NEW CLAUSE NO. 21—SCOTTISH VOTING PEERS

HC Deb 25 February 1969 vol 778 cc1472-687

Amendment No. 63 in the Preamble, page 2, line 4, leave out paragraph (b).

Amendment No. 64 in the Preamble, page 2, line 8, at end insert: Provided always that included in that House and in the said body of voting members there shall normally be not less than one-tenth of those members who are domiciled in Scotland.

Mr. Clegg

On a point of order. Would it be in order, Sir Barnett, to discuss the payment of Scottish and regional peers on this group of Amendments? If so, the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) would be able to resume the speech in the midst of which he was so rudely interrupted by the Government Whip.

The Temporary Chairman

It is in order to discuss the Amendments and the new Clause to which I have referred.

Mr. Iremonger

On a point of order. Are you aware. Sir Barnett, that it was pointed out on an earlier group of Amendments that some of them did not appear on today's Notice Paper? The same difficulty arises with Amendments Nos. 186, 63 and 64 in this group. The Chair was kind enough to read out the text of an earlier Amendment. May I ask you to do the same in this case; and as I am slow at writing, would you kindly read the text of these Amendments at dictation speed?

1.0 a.m.

The Temporary Chairman

I think the Committee consists of literate people. The Amendments have been on the Paper for quite a time and have been known for some time to the Committee. I think we ought to proceed with the debate now.

Mr. Arthur Lewis

Further to that point of order. The hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger) said the Amendments were not on the Paper. Can you assure us, Sir Barnett, by telling us on which page of the Paper they are? The hon. Member, as usual, seems to be completely wrong. He does not seem to have got his facts right. Or is the Chair wrong? I should like to be clear whether it is the hon. Member or the Chair who is wrong. Perhaps you could indicate the page on which the Amendments are.

The Temporary Chairman

It is quite simple. The Amendments have been on the Paper for some time. I am quite sure that every diligent Member knows what is contained in them, having read them on the Paper. If anyone objects to these Amendments all being taken together, that is another matter and one for the Committee. I am sure that now the Committee is anxious to hear what the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) has to say on what is a very important Amendment, as he says. He wants to explain his Amendment, and I hope we give him full opportunity to do so.

Mr. Arthur Lewis

I do not for one moment suggest that this is not a very important Amendment. All I wanted to get clear was, where the Amendments are. The hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger) says they are not on today's Notice Paper. You, Sir Barnett, have said they were and are on the Paper. All I want to know is, is the hon. Member for Ilford, North correct or incorrect? If he is correct, is that not a reflection on the Chair, since you have told us they are on the Paper and the hon. Member says they are not? May I ask you to name the page on which they are? Otherwise, I think we must object, and say they must not be discussed till they are on the Paper, because how can we discuss Amendments which are not on the Paper? I have always understood that Amendments must be on the Paper. Can you tell me on what page they are, and tell the hon. Member?

The Temporary Chairman

All the Amendments are on the Paper and have been for some time. If any hon. Member wishes that we should not with this group of Amendments discuss any one of the Amendments in particular that is an entirely different matter, but, as matters stand at present, I ask the Committee to be good enough to accept the suggestion which has been made about the grouping, because all these Amendments are relevant to the issue raised in the main one. No. 156. We really must get on. As has already been pointed out, it is very late, and I am sure the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) wants to assist the Committee by proceeding with his speech.

Mr. J. Bruce-Gardyne (South Angus)

On a point of order. It is about the grouping you have just made of Amendments, Sir Barnett. You have included No. 186 in the group. It seems to me that No. 186 involves a somewhat different and distinct point from that on the main Amendment, No. 156, which makes a proposal about the proportion of Members of the new House of Lords who should be domiciled in Scotland, whereas the proposal in Amendment 186 relates to rights of voting of normally non-voting peers. There is no provision in that Amendment for a proportion of those peers to be domiciled in Scotland. It therefore seems to me, with great respect—and I should like to hear your Ruling on this—that the two Amendments introduce distinct and separate points. I am wondering whether we might find it less confusing if we had two separate debates on these two rather different points.

The Temporary Chairman

The hon. Gentleman will appreciate the position it I tell him that Amendment No. 186 is not selected for debate, but as a special favour from the Chair it was included in this discussion so as to enable hon. Members to say something about it. The alternative would be that it would not be debated at all.

Mr. Younger

I should be grateful if the Committee could now try to hear at any rate this portion of my argument as a single piece, because otherwise it will not be possible to make sense of it.

I produced this set of Amendments because sub-paragraph (b) of the Preamble, which lays down the background to the Bill, says: the inclusion in that House, and in the said body of voting members, of suitable numbers of peers with knowledge of and experience in matters of special concern to the various countries, nations and regions of the United Kingdom:". That may sound like a fairly concrete commitment by the authors of the Bill to include in the reformed House of Lords a due proportion of members from the various parts of the United Kingdom. However, this must be read in conjunction with the remarks of the Prime Minister in his Second Reading speech on 3rd February. He said: Similarly, there are no provisions designed specifically to secure the inclusion of a suitable number of peers with knowledge of, and experience in, matters which are of special concern to the various parts and regions of the United Kingdom. These requirements, which are, of course, quite cardinal to the workings of the scheme, are, however, referred to in the Preamble to the Bill, and by these means they will receive statutory recognition. As the House realises, a Preamble is no longer usual in a public Bill, though it is still customary for a Bill which, like this one, is of great constitutional importance. Those are weighty words from the Prime Minister. He added in an intervention, when my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) had raised the question of what these words in the Preamble mean: I did not say that they had statutory force. I referred to the long-standing practice on major Bills of having a Preamble and said that many of the things in the White Paper would have to be done by Statute, but in other ways; for example, in connection with recommendations made by party leaders through the Prime Minister of the day to Her Majesty in respect of appointments. And this is the real point: The point about putting them in a Preamble … is not to make them obligatory, but to draw attention, within the Statute, to what will be the practice in the operation of the Bill for all concerned. This has a long history. It adds something to such points if they are put in the Preamble to a Measure, although they cannot be dealt with by legislation."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 3rd February, 1969; Vol. 777, c. 48–65.] These words, which I imagine were also carefully weighed by the Prime Minister, mean quite simply that in this Bill, proposing to reform the Upper Chamber of our constitution, a Chamber whose composition has not been substantially reformed for a very long time, there is no statutory provision—and cannot be in the wording of the Bill as it stands, to ensure as of right that there will be representation for the various parts of the United Kingdom.

I naturally want particularly to refer to Scotland, because that is the main substance of my interest in this question, but no doubt hon. Members from other parts of the United Kingdom will wish to make their contributions. I tried to do this by amending the Preamble but was informed that it could not be amended unless an Amendment was made necessary by an Amendment to the body of the Bill in Committee. This is why consideration of the Preamble is taken at the end of the Committee stage and not at the beginning. But, at the beginning of the Committee stage, the Chair ruled that it would be possible in this instance to move substantive Amendments to the Preamble, which is why one of my Amendments is an Amendment to the Preamble.

But I strongly suspected that it would not hold water for one reason or another, and I therefore put down two Amendments which would achieve exactly the same point in different parts of the Bill. One is new Clause 21 and the other is Amendment No. 156. The difficulty facing the Committee is that, even if we agree that my objective is right, it is mechanically extremely difficult to achieve as the Bill stands. I accept that one or even all my attempts to put this matter right may well not stand up to the scrutiny of the Parliamentary draftsmen, but I hope that, if this is the reply of the Minister, he will at least accept the principle and get the Parliamentary draftsmen to find a way of achieving it.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne

Perhaps my hon. Friend can clear up some confusion about the precise nature of the distinction between Amendment No. 156 and new Clause 21. So far as I can see, the only difference is that there is a hyphen in Amendment No. 156 between "one" and "tenth" in the first reference to "one-tenth". Has this any significance? If so, what is it? If it is the only distinction, am I right in thinking that, in other respects, the two are precisely the same? I still do not follow the reason why it was necessary to put both Amendment and new Clause down.

Mr. Younger

My hon. Friend is correct. There is supposed to be no difference between the two but he, with, his usual perspicacity, has picked up a stray hyphen in one, and I apologise if it is incorrect. But the intention is to have them both exactly the same and I put both down in order to ensure that the Government got the maximum chance of accepting my purpose.

The first major reason for Amendment No. 156 is the historical and constitutional background to the representation of peers from Scotland in the House of Lords. It goes right back to the Treaty of Union in 1707, when two entirely separate nations agreed mutually to form themselves into one.

Mr. Maude

A great mistake.

Mr. Younger

I cannot agree. It has been of immense benefit to both our countries ever since.

The Treaty of Union was a bargain entered into by the two sides, who each gained and lost something from it. We ought to think seriously before altering the basis upon which that Treaty was made. I am not arguing that there should be no change in the Treaty, but I say that it should be done after the most mature and careful consideration. Scotland gave up a separate Parliament in Edinburgh as a result of the Treaty. It did so on certain conditions, one of which was the right of Scotland to be represented in the new combined Parliament at Westminster. The matter of representation in Parliament was one of the few subjects which led to the two Commissions physically coming together to discuss the problem.

1.15 a.m.

An agreement was reached that Scotland should have the right to 45 Members of Parliament in the House of Commons, and that 16 members of the Scottish Peerage should be elected by that Peerage as a whole to represent Scottish peers in the Lords. In the Commons the Scottish element represented one-twelfth, among the English and Welsh element, which numbered 523 Members. The Lords element numbered approximately one-tenth, if one takes the total in the Lords at 161, plus 24 bishops. Accepting the bishops, for which there was no Scottish equivalent, the proportion was approximately one-tenth.

I give these figures to emphasise that this was part of a carefully worked-out package deal. These proportions compared with the proportion of population between the countries then of one in Scotland to five for England and Wales. On the other hand, when taking the other question considered by the Commissioners, the proportion of revenue raised in Scotland as compared with the proportion of revenue raised in England and Wales was, surprisingly, as little as one-fortieth in Scotland. I have gone into detail to make it clear that this was part of a carefully balanced bargain between the two sides.

Mrs. Ewing

Would the hon. Gentleman reconsider that phrase about a carefully worked out bargain? Is he aware that the signatories were induced to sign the Treaty of Union by amounts on record as bribes?

Mr. Younger

I will leave the hon. Lady, with her charming manner, to indulge in her fairy tales.

The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Norman Buchan)

I must correct the historical inaccuracy. That story came from the papers of Lockhart, a Jacobite, and no serious Scottish historian has ever borne it out.

Mr. Younger

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He is quite right. The person concerned was a thoroughly biased witness to the proceedings. But that does not alter the fact that it was a bargain, and the record speaks for itself.

We move now to much more modern times. The composition of the combined House of Lords remained untouched and unchanged, save for one minor exception, until 1963. In 1963, the reform of the other House encompassed the reform of the Scottish representation by giving all the Scottish peers the right to sit in the Lords on exactly the same terms as any other peers of the United Kingdom. It abolished the business of electing 16 Scottish peers. But the thread running throughout all these years has been that Scottish peers had representation as of right in the combined House of Lords. That is the point which leads me to the real question now before us.

We should do wrong, and we should act against the spirit of the Union, if we allowed the reform of the House of Lords now to go through without representation as of right for the representatives of Scotland. This should be a matter of concern to English and Scottish Members alike. It could do nothing but good in the reform of the House of Lords, and it ought not to be rejected without the most careful and mature consideration, with due weight given to all the precedents through history.

There is a further argument in support of our case, the sheer practical necessity of some such arrangement as we propose. We have had argument tonight about the size of the new House of Lords, but I take about 250 Members as being the likely average size under the Bill. If one in 10 came from Scotland, there would be about 25 Scottish-based peers, that is, peers residing in Scotland and knowing what went on there.

The new House of Lords, like the present one, will have to deal with purely Scottish legislation. In this House, we have the Scottish Grand Committee, which spends a great deal of time on Scottish legislation, and we have the Scottish Standing Committee which does the same, working constantly throughout the year, two mornings a week. At the same time, the present House of Lords, with a considerable number of Scottish peers, does a great deal of useful work on Scottish Bills.

Even with 25 Scottish-based peers, will the new House of Lords be able to give the careful and detailed consideration which is necessary, week in and week out, to long, complicated and detailed Scottish Measures? All the 25 are unlikely to be available on every occasion when Scottish matters are discussed. We understand that they are not to have payment, and this will ensure that some of them are unable to be present for a large part of the time. There will obviously be peers who are sick, or who have other business to attend. On many occasions, even if my Amendment is accepted, the reformed House of Lords will be struggling to deal with complicated Scottish legislation, which is often as large as English and Welsh legislation, having just as many Clauses and with Bills just as thick. It will be struggling with as few as five or 10 members able to give the time throughout the week to this detailed work.

My proposal is modest. If one in 10 of the peers in a reformed House were not based on Scotland, there could be a serious blockage in the work of the reformed House of Lords which simply would not have enough members able and willing to undertake the great amount of work which is involved in Scottish legislation. There are two reasons for the Amendment—the constitutional and historical reason, which none of us should take lightly and which we are in honour bound to consider, and the practical reason which is that this number will be needed at all times. The Government of the day of whichever party would have a clear statutory obligation to see that there was this one in 10 representation of peers ordinarily resident in Scotland.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne

I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend again, but he will appreciate in the light of what happened earlier this evening that we have to get these things clear before the Question is put, and we do not know how much time we have. Do I understand it to be my hon. Friend's proposition that Scottish peers should be a flat 10 per cent. of the whole membership of the new House? He will be aware that the Government proposed that membership of the new House should be broken down in various ways—77 peers of succession, 105 Government peers, 80 main Opposition party peers, 15 other Opposition party peers, 30 cross-benchers and know nothings. Perhaps my hon. Friend will explain why he does not think it necessary and desirable for his Amendment to be drafted so as to provide for 10 per cent. of each of these groups to be Scottish peers.

Mr. Younger

That is a good point. I shrank from delving into those immense complications because my Amendment was complicated enough already. Furthermore, I do not think that it would be practicable to ensure a party balance if the number of peers is to be changed every 10 minutes or so, as is proposed. It has to be accepted that it will never be clear who belongs to which party. I do not think that it will be possible for the Government to ensure a majority, but, even if it were, it would be extremely unlikely that the Government could ensure a majority among the Scottish peers alone. The numbers would not be big enough to allow for the necessary give and take in allegiance. I appreciate what my hon. Friend has in mind, but his suggestion would not be practicable.

Amendment No. 186, which the Chair has kindly allowed us to discuss at the same time, deals with voting in Committee. Even with my Amendment, it will be difficult to achieve appropriate numbers of Scottish peers, and Amendment No. 186 proposes to overcome the difficulty by allowing non-voting Scottish peers to vote in Committee on matters which affect only Scotland.

1.30 a.m.

It may be felt that this is rather a departure of principle in the Bill, and I agree that it seems to be so at first sight. But I would reassure any doubters on this point that even if these non-voting Scottish peers were allowed to vote in Committee on Scottish matters they would not be allowed to do so, even on Scottish matters, in the House of Lords as a whole. Therefore anything their votes achieved which would be inimical to the Government of the day could, quite properly, be put right in the House as a whole on Report stage.

This Amendment is an attempt to put right what I believe could be a severe shortage of peers, who are normally resident in Scotland, to deal with Scottish business.

I should like to say something about the words "ordinarily resident in Scotland", because it may well be that some hon. Members will feel that this is too vague. How can one tell if a peer is or is not ordinarily resident in Scotland? I am advised by the most eminent legal advice that there is no difficulty whatever in establishing whether or not anybody is ordinarily resident in Scotland, or ordinarily resident anywhere else. The words already appear in Statutes and do not appear to cause any difficulty. To give just one example, if a person is selling his house, he is exempt from Capital Gains Tax if it is the house in which he is ordinarily resident. If it is not, then he will have to pay Capital Gains Tax on it.

I submit that this description "ordinarily resident" is a perfectly normal one, and perfectly easy to establish, and I see no difficulty in establishing which peers in the House of Lords are ordinarily resident in Scotland.

Mr. John Smith

My hon. Friend may be right that it is easy to establish this, but it is a matter of very great importance and the effects are very far-reaching indeed. Can he develop this a little further in case I do not have the opportunity to do so?

Mr. Younger

I hope very much that my hon. Friend will have the opportunity of doing so. I am not going to be drawn into a long argument on this now. I would just say to my hon. Friend that there is an important difference between being domiciled in Scotland and being ordinarily resident in Scotland. If I had put "domiciled in Scotland" in the Amendment, we should have been in trouble because it is perfectly possible for anyone of us to be domiciled somewhere where we have not lived for many years. Being domiciled is what one regards as the place one comes from——

Mr. N. R. Wylie (Edinburgh, Pentlands)

Is my hon. Friend aware that there is a great deal of case law on what is meant by "ordinarily resident"? It is well known in tax legislation, it is repeatedly used in divorce legislation, and so far it has not given rise to any of the difficulties which my hon. Friend seems to think might arise.

Mr. John Smith

In Amendment No. 156 my hon. Friend has, it is true, put "ordinarily resident", but in Amendment No. 64, which we are also discussing, he has put "domiciled".

Mr. Younger

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bowling me out again on one of these Amendments. But I have already stated that I am not sticking word for word to these Amendments. The point remains that there is a difference between "domiciled" and "ordinarily resident", on which I wish to rely this evening. I hope that this rather complicated matter has been brought to the Committee in the clearest way it can be at this time of night.

I finish with a plea to the Government Front Bench to make allowance for the time of night at which we are discussing the Amendment, and to give it the most kind consideration they can. I assure them that I would not have dreamt of bringing this suggestion forward had I not felt that a matter of important constitutional principle was involved that we should not let go by. I hope that the Government Front Bench will treat this as the serious Amendment which it is intended to be.

Mr. Emrys Hughes

The hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) has put his case so reasonably and dispassionately that it is difficult not to agree with him. As one who represents a constituency near his, and also four members of the other place, all of whom did not support me at the election, may I say that his case does not command the full support of his constituents in Ayr, nor of my constituents in South Ayrshire.

Before I come to my main point I will deal with one or two points of detail that he made in the concluding part of his speech. He wants the election of peers from Scotland, which he says is justified because the reformed House of Lords will be dealing with matters affecting Scotland which need the special attention of peers who are resident in Scotland. On these issues the talking peers would have the right to be voting peers on Scots legislation. Try to imagine what it means in practice.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne

The hon. Gentleman should pay careful attention to the terms of Amendment No. 186, to which he has referred. It is clear in Amendment No. 186 that the rights of what he has called the talking peers would apply only to discussions under Sections 14 or 15 of the Act, which relate to affirmative and negative Resolutions. I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman has allowed for that in his argument.

Mr. Hughes

Yes, I have allowed for it, and I was about to develop my argument. Scottish peers will come down—especially if legislation affecting Scotland is being discussed at the time of the Derby, Ascot or the St. Leger—they will receive a salary of at least £2,000 a year, they will put in a short appearance in the House of Lords in Committee, receive expenses and will thus be a considerable burden upon the Exchequer.

Mr. Younger

I hope that the hon. Gentleman has this quite straight. Such a peer would get no expenses. To qualify for expenses, let alone a salary, peers have to attend at least one-third of the sittings, and if a peer came down, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, for one Committee only he would get nothing.

Mr. Hughes

The hon. Member for Ayr is doing the Scottish peers an injustice.

Mr. John Smith

Surely a man such as the hon. Gentleman would be a great deal more ordinarily resident than some peers, and he would have much more claim to represent the Scottish peers in London.

Mr. Hughes

I gather from the hon. Member for Ayr——

Mr. Hugh Fraser rose——

Mr. Hughes

One peer at a time, please!

Mr. Hugh Fraser

I agree that if the Scottish peer arrived on the first day after Pontefract and did not go north again before the St. Leger, he would fill in more than a third of his time. The hon. Gentleman has a good point.

Mr. Hughes

The hon. Member for Ayr apparently wants the Scottish peers to work for nothing. He wants them to be blacklegs. I am sure that the peers I represent will strongly object to Scottish peers being asked to come to London to take part in what may be very long and contentious legislation, pay their own expenses, and not be financially rewarded in any way. It is not exactly a national characteristic of the peers living north of the Border and it is out of keeping with the historical background hinted at by the hon. Gentleman.

I do not believe that the hon. Gentleman has the support of the Scottish peers. What is the position in the Conservative Party at present? Where is the best known and most respected right hon. Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Sir Alec Douglas-Home)?

An Hon. Member

In Scotland.

Mr. Hughes

He is not on the Opposition Front Bench. Looking back into recent history, we know that the right hon. Gentleman has completely changed the whole attitude of the Scottish peers to the House of Lords. Far from wanting to go to the House of Lords, he came out of it. The right hon. Gentleman's nonappearance on this occasion shows that the hon. Member for Ayr is trying to lead an insurrection against him.

The aristocracy who take politics seriously have decided that the House of Lords is a spent force. That is why the right hon. Member for Kinross and West Perthshire does not think it worth his while coming along to take part in the debate and back up the hon. Member for Ayr.

As hon. Members may have gathered, I do not believe in the House of Lords. I do not want to argue about that, because I understand that I would be out of order. However, I do not wish to claim any special privileges for Scottish peers. I do not believe that there is any feeling or any great demand in Scotland that a certain percentage of Scottish peers should come to London to take part in proceedings in a reformed House of Lords. If it was suggested that Scottish peers should come down and receive substantial salaries and first-class air fares, there would be public meetings in Ayr protesting against it. I do not believe that the hon. Member for Ayr has the support of the democratic sentiments of the people of Ayr in his concern about Scottish peers being members of a reformed House of Lords.

[Mr. JOHN BREWIS in the Chair]

Mr. Biggs-Davison

However that may be, what about the obligation under the Act of Union? Is the hon. Gentleman proposing to address himself to that?

Mr. Hughes

I am not at present in Ayr. Hon. Members will remember that the most distinguished and immortal citizen of Ayr was Robert Burns. He was born at Alloway, but he spent part of his time in Ayr. There is a strong historical sentiment in Ayr against the House of Lords. Robert Burns wrote: Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, Wha struts, and stares, and a' that; Tho' hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof for a' that…

Hon. Members

Translate.

1.45 a.m.

Mr. Hughes

I am trying to translate Burns for the benefit of the English.

Mr. Kirk

On a point of order. Mr. Brewis, is it in order for the hon. Member to speak a foreign language?

The Temporary Chairman (Mr. John Brewis)

No it is not, but the rest of it is in order.

Mr. Hughes

The hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Kirk) is utterly unsympathetic to Scotland. He is obviously opposed to Scotland, because he regards the normal language of Robert Burns as a foreign language. I am sure that the hon. Member for Ayr would repudiate his hon. Friend immediately.

Perhaps I might finish the quotation, or better still read it all: Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, Wha struts, and stares, and a' that; Tho' hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof for a' that: For a' that, and a' that, His riband, star, and a' that, The man of independent mind, He looks and laughs at a' that. That is a genuine expression of the feelings of the people of Ayr to this whole House of Lords business.

Mr. Hastings

Sing us a song.

Mr. Hughes

The hon. Member for Ayr started his speech by referring to the historical background of 1707. The hon. Gentleman ought to have gone further back into history, because the titles of many of the peers who presumably will be called upon to vote for the lucky one-tenth go further back into history than that. There is a considerable amount of descriptive literature about these noble gentlemen, which shows that they were by no means the most popular people in Scottish history.

I pass from Burns to a later Scottish spokesman, Thomas Carlyle. He looked a little further back than 1707, and said: It is noteworthy that the nobles of this country of Scotland have maintained a quite despicable behaviour from the days of Wallace downwards—a selfish, ferocious, famishing, unprincipled set a hyeanas"— these are the people who are to have special privileges— from whom at no time and no way has the country derived any benefit whatsoever.

Mr. Arthur Lewis

Like the Tory Party.

Mr. Hughes

They are the lineal descendants of the gentlemen whom Carlyle described in this rather vituperative language with which I should not like to associate myself.

Another more obscure Scottish historian described them as, Ravenous wolves who have enough and to spare, yet so greedy and covetous they will not suffer the people to live in peace. This is the old nobility of Scotland. If hon. Gentlemen opposite want a full and detailed study of how these members of the House of Lords came to acquire their lands, I can only advise them that I have no time to go into detail.

The Temporary Chairman

I should be obliged if the hon. Member would not go into detail, but would bring his remarks back to the Amendment.

Mr. Hughes

I know you would be much obliged, Mr. Brewis, if I did not pursue this argument, but I submit that it is relevant to the Bill. Obviously one tenth of the peers, under this Amendment, would come from Scotland. Their titles have come in this way.

Mr. Younger

I am so enjoying the hon. Member's remarks that I have desisted till now from correcting him, but he is under a false impression. This Amendment does not suggest that 10 should be elected, but only that the Prime Minister should have an obligation to see, in advising Her Majesty, that at least one in ten of the peers are resident in Scotland. It is nothing to do with election or with heredity at all.

Mr. Hughes

It is an argument for special privileges for peers who nearly all happen to be peers because their ancestors were of this special character.

Mr. Younger

I know that the hon. Member always likes to address himself closely to the matter in hand, and that is why I tell him that there is no question of ancestors in this. I am referring to appointed peers, peers of first creation, appointed on the advice of the Prime Minister as life peers.

Mr. Hughes

Their ancestors have faded into history but this would be considered when it was decided which Scots peers should go to the House of Lords. Before the House would seek to go——

Mr. Oscar Mutton (Poole)

In referring to the ancestry of these peers in such deleterious terms, is the hon. Member referring to Highlanders or Low-landers?

