sir Myer Galpern.

§ Sir M. Galpern
I have been following my hon. Friend's remarks with interest. In view of the absence of the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mrs. Ewing), can he assure us that he is making this plea with her full support? Is he quite sure that she is anxious to serve on every Committee of which he thinks she should be a member?

§ Mr. Emrys Hughes
I have not had any consultation with the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mrs. Ewing) and I do not speak with her knowledge. I take this point because of my experience on a local authority. My hon. Friend knows that it is always a matter of controversy in local authorities who shall be represented on different committees. I am arguing that, if a constituency returns a member to Parliament, whatever his political denomination, he is entitled to be represented on our Committees.

§ Mr. Emrys Hughes
I have not finished yet with the interruption of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Shettleston (Sir M. Galpern). I was saying in a chivalrous spirit that the hon. Lady is not here today, but neither are about 50 other hon. Members representing Scottish constituencies, and it would be just as unfair to attack one hon. Member—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. We cannot discuss the presence or absence of hon. Members representing Scottish constituencies on this matter.

§ Mr. Emrys Hughes
Mr. Speaker, I was simply responding to an interruption. It may be that I did it too readily.

§ Mr. Dewar
Does not my hon. Friend agree that the logic of his argument is that, if a constituency returns a Member to represent its point of view, the electors have a right to expect that Member to take part in a given Committee? If that logic is pused to its conclusion, every hon. Member representing a Scottish constituency would be a member of every Committee, which would be slightly absurd.

§ Mr. Emrys Hughes
There may be complications. I am merely asserting what I think is an elementary point of democracy. I have no connection with the Scottish Nationalists, but if we had a Scottish Nationalist on the Committee we would do away with a grievance. As long as there is no Scottish Nationalist on any Committee the Scottish Nationalists will have a grievance, which, in an assembly of this kind, is a most valuable asset.

§ Mr. Maclennan
Will my hon. Friend acknowledge that my constituents might feel aggrieved if I were kept off a Committee so that someone else might sit on it? My hon. Friend ought to give consideration to the grievances not of one small section of the community, but of all Scottish Members.

§ Mr. Emrys Hughes
There is some point in that. I was merely trying to follow to its logical conclusion the argument put from the Liberal benches. It is a point of view I have always argued in county council and other local government deliberations. If any electorate sends a Member to a deliberating body he should not be excluded from a Committee. Therefore, I suggest that when the Leader of the House comes back with a Motion he should take this point of view into consideration.
I further ask for an assurance that he will deal not only with the congestion of Bills, but the congestion at Question Time. I have been arguing for many years, with very little support, that—

§ Mr. Speaker
I know the hon. Member's keen interest in the subject that he is attempting to raise, but he cannot raise it on this Motion.

§ Mr. Emrys Hughes
I apologise, Mr. Speaker. I understand that the Motion is rather narrow and I have had considerable latitude. However, I ask the Leader of the House to take into consideration some of the unorthodox elements in the House before he comes forward with another Motion of this kind. Although we may seem irrational and unorthodox, we may have some small contribution to make the government of Scotland more efficient.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The hon. Member for Ormskirk (Sir D. Glover), whom we are glad to see back, must restrain himself for a moment. Mr. Grimond.

§ Mr. J. Grimond (Orkney and Shetland)
I wish to speak very briefly on one point concerned with the Motion. Before I come to that, I should like to say that I agree broadly with the point of view put forward so eloquently, if sometimes out of order, by the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes). He speaks from the heart. He has on occasion even been opposed to the Labour Party. He has frequently been in a minority and, therefore, feels for minorities.
I want to add one short point to what has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel). I understand that one of the Bills which may be sent to this second Committee affects only a part of Scotland, the Highlands and Islands Bill, the crofting counties, and in this House the Liberal Party has a majority there. Therefore, I am sure that the Chief Whip, who is a very accommodating, reasonable and intelligent man, will see the point that to exclude the Liberals from this Committee would be inexcusable. This is an obvious point and I know that he will take it.
I support everything that has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles. I will not repeat what he said, because no amount of repetition will make it more forceful in the mind of the Chief Whip.