Mr. Hughes

I was not referring to any in disrespectful terms. I was merely referring to the literary figure, Thomas Carlyle. [Interruption.] Now the hon. Member is arguing between Highlands and Lowlands. I do not know where it comes in terms of the Amendment, because I think if he wanted one tenth each from Highlands and Lowlands he would be asking too much. I hold no brief for peers who come from the Lowlands. As far as I can take an objective view, all of them were bloodthirsty. I take the Lowlands first.

Mr. Powell

Is it in order, Mr. Brewis, for hon. Members in this House to refer to noble Lords and members of another place as bloodthirsty?

The Temporary Chairman

I think it is to be deprecated, but it is not unparliamentary.

Mr. Hughes

That suits me. I come to the Lowlands——

Sir D. Glover

Further to that point of order, if I could support the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes), the Wolf of Badenoch was proud of the title of being bloodthirsty.

Mr. Hughes

I am still in the Lowlands. I have travelled from Ayr to the Lowlands, and, in reply to the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Murton), I do not see any great distinction between Lowlands and Highlands because we have had the old family of Home. The right hon. Gentleman who represents the present generation of that family has told us frankly that the Homes were the most successful cattle stealers in the Borders. To be descended from cattle stealers and bandits is not necessarily a qualification to take part in this ballot on who is to sit in the House of Lords. If the hon. Member wants to find out about the old nobility of the Lowlands and Highlands——

Mr. Ian MacArthur (Perth and East Perthshire)

To which ballot in the House of Lords in the hon. Gentleman referring?

Mr. Hughes

I understood that the peers are to be elected by ballot——

Hon. Members

No.

Mr. Younger

I have tried again and again to get it across to the hon. Member that I have never suggested, nor will I suggest, that any peers are elected. They are all to be appointed on the advice of the Prime Minister and, presumably, the Leader of the Opposition. I merely suggested that some should be ordinarily resident in Scotland.

Mr. Hughes

I am surprised at how democratic the hon. Member's proposal is. They are to be selected, not by a ballot of Scottish peers, but by an English Prime Minister. That is enough to make the hon. Member for Hamilton's blood boil.

To discover how these peers came to obtain so much political power, I recommend to hon. Members a classic history of the nobility of Scotland, called "Our Noble Friends"——

Mr. Crouch

On a point of Order. I would never seek to cross the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes), whose experience of order in Committee is excelled by none, but I would seek your guidance, Mr. Brewis. On what Amendment is he addressing the Committee?

The Temporary Chairman

I think that the hon. Gentleman is addressing himself to Amendment No. 156, but I am not sure that what he is saying is quite relevant.

Mr. Hughes

I have confidence in your impartiality, Mr. Brewis, and your knowledge of the rules of order, and know that if I had strayed one iota from the rules of order, you would have pulled me up long ago——

The Temporary Chairman

I already have.

Mr. Hughes

I deprecate the hon. Member's intervention, therefore, as an attempt to reflect on the Chair. Because you represent Galloway, next to me, Mr. Brewis, I regret that very much.

Let us consider, now, this examination of our noble families, whose descendants the hon. Member for Ayr wants to see in the Lords and specially privileged. This classic was written by an ex-Secretary of State for Scotland, Mr. Thomas Johnston. I could spend a great deal of time, if I did not want to keep my speech brief, reading copious extracts from this classic and well-known work, but I will content myself by quoting from the preface——

Hon. Members

Preamble.

Mr. Hughes

"Preamble" is only a very respectable name for a preface. It is a Norman translation of the word "preface". This preface says: The first step in reform, either of the Land Laws or of the House of Lords, is to destroy"——

Earl of Dalkeith

On a point of order. Since the Deputy Government Chief Whip has just returned, may we be assured that we are not to be cut short at the very beginning of our discussion of this subject

The Temporary Chairman

I cannot tell what will happen.

Mr. Hughes

I welcome the appearance of my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. O'Malley). When he presides in the Whips' Office his signature tune is "Show Us the Way to Go Home." He was attracted here by the knowledge that I was going to deal thoroughly with the question of Scottish peers.

2.0 a.m.

I start again with my quotation from Tom Johnston: The first step in reform either of the Land Laws or of the House of Lords is to destroy these delusions and superstitions. Show the people that our own nobility is not noble, that its lands are stolen lands—stolen either by force or fraud. Show people that the title deeds are rapine, murder, massacre, cheating or court harlotry"— this is Tom Johnston in one of his more moderate moods— destroy the halo of divinity that surrounds the hereditary title; let the people clearly understand that our present House of Lords is composed largely of descendants of successful pirates and rogues, do these things and we shatter the romance that keeps the nation numb and spellbound while privilege picks its pockets. I would not dream of using that language, but it is the considered opinion of a man who delved very deeply into Scottish history.

If hon. Members opposite wish to borrow this book—they can pay me a small fee—they will obtain some very useful material which will completely alter their political outlook. I shall not harrow the feelings of hon. Members opposite by reading the more purple passages from Tom Johnston's book, but I suggest that the Scottish peers have no special right to claim a certain fraction of the membership of the House of Lords. There is no historical argument for their being there.

Mention has been made of the Treaty of 1707. If hon. Members go to the House of Lords they will be able to examine that treaty in the Lords Library, and they will see that many of the Lords could hardly write their own names. [An HON. MEMBER: "They cannot be good at everything."] It is very interesting to examine the Act of Union in the House of Lords. The signatories are all famous men. Some signatures in the Lords today are no better than those appended to the original treaty.

I used to know the old Earl of Glasgow very well. He was chairman of the county council there for a long time. It was clear to me that the handwriting of the Glasgow's had not improved in the 20C or 300 years that had elapsed since the treaty was signed. I do not see why, because a collection of people met in 1707, we should perpetuate the Scottish hereditary element in the House of Lords.

What about the new element? It consists largely of successful business people. I do not want to go back into the history of recent years. Lloyd George sent quite a number of very wealthy Scots peers to the House of Lords, including many brewers and distillers and business people. It is not only a question of a hereditary title; the hon. Member for Ayr has a hereditary Whipship as well as a hereditary title.

I fail to understand why these Amendments and all this talk about consideration for Scotland should have the support of the Committee. I am sure that there will be no collusion on the other side about this Amendment.

The right hon. Gentleman, the former Conservative Prime Minister, has left the burning deck long ago, leaving behind a few stragglers who come along with ideas about the rights of Scotland in the House of Lords. I wish they would agree about the rights of Scotland in other respects.

Although I have repeatedly voted against the Government in previous discussions, I now have great pleasure in supporting the Government. Even if the hon. Member for Rotherham moves the closure, I shall look upon him with sympathetic consideration.

Earl of Dalkeith

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) has resumed his seat without giving us a rendering of "My love is like a red, red Ross". Perhaps he could fill in with a few minutes of what I am sure would be a tuneful song.

It is interesting to note that so far in all our discussions in this Committee we have had two Scottish representatives from the other side, one a Welshman and the other an Englishman. I do not think we have yet heard a Scotsman speaking from the Government benches.

Mr. Emrys Hughes

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the great Scottish patriot, William Wallace, was a Welshman?

Earl of Dalkeith

I hardly think that is relevant to my point.

I must reinforce the protest of my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) about the timing of this debate. I believe it is a matter of racial discrimination. The Government are treating us like white fish. I see on the Government Front Bench a Minister who was at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and who will be aware that debates on fishing matters traditionally come on at this hour. It is certainly shocking that such an important matter should be served up at this hour.

We all enjoy listening to the hon. Gentleman the Member for South Ayrshire. He would no doubt count himself among those who consider themselves knockers of tradition and the Establishment. The knockers have been fairly successful. It is said that they seem to think it unnecessary to try to find some kind of replacement for what they are knocking down.

This is the whole point of the Bill and is the purpose of this Amendment. But all one can see—to borrow the immortal phrase invented by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward M. Taylor)—are the sacred cows of Socialism coming home to roost. To me, as a forester, the idea fills me with alarm, particularly when they seem to be aiming for family trees.

Paragraph 50 of the White Paper says: The Government attaches the greatest importance to the presence in the reformed House of peers who can speak with authority on the problems and wishes of Scotland. Wales and Northern Ireland… We in Scotland are not in the same position as Wales because our law is totally different. For that reason the same per capita representation as might be applicable to other regions of the United Kingdom, is not sufficient and in suggesting 10 per cent. my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) has been extremely modest. I would have suggested a higher figure, since 10 per cent. of a House of Lords with a complement of 230 peers would give Scotland only 23 representatives which I do not believe is enough. I hope, therefore, that the Government will accept the spirit of the Amendment and write a similar provision into the Bill, or they may find themselves in breach of the Act of Union.

The bugbear of this Bill is that even if it is trying to do the right thing, which I very much doubt, it is absolutely clear that it is doing it at the wrong time. In any event, nothing should be done in this context until the Wheatley report, and its counterpart for England, are available. We do not know what may be in store for us in terms of local government reform and the outcome of the deliberations which are now proceeding could have a strong bearing on the sort of regional representation which we may have.

2.15 a.m.

Mr. Donald Dewar (Aberdeen, South)

I suspect that I may be a somewhat unique animal on these benches in that this is my first contribution to the discussions that have taken place on this Measure.

In view of the appalling pun with which the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North (Earl of Dalkeith) began his speech, I will not follow the theme which he adopted, except to tell him that I am ordinarily resident in Scotland. That would appear to place me in line with what has been generally laid down in recent minutes.

I am prepared to accept that the Committee is discussing a matter of some importance, although, in the context of the Bill, I suspect that my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) was greatly optimistic in imagining that public meetings will be taking place in Ayr. I would bet that a poll would reveal a state of wild apathy about the content of the Measure; and it would need more than the impassioned eloquence of my hon. Friend to arouse much interest and enthusiasm.

Mr. Heffer

Would not my hon. Friend agree that a state of wild apathy exists in Parliament over the Bill, particularly since not more than half the total number of hon. Members are taking part in Divisions?

Mr. Dewar

There may be apathy in general, but there is a great deal of interest in the Bill in particular. If my hon. Friend is saying that he is apathetic, heaven preserve us when he is in a state of energy.

I listened with interest to the remarks of the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) although I found it difficult to follow the thread of his argument. I share his general prejudice in the matter, although I accept that he was not concerned with hereditary peers. For this reason it is relevant to consider the Amendment in terms of the Scottish peerage in past generations.

I accept that it is not directly relevant, although he has himself to some extent made it relevant by this other minor Amendment to the effect that they should be brought into the machinery of discussion of specifically Scottish affairs, with the proviso that that could be reversed by a decision of voting peers in the House of Lords. So it is to that extent relevant.

Of course, at the end of the day prejudices will still colour consideration, and perhaps relevantly, of what is meant by "ordinarily resident" in Scotland. I accept the point he makes, and I have no wish, and certainly would not, without a good deal of preparation, be competent, to go into the niceties of the law and the distinction between "domiciled" and "ordinarily resident" as a phrase, but it seems to me a matter which could easily raise considerable difficulties.

There is in Scots law a very complicated body of case law on the meaning of domicile in Scotland, and this is not just a simple matter, but one which has certainly exercised the judiciary over a large number of years in a continuing process of definition, and presumably, the people who will be arbitrating on whether 10 per cent. or not of the peers are ordinarily resident in Scotland will not want to be involved in the complexes of the Scots law of domicile. If it is a matter of not just "ordinarily resident" but "domiciled", it seems to me that we are getting into another sort of difficulty, because while I accept that there may well be precedents from the tax law of the United Kingdom, at the end of the day there will be an element of choice, whether a man is "ordinarily resident" or not.

Members of the Scottish aristocracy had in the past and may have today a house in Scotland, or a very large number of houses, and houses in England. They are perhaps the last of the travelling folk who kind of move around. It may be they could advance a plausible claim to be "ordinarily resident" in Scotland and yet might very well be the kind of people one would not pick as representative of the spirit and ordinary feelings of Scotland. There has been a well-established and long-established custom among the Scottish aristocracy not to be educated in Scotland.

Mr. Younger

Would the hon. Gentleman mind addressing himself—I know he is trying to be serious—to the points which I made? I have never suggested the "hereditary aristocracy" or the "aristocracy" at all. I was talking about the Prime Minister's own appointed life peers. It would be a great service to us all if the hon. Gentleman would address himself to that point.

Mr. Dewar

The hon. Member who, I know, is trying to be helpful, is himself in error because he has not listened carefully enough to the argument. I am well aware that the new peers are not necessarily to come from the traditional, historical aristocracy of Scotland, and that the hon. Member limits them to a narrower group.

I am trying to point that I do not consider, if he is trying by means of this Amendment to introduce into the House of Lords a body of men who will really represent the feelings of Scotland and be in touch with opinion in Scotland, that he will not necessarily succeed, because there are not sufficient safeguards in merely saying they must be "ordinarily resident" in Scotland. I have been trying to point out that in the past, admittedly, and perhaps still, the aristocracy might well have been considered qualified to sit in the other House on the ground of ordinary residence, but yet, in my view, would not have been really representative of the feelings and spirit of Scotland.

Mr. Younger

Would the hon. Gentleman prefer, then, that I should alter the Amendment to read that they should be "ordinarily resident in England"? Would that be helpful?

Mr. Dewar

Not at all. No. It would be extremely helpful. I was merely trying to point out to the hon. Member that "ordinarily resident in Scotland" does not necessarily give the kind of qualification which, I presume, he is seeking in these peers, that is, to put into the House of Lords someone who is really in touch with the feelings of Scotland.

On exactly the same lines, the aristocracy of Scotland in the past—who I agree would not necessarily be the people in point—would still have qualified in terms of "ordinarily resident", but because of their social mores, ways of life and so on are utterly alien to the general population of Scotland. So I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not be too complacent and confident that writing in that consideration will achieve his purpose.

Mr. Wylie

Presumably the Prime Minister in making an appointment would have to have regard to the criteria set out in the Preamble— … suitable numbers of peers with knowledge of and experience in… That, surely, is not irrelevant?

Mr. Dewar

I find it a little strange that hon. Members supporting the Amendment should now rely on the despised Preamble, which they found so inadequate and have rejected.

I have no intention of trying to hold up this discussion, which I suspect will be maintained by its own momentum for a very long time. But I should like to make one or two remarks about the point that seems to fill the horizon of many hon. Members, namely, the immutability of the Act of Union. This surprises me. The Act is an extremely important Statute, for which I have a great respect, but it is the basis of a partnership. Moreover, it was written in 1707, which by any standards, even those of the Scottish aristocracy, is a very long time ago. In terms of representation, whether in the House of Lords or the House of Commons, the provisions of the Act have been left far behind. I do not regard it as a kind of graven tablet on high with which we cannot tamper.

If there is agreement in partnership between the representatives of England and Scotland as to the kind of developments we want to introduce, it would be very silly to allow the writ of the Act of Union to stand in the way. It is easy to make this point cheaply by reference to the Act, but as the question has been raised and as I have a copy with me it might be worth doing. There are all sorts of provisions in it that have long since rightly been forgotten. For example, when we were discussing the siting of the Mint in Britain there was a great deal of talk in the Press about the provisions in the Act about the Scottish Mint. No one bothered to discover that that provision was repealed in the 1860s.

If one looks at the Act of Union one will find all sorts of interesting provisions about salt duties, for example, with which I will not bother the Committee. But I draw the attention of hon. Members to Section X, which says: … during the continuance of the respective Duties of Stampt paper, Vellom and Parchment, by the several Acts now in force in England, Scotland shall not be charged with the same respective Duties. I suspect that we are paying our share by now, and I do not think that anyone would find that particularly unreasonable.

The hon. Member for Ayr will no doubt be interested in the provisions of Section VII, dealing with excise duties and exciseable liquors, which says: … excepting only that the thirty four Gallons English Barrel of Beer or Ale amounting to twelve Gallons Scots present measure sold in Scotland by the Brewer at nine shillings six pence Sterling excluding all Duties and Retailed including Duties and the Retailers profit at two pence the Scots pint or eight part of the Scots Gallon, be not after the Union lyable on account of the present Excise upon Excisable Liquors in England, to any higher Imposition than two shillings Sterling upon the forsaid thirty four Gallons English barrel, being twelve gallons the present Scots measure.… It might well be that I would run an extremely popular campaign in Scotland if I tried to stand on the Act of Union and say that there should be no higher duty than two bob on a 34-gallon barrel of beer, but it would not be seriously entertained by the House. I hope that we shall not stand too rigidly on what should be the foundation for a partnership. Such detail is unpleasant and irrelevant. If we insist on these detailed vested interests, I remind the Committee that those who benefited most from the Act of Union were the lawyers, the Church and the Scottish peers, who had to be placated in the original settlement.

Mr. MacArthur

The historical background to the Treaty of Union was exactly the other way round.

Mr. Dewar

I do not agree. These interested groups were given a special, entrenched position because they were influential at the time and their consent had to be gained if the Measure was to go through. There were all sorts of reasons for the treaty and all sorts of mutual advantages to be gained. But, in broad terms, what I have said holds up. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will not disagree about the basic points in the treaty.

This is a very serious matter and one has sympathy with what the hon. Member for Ayr said about Scottish business in the House of Lords and the efficient vetting of that business. But I am not sure that this is a valid point. I think that the provisions in the Preamble and the good sense of the Government of the day mean that they will seek to manage affairs in a businesslike way without the need for a specific safeguard in the Bill.

I worry considerably about the idea of having a special interest group, even one particularly important to me as a Scotsman, written into the Bill in specific terms. Once one starts doing this, it is difficult to avoid confining it to one case. There is already a spatter of Amendments down with reference to other regions. Hon. Members opposite say that they do not want that but the Amendment opens up the wider argument, and surely we do not want to organise the Upper House in terms of interest groups and territorial connection. The Lower House is based on territorial connection, but that does not apply to the Upper House.

I would not be happy about the idea that the other place should be fragmented into groups of representatives who were there not because of individual merit—although they might be of merit—but who were selected because they came from a territorial area and whose first loyalty lay to that area.

Other countries run such a system, the most obvious being West Germany, where the Bundesrat, the Upper House, consists of representatives of the Land Governments. They are nominees of the Land Governments. This set-up illustrates the dangers, because there is an immediate clash between the Lower House and the Upper House because of the interest groups represented in the Upper House. The system becomes unworkable and the safeguard the system is supposed to build in is defeated. The situation is unsatisfactory and it has not worked in West Germany.

This is a matter of interpretation and personal opinion, but it is my opinion and I believe that it is a real danger. This matter would escalate, because we arc being asked to change the whole concept on which the Upper House is to be formed. I am not prepared to support the Amendment, although I accept the concern which has motivated it.

The Temporary Chairman (Mr. John Brewis)

Mr. David Steel.

Sir D. Glover

On a point of order. May I draw your attention to the fact that we are debating Amendments Nos. 190 and 187? This is not an exclusively Scottish debate.

The Temporary Chairman

Order. That had not escaped my notice.

2.30 a.m.

Mr. David Steel

It is the custom in the House to declare any interest which an hon. Member has in a Bill, and I wonder whether it would be in order for me to declare a lack of interest in this one. I have not taken part in these discussions at all and have regarded the passage of the Bill through the House as a mistake by the Government, which has enabled me to catch up on my correspondence.

This Amendment is of interest to Scottish Members, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) on raising this subject. I received a useful memorandum circulated to a number of hon. Members by Scottish members in the House of Lords——

Mr. Eric Lubbock (Orpington)

On a point of order. I wonder whether you could cause the hon. Members sitting immediately behind me to shut up so that I could hear what my hon. Friend is saying.

Mr. Biggs-Davison

Further to that point of order. As the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) was delivering himself of abusive terms, which I would hesitate to repeat to the Chair, it is not surprising that there was a hubbub behind him. Indeed, the hubbub was not in proportion to the abusive language which the hon. Member was using.

Mr. Steel

My only claim to speak on this subject is that I would contest the claim of the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) to represent a large number of Scottish peers. I can assure him that I can claim to represent a larger number than any other hon. Member in the Committee. Like him, I am grateful that they are classed with criminals and lunatics for voting purposes, because I have no doubt that they would not assist me in my continuing to represent that part of Scotland.

I have an interest on behalf of my constituents and I have an interest in the constitutional point raised, which has rather been lost sight of. The hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Dewar) can be relied upon to speak when the Government's case is inadequate. He has an interest to defend, because if the Amendment was carried he could not qualify for a peerage because he is ordinarily resident in London. He might have declared that before he began his speech.

The constitutional point is important. The Act of Union of 1707 was a unique instrument, because there was no external guarantee built in after the dissolution of the Scottish Parliament. There was no external force, either by court of law or some constitutional body, to protect the interests of Scotland after the Act came into effect. The only provisions which can be said to be contained in it, which underline the importance of what might be regarded as entrenched Clauses in the Act, were phrases like "forever after" and "for all time". Such phrases mean nothing. The Government of the day can at any time change the provisions of the Act.

For the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South to raise Clauses about salt duty and equate them with the importance of the entrenched provisions for Scottish representation is ridiculous. I hope that when the Secretary of State replies we will be assured that the Government are sensitive to this constitutional provision, are aware that the equivalent of an entrenched Clause was negotiated in 1707, and that an entrenched proportion of representation was ensured by Statute. It is that provision which the hon. Member for Ayr is seeking to up-date in modern terms, in line with a reform proposed by the Government. It is wholly right and proper, and essential for the interests of Scotland that it should be carried out.

Mr. Michael Foot

The hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel) declared his lack of interest in the Bill. He said that until we came to this important Clause affecting Scotland, he thought that the best way he could discharge his obligations to the Committee on the Bill was to be absent altogether. I am sure that that is the view held by some, but I am sure that they do not understand what would be the result if we all followed their example. [AN HON. MEMBER: "We should be home earlier ".] We should get home a bit earlier, but that should not be our approach to the conduct of important business in the House. If hon. Members followed that course, the Bill would go through entirely in the form in which the Government propose it. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman must answer for his attitude.

At an earlier stage in our discussions, the Liberal spokesman said that they were bitterly opposed to the Bill. [An HON. MEMBER: "No."] The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson) said that he was strongly opposed to it. What I am now pointing out is that the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles had upheld a course which would have meant the passage of the Bill in exactly the form in which the Government proposed it. It should be known it Scotland that that is the position. It would be of interest to Liberals in Scotland who have held quite strong views about the House of Lords in the past that the spokesman for the Liberal Party on this occasion takes the view that this Measure should have been allowed to go through in its present form.

Mr. Crouch

I agree that the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles said at the outset that he was not interested in the Bill, but he went on to show a considerable interest in the Amendment now before us, with reference to the Act of 1707. He spoke much more sensibly on that point than did the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Dewar) with the Act in his hand.

Mr. Foot

I shall come to the Act of Union as it affects this Clause. But I was entitled to my comment, in view of what the hon. Gentleman had said, in order to clarify the Liberal Party's position.

Mr. David Steel

I thought that the hon. Gentleman would share my view that the Government are wasting a great deal of Parliamentary time on this rather mealy-mouthed Measure. If he looks up the Division records, he will find that on almost every occasion I have been in the same Lobby with him.

Mr. Foot

I am glad of that. But I am sure that the hon. Gentleman agrees that it is fair comment to point out that, if we all followed the course which he suggested, the Government would have their Bill without hostility and they could then represent to the country that the House of Commons was pretty well unanimous about it. In my view, that would be disastrous. Therefore, I put it to the hon. Gentleman, for whom I have the highest respect, that he might on reflection consider, as might his fellow Liberals, that those of us who have opposed the Bill have not been wasting the time of the House but have been debating a matter of first importance. It is not advisable for members of the Liberal Party, particularly those who are opposed to it, to taunt those who have maintained active opposition to the Bill.

[Mr. HARRY GOURLAY in the Chair]

Mr. Arthur Lewis

Not only have the Liberals adopted that attitude, but were they not parties to the package deal and have been in with it right the way through?

Mr. Lubbock

You are a liar.

Mr. Foot

There is a distinction between the attitudes of different members of the Liberal Party, and I should not be in order in examining those now.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne

On a point of order, Mr. Gourlay. It will have been in the hearing of a number of hon. Members that the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) accused the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) of being a liar. Is that not unparliamentary, and ought it not to be withdrawn?

The Deputy Chairman (Mr. Harry Gourlay)

It is an unparliamentary term, but the Chair did not hear it.

Mr. Heffer

Further to that point of order. The Chair may not have heard the remark, but I distinctly heard it. It is high time that the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) began to use Parliamentary language in the Chamber and to refrain from making statements such as that which he made the other night. He called my hon. Friend a liar when my hon. Friend had simply stated what he thought to be the position. I do not know what the Chair heard, but I think that the hon. Gentleman ought to withdraw the remark.

Mr. Lubbock

I apologise to the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) for calling him a liar. He was guilty of an inaccuracy because, although there was agreement between the Front Benches of the parties, that did not involve all my hon. Friends.

Mr. Arthur Lewis

Further to that point of order. I understood that the leader of the Liberal Party, as the leaders of the Tory Party, came to a package deal with the Government Front Bench. I referred to the leader of the Liberal Party.

Mr. Lubbock

The hon. Gentleman did not say that.

Mr. Lewis

I said the Leader of the Liberal Party.

Mr. Lubbock

No.

Mr. Lewis

I did and I say it again. If the Liberal Party has split and it was only one member of it, I would say that one-sixth of the Liberal Party was involved.

Mr. John Smith

On a point of order. I know that you have only just come into the Chair, Mr. Gourlay, but are not these Amendments about Scotsmen and not about Liberals?

Sir D. Glover

Further to that point of order. I disagree with my hon. Friend. The debate is not confined to Scotland. There are two Amendments.

The Deputy Chairman

I did not think it necessary to point that out to the hon. Member for the Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. John Smith), even though I have occupied the Chair for only a short time this morning.

Mr. Foot

These Amendments go much wider than Scotland. I was making a comment about the speech of the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles and I hope that, on consideration he will think differently.

I now come to the aspect of the matter which affects Scotland, what has been said about the Act of Union. A rather sinister argument seems to have been introduced. It is evident from our previous debates that the Bill is not universally popular, if I may put it that way. There is considerable hostility to it on both sides of the Committee. No very powerful or attractive arguments have been brought forward on its behalf, and even the Government have not been very enthusiastic.

There now seems to be a sinister attempt to introduce the Act of Union into the discussion and to bestow upon the Bill an entirely meretricious attraction. If the Bill drove a coach and horses through the Act of Union, some hon. Members and hon. Ladies might begin to take a different view, and we have therefore carefully to consider whether in fact the Bill injures the position under the Act of Union.

The hon. Lady the Member for Hamilton (Mrs. Ewing) has been a strong opponent of the Bill throughout. She opposed the White Paper and she bitterly opposed the Second Reading of the Bill—she signed my Amendment to the Second Reading—and she has voted against the Bill on every conceivable occasion. We may regard the hon. Lady as an authority on at any rate some aspects of the Act of Union. I understand that it is a matter to which she has given some attention. The hon. Lady does not take the view that the Bill would injure the Act of Union; if she did, she might take a different view of the Bill.

It cannot be argued that the Bill, with or without the Amendment, would destroy the Act of Union, although the Act of Union, particularly in connection with peers, was shrouded in obscurity to some extent. Some would argue, as I dare say the hon. Lady would argue, with some justice, that the passage of the Act of Union was a matter which would hardly bear investigation according to the high standards of political morals which we profess today. Some aspects of it should not be entirely accepted. It is true that some of the condemnation of the way in which the Act of Union was originally passed arose because of the writings of Lochart the Jacobite, who was a very good writer, even though most reprehensible in politics.

But there are many other aspects of the way in which the Act of Union was passed through which I think would hardly bear investigation according to those standards today. Moreover, there are the subsequent events that occurred, which we were talking about in the House the other day in the intervention by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell). Very soon after the passage of the Act of Union, when the agreement had been made about the number of peers who were to sit in the other place, the arrangement that had been made in 1707 by the Government of that time was found to be unsatisfactory for the Government of 1711.

2.45 a.m.

Indeed, it is an absolutely classic case of how it is not possible for people to stay bought. We have been arguing in some of the other Clauses whether the Government can make an arrangement whereby peers placed in another place will hold to the opinions which the Government think they have in the first place. It so happens that this Amendment illustrates how impossible it is for that to happen.

Now the right hon. Gentleman, when I referred the other day to the crisis of 1711, which is particularly apposite for our discussion now, interrupted me and said that the creation of the 12 peers in 1711 by Queen Anne had been undertaken precisely because of the fact that some of the Scottish peers had proved unreliable.

Mr. Powell

Too expensive.

Mr. Foot

Too expensive—well, that is a more precise way of putting it, but it comes to the same thing.

It was expected, when the Act of Union was put through, that those who would represent Scotland in the House of Lords would hold to the opinion of sustaining the Government of the day. The Government of 1711 happened to be engaged in a particularly disgraceful manoeuvre of betraying our allies in Europe in order to secure the Treaty of Utrecht.

The Government in power at that time—a Conservative Government—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh"] It is perfectly true. I hope hon. Gentlemen opposite will not disown some of their most eminent leaders, Lord Bolingbroke and Lord Harley, the first Conservative Prime Minister. They were engaged in this manoeuvre and to overcome the situation that some of the Scottish peers would not stay bought, they had to create 12 new peers, which they did create. Indeed, such a mockery was this attempt to change the situation by creating these peers that when they were appointed it was asked whether they would vote together or not, whether they would vote according to their foreman or individually.

We cannot possibly write into the Bill the Clause which the hon. Gentleman suggests, because if Scottish peers were so unreliable or so expensive in 1711, why should we think that they are cheaper and more reliable in 1969? There is not the slightest scrap of evidence to suggest that their morals have improved in the interim at all. Therefore, I do not think it is possible to lay down any law which will ensure that when the Scottish peers get there, they will vote according to the ideas, instructions or arrangements that have been made at the time of their appointment.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I am not quite sure I follow his argument entirely in the light of the Amendment we are discussing. The stipulation which my hon. Friend has imposed is not a stipulation of party loyalty, but a stipulation of residence. Therefore, surely it is not a question of the Scottish peers staying bought, but a question of their staying put.

Mr. Foot

That I appreciate, but there has to be the double qualification. The hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) said that he was also interested in their staying put, and so is the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger). Under the Bill they have to stay bought as well. The arrangement must be a combined one; not merely must there be a certain number of indiscriminately situated peers who would be prepared to stay bought, but a certain number of peers domiciled in a particular place would also have to stay bought, which enormously multiplies the complications of the Measure.

The Amendment is not directed to deal with the fundamental measures of the Bill, it is embroidery of the Bill. Within this arrangement of picking 230 peers, the hon. Gentleman is saying that a certain number should come from Scotland. That multiplies the difficulties of getting peers who will serve the purposes that the Government have in mind in creating them, or the purposes of the Opposition when they appoint a certain number, because it is a necessary consequence of the Bill that the Opposition peers should also stay bought, or keep to the general arrangement or understanding which exists at the time of their appointment. If they do not, the balance can be upset the other way.

The more one looks at the proposition put forward by the hon. Gentleman, the more one believes that it will greatly complicate an already complex situation. A Prime Minister who had to carry out all the permutations that are needed to be laid down if this proposal were carried out would have no time to spend on anything else.

Mr. Younger

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for addressing himself so seriously to the argument, but he is not being quite fair. Party allegiance does not come into the Amendment. The only question I am considering is where they are normally resident. If the hon. Gentleman is saying that out of five in Scotland a Prime Minister would have difficulty in finding representatives of the two major political parties, that is an exaggeration.

Mr. Foot

The hon. Gentleman must face the complications; he is moving the Amendment, and I have treated it seriously. I acknowledge that the Bill touches the Act of Union. The Act of Union contained an extraordinary provision about guaranteeing to Scotland a number of peers to sit in the other place, a guarantee, incidentally, which is not provided for any other part of the United Kingdom, but I will come to that in a moment. The Act of Union contained that provision, and, therefore, it could be said that Scottish Members have a duty to raise this matter and to see how a constitutional Bill of this importance affects the Act of Union.

I do not dispute that. All I am saying is that when the hon. Gentleman searches for a remedy he must be prepared to consider the complications that arise from the remedy. I am trying to illustrate how vastly complex the matter is. For example, if the Amendment were to go through, the Prime Minister might think, "I have about three or four safe Scottish peers; I will go along and trade them with the Opposition ones, to see how many safe ones they have and where they are situated." The Liberal Party, even the radical section of the Liberal Party, would no doubt stake a claim to be in on this too.

Which would be settled first? Would the reliability of the peers or their geographical allocation be settled first? It is an extremely difficult matter to settle. We are told these things can all be done behind the scenes, and this is an illustration of how difficult it would be.

Presumably Wales would also stake a claim. I know that there is no Act of Union which lays it down, but presumably there would have to be a general figure that is understood between the two sides.

Moreover, if the Royal Commission that is to examine the whole question of regional government were to report that the representation of Scotland under local government should be much the same as for Wales—for example, that in the North or in the South-West there should be the same kind of regional representation as may be proposed for Scotland or for Wales—then under the Clause, if it were accepted, there would have to be consequential Amendments proposed by the Government to insist that the same kind of nomination would take place in the other regions. That would enormously complicate it again.

Mr. David Steel

Surely the hon. Gentleman's argument is false. The sponsors of the Amendment would not support any of the other Amendments attached to it. There are two fundamental differences. One is that Scotland was a sovereign nation which entered into the Act of Union. The other is that we have a separate system of law and we still have to carry out our legislation. That does not apply to the other regions.

Mr. Foot

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that many people in Wales—quite justly, in my opinion—would insist on the same rights for Wales in this matter. The fact that there happens to be a somewhat different historical background. the fact that Wales happens to have been much more successful earlier in resisting English attacks than the Scots, and the fact that the Welsh never agreed, as the Scots did, to the formal Act of Union, makes a big difference. If we are to have inquiries into these historical matters, many of us would never accept the proposition that there should be a special position for Scotland as against Wales or other parts of the United Kingdom. On the first point concerning the history, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge what I say. Because different parts of the United Kingdom have come to this position by different methods is not a reason for saying that Scotland should have a written-in position in the new House of Lords whereas Wales should not.

On the different system of law—and I was talking about the possibilities of a much wider regionalisation—I should assume that under the proposals for stronger and separate regional governments in different parts of the United Kingdom, which may emerge from the Commission, Wales and other parts of Great Britain would be able to vary their systems if they wished. In any case, I am entitled to argue that there should be the same rights for any regional government in Scotland as for Wales, the North of England, or some of the other places.

Mr. Maude

Is the hon. Gentleman really trying to persuade the Committee that it would be possible to get a Welshman to stay bought?

Mr. Foot

I am not quite sure from what nondescript part of the country the hon. and mongrel Gentleman comes, so I do not know why he should make such an attack upon my adopted nationality. I am an honorary Welshman. Therefore, I repudiate his charge in the strongest possible terms.

I am putting forward a perfectly serious argument. If we are to write into the Bill special protections for the Scots, then we will have to do it for all the others, and that, again, will enormously multiply the difficulties of carrying it out.

Those of us who are opposed to the Bill are grateful to the hon. Member for Ayr for illustrating afresh the impossibility of making it sane and coherent. If the hon. Gentleman's reasonable Amendment, presented in reasonable terms, was adopted, and if the same principle was applied to other parts of the United Kingdom, everybody would realise—and even the Government would understand—the absolute impossibility of carrying out such an arrangement.

3.0 a.m.

Although there are objections, I think that there could be a system of election from the regions. We could say that Scotland, Wales, and the other regions would have a system of election to the second House. There would be profound objections to such a system, but it would overcome the complications of trying to do this by nominations. I believe that anybody who examines the proposals seriously must conclude that it would be impossible to carry out a reasonable allocation between different parts of the United Kingdom under any system of nomination. That is a further illustration of how the Bill would not work.

It is also a further illustration of how outrageous is the proposal that is being made by the Government, because here again, as in every previous Clause, we are being asked to pass something which nobody can explain. Nobody can define what we are being asked to approve. I know that it is tedious to argue these matters at three o'clock in the morning, but this is not our fault. If the Motion which some of us wanted the Committee to accept had been accepted we would not have to do this now.

There are a number of important questions which must be answered. What form of regional government is to be established in this country, whether we are to have it, whether it is to apply to Scotland and Wales, and in what form? These will be important questions over the next three or four years. We all agree about it. Whatever our views may be, we all understand that there has to be an answer from this Parliament and from this House of Commons to the people of this country. What is Parliament's answer to the demands for regional government? We know that this is a serious question. What proposals have the Government for dealing with it? I am not saying that it is the best proposal, but it has some advantages. A Commission should be set up to deal with it, and this is a further reason for not passing this Bill.

Paragraph 50 of the White Paper says: The Government has felt obliged to reject a House composed on a regional basis for the reasons given in paragraph 23 above, and it considers that in present circumstances the most satisfactory method of achieving this objective would be for the Prime Minister of the day, in advising the Queen on the creation of new peers, to pay special and continuing regard to the need for the membership of the House of Lords to include a suitable number of persons with knowledge of and experience in matters which are of special concern to the various parts and regions of the United Kingdom. If the proposed Commission on the Constitution leads to changes which would make practicable or desirable new methods of securing the presence of members with knowledge of the various parts and regions of the United Kingdom these methods could be introduced at a later date. They could be, but we are being asked to vote for something before we have had the report of the Commission, before we know the possibilities, before we are even told how proposals from the Commission will be brought before the House. Will they be brought forward by resolution as well? Will they be brought forward under the conditions of the Bill? This is the most extraordinary Bill that I have ever seen presented to the House. There is not a Clause in respect of which it cannot be said that a whole series of ill-defined and undefined measures will flow from it, and the Government have not told us how they propose to deal with each Clause.

There are no commitments. If we reject the Amendment, and if we do not pass an Amendment to deal with regional proposals, we may get some statement from the Government about their general intentions, but we shall not have any guarantee about what is to happen, and if somebody outside asks us what is the relationship of the Bill to regional government in the future, or how many peers from different areas are to be appointed, we shall not be able to answer those questions. No one will be able to answer them. It will be an arbitrary affair. It will be up to the Government.

According to the White Paper, this part of the Bill is supposed to deal with the question of how many peers in the new House are to be appointed from different regions. If the Opposition Front Bench has no view on this, as on other matters it appears to have no view, this is rather serious. Are we to assume that the Opposition have no general view of these matters?

I do not accept that for a moment. I think they have. I remember the speech delivered by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition in Edinburgh in which he stated his view about the future of Scotland. That affects this Bill, but he does not come and tell us the Opposition's view about it. I do not think that is proper for the House of Commons. I am absolutely serious in my opposition to this Bill, as I am sure are large and growing numbers of hon. Members. We cannot have a situation in which we are proposing to leave to indefinite Resolutions or amending Bills or Measures which have not even been explained or hinted at, decisions about the relationship of local government, regional government, and the House of Lords.

I do not believe that the hon. Gentleman's method of writing this into the Bill is very good, but it is proper that the Government should be called on first to state it much more specifically than they have. It is not stated at all in the Bill. They should be required to tell us how many peers will be appointed with regional considerations in mind, and how many of the different sides are to be appointed on this basis. How many peers from Scotland are supposed to be going there to sustain the obligation of the Act of Union, if those obligations are to be sustained, and how many are to be elected from other regions?

If all these different matters are not settled by the House of Commons, they will be settled in private discussion on some future date by the party leaders, and the whole of the country's future will be settled like that, without a Resolution of this House. I hope there will be no complaints from my hon. Friends if they are then in a different position. I hope they will not tell us, if they find this place stuffed with Tories once again, "We should have kicked up a row about that. I never knew we were doing that".

So, in spite of the fact that I disagree profoundly with the Amendment, see certain advantages in the approach of the Act of Union and the fact that many nobler Statutes have been placed on the Statute Book, and that I hope the hon. Member will withdraw his Amendment, I hope also that the House of Commons will once again say to the Government "We are not prepared to let a measure of this nature go through."

Several Hon. Members rose——

Mr. Arthur Lewis

On a point of order, Mr. Gourlay. Perhaps you will allow me a few moments to explain. About three hours ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) suggested that we might report Progress and ask leave to sit again. We have had three more hours, and a moment ago about 20 hon. Members opposite got up, and I do not know how many on this side. If 20 are to speak from that side and a fair representation from this side, the discussion might go on for many hours yet. No one can expect this matter to be adequately discussed. If this is an important Measure, the leaders of both parties should be here discussing it, but because they are tired or disgusted they are not here. So circumstances have now changed. I ask for permission to move, That the Chairman do report Progress and ask leave to sit again, and I want to give reasons why the Motion should be accepted——

The Deputy Chairman (Mr. Harry Gourlay)

Order. I am not prepared to accept the Motion at this stage, having regard to the circumstances of the debate, but it might be moved later.

Mr. Orme

Further to that point of order. When my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) sought to move this Motion at 12 o'clock, the then occupant of the Chair said that consideration would be given to it at a suitable time. He said that once this debate had got under way there would be a basis for moving such a Motion. The debate has been going for a considerable time. To protect the interests of the Committee, Mr. Gourlay, I would ask you seriously to reconsider your decision.

The Deputy Chairman

In making its decisions, the Chair always has regard to the interests of the Committee. I was in the Chamber when my predecessor in the Chair made those remarks about the acceptance of the Motion. If we made a little more progress, I am sure that the Chair would look favourably upon such a Motion.

Sir D. Glover

Further to that point of order. Might this not be the time when the Government could give the Committee an indication of their attitude to the passing of the Bill?

The Deputy Chairman

That is not exactly a point of order.

Mrs. Ewing

This Bill is repugnant to me and my party, with or without the Amendment. As to the attitude of the man in the street, after speaking in over 50 constituencies in one year, I have found that one frequently repeated question highlights his attitude in Scotland. To lapse into the language complained of before—not the non-parliamentary language, but the foreign language—the question is "Whit are we going tae dae wi' a' they dukes and lords?". My answer is always that I would abolish the House of Lords completely in its present form and that the only kind of second Chamber which I can envisage is an elected one with real powers and not a trained lap dog with none. To this end, I voted with great pleasure for a Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton).

But I prefer the House of Lords in its present form to the form proposed by the Government. Although I do not approve of it, it has at least the independence of the haphazard. The Bill will give us representation by Establishment, and it will not have time to become haphazard. We will move from an eighteenth century House only to a nineteenth century one. We shall replace the friends of long-dead Kings, Queens and Prime Ministers with friends and nominees of living Prime Ministers and Leaders of the Opposition. I do not see this as progress.

We should not be congratulating ourselves on getting a nominated House under a complete umbrella of patronage. This proposition is rooted in the nineteenth century, which is part of history, or should be. Although I agree with much of what has been said about the Amendment adding complexity, it is an amelioration of the Bill and I will support it to that extent. I hasten to add that I am all for justice for England and Wales, and therefore I would also support Amendment 187.

3.15 a.m.

I cannot see a great deal of virtue in the fraction of one-tenth. Would not a good measure be the degree of seriousness of the social problems in Scotland? As these are usually twice as serious in respect of unemployment, emigration and slum housing, is not there a need for greater representation, so that we can get something done to put these things right?

Illogical as the Bill may be, the spirit of the Amendment improves it. But I have to pose several questions. Is it fair to ask more of the Lords than we ask of the Commons? Why are voting peers—or some of them—required to be ordinarily resident while Members of the House of Commons are not? The residence I have is ordinarily in Scotland. My home and family are there, and I want to be there. But I have extraordinary residence in England, and I come to the House three or four days a week. When does "ordinarily resident" become "extraordinarily resident"? The terms are unsatisfactory. I accept the spirit of the Amendment as an improvement, but I wonder whether it can be successfully interpreted.

I shall not go into the argument about the difficulty of the word "domicile". I agree with the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Dewar); this is one of the most complex fields of Scots law, or any law. The very name of the subject is "Conflict of Laws". That is an indication of how complicated the matter is. I appreciate that the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) is trying to interpret the phrase "ordinarily resident" as imposing a stricter requirement than the word "domiciled", but what does it mean? One, two, three or four days a week?

Reference has been made to the undignified proposition requiring Members of the other place to clock in when they are down here in London. Who will clock them in when they are up there? Who will do the checking? Will there be abuse of the system?

Sir D. Glover

This is a very interesting point, but under the appointments system the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition appoint the Members, and once they are appointed it does not matter where they live, because they are free agents.

Mrs. Ewing

That is my next point. Once appointed, they can move to a bungalow in Richmond or London and be ordinarily resident there, while being extraordinarily resident in Scotland for hunting, shooting and fishing.

I hope that this proposal is not intended to include the Law Lords. I do not approve of the House of Lords as an appeal court for Scottish cases, but we must deal with the situation as it exists at the moment. I hope that the hon. Member for Ayr does not mean to include Scottish Law Lords in his one-tenth representation. If the Lords Spiritual are to represent nominations other than their present ones I hope that there is no question of Scottish Lords Spiritual also being part of the one-tenth.

I now turn to the Treaty of Union. I am not going to deal with it as others have dealt with it. I wanted to deal with it in relation to an Amendment which has not been called but which proposes that the Act should be abolished. I do not complain that it was not called because I know that would have taken the debate wider than the Government would allow.

Three things have to be borne in mind with regard to the Treaty of Union. It was not a treaty at the time of universal suffrage when there was any question of a mandate from the people. It has already been broken so many times that it is not worth going into all the grievances of the past. It is still in course of being broken over the serious constitutional matter of entry into the Common Market, a matter in which a Lord Commissioner, Lord Kilbrandon, has given it as his opinion that it is a possible breach of the Treaty.

Mr. Dewar

I am sure the hon. Lady would agree that the breaches and grievances of which she complains took place in a period of universal suffrage, and that as a result of the acts of which she complains the Government did not suffer election defeat. Whatever may have been the situation in 1707, there was a long period when the people of Scotland were not discontented with the bargain struck in the Act of Union.

Mrs. Ewing

I do not accept either part of the hon. Member's proposition. The first breach that comes to mind is the imposition of the treason law later on in the eighteenth century shortly after the Union, and then the right of appeal to the House of Lords was again, in my view, a breach of the Treaty of Union. That example is a matter of opinion which could be argued, and I will not go into it.

My third point about the Treaty of Union was mentioned by the hon. Member for Renfrew, West (Miss Harvie Anderson). I should like to make a quotation which might be of interest to the Committee and which is as follows: With the Act of Union the great majority of Scots believed that it was the death knell of Scottish nationhood. It was a great blow to Scottish pride and could have finished Scotland as a nation, but because of our virility and tradition of independence it did not. When Burns wrote 'We are bought and sold for English gold—sic a parcel of rogues in a nation!' he was actually castigating Scotland. He wrote those lines because the Act of Union was purchased for £398,085—which was recognised as the cost of the Darien Scheme to Scotland under which Scotland hoped to build up a great colony that would produce great wealth for our country. The English, by the actions they took, spelt the ruin of the scheme and the whole of the money was lost. Scotland eventually agreed to the offer made by King William and so sold the right to have her own parliament in Edinburgh. That was a quotation from a speech delivered in November, 1951, at the St. Andrew's Night dinner, held by the Kilmarnock Burns Club. The speaker was the right hon. Gentleman the present Secretary of State for Scotland.

Mr. Biggs-Davison

Did not the hon. Gentleman opposite, when speaking for the Scottish Office, say that the story had arisen as a result of Jacobite propaganda?

Mr. Buchan

Apart from "digging and scrabbling in the files", which was a phrase used about me, the reference was to the Darien Scheme and to the commercial advantage which was sought to be gained by the Act of Union, in the sense that there was a swapping of the separate Scottish institution of Parliament for the commercial advantages and a common Parliament. The earlier allegation of bribery has been disproved by every serious historian from Pryde and Burton to McKinnon. The allegation of the Lockhart papers has not been established. It is quite nonsensical.

Mrs. Ewing

I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's view of the position and I thought that the Committee would be interested to know the view of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for Scotland. If the justification for the Amendment is the future of Scotland, the Committee must face up to the real difficulty that in the near future the whole constitutional arrangements for Scotland will have to be changed. In doing that, I hope that Parliament will adopt a realistic approach and accept the attitude of Scotland to that and towards the House of Lords as an institution. However, we have the House of Lords at present and all our discussions must be related to the present position and to what I believe is the short-term. The Amendment, at least in the short-term, maintains the spirit of the Treaty of Union which, although it has been broken, is still the best safeguard we have. Although I recognise its complexities, I support the Amendment. I regret, therefore, that for the first time in this Bill I shall not be going into the same Division lobby as the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Merlyn Rees)

In this group of proposals are a number of Amendments and a new Clause. Most of the discussion has centred around the proposals affecting Scotland. However——

Mr. Clegg rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put, but The CHAIRMAN withheld his assent and declined then to put that Question.

Mr. Rees

As I was saying, there has been much discussion about Scotland. However, there are wider implications and——

Sir D. Glover

On a point of order. We appear to be getting a reply from the Government. Are you aware, Mr. Gourlay, that no hon. Members representing English constituencies have spoken to this group of Amendments?

The Deputy Chairman

There is no reason to suggest that the debate is closing.

Mr. Heffer

On a point of order. If the Minister is to reply to the Scottish aspect of the Amendment and if he also intends to comment on the English aspect of it, how can he do that properly before hearing the views of hon. Members who represent English constituencies?

The Temporary Chairman

The hon. Gentleman has been an hon. Member for long enough to appreciate the normal proceedings in Committee.

Mr. Rees

The group of Amendments goes wider than affecting Scotland, but in so far as the Scottish aspect has had a fair airing and while I have the greatest sympathy for the intention of these proposals, I will show why they approach the matter wrongly.

The Scottish Amendments are designed to secure that not less than one-tenth of the voting peers are ordinarily resident in Scotland. There are technical arguments about the size of the population of Scotland and the question of over-representation, but I will consider the matter from the point of view of the spirit of the intention and I will not press that argument too far. In the same way there are a number of drafting weaknesses which would lead to curious results, but again I will deal with the spirit of the proposal. I will not go into the technical question of defining "domicile" and the similar matters which have been raised from a technical point of view. 3.30 a.m.

The Government have expressed their view in the White Paper, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) about representation of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. They have done so in paragraphs 50 and 23. Paragraph 50 says, There are strong constitutional arguments, based on the presence of Scottish peers in the House of Lords ever since 1707, and practical arguments arising from the existence of separate Scottish law…". which is equally an argument for what the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) was arguing earlier. In paragraph 23 there is a rejection of the regional argument for reasons, which are put in that paragraph, about the inappropriateness of a House of Lords representationally based on regional interests in the sense of Members coming from different parts of the country numerically. Then there is also the Preamble to the Bill. We have had a great deal of discussion about the legal meaning of the Preamble, and the Attorney-General answered it the other day. As the hon. Member for Ayr pointed out, paragraph (b) states: the inclusion in that House, and in the said body of voting members, of suitable numbers of peers with knowledge of and experience in matters of special concern to Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom.