§ Mr. George Willis (Edinburgh, East)
I do not wish to add to what has been said. I merely wish to raise a point on the Motion which has not so far been raised.
The Motion says: That the said second Committee…shall consist of not less than Twenty nor more than Fifty Members…of whom not less than Twenty Members shall represent Scottish constituencies. It happens at times that in the House it is necessary to add English Members to reflect the balance of the parties, but, given the present situation, it seems there is no need for English Members to serve on this Scottish Committee. I therefore suggest to my right hon. Friend that we should have a Scottish Committee and not have English Members on it.
The present Secretary of State and I, on behalf of the Scottish Labour group in the House, were responsible for the change in our rules and procedures which provided for a second Standing Committee. It serves a very useful purpose. It is to the credit of the Scottish Committee that, although we are often accused of talking for long periods, in the Session before last, when the Committee was appointed, it dealt with and completed three Bills in one sitting. I do not think any other Standing Committee has a record to equal that.

§ Mr. Hector Monro (Dumfries)
I think that there is general agreement that Private Members on both sides of the House should have an opportunity for the Committee stage of their Bills to be taken in the second Committee. It would be right to remember that this idea was instigated—by my hon. Friend the Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. G. Campbell) in 1963, when he was Under-Secretary of State—for this very purpose. It is fortunate that his Private Member's Bill, which received its Second Reading on Friday, will be the second Bill to go to the Committee following the Highlands and Islands Bill.
We should also bear in mind that one of the reasons why the Committee is being set up is the general mismanagement of Scottish business throughout this Session. There was no business forward in November when we could well have 930 had two sittings a week. It might have been possible to fit in Private Members' Bills; then sitting on Wednesdays would be unnecessary. The hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel) is right to be concerned about whether it will be possible to get a quorum on a Wednesday. About 25 Committees, including Select Committees, meet then, and the Chairman's Panel and all Scottish Members are extremely fully engaged. To put more work on to them may mean that it will be difficult to get a quorum in the Committee.

§ Mr. Maclennan
The hon. Member made a point which should not go unanswered. He said that Private Members' Bills could be considered as early as November, but the Ballot for those Bills took place only at the end of November and they did not get a Second Reading before the beginning of the new year.

§ Mr. Monro
I did not think that I should need to put such an elementary point to the hon. Member. Surely he realises that it would have been possible for Government business to come on in November. Then we would have taken Private Members' Bills at this time.

§ Mr. Donald Dewar (Aberdeen, South)
I had not intended to take part in this debate—I intended to hold my fire until later tonight—but I have been rather alarmed by the patriotic euphoria by which hon. Members have advocated that the Scottish Grand Committee should not reflect the composition of the House.
In discussing the Highlands and Islands Bill, there may be a real cause for grievance if there is not a Liberal Member on the Committee, but it is a tendency away from the rule that we should reflect the composition of the House. This was taken further by my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis), who suggested that the Committee should consist of Scottish Members only. That seems very attractive and sounds extraordinarily patriotic, but ultimately it would be extremely dangerous.
It raises the most far-reaching questions, into which I do not want to go at great length tonight. For example, it 931 raises the whole question of the composition of Standing Committees. Possibly many hon. Members, including some Liberal Members, would like to eject English Members from the Scottish Standing Committee, but such a proposition would raise profound difficulties. Clearly, it could be possible for there to be a situation in which the Scottish Committee then consisted predominantly of one party which was not the party in Government. There would be a clash, and the question would arise of which business should be passed through the Committee and when. That would throw a most serious spanner into the constitutional works. Such a proposal should not be endorsed lightly merely as a good idea which would be popular and look good in tomorrow's Scottish Press. That is a dangerous basis to adopt.
Ultimately, we might have the situation in which legislation affecting the development districts could be discussed only by Members of Parliament from those districts, in which, for example, the Labour Party might have an enormous predominance. Next, if a Bill affected only Manchester, it, might be said that only Manchester Members of Parliament could be on the Standing Committee. It seems to me that we are tearing up the whole machinery by which Parliament works and writing a prescription to constitutional anarchy under which Government business would not go through.

§ Sir M. Galpern
Is it not the case that when a Bill applies exclusively to England and Wales Scottish Members are excluded from membership of the Standing Committee?

§ Mr. Dewar
Not as far as I am aware. If, because of the party allegiance of the Welsh Members of the House, a wholly Welsh Standing Committee could not truly reflect the composition of the House, then Members from the rest of the United Kingdom would be drafted on to it, and it might well he that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Shettleston (Sir M. Galpern) or English Members or myself would serve on that Standing Committee according to the whim or wisdom of the selection Committee, depending on how hon. Members regard it. I do not want to discuss the matter further, but I hope that the Leader of the House will resist at this stage any 932 suggestion that the Scottish Standing Committee should not reflect the composition of the House.

§ Sir Douglas Glover (Ormskirk)
I rise to support what was said by the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Dewar), because it was very pertinent.