There have been a number of points about Scottish representation and how the Bill affects the Scottish peerage. As the Scottish peers are, I am advised, peers by succession they will continue as non-voting peers under Clause 1 for their lifetimes. They will not get voting rights unless they are peers of first creation. I am also advised that there are now 25 created peers resident in Scotland, and also resident in Scotland about 40 hereditary peers of the United Kingdom or Great Britain peerages.

Sir D. Glover

Why does the hon. Gentleman not appear to realise that what is worrying hon. Members on both sides of the Committee is that a White Paper is nothing to do with an Act of Parliament, and that whatever is said in the White Paper the Government of the day can ignore it once the Bill is through the House?

Mr. Rees

I said that we have argued in recent weeks over the legal force of the Preamble. What lies between us is the argument on what should be written into the Bill, and the Government's argument is that the matter is better dealt with in this way. That is the argument I was seeking to put.

Mr. Mat Arthur

Before the hon. Gentleman leaves the residential point, it may help him to know, because it extends the argument, that of the 1,062 peers temporal and spiritual 115, according to my reading of various works of reference, would qualify as having residence in Scotland under the terms of my hon. Friend's Amendment. That represents 10.82 per cent. of the composition of the House of Lords. Therefore, my hon. Friend's proposal for a figure of one-tenth is not far removed from the present position.

Mr. Rees

The mathematics of this are very interesting. We are arguing in terms of about 230 members. The Government accept a need for regional representation, but think it is best not met by writing it into the Bill in the way the hon. Member suggests. What I am seeking to argue is that there is no more between us than that. We say there should be regional representation, and that is expressed in the Preamble, and the argument is about the best way of securing it, not about the need for it.

Mr. MacArthur

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that the Bill includes a provision which is a departure from a principle of the Constitution which has been observed without break for 262 years?

Mr. Rees

But the other point to bear in mind is that in 1963 the procedure for electing the 16 Scottish representative peers was abolished, but the Act enabled all holders of Scottish peerages to be Members of the House, which increased the number from 16 to about 75. I was not in the House then, but I doubt whether there was great argument, when the number rose in that way, that the Act of Union had been breached. That number is still there.

Mr. MacArthur

Will the Minister recognise that the 1963 Act did not breach the principle of the Act of Union? It increased Scottish representation, whereas in theory the Bill gets rid of it altogether.

Mr. Rees

There is also a decreased representation of everybody, because the number of active peers will fall. The important point I shall come to later is that there is little doubt that the number of Scottish peers will be more than 16, that there is no question of there being under-representation as compared with the 16 dating back to the Act of Union.

Mr. Wylie

Is not the essential difference that the Act of Union recognised by statute adequate representation of the Scottish peerage in the Upper Chamber, and that that statutory recognition is now being abolished? Whatever may be intended, in practice the statutory provision is going.

Mr. Rees

I think that that is right, but the Government's point is that in practice anyway the number of peers will exceed the 16, and that there is need to consider the wider interests of the United Kingdom as a whole. There is a feeling that although Scotland has the special interest, which I freely concede, it is in this sense no different from Wales and other parts of the United Kingdom.

Mr. Younger

Does the Minister realise that it would be totally unsatisfactory if we were now to go back to 16? That number out of 160 was 10 per cent. Out of 250, it would be very much less.

Mr. Rees

In other words, the hon. Gentleman is asking for an increase on the 16 in the Act of Union.

Several hon. Members rose——

Mr. Rees

I do not want to give way again on this. We understand clearly the point at issue. What lies between us is the question of how this representation should be obtained. The Government's view, stated in the White Paper and the Preamble, is that it should and can be done in the normal way, by creation and so on, but that it should not be written into the Bill to give it statutory form. As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary told the House on Second Reading, the Government had considered whether the Bill should include a Clause requiring a minimum number or proportion of Members of the voting House to be Scotsmen, but came to the conclusion that this would cause severe difficulties. One difficulty is that there are other parts of the United Kingdom to take into account.

Apart from the difficulties of principle, the amendment would impose a statutory obligation on the House of Lords in certain circumstances to accept a resolution to pray Her Majesty to create more peers. There would be strong constitutional objections to any restriction on the freedom of the House to present, or refrain from presenting, such resolutions as it thinks fit, though there are ways of getting over this. I mention this because I think that it is more than just a drafting arrangement.

There is no doubt that the number of Scots among the new life peers who will be created to achieve a voting House of the size envisaged in the White Paper will give a sufficient number to obtain about the figure of a tenth. I accept that I am not being precise, just as I was not able to be precise when talking about numbers the other day. Given the nature of the need to have an overall majority other than the cross-bench peers, it is best left not in the absolute fashion which the hon. Member for Ayr suggests.

Mr. Orme

Will the Scottish peers have to be domiciled in Scotland? If they come to London, does their status change?

Mr. Rees

I accept that such difficulty could arise out of the Amendments but it does not in the case I am putting. The position of Scottish peers with a residence in London will be similar to that of Members of Parliament. In the choice, the intention would be to ensure that they were representative of Scotland in the sense to which I have referred. While I see the need to be perhaps a little more precise, it would be wrong to be too precise. The Committee knows what it is arguing about in the sense of representation from different parts of the United Kingdom, and it would be a mistake to be too precise about domicile.

Mr. Arthur Lewis

My hon. Friend has referred to what other Members have in mind with regard to the rest of the country as being X, Y, Z. How can he say that? No hon. Member from any other part of the country has spoken in this debate apart from three Scottish Members and my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot). I know that hon. Friends from Liverpool, Manchester and other areas have points they want to put.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne

The Under-Secretary of Slate says we must not be too precise but that we must have a suitable number and that it will be more than 16. Will suitability be related to each of the elements in the House? For example, will it be related to the 77 who are to be peers of succession, or to the 105 who are to be Government stooges, or to the 80 who are to be Opposition stooges, or to the 15 representing the Liberal Party? To break the thing down in this way would be a full time occupation for the Prime Minister, although many of us think that it would be a very good occupation for him.

3.45 a.m.

Mr. Rees

The hon. Gentleman is talking about white fish or the Prime Minister and I never know which is which. [Laughter.] Hon. Gentlemen opposite laugh too quickly. The reason why I do not know which is which is because I am never clear what the hon. Gentleman is talking about. The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) made an excellent point about the concentration of numbers, given the need to have the overall majority. This is one of the reasons why it is wrong to be precise about numbers. As to the choice of peers from the various types of peers paragraph 51 of the White Paper says there will be a committee which, it has been proposed, will review the composition of the reformed House and consider how far it includes members with knowledge of the various parts of the United Kingdom. Besides the hereditary peers, some of whom will become life peers, there are 25 created peers and about 40 hereditary peers, and it would be wrong to lay down what proportion the Scottish peers should form, just as it would be wrong to do this for other parts of the country.

There are a number of problems about Amendment 186. It involves a further breach of the general principle that voting rights should be confined to the created peers who had deposited voting declarations under Clause 3, and fulfil the attendance requirements under Clause 4. It would be difficult if this Amendment were accepted, to avoid repercussions in other areas, for example to enable non-voting peers to vote in any Committee considering legislation or other matters of exclusive concern to Wales, or any other Committee of the House. There are a number of drafting problems, but the overall weakness is that if one did it in Scotland there are other aspects in the reformed Chamber which might lead to the cry that nonvoting peers should be able to play their part as well.

There are great difficulties in any scheme involving specific territorial representation. The best way is to rely on the Prime Minister of the day and his advice to the Sovereign on the creation of new peers, and on the consultations that would be carried out. The Government see the fears underlying the Amendments and are not unsympathetic to the general argument, but the view of the Government is that it is best done in the way suggested in the White Paper, and the Preamble, namely, to see, in general, that representation of these areas shall be carried out as described in the White Paper. For this reason I reject the method set out in the Amendments.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

Would you, Mr. Gourlay, at this stage be prepared to accept a Motion that you report Progress and ask leave to sit again?

The Deputy Chairman

Yes.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

In that case I beg to move, That the Chairman do report Progress and ask leave to sit again. I do not insist on the latter part of the Motion. It would be to the general convenience of the Committee, particularly as we now have the benefit of the company of the Leader of the House, to have some indication of the Government's intentions about the course of business. It is normal to move a Motion of this kind somewhat earlier, so that the Government may have the opportunity to review the position and convey their intentions to hon. Members.

This Committee has now been sitting today for just over nine hours. Even allowing for the fact that, because of other business, we did not enter upon our consideration of this Bill until about a quarter to seven, we have done a good day—the equivalent of sitting well after midnight if we had started at 3.30. The Committee will recall that the former Leader of the House often expressed himself with great eloquence on the evil of very late sittings.

Moreover, it would be a convenient moment to adjourn our labours now. We have so far on this group of Amendments had a series of speeches on the Scottish question, replied to by an English—or, rather, Welsh—Minister. If we could continue when we resume to discuss the regional provisions raised by the Amendment being taken at the same time, on which one would hope, several English Members might be able to speak, it might then be convenient, to maintain harmony, I suppose, that a Scottish Minister should eventually reply.

In all seriousness, this is what is called in another context a natural break in the programme. Having discussed a major constitutional Measure through a considerable part of the night, and knowing that in less than 12 hours we shall in any event take up our discussions again under the announced programme of business, the Committee would be well advised, I suggest, to terminate its proceedings now.

Mr. Callaghan

I imagine that you would find it difficult, Mr. Gourlay, and a strain on your conscience, to report that we have made progress today. Whatever else we have done, we have hardly done that. Since a quarter to seven, we have managed to dispose of one Amendment. We are now in process of considering the second. When we reach a conclusion is for the Chair to say, not for me, but, looking at the Notice Paper. I am sure that, with a little diligence and with the care which the Committee has been bestowing on the Amendments so far, it should be possible for us to make some further progress.

Disappointed though I am with the progress we have made up to now, I think that, for example, it should be possible to finish Clause 2 without difficulty before we adjourn our labours. There are only two Amendments to be taken on Clause 3, and it should be possible to dispose of that. With normal progress, we should be able to start on Clause 4. However, I should not cavil if my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) wished to go home after Clause 3. I should not quarrel with him on that, but Clauses 2 and 3 are obvious certainties on any normal consideration of a Bill.

The right hon. Member for Kingston-on-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) seems to be expressing some disinclination. He seems to be losing his taste for the fight. I beg him to gird his loins again. His Front Bench has been replenished and refreshed. Clearly, they are in full voice. We have heard from the hon. Member for Ormskirk (Sir D. Glover), who has taken over the leadership of the Conservative Party, and from the hon. Member for Chigwell (Mr. Biggs-Davison). There have been more interventions from them than from the whole Front Bench before they established their coup d'état an hour or two ago. These two are a great improvement. I do not think that we ought to ask where the others are. At least we are getting some contributions from the two hon. Gentlemen. When General Ormskirk and Field Marshal Chigwell are setting such a good example, it is not for the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames to be faint hearted. There is work to be done; there is a battle to be fought; the Bill has to be examined—[HON. MEMBERS: "Steady as she gees! "]—If we had maintained the balance of payments surplus which we had when I uttered that comment, if there had not been an outbreak of war in the Middle East, it might have been more accurate.

I agree that some hon. Members are getting a little impatient about our proceedings. I listened to the hon. Member for North Fylde (Mr. Clegg) who wanted to draw the discussion on the Amendment to a close three-quarters of an hour ago. He clearly thought that he had heard enough to be able to make up his mind. Indeed, he was so certain what the answer was that he did not even wish to hear my hon. Friend reply to the debate. With his well known perspicacity, I can understand that and sympathise with him. Indeed, if the Chair had accepted his Motion and the hon. Gentleman had pushed it, I should have voted with him, because I, too, had heard enough to make up my mind on the Clause. I think that, like many others, the hon. Gentlemen feels that some of the opposition to the Bill is a little excessive and for that reason he wished the debate to conclude.

Mr. Clegg rose——

Mr. Callaghan

I hope that the hon. Gentleman does not intend to throw away my support after I have offered it to him.

Mr. Clegg

I do not want to throw away anybody's support. The right hon. Gentleman has misunderstood my motives. I was merely trying a bit of tit for tat.

Mr. Callaghan

The hon. Gentleman must know that in the House of Commons one should never deal in motives. One can deal only with the consequences of one's actions, and a consequence of the hon. Gentleman's action would have been to take me into the Division Lobby with him. I am sorry that I shall not now have the opportunity to follow what would have been his refreshing leadership.

Mr. Crouch

The right hon. Gentleman has said that he has heard enough to allow us to put the Closure, but we have not heard enough. We have not heard anything about the English regions. We have discussed only Scotland. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Hull (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) that we want to return refreshed to discuss this matter as it affects the English and Welsh regions as well as Scotland.

Mr. Callaghan

The hon. Gentleman does himself less than justice. To me he looks as fresh as paint. He is applying himself with cogency and determination to these problems and I congratulate him on so doing. I want to encourage him to go further. However, in the debate on the White Paper and on Second Reading he heard the Government's view about regional representation. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has attended any party meetings to question his own Front Bench about it, or what answers he got if he did. He might get better answers if he asked the new Leader of the Opposition, the hon. Member for Ormskirk. If he asked, he would know what was in everybody's mind, but I do not accept that the hon. Member is unable to make up his mind on this question.

I agree with the hon. Member for North Fylde that it is time that we made up our minds on the Amendment and the Clause. If the hon. Gentleman chooses at some further time to try to cut off the debate at the moment when we have had full discussion, I shall again be willing to join him, but at the moment I recommend to the Committee that our progress, although slight, has been dogged and determined and that we should pursue that course. I want the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames not to give up, but to continue discussion. I am sure that we shall then make some progress and be able to see how the discussions go, and I am sure that we could then adjourn at a mutually agreeable time in due course.

4.0 a.m.

Mr. Powell

I hope that my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter), after hearing the manner in which his Motion has been received by the Home Secretary, will already have decided not to withdraw it, but to submit it to the Committee in due course for decision.

One of the remarks of the Home Secretary, which I think will not have been lost on the Committee, was his reference to motives. He said that in this Committee we are wise not to pay attention to motives, but to what is actually said. [HON. MEMBERS: "To the consequences."] I am much obliged. That makes it stronger still. One of the difficulties which the Committee has been contending with throughout its consideration of this Bill is that the Government is continually appealing to its motives with regard to what will eventually happen if and when this Bill is passed, asking the Committee to take these on trust, but declining to be precise about them and say what will be the consequences of the Bill.

There is a consideration which I think goes to strengthen the argument put forward by my right hon. Friend. This Motion was moved at the first time when, in the wisdom of the Chair, it was acceptable after the first Amendment had been disposed of, though I must say I thought, incidentally, that the Home Secretary insufficiently appreciated the importance of the work which the Committee had done in disposing of the question of the payment of members of the other House. The fact that he regarded that debate as such trivial progress is another illustration of the inadequate importance which the Government attach to the fundamental constitutional matters which are being brought up in every single Amendment which we have to deal with. Indeed, I would say that very real progress was made, and perhaps progress was made too fast by this Committee in having disposed of the major question of payment of members of the new chamber.

However, that is the question which has been disposed of, after which, for the first time, we are now able to consider whether we shall report Progress and ask leave to sit again.

Towards the end of the debate a very remarkable event occurred, and one which, in itself, would justify, if not necessitate, an opportunity for both sides of the Committee to reconsider their position. Very shortly before that debate ended, one of the hon. Members opposite—1 think it may have been the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon)—succeeded in eliciting from my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) the fact that payment of Members of the other House had been an integral part of the agreement or bargain between the two sides of the House, upon the basis of which the House, and subsequently the Committee, have been proceeding.

Having established that, the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne put another question to my right hon. Friend. He asked whether the Opposition were in any way aware that the Government intended to depart from or break that part of the agreement. My right hon. Friend indicated a negative. The hon. Member then finally asked whether there was any agreement upon this modification of the agreement, and once again my right hon. Friend made it perfectly clear that there was no such agreement. So the Committee is now faced—and this is the first opportunity we have had to consider this matter—with an admitted breach of what nobody disputes is an important element in the agreement, on the basis of which this Bill has hitherto been considered.

I suggest that this is so major a matter, and so alters the background against which the Bill is being considered, that it is imperatively incumbent upon the Government to give the Committee an opportunity to reconsider the position. I say both sides, but it is not only both sides of the Committee. The agreement embraces another place and the faith upon which a decision on the White Paper was taken in another place. Quite obviously, consultations will be necessary between members in another place and Members of the House of Commons upon what are to be the consequences on the future progress, if any. of this Bill of a breach of an admittedly vital element of the agreement, on the strength of which we have hitherto been proceeding. That consideration alone, if there were not those which have been urged by my right hon. Friend, would make it not only desirable but absolutely necessary that this Motion should now be accepted by the Committee.

Mr. Michael Foot

Some time ago, at about 12 midnight, I sought to move the Motion which the right hon. Gentleman has moved. I sought to do so then for reasons which are still substantive and which are additional to the reasons which have been urged by hon. Gentlemen opposite.

An incident occurred. I do not think that the Home Secretary was able to be present at the time it occurred, and it may be that some other hon. Members were not present, but I think it would have been desirable, if it had been possible, to deal with the matter then by the method which is now available to us, thanks to the acceptance of the Motion moved by the right hon. Gentleman.

I am strongly opposed at any time, if it can possibly be avoided, to a clash between the back benches of the House and the Chair. It is right that hon. Members should accept the authority of the Chair. They are Members of the House and that is one of the obligations which they must accept. It is highly dangerous if there is a clash between the House and the Chair leading to the only method that can be applied in that situation, a Motion on the Order Paper. I am strongly opposed to such Motions, and it would have been wrong in such circumstances for anybody to have thought in those terms.

For a few minutes there was a situation in which some hon. Members, seized by the emotion of the Amendment, made noises, shouts or objections, which might have appeared to be reflecting not merely on the actions of the Treasury Bench but on the Chair. Hon. Members who were in the House at the time will recall the situation. That is why at the time I thought it right to try to dispose of the matter in a way which would avoid any such clash, and I am still in favour of that. Therefore, my first reason for supporting the Motion is that it would enable us to dispose of the incident in a way which would be satisfactory to the whole Committee.

I do not blame the Home Secretary for not having dealt with this in his first remarks in dealing with the Motion. He, or the Leader of the House, may deal with it later. What happened was this. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) was speaking; he gave way to my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes), and it was assumed by the Whip in charge, my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. O'Malley), that my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne had concluded his speech, and, therefore, he moved the Closure, which was accepted by the Chair.

I readily understand that there are many precedents for the Chair accepting a Closure moved by hon. Members after a certain period. It was not possible, perhaps, for my hon. Friend to withdraw the Motion. Some of us thought that he could have taken the opportunity of withdrawing the Motion when he saw that it had been moved in circumstances of misapprehension, and that would have disposed of the incident. But once the Chair had put the Question, that procedure for remedying the situation was made more difficult.

Whatever the rights or wrongs, I think that it would be desirable, from the Committee's point of view, that the Government should say that they do not regard the way in which the Closure was moved then as being comparable to the normal circumstances in which closures are moved.

We all know that the Closure is sometimes moved in the middle of a speech just before 10 o'clock. We all know that a moment or so before 10 o'clock, when an hon. Member may be speaking, a Patronage Secretary may move the Closure. That is a precedent perhaps for the acceptance of the Closure by the Chair on this occasion. But those circumstances are different from those prevailing when my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) had the Closure moved in the middle of his speech.

Many Members, on both sides, who have seen the operation of the Closure Motion, have generally accepted the position that it is not moved in the middle of a Member's speech. The Closure is certainly not moved at the moment when an hon. Member is giving way to somebody else. Therefore, it would be appropriate if, on behalf of the Government, an apology was made. I do not think that anybody has to make a statement that he has perpetrated an appalling sin. But it would assist the courtesies of the Committee, and also be a guarantee for the future, if some form of regret was expressed by the Government on that matter. It would also be helpful to the conduct of our operations on the Bill.

The Home Secretary has not been present the whole time. I do not criticise him for that. I know that Ministers have heavy engagements. Sometimes they have to be absent when the most important Bills are going through. I do not criticise my right hon. Friend on that count, but when he says, as part of his argument, that we have not made as much progress as he would have desired, I point out that that is because we spent about an hour discussing that incident. The Home Secretary cannot claim, because he was not here, that that hour was wasted. He has no right to claim that. Some of us were seeking to remedy a situation which we thought ought to be remedied in the interests of the Committee. That incident has partly delayed these proceedings. Had it not been for that incident, we might have reached the end of the Clause and the end of these proceedings, instead of having to resume this afternoon at half-past three.

It is no use the Home Secretary saying that that incident does not affect how much progress we have made, I say that for the future of the Bill. The Home Secretary is extremely experienced in these matters. He knows how tempers flare. Tempers can flare partly because of such incidents—and tempers did flare. I think that everyone agrees that my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne was treated in what appeared to be a shabby manner. I do not believe that that was the intention of my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham, because he does not deal with Members in that way. Therefore, I hope that some form or regret will be expressed.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne made a lengthy speech at the beginning of the Committee proceedings which I can understand the Government not liking very much. But, as I said earlier, I think that the Committee owes a great debt of gratitude to my hon. Friend for the way in which he launched the discussion. It would be intolerable if the Closure was moved on my hon. Friend because of any feeling of resentment for what he had done on a previous occasion. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham shakes his head. If he says that the Closure was not moved for that reason, I accept it at once and do not proceed with the point further. But I hope that the Government will express regret for the incident that occurred.

That is the first reason why I think the Motion should be accepted.

4.15 a.m.

Mr. Ridley

Has it occurred to the hon. Gentleman that it might have been that because the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) had unearthed a breach of that piece of the bargain the Government Front Bench saw fit to terminate his very telling speech?

Mr. Foot

I concede that that might be an explanation, but I have accepted the statement of my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham that the motive suggested for curtailing my hon. Friend's speech was not the reason why that was done. I accept that my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham moved the Closure at the point that he did because he thought that my hon. Friend had reached the end of his speech. Having accepted that, I cannot proceed to adopt an argument which would be a denial of that acceptance.

Mr. Arthur Lewis

It might add something to the point made by the hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) if I remind the Committee that when my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) elicited this information from the right hon. Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) the right hon. Gentleman vanished, and he has not put in an appearance since.

Mr. Foot

That is a different question. It is no mystery why the right hon. Gentleman has left. Everybody knows why he has cleared off. We cannot have any half secrets being spilled on the Floor of the House of Commons. That would be too disgraceful.

Now I come to the second part of the Home Secretary's statement on this Motion. I am sorry that my right hon. Friend did not get up and say that he accepted it. If he had done so, we would be on our way home now—and we all want that—and it would have been much more helpful for the Committee generally.

The Government say that we have not made a great deal of progress on this Bill if one compares it with some other Bills. But this is no ordinary Bill. This is why it is causing such difficulties. It is an extraordinary Bill. It is a Bill which proposes to alter the nature of Parliament. A Measure of this nature has to be considered in great detail, and with great care.

A large number of Amendments which have been put down have not been called. I am not criticising the Chair for not calling them, but we must have some discussion at some stage in our proceedings about some of the Amendments which were put down by the Government and then withdrawn. We ought to have time—and this is a further reason for accepting the Motion—to discuss a peculiar situation whereby certain Amendments which were put down by the Government have been withdrawn, thereby possibly preventing a discussion of some of these Amendments on Report. I think that we should hear from the Government why they have withdrawn some of those Amendments. It may be that it is convenient for them to do that now, or alternatively to put the Amendments back on the Notice Paper.

The major reason why the Government have no right to complain about the progress that has been made, and therefore no right to resist the Motion, is that we have discussed questions which on previous occasions might have been incorporated in whole Bills. There could be a whole Bill dealing with some of the questions that are now incorporated in Clauses which are not being explained. There could be a whole Bill to say what is to be the regional representation in the other place. There could be a whole Bill to say what the proposal is for remuneration in the other place. There could be whole Bills which would have to go through under these procedures, but instead of that the Government have decided to incorporate these matters in a general Bill, even though they have not reached a conclusion on many of these matters.

The Government have not decided what is to be the size of the new second Chamber. They have not decided how many are to be appointed from Scotland. They have not decided how many are to come from the other regions. They have not decided how much members in the other place are to be paid. They have not decided any of those questions, and, therefore, they have presented to us a Bill which is wide open for Amendment.

Some of us noticed this during Second Reading and pointed it out to the Government. We said, "If you produce a Bill like this, you cannot expect it to go through in the normal fashion". That prophecy was fulfilled and will continue to be fulfilled, because this is not an ordinary Measure, and, therefore, will not go through in an ordinary fashion. The pace at which it proceeds cannot legitimately be compared with the pace of the passage of a normal Bill. Therefore, the Home Secretary's major argument falls to the ground. His speech was the kind of speech which is made on the Finance Bill at 4 o'clock in the morning. I am not saying anything derogatory about Finance Bills, but one characteristic of this old-fashioned House is that constitutional Bills have to be dealt with in a special way.