§ Mr. Willis
The hon. Member will not serve on the Standing Committee.

§ Sir D. Glover
I will come shortly to the right hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis). There are one or two things which I wish to say to him.
I thought that the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South put the problem in a nutshell. I have great sympathy with the view of the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) about a Bill dealing with the Highlands and Islands, because the Liberals hold the majority of the seats in the Highlands of Scotland. But if we once accept the view that specialist Committees should be formed entirely by local membership, we are on a very slippery slope. Such a Committee would naturally produce a specialist solution, which might be quite contrary to the wish of the House as a whole.
It is necessary that other Members, too, should sit on a Committee dealing with the Highlands of Scotland, because we are allocating money or resources, and if the Committee were overweighted by a few Members from that part of the kingdom, it would probably reach a totally different decision from that reached by a Committee made up of broad spectrum of the House. Whether hon. Members like it or not, this is a United Kingdom Parliament and not a Scottish Parliament or a Welsh Parliament.

§ Mr. Willis
The hon. Member is missing the point. The Second Reading of the Bill has to be passed by the House and after the Committee stage, the Report stage is on the Floor of the House.

§ Sir D. Glover
The right hon. Member knows only too well that with a great many Bills, whatever is done in Committee is only too likely to pass the scrutiny of the House on Report and Third Reading. The Committee stage of a Bill is vitally important. The House 933 is the United Kingdom Parliament and not a Scottish Parliament. When the right hon. Gentleman said that the Scottish Committee should be formed only of Scottish Members, did he mean Scottish by birth or Members representing Scottish constituencies?

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. We are moving into very wide fields now. The purpose of this debate is to decide whether we should discharge an Order which set up a second Scottish Standing Committee.

§ Sir D. Glover
I bow to your Ruling, Mr. Speaker. I was only replying to arguments which had already been advanced in the debate.
In response to the Deputy Leader of the House—I gather that it was in that capacity he spoke from the Box tonight and not in his much more scurrilous capacity as Chief Whip of the Government party—I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on the suavity with which he addressed the House in his new position, and I wish him success, though not for very long, in his tenure of office.
The right hon. Gentleman said that this would be the last time before the year 2017 when there would be a like occurence of the incident which occurred the other evening. All I can say is that on this small item, the earlier Motion having been passed on the nod—an interesting way to put it—the Government now, within three days, have to ask the House to rescind what was done, saying that what had been done, with great deliberation, was all a mistake. It typifies the administration of this country's affairs by the present Government. The sooner the Deputy Leader of the House and all his colleagues go, the better for the nation.

§ Mr. George Lawson (Motherwell)
I had not intended to intervene, but the hon. Member for Ormskirk (Sir D. Glover) has been a bit provocative. My right hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House made the position clear. Had he wished, the matter could have stood where it was. Two Motions were passed, which it was intended to pass, but because my right hon. Friend had let the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel) know that the intention was to afford an opportunity for him to say what he wanted to say, the 934 present Motion was put down for tonight. It is simply a matter of honouring an undertaking. But the situation could quite well have been allowed to pass, and, no doubt, some others might well have allowed it to do so.
The hon. Member for Dumfries (Mr. Monro) has been a bit tortuous in this matter, too. Perhaps he does not know that the extra Committee was originally set un under the Tory Administration, though prompted, admittedly, by my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) and various others of my hon. Friends, because we wanted to add to the machinery available for Scottish Members. It was set up when the Opposition were in Government, and it was set up in this form because we wanted to ensure that there were no abuses.
Before the Committee was set up initially, there was discussion with the then Opposition, of which I was a member. We wanted to ensure that the then Government did not use that Committee to force through controversial legislation, and we had agreement—admittedly, oral agreement—on what form it should take. It was understood that there would be no attempt to put controversial legislation through the Committee.
It was understood, also, that, as far as possible, we would keep the Committee small. I can tell the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles that, subsequently, when we became the Government, we did our utmost to enable a Liberal Member to go on to that Committee. Indeed, an agreement was arrived at with the object of allowing a Liberal Member to come on to the Committee. We were prepared to have a Member stand down on either side—I think that the party opposite would have agreed—so that a Liberal Member might come on. But the rule, the legitimate rule, that the composition of the Committee should reflect the composition of the House had to be observed. That oral agreement was kept in the past, and, so far as I know, it would be kept in the future.
I can tell my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) that the form of the Motion was the same when we became the Government. The fact that it provided for 20 Scottish Members plus does not mean that the "plus" would be utilised.
935 I must support my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Dewar). Despite what my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) says, these Committees were devised so that the House could get its business done more expeditiously and as a substitute for the functioning of the House. It is the House delegating a job to the Committee, and as the House is composed in a particular way so, very reasonably, the Committe should be composed in that way.
I yield to nobody in my Scottishness, and I should be very much opposed to any setting apart of any Scottish group, either in composition or place of meeting. This would be the first long step to driving us out of the House. For whatever reason, I want to see my compatriots continue in the House, because we need this House. We are part of the United Kingdom, and I think that the House benefits by our presence. I am very much behind my right hon. Friend in what he is doing tonight.