I remember some lengthy debates about constitutional Bills. We insisted that the Bill on Commonwealth immigration was a constitutional Bill and I remember that the Guillotine had to be imposed on that by a Conservative Government. I could give a long list of constitutional Bills which had to be debated on the Floor, and this is a bigger constitutional Bill than those. It will decide how we operate in this Parliament for the rest of this century. It will decide which powers are to be left here. Until one decides what that place is like, one cannot decide what powers are left to us.

The reason the Government thought they could get the Measure through without so much commotion and difficulty was that they thought they had the support of the Opposition. I think that they have legitimate grounds for complaint. They have been done a dirty trick. They should have known they could not, and the reason they thought they could was that they had what used to be called a copper-bottomed guarantee from the leaders of the Opposition that the Bill would go through.

Mr. Onslow

An additional reason why the Government were mistaken in thinking it would go through quickly was contained in the Home Secretary's admission, unique in debate, that he was open to argument and had already been swayed by what had been said about payment. Why, therefore, should he not expect the House of Commons to try to convince him on other important matters?

Mr. Foot

If I had believed that it was our Motion which enabled change, I would be even more encouraged to sustain the present debate, which I will sustain, if I had thought that that was the only reason. I think that there were three reasons. We have not been given one, but I give credit to the Home Secretary for bowing to the will of the Committee. The Government wanted to ensure that they were going to accommodate those of us who had broken down the Government's defences so certainly that the Government should have come along and asked what we wanted.

Once they were in this insecure position, they should have asked us what we wanted. Instead of that, they have produced something which is worse still. That cannot have been the only reason, although it may have been a contributory factor, but that does not alter the fact that the Government proceeded with the Bill, which they cannot compare with other Bills, because of this assumption of the Opposition's support. I say no more about how they have been betrayed. They have every right to complain, although they have changed and removed the payment Clause which was foreshadowed in the White Paper.

But, although the nature of the bargain has been altered, and this may alter the reception which the Bill is given in another place, if it ever gets there, there has been no substantial objection from the Opposition Front Bench. The right hon. Member for Barnet, who underlined the fact that there has been a change, must also acknowledge that. If they objected to the removal of the Clause, they had only to participate in this debate but they have refused to do so. It is no exaggeration to say that this refusal is a sign that they accept the Bill now as they accepted it before.

Even so, the Government are to proceed with the Bill, so those of us who oppose it have all the more right to press our opposition. Half the parties to the bargain are not prepared to come here and defend the Bill, as they are under an obligation to do. So far from that lengthening our proceedings, it should abbreviate them. It is monstrous that the argument put by one side of the House, not only to the Government but to their own leadership, should not be answered. This also greatly lengthens our proceedings. So long as this extraordinary arrangement continues, the debates will continue as well.

Sir D. Glover

To be fair, the hon. Member will remember that my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) said earlier this evening that he thought that anyone doing a useful job should be paid the rate for the job. What he did not explain was whether he thought that, under the Bill, anyone in another place would be doing a useful job.

Mr. Foot

That is one part of the argument, and I think that he assumed that they would be doing a good job. But no one could say that that single sentence from the right hon. Gentleman was an answer to the elaborate arguments presented from that side of the House. The arguments about pay are all interwoven with the question whether the Bill can be operated at all. There have been arguments from many different angles pointed to the fact that the Bill cannot operate or seeking to prove that we are being asked to pass something which is not defined. These propositions from both sides of the House have not been satisfactorily answered and that is why our proceedings have been and will continue to be so lengthy. The Government and, even more, the Opposition Front Bench, appear to say, "We regard your arguments as derisory and not worth discussing," although they were treated in a courteous way by the Home Secretary. He did not go into them in detail, but they were arguments for which he himself was responsible to the House.

We had a few answers from the right hon. Member for Barnet about the bargain, and if it is possible for the right hon. Member for Barnet to say what was in the bargain it should be possible for the other people concerned to say what was in it. My claim is that if the Government wish the Bill to go through more speedily they will be in difficulty, because our objections are rooted and strong, and no reasons have been given which lead us to take a different view. The Government have rejected my advice on every occasion I have offered it, but they must not think that that has proved their wisdom. The state of the debate indicates that it might be wiser for them occasionally to heed my advice.

4.30 a.m.

The Government often do not listen sufficiently to what is said from the back benches. We are to debate other Measures concerned with strikes, where we shall put forward arguments. We wonder whether the Government will listen to them. We shall fight this Bill Clause by Clause, although we know that the Government will not alter any of the Clauses. If the Government want to get it through they must be prepared to argue the issues and present their case against the formidable arguments put forward by hon. Members on both sides of the Committee.

This is not a case of filibustering or obstruction. The Home Secretary did not use those words, but the manner in which he intervened recently and a few hours ago indicated that he thought that that was what was happeninig. We are not filibustering; we are using the delaying powers of the House of Commons, as we are entitled to do—for the purposes of trying to extract a whole series of answers to some very complicated questions from both sides of the Committee. We have had little success in getting those answers so far. The proceedings are bound to be lengthened and lengthened almost to an interminable extent if the answers are not forthcoming. The purpose of having lengthy Committee stages is to enforce good manners on both Front Benches—to make them aware of the need to answer our questions.

I tell my hon. Friend that it is not only a question of answering hon. Members; the Bill will have to go to the other place. It will be debated there during a lengthy Committee stage. Members of the other place will study what has been said here, and what answers have been given. They will discover that what is being proposed is something different from what was proposed before. They will also discover that when this fact prompted a series of arguments we were not supplied with answers from either Front Bench.

Mr. Callaghan

I take exception to my hon. Friend's remarks. Three-quarters of an hour ago my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary made a full and comprehensive statement.

Mr. Heffer

The Under-Secretary did not even hear all the debate.

Mr. Callaghan

I heard him answer the debate in the most courteous manner. He took all the points that had been raised. Perhaps there was disagreement, but it is unfair to say that he did not reply to the arguments in full.

Mr. Foot

I acknowledge that when replying on this occasion, and when he replied to the debate yesterday, the Under-Secretary answered many of the points which were raised, but, as we have been pointing out all the time, some of the Amendments that we were discussing before the Chair accepted the Motion deal not only with Scotland or Wales, but with England.

The Under-Secretary showed application and courtesy in replying, but he was unable to answer the arguments which hon. Members who represent English constituencies could make because they had not had an opportunity to make them. This illustrates what I say about this series of Amendments embracing the whole question of regional government and the relationship between the House of Lords and the Commission which my right hon. Friend has set up to deal with regional government.

The Under-Secretary is not in a position to answer our questions about the bargain that was made, about what was in the bargain or what has been removed from it because he was not a party to it. Only the party leaders can deal with that. The House of Lords will be established on the basis of a settlement reached in secret between three or four men with only the haziest of guidelines having been given by the House of Commons. It will, therefore, be an outrage if we allow the Bill to pass. It is already an outrage in view of the opposition from the whole Labour Party.

The Government are in difficulties at half-past-four in the morning because of the nature of the Bill. The Cabinet should reconsider the matter in the light of what has occurred in Parliament. My right hon. Friends must think of the days and weeks that we have yet to spend on the Measure and the consequences elsewhere. I trust, therefore, that, in the interest of the Government, the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the Home Secretary will accept the Motion and allow time for the Government to reflect on these matters.

Mr. Hugh Fraser

The Committee is in difficulty in making progress with the Bill. The Home Secretary said earlier that he was not worried about this because whatever hon. Members said the Government would have a majority. While that may be true, it is obvious that the powers of obstruction and our ability to probe the Measure line by line are so great that the right hon. Gentleman must adopt a new approach.

Whatever may have happened in the past—whatever bargain might have been arrived at—it is time that the parties got together and said "We are chucking the Bill". That decision could be taken jointly by the parties so that no blame would be attached to anybody. It would be the joint decision and responsibility of the party leaders. There would be no blame to either party. Both Front Benches, being equally responsible for having got the House of Commons into this nonsense, would be equally responsible for pulling the House of Commons out of the impasse into which they have manoeuvred us.

I am sure that this is a fair reason why the debate should now be adjourned, so that there could be conversations between the leaderships of the two main parties. Otherwise, nothing will be done but damage to the House of Commons, damage to the House of Lords, and damage to the constitution as a whole. That is a very strong reason why my right hon. Friend's Motion should be adopted.

Mr. Heffer

I support the right hon. Gentleman's Motion. I was very surprised by the view of the Home Secretary when he said he did not think we had much progress. I do not know what progress he wants. We have been discussing the Bill for only four days, and during those four days on a very important constitutional Bill we have got past Clause 1 and are now on Clause 2, and I would have thought we were making rather good progress with Clause 2.

I cannot understand why the Home Secretary has any complaint at all. We have been extremely co-operative. For example, we did not have a discussion on the Question, That Clause 1 stand part of the Bill. I am not making any complaint about that, but there was a whole series of Amendments which were not called, and that meant that people who did not have an opportunity to speak to those Amendments did not have an opportunity to speak on the Clause as a whole.

I am not making a complaint about that, but the right hon. Gentleman can hardly complain that we have not made any progress. It seems to me that we have made great progress—indeed, that we are galloping, positively galloping, through the Bill. If we are not careful we shall get the Bill completed by the Summer Recess.

That would terrify me, because I think that we ought minutely to examine every detail of the Bill, precisely because it really is a most important Bill, despite what hon. Gentlemen on the Liberal bench think. This very important constitutional Bill, if it is passed, will be with us for a very long time indeed.

I remember reading the Preamble to the 1911 Act. That was to have been a temporary Measure. It has been with us a long time. Will this one be a temporary Measure? To be amended—when? A hundred years from now? No doubt, by that time we shall have some 5,000 or 7,000 Members of another place. I really do not think that there can be any objection to the progress which is being made, and the case has been made out very well indeed for the termination of this debate this evening.

There is the very serious point which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) raised, and that was that certain information was gathered from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling), who pointed out that the White Paper was the ebodiment of the agreement, but that the agreement had now been breached and that there was no discussion between the two Front Benches about the question of remuneration.

4.45 a.m.

If I were on the back benches opposite, I should be asking the leaders of my party for a rather rapid party meeting. In their case I think that it is called the 1922 Committee. I should want to put some pertinent questions. We also have the right now to put some pertinent questions to my right hon. Friends. I am asking now for a party meeting to discuss a new development resulting from the statements that were made.

Our discussion should also be terminated to allow time for right hon. Gentlemen who should be on the Front Bench opposite to get here. We should go home and let them get out of their beds, baths, and so on, and be here tomorrow to have the opportunity first to meet their Members at a party meeting and then to appear in the Chamber to answer some of the points put to them.

It is obvious that the hon. Member for North Fylde (Mr. Clegg) was misunderstood when he interrupted the Minister and asked that we should have a Closure then. He was merely trying to establish whether this could be done to a Front Bench speaker as it was done to my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr.Sheldon). It was a point that I should have liked to put to the Chair, but there were so many points of order at that time that I did not think that one more would help the proceedings. It might have helped to hold up progress a little, and I would not want to be accused of holding up progress on the Bill.

It was important to try to establish back-benchers' rights to move the Closure even though a Front Bench speaker was speaking, just as that was done to my hon. Friend. We still have not established this principle, although it can, and perhaps should, be established. It could well be established, for example, when we debate the White Paper, "In Place of Strife". I can think of many examples where we could establish this principle of terminating the discussion rather rapidly because the discussion is unnecessary and we have pretty well heard it all before. We should now report Progress. I have a great deal of pleasure in supporting the hon. Gentleman.

I have one last point to put to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, who looked at me as though I did not want to be here when Clauses 2, 3 and 4, and so on, were discussed. I want to disillusion him. I shall be here for Clauses 2, 3, 4, and right up to Clause 20 and the Schedules—the whole lot. I shall be here to argue and put my point of view; and I hope that my hon. Friends will do likewise.

The most sensible thing to do is to withdraw the Bill and accept some sort of Bill along the lines suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne. It is high time that the Government realised that we are serious about this. We are not playing games. We may make jokes, but we are not playing games. We are getting a little fed up with not being listened to.

We are told that the Government have the majority for the Bill. I have been looking at the Division lists. The biggest vote comes from hon. Members who have now gone home. There is a massive apathy among the majority of Members towards the Bill. The last Division total was just over 200 Members. Where are the other 430? They have gone home because they feel that the Bill is not worth bothering with and that, too, is an indication to the Government of the feeling of the Committee about it.

Mr. Michael Alison (Barkston Ash)

Last time we heard the Home Secretary speaking in such a tone was in the spring and early summer of 1965, when he was trying to get his immortal and notorious Finance Bill through Committee. I recall the occasions in the early hours when he tried to persuade the Committee to go on a little longer. It was difficult to work out then which was the greater catastrophe—his half-baked Measure or the way in which he sought to batter it through.

But one thing emerged clearly. The net result of battering through a half-baked Measure was an Act which has never since been able to stand on its own feet. I suspect that we are repeating the process now. I discern in his tone of buoyant but somewhat false bonhomie the maniacal tone that he displayed then.

This sort of thing should not happen with a Bill of this kind. The lesson he should have learnt in 1965 was that we should hasten slowly; and it is certainly imperative to hasten slowly with this Bill. What is the hurry? I cannot understand why he wants to press on at such speed in the small hours. There is plenty of time. Nothing fundamental will be changed by the Bill until after the next General Election.

We have to look for formulae for the important changes to follow. What is the hurry? There are at least 18 months before any General Election need come to pass, and there are several weeks before Easter. There are plenty of weeks after the Easter and Whitsun Recesses, and there is the whole of the following Session. It is impossible to see why we should not be allowed to take a serious and leisurely consideration of the Bill, instead of being pressed on in the small hours.

The right hon. Gentleman has said that we were not making enough progress but progress is a multi-dimensional concept. One of the ways in which we have been progressing has been in depth. It is clear that the depths of surprise, the lack of clarity, and the mystery surrounding the Preamble and Clauses 1 and 2 have only just begun to be explored. It is incumbent upon the Committee to delve deeper if it is to do its job properly. That does not mean that we are wasting time, because we should not go forward until we are sure that the ground beneath is solid.

To be sure of that we have to dig down. We have been exploring the Bill in considerable depth. There is no need to make progress in a forward direction as Mr. Toad sought to do. It is better to make certain that we are standing on solid ground. My impression is that the ground is extremely uncertain, and that we must explore this in greater depth. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will admit that progress can be made in depth, and need not be just in a forward direction for the Committee to perform a valuable task.

I went into the Tea Room recently and saw that Wednesday's papers had arrived. The results of the Northern Ireland General Election are now receiving their first considered analyses. This group of Amendments relates to subsection (b) of the Preamble, dealing with the need to have representatives of the countries, nations and regions of the United Kingdom. The Committee must be able to consider the implications of what has happened in Northern Ireland and whether any modifications are necessary in the light of that. Is true representation of Northern Ireland, which must come into the category of special representation, under subsection (b) of the Preamble, to include some special religious representations? At first sight, it is difficult to see whether the cleavage in Northern Ireland is between the Catholics and Protestants, or between extremists on either side and the moderates, or between the working-class and the middle-class.

[Mr. SYDNEY IRVING in the Chair]

The Chairman

Order. The hon. Gentleman is going a little wide of the Motion.

5.0 a.m.

Mr. Alison

I infer that that is a rebuke, Mr. Irving, though I am not sure whether you wish me to explore the matter in greater depth rather than leap further into the wide area which is now opened up.

Inevitably now, the tenor of the Preamble, with its references to the nations, countries and regions of the United Kingdom, gives an inadequate definition in respect of Northern Ireland. We should now pause to consider the developments there in relation to the Amendments touching the question whether there should be special reference to the new factors emerging in Northern Ireland.

Those considerations add force to the case put by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames, that on a constitutional Bill of this importance we should go a step at a time, taking into account the new evidence and material which emerge, so that we produce at the end of the day a Bill which has some relation with reality. We must digest the results of our exploratory moves into the essence and substratum of the Bill. On the progress made so far, we should be able to pause and consider the new evidence and the material which will appear presently in HANSARD, enabling ourselves to make real steps forward rather than the leaps in the dark which the ex-Chancellor is anxious for the Committee to make, and which he was anxious for the country to make, without the necessary evidence.

Mr. Orme

I support the Motion. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary dealt with the matter in a most offhand way when opposing the Motion. He said that we had not made enough Progress, that he wanted to get Clauses 2, 3 and 4 and he chided the Committee for not getting on. I do not know whether my right hon. Friend imagines that he will make much progress if he continues in that fashion.

There has been no endeavour to move the Closure for quite a time now. There may be something in the thought that the Government have not got 100 Members present to support them. We may be able to test that in a short time. Perhaps they have made arrangements to have Members here. I understand that there are Government supporters at parties and elsewhere at the moment, and, no doubt, they can be brought in.

Mr. Ridley

The hon. Gentleman is running the risk of having the Closure moved in the middle of his own speech if he makes offensive remarks like that about his own Front Bench.

Mr. Orme

I am not being offensive. I am stating matters of fact.

So far, on this side, we have left a great deal of the weight to lie on the shoulders of my hon. Friends the Members for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon), to whom we owe a great debt, and for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) and one or two others. During the coming weeks and months on the Bill, we shall gird ourselves for the battle and we shall make sure that the burden of opposition is more evenly spread. The Government have not learned anything, and, apparently, they will never learn anything about the feeling in the House. That goes for the Opposition Front Bench as well.

I am glad to see that the hon. Member for Ormskirk. the "Leader of the Opposition", has now returned to his place. The Government should have time to re-examine the whole situation and in the hours between now and half-past three this afternoon they could meditate on the debate so far. The Government and the Committee are reaching an impasse. Procedures are available to back benchers not to filibuster, but to protect their constitutional rights in a democratic assembly, and if Parliament is not to become a charade and the prerogative of the Whips, hon. Members will have to use those resources.

My right hon. Friend defended the manner in which his hon. Friend replied to the previous debate. We were all aware of my hon. Friend's courtesy and we all have a great respect for him and his ability. What my right hon. Friend did not say, however, was that in an earlier debate on a fundamental issue, the remuneration of peers, there was no reply from the Government. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne was cut short when he was going to the kernel of the issue as he elicited information from the right hon. Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling). The Home Secretary is responsible for answering my hon. Friend's questions, however, and he should find a way of doing so.

Many hon. Members wanted to speak in the debate about the remuneration of peers. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne was dealing with an important constitutional issue when his speech was cut short and he was not allowed to develop his argument. Although he tried to keep his words to the minimum, the right hon. Member for Barnet gave away more than we had heard in two or three days' debate.

Mr. Powell

Does not the hon. Gentleman agree that the Motion, That the Clause stand part of the Bill, to which we shall come in due course, will give the Home Secretary an opportunity to make good these omissions?

Mr. Orme

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for drawing attention to that fact. We cannot afford to let Clause 2 go through as easily as we allowed Clause 1 to pass. Perhaps we shall be able to arrange a convenient time for the Home Secretary to clear up these matters. It is interesting to note that in our many hours of debate support for the Bill has come only from the Government Front Bench.

It is no secret that most of my hon. Friends, who perhaps are not here to take part in our debates, nevertheless have no enthusiasm whatsoever for the Bill. In fact, when my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) talks about having party meetings to rediscuss this matter, I must remind him of a meeting he and I attended not very long ago. It was a silent meeting. I have never been to a party meeting in my life—and I do not suppose right hon. and hon. Members opposite have experienced this—where the Lord Chancellor and other senior Ministers came to give the Government case, and nobody spoke. So I would say to my hon. Friend the Member for Walton——

Sir D. Glover

Perhaps the hon. Member will at least admit that it was much more convincing than anything they have said in public.

Mr. Orme

No. What I am trying to say is that the conspiracy—it was not a planned conspiracy but a conspiracy of silence—was in the nature of basic opposition to the Bill.

I think that, as my hon. Friends the Members for Walton and Ebbw Vale have said, we have reached a serious situation. There are hon. Members on this side who, for very different reasons to hon. Members opposite, are opposing the Bill, and in consequence they are raising very broad constitutional issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale asked that the Government should reconsider their attitude and the fact that we have not had a proper reply to the debate on the regions.

Many of us want to debate this issue of the regions. It is clear that the question of the representation of the regions, the balance of this representation, how it should be dealt with, and whether the representatives should be domiciled in the area or not, raises all sorts of issues. The more one looks at it, the more ludicrous it becomes, but it raises issues of a fundamental character which have got to be discussed.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale, who has a standing probably second to none in this House in his knowledge and understanding of Parliamentary democracy, that Parliamentary democracy is under attack at the moment from many quarters in this country.

The Chairman

Order. I must ask the hon. Member to relate his remarks to the Motion before the Committee.

Mr. Orme

I accept that I was going wide of the mark, Mr. Irving.

The point I was trying to make is that these basic issues have not been covered in the previous debate, which is still, I understand, going on. I hope we are going to have another reply from the Home Secretary. It is at a time like this that the Government should take cognisance of the opinions which have been expressed in the House, and accept the Motion.

Pressing on with the Bill is not like pressing on with the Finance Bill, when every two hours a Closure could be moved and progress made. The Home Secretary will not make progress between now and 2 o'clock if he continues to resist the Motion. I urge the Committee to pass the Motion, and I urge my right hon. Friends to vote for the Motion, so that the Government may have time to reconsider the Measure.

5.15 a.m.

Mr. Ian Gilmour (Norfolk, Central)

Shortly after 5 o'clock the hon. Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme) said that he understood that there were members of the Government at parties. I do not know which members of the Government or which parties, but I hope that at a later stage, when it will perhaps be in order, he will elaborate that point.

Mr. Orme

I understand that there are functions taking place in connection with the American visitors, but probably those parties are now over.

Mr. Gilmour

Probably they are.

This is the first time that I have been able to take part in the deliberations of the Committee. I have been thwarted first by morning sittings which, like this Bill, were a brainchild of the Secretary of State for Social Services. As I sit on Committees on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I cannot take part in morning sittings on the Bill. The second reason why I have not taken part is the Government's habit of moving the Closure when a great many hon. Members of the Committee still wish to speak.

The moving of the Closure is one of the many reasons why the Committee should support the Motion moved by my right hen. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter). The hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. O'Malley) moved the Closure in the middle of a speech by the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) during an intervention. It is important for the proper deliberations of the Committee that hon. Members should give way to each other. Great damage would be done if hon. Members were afraid to give way to other hon. Members for fear of having the Closure moved when they sit down.

Another reason why we ought to adjourn is so that we may have clear guidance from the Leader of the House. He does not seem to consider the deliberations of the Committee to be as important as we would have hoped and he has not been here very much. It would be helpful if this afternoon he gave us an undertaking, so that the operations of the hon. Member for Rotherham will in future be curbed.

The Home Secretary said that we had not made progress. I disagree. We have been considering what appear to be two widely different matters, payment and regional representation, but which are in the Bill intimately connected. They have a feature in common, in that the Government do not wish to have these matters entered into the Bill, whereas most of the active Members of the Committee—those who pay attention to what is said, not those who just vote—do not believe that this is the right way in which to legislate. They believe that the questions of payment or non-payment and regional representation should be decided in the Bill.

As the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) said, it is difficult to ensure that anyone will stay bought. In making that point he said that there was a Conservative Government in power in 1911. It is slightly paradoxical that, in discussing a Bill which is designed to end the hereditary principle, the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale should seek to extend the heredity of the Conservative Party back to 1711. Although there were Tories and what can loosely be called a Tory Party at that stage, I have never heard that its ancestry could be dated back to 1711. I think that the modern Conservative Party can be dated from 1797, 1832 or 1836. However, I am delighted to have its ancestry extended in this way. One of my right hon. Friends says that it goes back to Richard II. That is better still.

The second reason why the Motion should be accepted is that the Government must realise that this is not the way to legislate. What they intend to happen should be put into the Bill.

The third reason is that, just before the unfortunate action of the hon. Member for Rotherham, we were beginning to find out what the position was between the two Front Benches. It is difficult to continue our deliberations very meaningfully until we have a statement from both Front Benches on this point. The most important reason for adojurning at this point is to give the Government a chance to think up some arguments. A little sleep and a little food might give them some ideas.

For the Home Secretary to say that we were given a full answer on the Scottish point is simply untrue. Certainly, the manner of the Under-Secretary was better than that of the Home Secretary. But there was no argument at all; there was mere assertion. The Under-Secretary merely said that he would prefer to do things in a different way from my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger). He said that it would be impossible to write this into the Bill and it should be left open. There was no argument and we have had no answers.

For all those reasons, it seems quite plain that the right thing for the Committee to do is to end its deliberations and resume them possibly a great deal later.

Mr. Arthur Lewis

I support the Motion. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot), at about three o'clock I sought leave to move a similar Motion, but at that time, quite rightly, the Chair did not feel in a position to accept it.

I was amazed when I heard the Home Secretary. I am sorry that he has again left the Committee. This seems to be the practice of the Front Benches on both sides. First, the Opposition Front Bench spokesmen are never here. Secondly, the Government, whenever a Motion is put, either give no reply or give a reply before hearing the debate.

Immediately after the Motion was moved very ably by the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter), the Home Secretary got up to reply without hearing any arguments from his own side. He chastised and made jeering remarks about the hon. Member for North Fylde (Mr. Clegg) because he tried to move the Closure. The Home Secretary was not here to know why the hon. Member did that. He did it because he wanted to show that, rightly or wrongly, if he tried to move the Closure on a Minister it would not be accepted.

In that instance he was right, but I can assure him from personal experience and knowledge that only once, during nearly 25 years that I have been here, on Government business has a Closure Motion been accepted by the Chair, and that was when I moved it. In that instance the Whips said that they wanted it to be accepted. Had the Home Secretary been here he would have appreciated why the hon. Member made that interjection.

Equally, had the Home Secretary been here he would have appreciated how discourteous, albeit unintentionally, my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. O'Malley) was to my hon. Friends the Members for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) and South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes). My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham moved the Closure when my two other hon. Friends were being courteous to one another.

I come now to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme), and by the hon. Member for Norfolk, Central (Mr. Ian Gilmour). My hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West slipped up when he said that the party was still going on. What he should have said was that the time when my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham moved the Closure was the time when Government Members who had been at a party had been called back for the vote. Where my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham slipped up was that it had been prearranged that the vote would come then and so they had to return from Claridge's, or whether it was they held their party. [An HON. MEMBER: "At No. 10."] It does not matter. It was a party.

I am glad that the Under-Secretary of State is confirming what I am saying, namely, that they had to come back. I apologise to the Committee. I understand that they had to come back from No. 10, not from Claridge's. This discussion will not be closured because the Government have not got the support of 100 Members. It might be as well for us to move, That the Question be now put. We might be able to muster the support of 100 Members between us. Indeed, we might vote in favour of the Motion without moving the Closure.

Mr. Howie

If we were to divide and fewer than 40 Members voted we would be counted out.

Mr. Lewis

We are debating whether we should report Progress and ask leave to sit again. I do now know how this would work. Perhaps my hon. Friend would have a word with the Chairman, who would no doubt advise him on whether this is a way of dealing with the matter.

I wish that the Government would listen to my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) more often, rather than listen to the Opposition Front Bench and to some of my hon. Friends on this side. If they did they would not get into such a mess as they have now. I have in mind the three-line Whip issued in connection with the Stansted affair, when evenually my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale was proved to be right, and I could quote a dozen occasions when the Government changed their minds because they discovered that they were wrong.

Why should we go on with this Bill at half-past five in the morning? I do not know who wants it. It was said that there was no interest in it in the House or at the party meetings. I do not know why whoever said that stopped there. I have not found any interest for it in the country. It was reported on television, or on the radio, that there were demonstrations in Westminster yesterday. In my stupidity I thought that people were demonstrating in favour of the Bill. I find it was not that at all.

A few weeks ago, I found that there were riots in Grosvenor Square and I was not sure whether it might be my trade union or Labour Party colleagues demonstrating in favour of the Parliament Bill. I was mistaken and although I understood that the Bill was urgent and necessary, the Opposition do not think so, because we have the second team here.

Sir D. Glover

A very good second team.

5.30 a.m.

Mr. Lewis

Yes, and with the exception of the Under-Secretary in full and the Home Secretary, in part, there have not been many Ministers here. I do not think that they have been too interested in the Bill.

If we were to report Progress and go away, I would agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale and say, "Let us scrap the Bill altogether because there are a hundred and one different progressive Measures which hon. Members on both sides would like to see brought in." When we had the last debate before the vote was taken on the Closure, we were discussing salaries, fees, or expenses to noble Lords. We had no answer to that. We had a leak. Every days I find there are leaks and I ask for Select Committees to look into them, but the hon. Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir G. Nabarro) is the only lucky one who gets such a Committee appointed.

What happens? Here we have a leak by the right hon. Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) on what happened. Since he made it, my hon. Friend got into a fix and we have not seen him since. We never had an answer. Had I been able to take part in the debate I would have liked to have asked if whether there were any need for payment or expenses for the Lords at all. Some of them are having salaries increased by 60 per cent., from £12,500 to £20,000 a year. When people talk about 4½ guineas a day on such a salary that is what they mean. It is quite a substantial sum.

Had I been able to take part in the debate, I would have developed this and argued what the 4½ guineas——

The Chairman

The hon. Gentleman is getting away from the Motion.

Mr. Lewis

I was about to relate this to what would happen if we reported Progress and obtained leave to sit again. We could then perhaps come back later today and be more refreshed and have an opportunity on the Clause as a whole, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Enoch Powell) mentioned, and I could then, with my hon. Friend the Member for Luton (Mr. W. Howie) and my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme) and my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) raise the question whether there is any need at all for payments or expenses.

If a number of Lords are to receive 50 or 60 per cent. increases in salaries we could debate it when fresh. No doubt we could go to the Library and spend——

The Chairman

As the Bill stands, the hon. Member cannot debate that at the moment.

Mr. Lewis

If we could now report Progress, and adjourn we would have time from, say, six o'clock until 2.30 p.m., to go into this and get all the facts and figures. We could show them to my hon. Friend, who says that the facts and figures were not leaked to the Press. Some hon. Members want to go home to bed or have a bath, but my hon. Friends would want to join me in the Library to look up some of these matters in preparation for the continuation of the debate. The election in Northern Ireland has been mentioned. If we reported Progress, that would enable Northern Ireland Members who have been active in that election to be here at 2.30, since they are vitally affected.

I like the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department very much. He is one of the most charming and capable Ministers and I hope that he will soon rise to higher office. But he did not answer the question which was not put to him, because we did not have time to debate it——

Mr. Emrys Hughes

Has my hon. Friend overlooked the fact that Northern Ireland Members have not yet been able to study the provisions of the Act of 1707?

Mr. Lewis

I do not know whether that would be in order on this Question.

Mr. Emrys Hughes

Of course it is.

Mr. Lewis

I must be guided by my hon. Friend. If we reported Progress, those hon. Members could study that Act. Better still, they might prefer to discuss it with the hon. Lady the Member for Hamilton (Mrs. Ewing), who, in her charming way, could probably go into much more detail and teach them about it personally. She could probably interest those hon. Members better than my hon. Friend could, on that subject only, of course.

Mr. John Smith

This is a most important and valuable point which the hon. Member is verging towards. It is very important that these Northern Irish Members should be here, because many Northern Irishmen are Scotsmen. Our discussion, had we gone on, would have involved Northern Irish peers, whom I have always found a very superior class of person. I should be very sorry if they were excluded from any rearrangement of the Upper House as they have been excluded for so long from the present House. It would be most discourteous to them and the people of Northern Ireland to go on in their absence; we should wait until they can be here.

The Chairman

Order. To elaborate this matter much further would be out of order.

Mr. Lewis

I was about to say exactly that, Mr. Irving. I thank the hon. Member for allowing me to make my speech in his intervention. If I developed the point he raised I have no doubt that you would call me to order. I do not want to discuss the point in depth. I mention it as another reason why it would be advantageous to hon. Members to report Progress now.

I want to deal with the City of London. My hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) may think that Scotland is supreme, but I have a great respect for the City of London, from whence all goodness flows. The hon. Member for the Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. John Smith) is a great friend of mine. I have constituency arrangements with him. and, therefore, I must deal with his point first. If we adjourn now I can meet the hon. Member and discuss with him vital matters concerning our two constituencies——

The Chairman

Order. The hon. Member is now going away from the Motion.

Mr. Lewis

I am sorry, Mr. Irving. I am making a case——

The Chairman

I have indicated to the hon. Member that to pursue the line he is now pursuing would be out of order.

Mr. Lewis

I am putting forward reasons why we should now adjourn, Mr. Irving. I am putting forward as one reason the fact that if we were to report Progress and I did not have to sit in this Committee now, taking part in this debate, the hon. Member for the Cities of London and Westminster and I could better spend our time in discussing Epping Forest, for which he is responsible, and West Ham Borough Corporation. We could much better discuss such matters than sit here. I shall not develop that point.

Sir C. Taylor rose——

Mr. Lewis

The hon. Member for Eastbourne (Sir C. Taylor) and I have often travelled from the City of London to Eastbourne. I am always willing to visit the seaside if the hon. Member wishes to interject, but I hope that he will not take quite as long as his hon. Friend.

Sir C. Taylor

I only wanted to advise the hon. Gentleman that he could not meet my hon. Friend the Member for the Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. John Smith), after the debate and before we meet this afternoon, because he has already made a date with some of his hon. Friends in the Library.

The Chairman

Order. The purpose of the Motion is to report Progress on the Bill. Hon. Members are getting away from the Motion.

Mr. Lewis

I agree, Mr. Irving. I wish that hon. Members opposite would not sidetrack me from the issue.

If we were to agree to report Progress my hon. Friends and I could do a lot of work in a little time. I could deal both with the hon. Member for the Cities of London and Westminster and my hon. Friend the Member for Walton at the same time and, if need be, the hon. Member for Eastbourne.

Mr. Michael Alison

On a point of order. Is it in order for a Member of the Liberal Party to read The Guardian of Wednesday, 25th February, Mr. Irving?

The Chairman

The practice of the Committee is that Members may have papers only if they relate to the contribution they hope to make in the debate.

Mr. David Steel

I was reading an article entitled "About the House", which refers to the fact that a new can opener which opens tins, leaving a smooth instead of a jagged edge, will set a new standard. I thought that this might be relevant to the debate.

5.45 a.m.

Mr. Lewis

I do not know whether it is or is not in order, but the hon. Member may have been bringing the paper for me to provide me with ammunition to support the Motion to ably moved in a short speech by the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter).

The majority of hon. Members want to report Progress, including the Liberals. Indeed, I notice one hon. Member nodding on the Government Front Bench, though I use the word "nodding" not to imply that he is assenting to what I am saying. The occupants of the Opposition Front Bench have already reported Progress and have gone home, including the Leader of the Opposition. [An HON. MEMBER: "Which one?"] I refer to the one who is paid, whether or not he deserves it.

I also note that the Home Secretary has rejoined us. For his benefit I will repeat what I said earlier. He should not have intervened so soon after, hours ago, the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames moved the Motion, since he had not had the benefit of hearing the case which other hon. Members wished to put. He established that point, but I would explain that had he been a Member a little longer he would have realised that never has the Chair accepted and never does the Chair accept from a back bencher a Closure on Government orders of the day. There was one exception. Once a Closure Motion by me was accepted. I thought that I had achieved something almost miraculous, until I was told afterwards by the Whips, "We were going to move it if you had not moved it." So they let me get away with it.

The Home Secretary really must listen, because I cannot address the rest of the Committee, for if I do I shall be accused of tedious repetition I was about to say that the reason why the hon. Member for Rotherham got up to interrupt my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire during the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne was not that he slipped up and acted in error, but that the payroll gang had come back. I apologise to the Home Secretary, because I originally said that they had come back from Claridge's but——

The Chairman

The hon. Member is not relating his remarks to the Motion before the Committee.

Mr. Lewis

The Home Secretary spoke to the Motion, and I was dealing with a point he made, and I was going to say that one of the reasons for the problem which arose earlier was the attempt by the hon. Member for Rotherham to stifle discussion, but that the reason why he did that was that the time was fixed by the payroll gang who had come back from Claridge's Hotel. Then a junior Home Office Minister corrected me, and said that it was not Claridge's: they had come back from a party at 10, Downing Street.

Sir D. Glover

A free do?

Mr. Lewis

I do not know whether it was a free do. I do not know whether it would be in order for me to discuss that, or whether, Mr. Irving, you would give me permission to develop it? I would like to have guidance whether, on this Motion, I could deal with the point which the hon. Gentleman has made. Perhaps you would advise me. I am quite willing to debate this issue. I have not been corrected, so I assume that I may.

The Chairman

Order. The hon. Member must make no such assumption. I am listening very carefully. I shall tell the hon. Member if and when he is out of order.

Mr. Lewis

We will see how far I get.

The hon. Member wanted to know whether the party was a paid one or not. I think it likely that it was an unpaid one, but, not having been to one myself, I cannot vouch for this.

The Chairman

The hon. Member is now out of order.

Mr. Lewis

I thought that that probably would be your point, Mr. Irving, but most of the points which hon. Members opposite make are out of order. I have to hear them first; when I discover they are out of order I have to bow to the Ruling of the Chair.

Mr. John Smith rose——

Mr. Biggs-Davison rose——

Mr. Lewis

I am giving way to the City of London.

Mr. John Smith

I am not quite clear—how many times did these people come back from Claridge's?

The Chairman

Order. The hon. Gentleman cannot pursue that matter.

Mr. Lewis

I cannot pursue that, but probably if the hon. Gentleman looks at HANSARD——

The Chairman

Order. I suspect that the hon. Gentleman will do just that.

Mr. Lewis

If the hon. Gentleman likes to look at HANSARD tomorrow, if we adjourn early enough, he will probably find the answer there.

Mr. Biggs-Davison

Is not it extraordinary that we have representatives of the Government coming here repeatedly from parties, described by some as being at Claridge's and by others as being at No. 10——

The Chairman

Order. The hon. Gentleman is not relating his remarks to the Motion to report Progress.

Mr. Biggs-Davison

With the greatest respect, that is precisely what I aim to do. If this is the case, those members of the Government must be perhaps not in the best form to deal with this very serious constitutional Measure. Therefore, it is best that they accept the Motion.

Mr. Lewis

I shall not be tempted into going out of order to deal with that point.

It would be as well if the Motion were accepted now, because then there would be no question of parties and returning from parties. We would come back at 2.30, and after an hour of Questions would get back on to the Bill. I assume that there would then be no question of whether hon. Members are fit to continue consideration of it.

I think that the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster was trying to get me to give way.

The Chairman

Order. The hon. Member for the Cities of London and Westminster did not indicate that he wished the hon. Gentleman to give way. There are other hon. Members wishing to speak on the Motion.

Mr. Lewis

We have reached the stage where even I am beginning to see things which are not there. I am usually all right up to about 5.30 a.m., but after 5.45 I begin to see things. We should adjourn now and go away and refresh ourselves, and perhaps have a bath and a few hours' sleep before our next sitting.

Mr. Crouch

Is the hon. Gentleman coming to the end of his speech for the second time? I think that he has left out the essential point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster about the Irish peers. When the hon. Gentleman made his speech the first time, before the Home Secretary returned, he made references that he has not yet covered.

Mr. Lewis

For the benefit now of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, what I said was that we could not debate this question because my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, in his usual charming, courteous and helpful way, had answered it, but he did so too soon. He said that he would now deal with the debate, but he had not heard any of it—only three Members from Scotland. I have the greatest respect for my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire and the others, whoever they were, but some of the parts of England should have been debated, together with the point about Northern Ireland. What a wonderful opportunity we had to discuss the question of Northern Irish peers.

The Chairman

Order. The hon. Gentleman is not relating his remarks to the Motion.

6.0 a.m.

Mr. Lewis

If we were to report Progress we could give Northern Irish Members who have been otherwise engaged in electoral activities the opportunity to be here at 2.30. No one expects them to be here at this hour. We could give them the opportunity to be here——

The Chairman

Order. The hon. Gentleman has made this point before.

Mr. Lewis

If we reported Progress we could get away. I could go to my constituency where I have an engagement at 9 a.m. to lecture at a local college. I have irrefutable proof of that engagement. It would give me a chance to prepare my lecture.

Sir D. Glover

Perhaps I can help. If the hon. Gentleman will give me the name of the school, perhaps I can make a speech for him since he does not look like finishing his speech to the House in time.

The Chairman

Order. I hope that the hon. Member for West Ham. North will relate his remarks to the Bill.

Mr. Lewis

To the Bill? Surely it is a Motion to report Progress.

The Chairman

The Motion is to report Progress on the Bill.

Mr. Lewis

This shows how the hour affects us all. I have made mistakes. Now you, Mr. Irving, mention the Bill rather than the Motion to report Progress.

The Chairman

Order. The hon. Gentleman is questioning the statement of the Chair. The Motion to report Progress is to report Progress on the Bill.

Mr. Lewis

Yes, Mr. Irving. I was going to say that I could not discuss the Bill or its Clauses because we have to relate our speeches to the Motion to report progress.

I want the debate adjourned so that I can get to the college and deliver my lecture. God forbid that I should wish the hon. Member for Ormskirk (Sir D. Glover) upon my constituents. There are worse things, I know not what.

Mr. Clegg

As the Secretary of State for Wales has arrived, would the hon. Gentleman like to tell him of the important regional aspects involved?

Mr. Lewis

I would not attempt it, because the Under-Secretary is a Welshman and he dealt adequately with the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale. The Welsh and the Scots have been cornering the market in the debate. I mean no reflection upon the Chair, but there has been my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale, that adopted Welshman, and English Members have not been called by the Chair.

The Chairman

Order. The hon. Gentleman may not be reflecting on the Chair, but neither are his remarks reflecting upon the Motion.

Mr. Lewis

If we had adjourned earlier, we should not have had the Under-Secretary replying to a debate which he did not hear, and which did not really take place because no English Members took part. If we adjourn now those Members will be able to return, refreshed, later today to take part.

[Sir BARNETT JANNER in the Chair]

Mr. John Smith

The Home Secretary's attitude towards this Motion has been rather cynical, very much in line with the Government's attitude to the Bill. They have refused to define the Bill more closely, and have even withdrawn Amendments in the hope of avoiding Report stage. One gets the feeling that they would sooner have the wrong Bill, an undiscussed Bill, than Report stage. We are asked to continue our discussions at this late hour. What should we think of a solicitor who drew up a will at 6 a.m. or of a bank manager if he made a decision about our overdraft at this time? What would we think of a surgeon if he "surged"—if he operated—until 6 a.m.? We should change them. What should we think of a firm which was working as we returned home at 6 a.m. from a party at Claridges?

Mr. Lewis

I apologise because I inadvertently said Claridge's. I corrected this and said that it was No. 10 Downing Street.

Mr. Smith

However that may be, my point is that we are being asked to conduct our business on an important matter at an hour when we would not expect a person to make any decision, however trivial, about our own private affairs. Indeed, we should greatly resent it. Yet here we are dealing with the representation in Parliament of several nations and regions. To proceed in this way is not only disgraceful; it is dangerous for Parliament. The hon. Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme) was right to point out that this was what put Parliamentary democracy in danger. I regard that as a serious matter, far transcending the stuff about Claridge's which we have had from the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis). One knows how angry the fringe groups become if one glosses over their affairs. It is most unwise, it is disrespectful to them, and it will bring the House into disrepute if we carry on as the Government wish us to do.

What is the hurry to reform the House of Lords? We all want to reform the House of Lords, but we want to get it right. We are helping the Government by suggesting that we should adjourn at this point. They do not want to go on with the Bill in this form. They would be pleased to find a way of getting off the hook, putting the Bill right, and re-introducing it later in a more acceptable form.

There is a great deal more to be said. There is a great deal more to be said about Scotland, for example, and the Scottish question is only one of several raised by the Amendments. The affairs of the other nations and regions cannot be dismissed in a brief debate at a late hour of the night. I support the Motion.

Mr. Ridley

I hate to disagree with the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot), but I believe that the hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. O'Malley) moved the Closure on purpose in the middle of the speech of the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon).

Mr. Arthur Lewis

The hon. Gentleman ought not to say that. There is a custom of the House that we accept what an hon. Member says if he is challenged. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham said earlier that he did not do it intentionally. [HON. MEMBERS: "NO."] He is not here at the moment, but earlier on he nodded in response to a question.

Mr. Ridley

I did not hear the hon. Gentleman say anything, and neither did any of my hon. Friends. I was about to adduce in support of what I say that, if the hon. Gentleman had realised that he had made a mistake, he could have put the matter right by allowing the Motion to be negatived and not taking it to a Division.

6.15 a.m.

I pondered on the motive for this, because I believed that the hon. Member for Rotherham wanted to stop the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne in midstream. I am certain that that was because my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) had lifted the corner of the cover of some part of this bargain. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Ashton-under Lyne for the clever way in which he found out that there was this bargain. It was clearly part of the bargain that my right hon. Friends insisted that there should be payment for members of the House of Lords.

The fact that this part of the bargain has been abandoned, that it has gone out of the window, makes it impossible to secure that the members of another place will support the Bill when it gets there, for the compliance of another place and the all-party support upon which the Bill is based depend entirely upon getting it through another place. Now that it is known not only that there is to be no pay, but that the right hon. Member for Barnet has admitted that he has not even protested at the breaking of the bargain and is prepared to let the bargain be destroyed, to let the breach of faith pass, means that there will be a great revolt among noble Lords.

I thing that my right hon. Friends are absent from the Chamber tonight because they have gone to canvass Conservative peers to make sure that they will still behave and, if the Committee is not now adjourned, it will be impossible to secure the compliance of noble Lords in voting for the Bill when it goes to another place. Noble Lords are scattered all over the countryside; some are in Scotland, some in Northern Ireland, and others are in the regions, and they all have to be consulted about whether they are still prepared to support the Bill. Their heirs will also obviously have to be consulted, because no noble Lord will make up his mind about whether to support the Bill unless his heir agrees that it be worth while to do so.

All these considerations are completely new—the fact that there is not to be any pay and the fact that the Opposition Front Bench has connived at the destruction of the pay element—and they make the picture completely different and will alter the attitudes of many noble Lords to the Bill.

Two of the conditions on which the Conservative Front Bench insisted have become clear—one is that hereditary peers who were not nominated voting peers should maintain the right to sit in the House of Lords, and the other is that everybody would be paid. These were two of the terms on which Conservative peers agreed to the reform. This was the Opposition's side of the bargain. All that has now been blown sky high and brought into the open, and the element of risk which noble Lords will feel will be considerably heightened by the disclosures this evening.

It therefore becomes essential to report Progress so that the views of noble Lords may be consulted and so that it can be ascertained whether they are still prepared to support the Bill. Their whole motive for supporting the Bill seems to have been shot from under their feet and they will therefore not be so keen to continue to support the Bill. This seems to be a compelling reason to add to all the other reasons why we should not proceed further with the Bill.

I hope that the soundings which my right hon. Friends make with the peers will convince them that there is no future for the Bill in another place. That will be another reason why the Government should not proceed with the Bill. The experience of tonight, when the Committee has been united in resisting the Bill, seems to be sufficient evidence, if sufficient evidence be needed, that politically it is not on to push on with the Bill any more tonight.

Reasons have been adduced to report Progress and sit again from the witty, to the eloquent, to the telling and to the utterly convincing, which the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) has repeated in case the Home Secretary had not heard them.

Mr. Arthur Lewis

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I was rather hurried when I made my little interjection. There was another point which I was going to put——

[Sir BARNETT JANNER in the Chair]

The Temporary Chairman

Order. The hon. Member cannot make another speech, An interjection should be brief.

Mr. Lewis

Yes, Sir Barnett. I was going to make a very short point—to tell the hon. Member that a point which I would have made, had he not hurried me, was that I understand the Government are now talking about a guillotine on this Bill. If that was to happen, this is another good reason why we should adjourn to discuss that matter.

Sir D. Glover

On a point of order, Sir Barnett. I understood you to indicate to the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) that he was not allowed to make a second speech. May I point out that we are on a Committee stage, and respectfully suggest that hon. Members can make second speeches?

The Temporary Chairman

The hon. Member is not allowed to make a second speech in an intervention, and he was intervening at the time. That is an entirely different matter.

Mr. Ridley

I would not like to follow your intervention into the intervention by the hon. Member for West Ham, North into my speech, but I would like to deal with his suggestion that there could conceivably be a guillotine on this Bill. That idea is utterly unrealistic and fantastic. It is totally unacceptable and unprecedented that there should ever be a Motion of that sort on an important constitutional Bill like this, and I beg the hon. Gentleman not to accept it as being at all possible. I would defend even this Home Secretary to the utmost from any suggestion that this could be in the Government's mind. I am sure my right hon. and hon. Friends would acquit him of any such motives, because I am certain that the whole House would join in voting down a Motion of that sort because of its utter constitutional impropriety.

Mr. Sheldon

There are a number of occasions when we do from time to time sit during the night and discuss quite important matters of legislation. What has happened tonight is, in its outward form at any rate, nothing that comes as a surprise to us. But when we are considering the particular legislation that we have been debating, we see two factors that are a little different.

The first concerns the importance of the Measure. When we are discussing matters whereby we are in effect drawing up an important part of the Constitution of this country, it needs to be treated in a rather different way even from that of our most important Bills, such as the Finance Bill. When we are discussing how we should organise one of the two constituent parts of our Parliament, it is very important that we not only do this with some care, but that we do it at a time of day when perhaps or energies are rather better directed to the work in hand.

The second point which is rather special about this reform of Parliament is the lack of urgency about it. Nobody has really said that after staying as it has been virtually unchanged since 1911, because the 1948 changes were very minor, suddenly within a matter of months the position became so urgent that we had to sit day and night in order to bring about the change presented to us. The least we could do would be to spend more time on important legislation such as this than on legislation of a more temporary character. Although we might be prepared to abuse our working hours to carry out certain essential matters, the case for doing so on this Bill is much less, and 6.25 a.m. would be a suitable time to discontinue our discussions so that we may come back afresh.

We saw earlier the disgruntlement of the right hon. Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) at the bargain, which is now turning very sour. It is obvious, too, that the interpretation of the bargain by one Front Bench is not the same as that of the other. Since there is a difference of view on the compact reached, there will be a need for consultations between the Front Benches and the other place and between our two Front Benches and some time will be needed to resolve this matter, if it is possible to do so.

Earlier we experienced the heated tempers which we all deprecate but can very well understand when the Front Benches co-operate to thwart the backbenchers of both sides. The antipathy between the Front Benches and the backbenchers shown during the debate is unique in my experience. For backbenchers to be united against the Front Benches is not good for the House of Commons. I would prefer to have seen both Front Benches responding more readily to the prompting of the backbenchers, who perhaps understand the political matters which seem not to have occupied the foremost place in the minds of Front Benchers.