§ Mr. John Brewis (Galloway)
I echo what the hon. Member for Motherwell (Mr. Lawson) said in concluding. It is true that the Committee was set up by us when we were the Government to deal with non-controversial Bills. But we do not have controversial Bills from the present Government now, because they do not bring them forward. They promised all sorts of things, but we have had the Water (Scotland) Bill, Sewerage (Scotland) Bill—

§ Mr. Speaker
With respect, we cannot have a list of the non-controversial Bills that have gone to the Committee.

§ Mr. Brewis
The reason this second Committee has had to be set up is that Government business has not been arranged in such a way that certain Bills could be brought before the existing Committee before now. As an example, the present main Scottish social Bill is coming before this Committee only on 9th May. I cannot imagine how it can be expected to be got through the House by the Summer Recess. It should have been brought much sooner. These Bills could easily have been brought before the existing Committee. For that reason I say 936 that there is no reason why the Committee should need to be set up, except the complete bungling of the Government Whips in this matter.
I am particularly interested to see that the Commitee will reflect the composition of the House. We have had numerous speeches from Liberal Members and others pointing this out, and saying that it was quite wrong that English Members should be added. Is it not very lucky that it is being fixed by the composition of the House, and not the membership which the country would elect, because in that case the Government would be bringing in English Members as quickly as they could in view of their present electoral position?

§ Mr. John Silkin
I think that I should shortly reply to what has been an extremely instructive debate, at any rate for me.
I was very interested in the short lecture by my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes). I do not think that it was wholly germane to the point that we have to discuss. It will make an excellent chapter in another book, a copy of which I hope he will send me. He sent me the last one when our relationship was not as pleasant as it is now.

§ Mr. Emrys Hughes
It was in the last one. My right hon. Friend should have read it.

§ Mr. Silkin
I should really, but I have never had the time.
We are dealing with a Standing Committee and not a Select Committee. Select Committees have the opportunity of travelling around, and Standing Committees do not. There are many possible changes in procedure that the House may adopt now or in the future, but this is not the moment to discuss them. Certainly, my hon. Friend's gallantry in offering a seat on Committees to people who, I suspect, may not want them, may not be quite as much appreciated as he believes. There is sometimes a great deal of difficulty—if I can speak in another capacity—about getting Standing Committees filled.
The views put forward by the hon. Member for Dumfries (Mr. Monro) and 937 the hon. Member for Galloway (Mr. Brewis) do less than justice to their Conservative Government in 1963, because they said that the only reason for having a second Scottish Standing Committee was that the Government had messed up the business which had fallen behind and that if things had been done properly, everything would have been all right. On the one hand, the hon. Member for Dumfries thinks that we have too much crowded legislation and, on the other hand, the hon. Member for Galloway thinks that our legislation is non-controversial.

§ Mr. Brewis
Was the right hon. Gentleman here in 1953?

§ Mr. Silkin
As a matter of fact, I was. However, I am saying only that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the propaganda. Incidentally, I should like to thank both the hon. Member for Ormskirk (Sir D. Glover) and my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell (Mr. Lawson) for their very gracious speeches.
The real issue here is the representation of the Liberal Party. I appreciate the difficulty about a Standing Committee of 30. We are more than halfway 938 through a Session and there can be a bit of a log jam in Standing Committees and Select Committees. I cannot, and nor can my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, pre-empt the Committee of Selection, but I hope that it will take this matter into account. I shall see that any influence which I have is used to see that there is a Liberal representation. It could be done with a Committee smaller than 30.
The hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel) said—he probably did not intend to say—that the Liberals could be represented only if there were a Committee of 30. That is not true. If there is someone with expertise—and I should say that he himself has such expertise in certainly one of the Private Members' Bills which would be going to the Standing Committee—the Committee of Selection should take that into account. I hope that he will be satisfied with what I have said. I shall do my best to see that he is not entirely disappointed in this matter. With that, I hope that the House will permit me to withdraw the Motion.