We may have taken a fair amount of time in discussing the Bill, but it must be remembered that small Amendments to a big Bill can be of greater consequence than big Amendments to a small Bill. We should, therefore, make no apology for discussing the effects of the Bill, which are very large and to some extent incalculable. We must examine the Bill from every conceivable angle, since the effect of even the smallest changes is likely to be very large.

The other reason why we should make no apology is that in the constitution of virtually every democratic country there are safeguards against the rapid and easy change of that constitution, whether by the large majorities which are required, such as the two-thirds majority in Germany and the three-quarters of all the States in the United States, or by entrenched clauses.

We do not have this kind of safeguard, so we are open to change our constitution very easily. What we are trying to do, very properly, is to provide, by this close examination of the Bill, some small part of the very important delay that occurs in most constitutions. However much we try by these processes, it is still far less than most democratic countries possess for preventing change precipitously in their constitutions.

6.30 a.m.

Mr. Arthur Lewis

My hon. Friend mentioned different countries. I think he should use the analogy of the nominated body of the party bosses of the Kremlin, because this is done on a patronage basis. They are nominated according to service to the party boss. This seems to be what will happen here.

Mr. Sheldon

My hon. Friend will have an opportunity of developing his point later in the debate, which will obviously continue for a little while.

The next reason why we should pause is to give the Opposition Front Bench a chance to regroup its forces to appear here in the place where they should be. Although the speeches from right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on the Front Bench opposite may not have been noticeable in their content and quantity, their presence up to now has been more or less intermittent. It is sad to see the Opposition Front Bench completely deserted, as it is now.

It is important that the views of the Committee be made known to the Front Benches on both sides so that, if there is any change in the compact, it will come about as a result of the views and pressure of hon. Members on the back benches on both sides.

I do not believe that it is possible to decide the composition of a second Chamber without very thorough investigation. I do not think that the reflection that we ought to be giving to the Bill can be given at this time in the morning. I feel that we have reached a stage in our proceedings when we might usefully adjourn, to come back later and review how we are to bring about constitutional changes. We all know the limitations on investigating many of our important Bills by means of Standing Committees—even Committees of the whole House. When we come to crucial constitutional changes the inadequacies of some of our processes become even more apparent. If there are inadequacies, as I believe, in the way that we examine these matters, we should not compound them by meeting at this time in the morning.

Mr. Biggs-Davison

I have resumed my normal humble place below the Gangway in order that I may have full freedom of debate. But I should be happy to station myself again above the Gangway with my hon. Friend the Member for Ormskirk (Sir D. Glover) if there was a possibility that we might enter into a package deal with right hon. Gentlemen opposite to bring these proceedings to an end as soon as may be and of persuading them that they should listen to what has been said by their hon. Friends and do away with what was so rightly described in an article in The Times yesterday as "the Bill nobody wants".

Sir D. Glover

My hon. Friend says that he would be only too happy to accompany me back on to the Front Bench. If we did that, would we get squatters' rights and be able to commit our party?

Mr. Biggs-Davison

I should not like to enter into a discussion about that because I think that I might be called to order for transgressing beyond the bounds of this Motion if I were to do so.

Mr. Julian Ridsdale (Harwich)

Does my hon. Friend think that it would be an excellent idea to adjourn so that we could raise the matter in the 1922 Committee?

Mr. Biggs-Davison

The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) was very anxious to have a party meeting.

Mr. Orme

I warned my hon. Friend about that.

Mr. Biggs-Davison

I do not know whether it is possible or feasible to have a meeting of the Conservative members of the Committee.

I think that we have first to dispose of the Motion. I hope that the Home Secretary will now agree to accept it. I do not see why the Government should not do so. I do not see what they are gaining by not accepting it. Do Members on the Treasury Bench like to sit there? It is not as though they are playing an intelligent part in the proceedings. It is not as though they are studying the arguments which are being put before them. They are sitting there with the most uninterested look on their faces.

I know that they are as fresh as paint. That is the phrase the Home Secretary used after we had been engaged in debate for several hours. He descended upon us, very jolly—not as he was the other day, when he was a bit short with some of us—very nice, and full of enthusiasm to carry on the discussion. That was not so of all his right hon. Friends. I hope that the hon. Gentleman who was sitting on the Treasury Bench is all right. I am seeking to persuade the fresh-as-paint Home Secretary to accept the Motion.

Mr. Arthur Lewis

The hon. Gentleman mentioned someone on the Treasury Bench. What about the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot)? He is anxious to go home.

Mr. Biggs-Davison

The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) is not yet on the Treasury Bench. I think that the hon. Gentleman is right to want to go home. I think that he has played a notable part in our debates. We have all enjoyed his speeches, and I think that he is entitled to his rest. The hon. Gentleman is entitled to prepare himself for future debates, if such occur.

I think that the Home Secretary ought to take pity on his colleagues, because they are not standing up to this in the way that he is. They are not finding it so nice. Everyone admires the Under-Secretary of State, but the most extraordinary thing happened earlier on. The hon. Gentleman said that he could not distinguish between a white fish and the Prime Minister—a most extraordinary thing for a junior member of the Administration to say. The hon. Gentleman then replied to a debate that had not taken place. He answered all the arguments that had not been adduced. The debate centred upon the question of the Act of Union and the right of Scottish peers to remain in a reformed House of Lords, and then an English Member rose to reply on the whole question of British standard regions. I am not quite clear what they are. Other parts of Great Britain were not touched on, yet the hon. Gentleman plunged into the debate to answer interventions, speeches, and contributions which had not been made.

That seemed strange to me. It seemed to me that some hours ago the hon. Member was suffering from extreme fatigue. Now I think the fatigue must be intolerable and the burden heavy on him. It does not seem right that the Administration which is trying to govern the country should remain sitting there. It is not in the interests of the Administration, nor in the interest of members of the Committee. I do not believe that if members of the Government were called on to put their hands on their hearts and say whether they wanted to continue here rather than go away, that they would say they would rather stay here.

I notice that our counsels have been reinforced by a Law Officer.

Sir D. Glover

Two of them.

Mr. Biggs-Davison

Yes. That is a bonanza. We have the Solicitor-General and the Attorney-General as well, yet when we were arguing about the constitutional complexities of the Act of Union and how it would be altered by this reform of another place, there was no Law Officer, certainly not a Scottish Law Officer. Now they are here, and this shows the extraordinary confusion in which this Bill is being conducted. It reinforces my argument that Her Majesty's Ministers, who have been taking some part, should be allowed to go away, pull themselves together and do away with this beastly Bill.

Mr. Iremonger

It must now have become clear to the Government that this Committee will not tolerate being pushed around in the way the Government have been trying to push us around during the night. It is time they accepted this Motion with good grace and reported progress and asked leave to sit again. Obviously no further progress will be made in this sitting day, and less and less progress will be made in successive sitting days. It would be much better if they were to take advantage of this opportunity.

The Deputy Chief Whip made the kind of blunder in handling the House which no Government lightly survives on any Measure, and on a Measure of this kind to have done that sort of thing in that way will not, I hope, be forgotten or forgiven by the House. This Measure is long and difficult and puts great responsibility on the House in any circumstances. It is a bad augury for the Government to have treated the Committee in the way it has.

The Home Secretary has everything to gain and nothing to lose by accepting the Motion now. It has been subjected to the most rigorous scrutiny, quite properly in the last two and threequarter hours and I have been giving serious thought to its precise terms. I am bound to question it. We are being asked to report Progress. What progress are we going to report? In considering the Motion we should ask ourselves what progress has been made with the Bill so far.

The Motion adds "and ask leave to sit again". The Committee should recall that in moving this the right hon. Member for Kingston (Mr. J. Boyd-Carpenter) said that it was the part of the Motion which least engaged his loyalties. That was the bit, I thought, which was least attractive and could be most easily left out. I should have preferred it if he had not pressed that part and the Government had said that we should never sit again on this Bill, that we had made already too much progress with a bad Bill, and that they would tell my right hon. Friends that they were sorry to let them down but the time had come to wash the: whole thing out. Then they could gel on with more constructive and useful Measures——

Sir D. Glover

They have none.

[Mr. SYDNEY IRVING in the Chair]

6.45 a.m.

Mr. Iremonger

One very useful Measure which they could introduce would be a Proclamation dissolving Parliament and enabling the country to decide exactly what fundamental reforms it wanted in a more basic and crude way.

If we are to consider what progress we have made, we must bring our minds urgently to bear on Clause 1. I am sorry that it has been passed, but, in reporting progress on it, we should have to say, what would be the sorry truth, that, in all the matters considered so far, not one Amendment has been accepted by the Government or even acceded to by our own Front Bench. Therefore, all that we have done now on Clause 1 is abandon that admirable hereditary principle, to which any legislature should be and remain attached and for which it should be thankful. It is a far better way of achieving a random selection of obstructive legislators than——

The Chairman

Order. The hon. Member is now getting on to the detailed merits of the Bill; he must address himself to the Motion, which is, That the Chairman do report Progress and ask leave to sit again.

Mr. Iremonger

Subject to your correction, Mr. Irving, I was casting around in my mind as to what progress we should be reporting. If we were to report conscientiously, we should report Clause by Clause and failed Amendment by failed Amendment. We should have to say to the House what we tried and failed to do on Clause 1. What will the House say when we report that sorry state of affairs?

Mr. Brian O'Malley (Lord Commissioner to the Treasury) rose——

The Chairman

Order. The hon. Member is going into too much detail on this. He may discuss only that part of the Bill which was considered in this sitting.

Mr. Iremonger

I am most grateful for your guidance, Mr. Irving, and the masterly synchronisation which you and I managed to achieve. Our physical athleticism does us even great credit than our intellectual athleticism. I hope that hon. Gentlemen will not hesitate to make any interventions which they see fit, but it would be unwise to rise and tempt me to sit, because if I resume my seat for one second——

Mr. Hugh Fraser

Rotherham is there.

Mr. Iremonger

—we know what will happen.

While on the subject of reporting Progress, you have rightly told me, Mr. Irving, that the progress which we shall report is the progress which we have made in this sitting. The first element in the progress that we have made is a sorry insight into the Parliamentary ethics of the Government Deputy Chief Whip. If ever anything were to be reported to the House—and I hope it will be, in the sense of a substantive Motion—it should be under the time-honoured heading of "Conduct of the hon. Member for Rotherham". I hope that the report made is to the effect that he breached what, if it had not been on an intervention, would have been a cardinal rule of the House, in interrupting one of his hon. Friends—it would have been still worse if he had interrupted one of my hon. Friends—in full flow, under a cruel subterfuge, when the hon. Member was giving way to one of his hon. Friends, to move the Closure—which in any circumstances would have been an unpardonable thing to have done on a Measure of this nature in a debate on an Amendment to a Clause of the nature that the Clause and the Amendment have. The debate had hardly begun.

The hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) was being as brief and succinct as he possibly could have been. We were dealing with a subject which could hardly have begun to be considered by the House; I had been in my seat from just after seven o'clock until whatever hour it was that this dastardly deed was done—hours and hours and hours without so much as a sausage or a cup of tea to refresh me.

I had quite a lot to say which would have added to the progress we could have reported as having been made. That is progress which we now have to report we have not made. It would have been a pretty wretched report to make to the House. None the less, I feel that we ought to make that report now. We shall have to say that we tried to make progress in subjecting Clause 2 to the scrutiny it deserved in respect of the Amendments about the payment of these—as my right hon. Friend the Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch) called them—lavatory attendants that we are proposing to establish in another place. [Interruption.] My right hon. Friend the Member for Flint, West used that phrase. I would have thought that its vulgarity would convince my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) that it did not come from my mouth. That was the epithet proposed for these peers.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

I was referring to the Liberal Member.

Mr. Iremonger

In that case we should make it clear to the House. I apologise to any other nominees to whom it does not apply.

The question of paying these peers did arise, and there was a lot to be said on the subject. Only the fringes of the problem had been touched upon—and then only by Privy Councillors. Hardly any of the rabble on this side of the Committee had had their say.

Sir D. Glover

I beg your pardon!

Mr. Iremonger

Only the Privy Councillors had been able to examine this question. Then, having been cut short in our prime in our debate on that matter, we tried to make some progress in amending the Clause in respect of Scottish representation, which was the subject of the Amendment we were considering. With that Amendment were grouped many others. The question of Scottish representation was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger), who moved the Amendment most ably, and opened up a huge field of debate.

We shall have to report that, for example, on Amendment 187 we made no progress. That proposal introduced the question of standard regions. I am not sure what standard regions are, but that Amendment must have been important or——

The Chairman

Order. The hon. Gentleman cannot debate an Amendment on this Motion.

Mr. Iremonger

We were making progress on that Amendment when——

The Chairman

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that on this Motion he cannot discuss the subject of an Amendment in detail.

Mr. Iremonger

As we must consider what progress we have made—if we have made any or if we could have made more—hon. Members must approach the Motion with an open mind. The Home Secretary is on my side because he said, in a light-hearted way, that he hoped to get Clauses 3 and 4 as well tonight.

Earl of Dalkeith rose——

Mr. Hugh Fraser

Do not give way. The Government Whip is waiting.

Sir D. Glover

I do not think so. The hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. O'Malley) is probably bluffing. I do not believe that he can round up 100 supporters.

Mr. Iremonger

I am normally willing to give way, but I am in a procedural dilemma.

The Chairman

Order. Perhaps I can assist the hon. Gentleman on this procedural point. If the hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. O'Malley) cared to move the Motion which the hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger) has in mind, he could do so whether or not the hon. Gentleman was on his feet.

Sir D. Glover

Do not encourage the Government Whip.

Mr. Iremonger

I suppose that nothing will stop the hon. Member for Rotherham from curtailing the discussion still further if he wants to do so.

Sir D. Glover

I am not so sure. I think he is bluffing.

7.0 a.m.

Mr. Iremonger

My right hon. Friend submitted that we should report Progress and ask leave to sit again. The Home Secretary said, "Progress? Call this progress? Look at what we ought to do. That would be progress." Therefore, the House ought to consider what the Home Secretary is asking of us. Perhaps we ought to accede to his argument that we should go on to Clause 3 and to the Amendments to it.

The Chairman

The hon. Member has addressed these remarks to the Committee already.

Mr. Iremonger

I was hoping that the Home Secretary would take the opportunity which I was giving him of rising and going to that Box and saying that;he had been persuaded by his hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot), by my right hon. Friend, and by other Members, to accept the Motion before the Committee and to say that he thought that we had made as much progress as we would be likely to make tonight, and that we would sit again. What he ought also to say is, that we should not sit again on tomorrow's sitting day, that he would consider withdrawing the Bill, after what has happened tonight. That is why I said I thought my right hon. Friend was so very right in not pressing that part of the Motion which speaks of sitting again.

I think the Home Secretary must be having very serious qualms of conscience when he considers what he has done. He has entered into an unsuccessful conspiracy with our Front Bench. [HON. MEMBERS: "Where are they?"]. Well, at least they have enough sense of shame to be absent from the Chamber. They are not sitting here blatantly and defiantly like hon. Members opposite. Were my hon. Friend the Member for Ormskirk (Sir D. Glover) and my hon. Friend the Member for Chigwell (Mr. Biggs-Davison), now on the Front Bench, to enter into a conspiracy, at least it would be a successful one. The trouble is that this was entered into in a hole and corner way. It was entered into by members of the Committee who have hardly been on the back benches half a dog watch, and who were primarily by temperament and experience Government men, who introduced a Government Measure to turn the Upper House into the same——

Mr. Arthur Lewis

On a point of order, Mr. Irving. Whether it is true or not, is it in order to say that Ministers and members on the Government Front Bench are entering into conspiracies? Is it in order to accuse Ministers of entering into conspiracies?

The Chairman

There is nothing un-parliamentary in that.

Mr. Iremonger

I was criticising them for having been unsuccessful, and I was criticising my own Front Bench for having entered into a conspiracy which, when it came to the test, was not accepted by the hon. Friends of the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) and not accepted by my hon. Friends.

Mr. Emrys Hughes

The Opposition leaders have run away.

Mr. Iremonger

They have been replaced by other hon. Members of this party.

I really cannot see how the Home Secretary can possibly anticipate that we shall make any more progress in the whole of this forenoon, unless he is proposing to move the Closure before spokesmen for Northern Ireland, as an hon. Member mentioned, spokesmen for Wales, for North-East England, North-West England, Cornwall, South-East England, East Anglia, the West Midlands, to say nothing of Ilford and other areas of London and England, have had a say; to move the Closure as he did on the last Amendment we considered and then hurry us on to Clause 3, dealing with senility and other matters; to move the Closure on that after a mere token debate on the Question, That the Clause stand part.

This Motion is the one Motion that we have debated during these long hours that should be quite irresistible to anyone with any sense of constitutional responsibility. This is no light matter. I hope the Home Secretary realises that sense of deep outrage he has inspired on both sides of the Committee tonight. Only from one quarter has there been total silence. We know that second only to the Socialist Party the Liberal Party is historically the great wrecker of the constitution. This is a Socialist Measure to impose a Socialist régime on the country.

I do not want to disturb the harmony between the back benches on both sides, but the Government Front Bench has entered upon a course that will rob Parliament of its proper constitutional prerogative of checking the Executive, and will substitute for a proper Parliament one that is merely composed of nominated place men put in by each successive Prime Minister, arithmetically arranged so as always to give a Government majority.

The Chairman

Order. The hon. Gentleman is going into much too much detail now.

Mr. Iremonger

I know the Committee is anxious to come to a conclusion on the matter. I have been in some doubt as to whether we had enough progress to report, and whether we should ask to sit again. But as the Motion does not give us the option of recording a vote for the proposition that we should not sit again, all I can do is to say to right hon. Gentlemen opposite, who are looking extremely cynical and unresponsive——

I am glad to see that our forces have been replenished by the Chief Whip of the third party to the agreement between the parties. I do not think that we can hope for very much help from the Chief Whip of the Liberal Party. I think that he is in it up to the neck. I do not think that he will try to stop the Bill going through. After all, as has been pointed out, the only patronage he will ever have is to nominate people for the Prime Minister to nominate to the House of Lords—and a very ripe picking it will be. I can hardly see him wanting to hold up the progress of the Bill.

Mr. Lubbock

I have never nominated anybody for membership of the Upper House.

Mr. Iremonger

And until the Bill was introduced it never looked as though the hon. Gentleman would have a chance to do so.

Mr. Albert Murray (Gravesend)

The hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger) has been consistently out of order. The Chair has called him to order at least 10 times; I have counted them. It is about time he was asked to resume his seat.

The Chairman

The hon. Gentleman will have to leave matters of order to the Chair.

Mr. Iremonger

There are no hands in which I would sooner leave matters of order, Mr. Irving, and I hope you have not been unduly generous. You have been extremely fair. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I am distressed to think that the impression may have been created that the points I have made have been out of order. In order to establish the soundness of the Chair's judgment, it would be as well if I rehearsed point by point the points I have made.

The Chairman

Order. It would be better if hon. Members on both sides would refrain from commenting on the actions of the Chair.

Mr. Iremonger

I am about to resume my seat, having, I hope not too unkindly, pointed out to the Home Secretary what he has done. I make one final plea which I am sure hon. Members opposite will think justified. This is something quite unprecedented in my experience. Never during the last 25 years have we had a Bill of such constitutional importance. The only Measure which can compare with it is the Life Peerages Act, which many of us have come to regret because it may well have been that which led to this. For the right hon. Gentleman to want to hustle the Committee is unpardonable; for the Government Whips to be on at all is an outrage.

Sir D. Glover

I do not think they are on. That is the trouble.

Mr. Iremonger

For a Government Whip to move the Closure would be an offence to the Committee. The only thing to be said for the hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. O'Malley) is that he might not get the Closure if he moved it. Therefore, we shall have to be generous to him and say that he has had a change of heart, is a reformed character and will not take advantage to move the Closure

of this debate because I need a little more convincing. I hope others will catch your eye, Mr. Irving, and be able to give further and fuller consideration to the question of whether we have made enough progress to be reported to the House; whether it would be creditable to report it; and whether, if we reported it, we should ask leave to sit again on this Bill. I believe that to do that would be a betrayal of our responsibilities.

7.15 a.m.

Mr. O'Malley rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question put, That the Question be now put: —

The Committee divided: Ayes 102, Noes 44.

Division No. 91.]	AYES	[7.10 a m.
Anderson, Donald	Evans, Ioan L. (Birm'h'm, yardley)	Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)
Archer, Peter	Fernyhough, E.	Morris, John (Aberavon)
Bagier, Gordon A. T.	Fitch, Alan (Wigan)	Moyle, Roland
Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood	Fowler, Gerry	Murray, Albert
Bennett, James (G'gow, Bridgeton)	Fraser, John (Norwood)	Ogden, Eric
Binns, John	Freeson, Reginald	O'Malley, Brian
Bishop, E. S.	Greenwood, Rt. Hn. Anthony	Oram, Albert E.
Blackburn, F.	Grey, Charles (Durham)	Orbach, Maurice
Boyden, James	Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)	Oswald, Thomas
Bray, Dr. Jeremy	Hamling, William	Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, S'tn)
Brown, Bob (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, W.)	Hannan, William	Pavitt, Laurence
Buchan, Norman	Harper, Joseph	Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred
Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)	Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)	Portland, Norman
Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James	Hart, Rt. Hn. Judith	Rees, Merlyn
Carmichael, Neil	Howie, W.	Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy
Carter-Jones, Lewis	Hoy, James	Robinson, Rt. Hn. Kenneth (St. P'c'as)
Coe, Denis	Huckfield, Leslie	Ross, Rt. Hn. William
Coleman, Donald	Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)	Rowlands, E.
Concannon, J. D.	Irvine, Sir Arthur (Edge Hill)	Short, Rt. Hn. Edward (N'c'tle-u-Tyne)
Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard	Jackson, Colin (B'h'se & Spenb'gh)	Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)
Dalyell, Tam	Jones, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn (W.Ham, S.)	Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)
Davies, Dr. Ernest (Stretfortl)	Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, West)	Skeffington, Arthur
Davies, Ifor (Gower)	Lever, Harold (Cheetham)	Stonehouse, Rt. Hn. John
Dell, Edmund	Loughlin, Charles	Taverne, Dick
Dewar, Donald	Lubbock, Eric	Thomas, Rt. Hn. George
Diamond, Rt. Hn. John	McBride, Neil	Thomson, Rt. Hn. George
Doig, Peter	MacColl, James	Tinn, James
Dunwoody, Mrs. Gwyneth (Exeter)	Macdonald, A. H.	Urwin, T. W.
Dunwoody, Dr. John (F'th& C'b'e)	Mackie, John	Varley, Eric G.
Edwards, William (Merioneth)	McNamara, J. Kevin	Walker, Harold (Doncaster)
Ellis, John	Marks, Kenneth	White Mrs. Eirene
English, Michael	Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert	Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)
Ennals, David	Millan, Bruce	TELLERS FOR THE AYES:
Ensor, David	Miller, Dr. M. S.	Mr. Charles R. Morris and
Evans, Fred (Caerphilly)	Mitchell, R. C. (S'th'pton, Test)	Mr. Ernest G. Perry.
NOES
Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)	Hastings, Stephen	Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon
Atkinson, Norman (Tottenham)	Heffer, Eric S.	Ridley, Hn. Nicholas
Biffen, John	Hughes, Emrys (Ayrshire, S.)	Ridsdale, Julian
Booth, Albert	Iremonger, T. L.	Russell, Sir Ronald
Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John	Kerr, Mrs. Anne (R'ter & Chatham)	Sheldon, Robert
Clegg, Walter	Kerr, Russell (Feltham)	Smith, John (London & W'minster)
Crouch, David	Kitson, Timothy	Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)
Dalkeith, Earl of	Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)	Taylor, Edward M.(G'gow, Cathcart)
Ewing, Mrs. Winifred	MacArthur, Ian	Ward, Dame Irene
Farr, John	Macmillan, Maurice (Farnham)	Wright, Esmond
Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)	Neave, Airey	Wylie, N. R.
Fraser, Rt. Hn. Hugh (St'fford & Stone)	Nott, John	Younger, Hn. George
Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)	Orme, Stanley
Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)	Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch	TELLERS FOR THE NOES:
Glover, Sir Douglas	Quennell, Miss J. M.	Mr. John Biggs-Davison and
Goodhart, Philip	Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James	Mr. Victor Goodhew.

Question put accordingly, That the Chairman do report Progress and ask leave to sit again: —

7.30 a.m.

Original Question again proposed, That the Amendment be made.

Mr. Powell

It was most unfortunate, and, indeed, ill-judged, that the Under-Secretary for the Home Department should have intervened at so comparatively early a stage in our consideration of this group of six Amendments.

To hear the earlier part of the debate, a stranger might have assumed that they were concerned exclusively with Scotland. A good deal of the discussion

The Committee divided: Ayes 46, Noes 99.

Division No. 92.]	AYES	[7.22 a.m.
Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)	Hastings, Stephen	Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon
Atkinson, Norman (Tottenham)	Heffer, Eric S.	Ridley, Hn. Nicholas
Bitten, John	Hughes, Emrys (Ayrshire, S.)	Ridsdale, Julian
Booth, Albert	Iremonger, T. L.	Russell, Sir Ronald
Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John	Kerr, Mrs. Anne (R'ter & Chatham)	Sheldon, Robert
Clegg, Walter	Kerr, Russell (Feltham)	Smith, John (London & W'minster)
Crouch, David	Kitson, Timothy	Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)
Dalkeith, Earl of	Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)	Taylor, Edward M. (G'gow, Cathcart)
English, Michael	Lubbock, Eric	Ward, Dame Irene
Ewing, Mrs. Winifred	MacArthur, Ian	Wright, Esmond
Farr, John	Macmillan, Maurice (Farnham)	Wylie, N. R.
Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)	Neave, Airey	Younger, Hn. George
Fraser, Rt. Hn. Hugh (St'fford & Stone)	Nott, John
Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)	Orme, Stanley	TELLERS FOR THE AYES:
Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)	Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch	Mr. John Biggs-Davison and
Gtover, Sir Douglas	Quennell, Miss J. M.	Mr. Victor Goodhew.
Goodhart, Phlilp	Ramsden, Rt. Hn, James

NOES
Anderson, Donald	Fitch, Alan (Wigan)	Murray, Albert
Archer, Peter	Fowler, Gerry	Ogden, Eric
Bagier, Gordon A. T.	Fraser, John (Norwood)	O'Malley, Brian
Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood	Freeson, Reginald	Oram, Albert E.
Bennett, James (G'gow, Bridgeton)	Greenwood, Rt. Hn. Anthony	Orbach, Maurice
Binns, John	Grey, Charles (Durham)	Oswald, Thomas
Bishop, E. S.	Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)	Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, S'tn)
Blackburn, F.	Hamling, William	Pavitt, Laurence
Boyden, James	Hannan, William	Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred
Bray, Dr. Jeremy	Harper, Joseph	Pentland, Norman
Brown, Bob (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, W.)	Harrison, Waiter (Wakefield)	Rees, Merlyn
Buchan, Norman	Hart, Rt. Hn. Judith	Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy
Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)	Howie, W.	Robinson, Rt. Hn. Kenneth (St. P'c'as)
Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James	Hoy, James	Ross, Rt. Hn. William
Carmichael, Neil	Huckfield, Leslie	Rowlands, E.
Carter-Jones, Lewis	Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)	Short, Rt. Hn. Edward (N'c'tle-u-Tyne)
Coe, Denis	Irvine, Sir Arthur (Edge Hill)	Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)
Coleman, Donald	Jackson, Colin (B'h'se & Spenb'gh)	Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)
Concannon, J. D.	Jones, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn (W. Ham, S.)	Skeffington, Arthur
Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard	Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, West)	Stonehouse, Rt. Hn. John
Dalyell, Tam	Lever, Harold (Cheetham)	Taverne, Dick
Davies, Dr. Ernest (Stretford)	Loughlin, Charles	Thomas, Rt. Hn. George
Davies, Ifor (Gower)	McBride, Neil	Thomson, Rt. Hn. George
Dell, Edmund	MacColl, James	Tinn, James
Dewar, Donald	Macdonald, A. H.	Urwin, T. W.
Diamond, Rt. Hn. John	Mackie, John	Varley, Eric G.
Doig, Peter	McNamara, J. Kevin	Walker, Harold (Doncaster)
Dunwoody, Mrs. Gwyneth (Exeter)	Marks, Kenneth	White, Mrs. Eirene
Edwards, William (Merioneth)	Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert	Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)
Ellis, John	Millan, Bruce
Ennals, David	Miller, Dr. M. S.	TELLERS FOR THE NOES:
Ensor, David	Mitchell, R. C. (S'th'pton, Test)	Mr. Charles R. Morris and
Evans, Fred (Caerphilly)	Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)	Mr. Ernest G. Perry.
Evans, Ioan L. (Birm'h'm, Yardley)	Morris, John (Aberavon)
Fernyhough, E.	Moyle, Roland

turned upon the Act of Union of 1707, but I think that it appeared that the Act of Union was, in fact, not strictly relevant even to the Scottish Amendments, in that Parliament had shown repeatedly that it was not bound by the exact terms—though it might well be obliged morally to have regard to the spirit—of the provisions of the Act of Union.

I thought that the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel) was guilty of an inaccuracy when he said that in this respect the Scottish Members of another place were in a unique position in that their position was, at any rate originally, sought to be safeguarded by an agreement on which the union of the kingdoms was founded. He had overlooked that a similar union took place in 1800 between Ireland and Great Britain, with a similar provision for the representation of Irish peers in another place, and it was a matter of doubtful legality, on which lawyers and historians will long dispute, when the election, in that case for life, of Irish peers was discontinued by a sidewind after Home Rule was realised in Southern Ireland.

In fact, this group of Amendments covers not one but three largely separate issues. The first is whether Scottish peers should have the right to vote upon matters of special concern to Scotland, though not in other respects—the question, in short, whether we are right in drawing an absolute distinction between voting and non-voting peers, or whether certain non-voting peers should have voting rights on matters which specially concern them.

Then the second Amendment, to which I think the whole of the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) referred, was directed to a specific, guaranteed minimum representation of Scotland in the composition of the new nominated Chamber.

Thirdly, there is an Amendment, which has hardly received any attention so far, for the representation—again, by a specific minimum membership—of what are called the standard regions of England and Wales.

These are the three, and to a large extent separate, matters which we are considering together in this group of Amendments, and once again the Committee finds itself, as so often, endeavouring to formulate in definite and intelligible terms an aspiration or a hint sketched out in the Preamble to the Bill.

It is paragraph (b) of that Preamble: the inclusion in that House,"—

I do not think that these Amendments are directly concerned with inclusion in the House— … and in the said body of voting members …"—

that is where the Amendments seek to bite— '… of suitable numbers of peers with knowledge of and experience in matters of special concern to the various countries, nations and regions of the United Kingdom.

This is one of the many occasions on which the Committee has been trying to give form, precision and substance to a part of the Preamble and found itself once again baffled. We always find ourselves embracing a cloud, like the Greek mythical hero Ixion, when we try to give precision and definiteness to what is set out in the Preamble. All we succeed in doing at the end of the debates is once again to expose the futility of the whole operation upon which the House has been engaged in this piece of legislation.

One might reflect on what ungrateful people we British are. We accept the gifts which Providence, through a long history, has showered upon us, yet remain as if unconscious of their very existence, and attempt to dispense with them. That is what we are doing here.

Representation of Scotland; representation of the various regions and parts of England and Wales. Why? We have it already, in profusion. We have it already, with a flexibility which does not require any of this artificial distinction between voting peers and non-voting peers, or the question of when non-voting peers should for the nonce be voting peers. We have this very representation amongst that 1,062 Members of the existing House of Lords.

There is hardly a local or national interest throughout the United Kingdom where there are not already numerous members of the Upper House who are available, willing and able to speak, and who are even allowed to vote, should there be a vote on matters where they are specially qualified or specially concerned.

I have done a certain amount of partial research to illustrate the extent of the regional representation in the existing House of Lords, representation which we are sweeping away. I took a number of Midland counties, being myself a Midlander and representing a Midland city, to see how far the present secular membership of the Upper House—I took no account of the Lords spiritual, although they in a sense also can represent areas of England and Wales—represented the various parts of England and Wales.

My figures are minimum figures, since I was relying upon the addresses given as places of residence of peers in Dod's Parliamentary Companion, so that in almost every case I am bound to have under-estimated the number of peers who could reasonably be claimed to have a representative character in relation to one area or another. As I say, I took a number of Midland counties, and the score runs as follows: Gloucestershire, 20; Oxfordshire, 19; Buckinghamshire, 15; Warwickshire, 6; Worcestershire, 6; Herefordshire, 5; Cheshire, 4; Shropshire, 7; Derbyshire, 5; Staffordshire, 5.

These are counties, not large regions. We would need to add these together to form a region such as we have got into the habit of calling Mercia, for example. These are counties—relatively small parts of England and Wales—represented in profusion by noble Lords in the existing House. This is only possible because, with the present constitution of the Upper House, it is reasonable and rational for many of these noble Lords only to take part very occasionally when the special interests of the areas of which they have personal knowledge are involved.

I now turn from the picture of what we are ungrateful for having to look, so far as it is visible, at what is in the Bill. We do not know how many Members the second Chamber will have, but we are told that it will start with between 200 and 250. Immediately, the difficulties begin to crowd upon us. If there are to be only 250 Members altogether, we are immediately cramped in giving representation not only to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, but to the regions of England. We have not got the same amount of water in which to swim as in a Chamber of over 1,000 Members.

But the difficulty is far greater than the mere limitation upon the total number. There is the party and non-party breakdown of these 230 Members. So it is necessary to have regard both to regional and local representation and to the party breakdown in constituting this new and much more complex voting House of Lords.

Some of the difficulties—it seems a long time ago now, but it is the same debate—were illustrated very effectively by the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot). But even he did not probe all the complexities which arise from the simple attempt, in the proposed nominated Chamber, to have representation of local and regional interests.

It is not only the party complexions of the 230 Members; it is the fact that into those 230 Members we have to fit, so the Government tell us, 77, give or take one or two either way perhaps, peers by succession, who themselves break down into a definite, already calculated and apparently agreed pattern. Although we have not been told, that can be elicited from the effective cross-examination by the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon). At any rate, there will have to be some breakdown of the 77, or thereabouts, peers by succession within the 230. That is another factor which has to be taken into account in securing, if it be at all possible, a properly balanced regional representation.

In addition to the original complexity of setting the thing up, with so many factors to take into account—no doubt computers would be used, because we are in the computer age and I dare say that all the possible qualifications of all the possible peers would be put through computers and they would come out, as usual, with some absurd answer—it goes much beyond that. That is just the initial difficulty. Upon every change of party balance in the House of Commons it would be necessary, in readjusting the party structure in the nominated Chamber, to have an elaborate readjustment of the regional and local representation to keep it intact. I cannot imagine that it would be possible to combine these two requirements—we must remember that these are not requirements which my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) has invented; these requirements are in the Preamble to the Bill; these are the Government's requirements—I submit that it would not be possible to realise those requirements without a continuous and substantial escalation in the total numbers of another place. That would be the only way to solve the mathematical problems which would crowd on us with each successive General Election.

7.45 a.m.

In these Amendments we are looking at only one type of qualification of noble Lords in another place—if they are still to be noble Lords when they are nominated. I shall not trespass far in this direction, but I remind the Committee that there are all kinds of other sorts of interests, experience, and background, which we would all agree ought to be represented, and represented in some sort of balanced way, in this new nominated Chamber. So all those requirements would have to be superadded to the already intolerable complexities that I have envisaged.

The Government retort, "Why give yourselves all this trouble?". "Of course you get into difficulties", say the Government, "when you try to give precision in a Bill to what is imprecise"—I see the hon. Gentleman nodding—"in the Preamble". They say, "Leave it vague, and it will be all right". Some hours ago now we had a lecture from the Home Secretary, a lecture on convention, the basis of the working of the constitution, the indispensable sine qua non of our life together in this House. Of course it is, but the right hon. Gentleman misapplied the lesson. A convention is a habit into which people have already gradually and insensibly got over a time, so that in the end it becomes binding upon them.

Many of our most important procedures in this House are conventions, but they are conventions because they are habits of so long standing that we regard them now as rules which we are no longer able to break. That is what is known as a constitutional convention, something which has grown up over a long period of time, not by contrivance, not by being planned in advance, but because it so happened and was continued that in the end men said to one another, "This is good and indispensable and we will regard it as a convention which is binding upon us".

That is the place of convention in the life of Parliament. That is the place of convention in the constitution. It is not relevant here. We cannot suddenly say, "Let there be a convention". It is no means for the Government to ride out of all these difficulties by saying that there will be a convention. It is an impossible thing deliberately to define a rule and say that this shall be a convention. What the Government are doing, when they find that they cannot define a rule in an intelligible way, is to say, "Well, there will be a convention". But they do not mean that there will be a convention. They mean something different. They are using an honourable name for a thing which, seen nakedly, most hon. Members would repudiate, the arbitrary decision and contrivance of the Executive, aided and abetted through the usual channels by the Opposition and third parties. That is what is being described as a convention.

When the Government say that it will be all right on the night, they mean, "We will fix it to our satisfaction". It is no escape from the inherent impossibilities of doing what they purport to offer, within the framework of such a Chamber as they are seeking to create, to say, "There is going to be a convention".

My hon. Friend and all of those of us who have spoken, and who will speak, in this debate have performed a valuable service in once again exposing the hollowness of the provisions which the Preamble appears to make. In this case we are also shown the value of that prescriptive Chamber which we are proposing to destroy in order to replace it with something we cannot explain, nor show how it would work at all intelligently or tolerably. We are blind and ungrateful if we do such a thing. The time we have spent and will spend on this Amendment will not have been wasted but will be richly rewarded if it brings this House to some knowledge of the wealth, including the wealth of convention, which we already possess, so that we become more loath than ever to cast it away.

Mr. Heffer

I would like to comment on some of the speeches I remember from earlier this morning, or perhaps even last evening.

I remember a speech by the hon. Lady the Member for Hamilton (Mrs. Ewing). I am sorry that she is not here to hear me, because I was a little saddened by her speech. It had a great contradiction in it. On the one hand, she said that she had gone through the Lobby with me and my hon. Friends because she agreed basically with our idea that the House of Lords should be abolished.

Then the hon. Lady came to the Amendment moved by the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) and said that she felt she had to support this, which was a complete reversal of abolition of the House of Lords. In effect, I suppose, she thinks that she has to support the hon. Member because his Amendment refers to Scotland, and her party demands that she must be interested in Scotland whether it is right or wrong. It is a fantastic situation to say that one is against the House of Lords and then to come up with arguments supporting the hon. Member for Ayr. With my simple mind, I find it difficult to take in.

The hon. Member has argued the case for the continuation of the House of Lords, not necessarily as in this Bill, but as a separate concept. He would not agree to abolition.

Much of what the hon. Lady has said is illogical because of her Scottish nationalism, which I find a totally illogical thing to argue. I suppose that Scottish, like Welsh, nationalism has moments when there are economic difficulties. I have looked into this matter and find that there is a rise of Welsh and Scottish nationalism when the economic problems of the two countries have been acute and also when there has been disillusionment with central Government.

I did this research because I was asked by a German to write an article on Scottish nationalism, a subject about which I knew nothing. Other hon. Members must have been in similar positions. Scottish and Welsh nationalism leads also to local nationalism. My hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme) has often accused me of being a thorough-going Liverpool nationalist, because I feel that Liverpool does not get enough attention, and that we might do better with a huge wall around Merseyside.

The Amendment of my hon. Friend says that the "standard regions" of England and Wales should have no fewer than five voting peers each in another place. But, of five for the standard North-West, not one might be for Liverpool or Merseyside. I would not want five voting peers for Manchester without one for Liverpool. I cannot support the Amendment, therefore, because it is not sensible and would not secure proper distribution. But, with a second Chamber elected on a constituency or area basis, this problem would not arise, because each area would have automatic representation.

This argument leads me into conflict with the Amendments of the hon. Member for Ayr. I am not sure whether we should encourage the division of our country into separate countries. Even regional government, for Yorkshire, say, or Devon or Cornwall, would not be based on nationality. Nationalism is very out-dated. A Welshman with whom I worked explained to me that if a Welshman's language was being taken away from him, it was like losing his left arm. I understand that. It would be tragic and wrong, and no one should do it.

8.0 a.m.

The argument is not the same for Scotland. I understand that the Gaelic language is spoken only in the Outer Isles, and is not widespread. The important thing is that in our country the free flow of people from one region to the other—from Scotland to England, from England to Wales, and so on—is essential if we are to build a sensible economy.

Sir D. Glover

Surely there is a misunderstanding about State or regional government. There is no difficulty with the Governments of the United States or Australia, yet both countries are divided into separate States, with their own Parliaments.

Mr. Heffer

Regional government is quite right, but that is not the idea of the Scottish or Welsh nationalists. They do not want regional government as we would envisage it. They want a separate national Government. It would not do either country any good to have separate Governments.

I have much sympathy with the Welsh. There was no Act of Union in their case; it was an act of conquest. The poor welsh were conquered, and I can understand their being a little upset in relation to the English—more upset than the Scots have a right to be, because at least in their case there was a voluntary agreement. There is a distinction between the two, and in my opinion it would be a retrogressive step to move away from the idea of the United Kingdom.

Mr. Younger

I agree with nearly all of what the hon. Member has said, but Scotland has had individual regional representation in the Upper House for 250 years.

Mr. Heffer

I do not suggest that if we had a democratically elected second Chamber the Scots as well as the Welsh should not have their proper representation, but I am against the idea of nomination. That is why I oppose the Amendments. I find the idea of nomination impossible to accept. In any case, I imagine that this system of nomination would affect only a minority of peers.

None of us knows what the numbers will be, but we all have a good idea of the ones who will be appointed, assuming that only life peers will be accepted—although some hereditary peers might think they had a right to be there and would want to be nominated. I can see a great deal of difficulty and confusion arising.

Mr. Younger

I urge the hon. Gentleman to consider the Amendment in the context of the Bill. The objections which he is voicing against the Amendment may be applied to the whole Measure.

Mr. Heffer

I agree. I reject both the Amendment and the Bill, although I appreciate the purpose of the Amendment.

The Preamble accepts that there must be in the Lords people who are representative of the various parts of the United Kingdom. Since a Commission is looking into the whole structure of local government, we should not be tinkering with the Lords in this way because when we get the report of that Commission we may have to go over all this ground again.

When that report is received, we may find ourselves with regional governments and the possibility of having representatives of those governments in the Lords. Alternatively, perhaps we will not need a House of Lords. Those regional governments might provide the necessary check on this Chamber. There are many possibilities and while I appreciate the thinking behind the Amendment, I cannot support it.

Mr. Wylie

I want to address myself particularly to Amendment 156. It seems to me that the issue between my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger), his ideas in his Amendment, and the Government's proposals, is very narrow indeed. No one is disputing, as I understand, that there must be strong Scottish representation in the reconstituted House of Lords. That is recognised in the Preamble to the Bill, and it is also recognised in paragraph 50 of the White Paper, to which reference has been made before: There are strong constitutional arguments, based on the presence of Scottish peers in the House of Lords ever since 1707, and practical arguments arising from the existence of separate Scottish law, which make it particularly important that the reformed House should include a suitable number of Scottish peers. So there is no dispute about that. The dispute is over the question, should there be written into the Bill a specific provision along the kind of lines my hon. Friend proposes, or should this be left to be sorted out by Executive action as occasion arises?

I would be the last to undermine the legitimate claims of every region in the United Kingdom for representation in the reconstituted House of Lords, if we have got to have that at all, but I submit that there is a special case for Scotland. Scotland is not just a region. I do not put that proposition forward with any sense of arrogance at all. I put it forward as a fact. Scotland is a nation.

Notwithstanding 250 years of close cooperation and close unification with England and Wales, Scotland has preserved her identity as a nation through the existence of her separate legal system. It is the legal system of Scotland which has preserved the separate identity of the Scottish nation, and it is that very legal system, of course, which requires, in my submission, the particular claim which Scotland has for this kind of special treatment, if that is the way to put it.

Now, why should the promoters of this Amendment seek to write into the Bill a provision such as that contained in Amendment No. 156? The reason is that it was part of the agreement reached between the two independent countries in 1707, that there should be, written in statutory form, adequate representation for the Scottish peerage.

I recognise that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) pointed out, modifications in the Act, and in corresponding legislation for Ireland, have taken place. I recognise the effect of the development of the doctrine of the unlimited sovereignty of Parliament on this type of legislation. I would only say that that doctrine which developed late in the 18th and in the 19th century developed since the Act of Union was passed, and it certainly was no part of Scottish constitutional law. The doctrine of the unlimited sovereignty of Parliament formed no part of Scottish constitutional law, and this was recognised in a case in the Scottish courts as recently as 1953, when the Royal Title was challenged; that was recognised by the Lord President of the Court of Session.

8.15 a.m.

While it may be perfectly competent for Parliament to write out that statutory provision in the Act of Union, and to deal with legislation as proposed in the Bill, to do so would be contrary to the principle and spirit of that Act. This is the worst moment that could be found to do something so blatantly contrary to the spirit of that legislation. If we recognise, as everyone does, that there must be strong Scottish representation in a reformed House of Lords, for practical as well as constitutional reasons, why cannot we recognise it in the Statute?

There may be criticisms of the Amendment, but those on the words "ordinarily resident" are not well founded. They are well recognised in statutory practice. There may be defects in the drafting, but I urge the Government to think again about this. If we recognise the need, and are to do this anyway, why cannot we write it into the Statute? That is my hon. Friend's basic request.

Mr. Sheldon

I wish to speak to Amendment No. 187, in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Southall (Mr. Bidwell). It would bring in a new subsection (5) stating: At the beginning of each Session of Parliament the Lord Chancellor shall compile a roll of the voting peers, specifying particularly those voting peers who are ordinarily resident in each of the standard regions of England and Wales and shall lay this register on the table of the House of Lords; So far, it is in almost precisely the same terms as Amendment No. 156. It continues: and if it shall appear from the said register that fewer than five voting peers are ordinarily resident in each of the standard regions of England and Wales, the House shall by resolution pray Her Majesty to create sufficient voting peers so that the total number thereof shall comprise not less than five voting peers from each of the standard regions of England and Wales. That is not the precise form in which I would have wished the Amendment to be tabled. But as it came in late—it is a starred Amendment—I realised that the only chance of getting it selected was to introduce the question of regionalism in an attempt to get the debate, which would otherwise have been on the narrow issue of Scottish representation, broadened into a regional debate. I tried to introduce this factor into another Amendment, which was not selected.

It is on the broader point that I wish to speak. I am not too closely wedded to the precise wording of the Amendment, based as it is on Amendment 156. I am not too happy about specifying the precise numbers, or the manner in which they are laid before the House. What I am very concerned about is obtaining some representation with guarantees—much more than are in the Bill or the White Paper—of a distribution of peers, drawing their strength from different parts of the country. My research on this was based on life peers, which is different from the research of the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell). It is no use going to the peers, because most of them are peers of succession and will not be represented in the new Chamber. If we wish to get an idea of the background of the peers, we should think more in terms of the life peers, because about 150 Members of the other place are to be life peers. They will constitute a very large proportion of its membership. I selected 25 per cent. of the 150 at random and I believe that the results are reasonably representative.

About 60 per cent. of the life peers live in London—and by "live" I mean that they reside here and do not just have club addresses, for example. That is no great surprise but it reinforces something many of us had assumed from the way in which life peers have so far been chosen. In the regions, the proportions are much lower than would be obtained by distribution based on population. For example, my area has a representation much lower than I regard as adequate in terms of population.

Again this does not come as a surprise, since life peers in the main are successful men and women and such people, even if they do not start in London, tend largely to gravitate there. Since life peers are usually past their prime, it is reasonable to assume that the knowledge which at one stage they possessed about their regions of origin will have been very much diminished by time.

If we are to decide whether a life peer has a genuine connection with his region of origin, it is not enough merely to consider where he came from. All too often, one meets people who have a sentimental regard for their origins, which is admirable but is no substitute for an up-to-date knowledge of the problems of those areas.

Sentimentality is no substitute for this kind of realism that can only come about by an understanding, not of the problems of one's youth, but of the present. The average age in my sample is 67. Any knowledge of their regions from their past is not likely to have survived very well into old age. These people may have been appointed in a regional sense because, although they live in London they originally came from a certain area. Regional representation would therefore be very poor. We must write something into the Bill to change this.

Mr. Younger

I do not think that the people to whom the hon. Member is referring would come within his Amendment. If they were living in London and had in the remote past been connected with a region, they could not be described as ordinarily resident in that region.

Mr. Sheldon

The hon. Gentleman has misunderstood me. I was dealing with the situation in which life peers might be created with this in mind. I was trying to show how involved this argument could become and that the true representation could only come from the close personal association with the region, which normally involves residence in that region.

Mr. Wylie

Would the hon. Gentleman agree that these are cogent reasons for some such test, such as being ordinarily resident, being applied for regional representation?

Mr. Sheldon

I accept that without question. For those who are aged about 67—and are peers—these problems can be difficult to deal with. Add to that living almost entirely in London, and the barrier between them and what is going on in different parts of the country becomes intolerable. Those peers doing valuable service in the regions should have close links with the community. Not many had in industrial areas before the Peerages Act. In Ashton-under-Lyne we have two such people, Lord Wright of Ashton-under-Lyne and Lord Rhodes, the former Member of Parliament for Ashton-under-Lyne, and a very distinguished Member at that. People such as these actively pursue their work in the area which gives them so much interest and pleasure. These people are the very epitome of the kind of peers we need, with some personal knowldge of the problems and with a continuing interest in an area.

[Mr. JOHN BREWIS in the Chair]

8.30 a.m.

Each region has its own problems. The problems of the North-West are largely those associated with the decline of cotton and coal, those once great industries which are no longer able to influence the area by their wealth but which still have an influence on our surroundings. Ours are largely the problems of the "grey" areas, the need to bring in new industry and to deal with the slag heaps and the subsidence which are our legacy from the past.

Life peers can closely concern themselves with our problems of amenities and a certain amount of dereliction, and their work on matters of that kind could make a useful contribution in the House of Lords. They are problems which we often try to tackle in the House of Commons but which to many peers are less real because of their lack of direct regional understanding and experience based upon residence.

If there is to be remuneration in the other place—and the defeat of an earlier Amendment makes eventual remuneration far more likely—what will be the effect? A small number of attendances will qualify a peer for the money. If one-third of attendances are required to secure the £2,000 a year, about 40 attendances a year will suffice. That is roughly £50 per attendance, about as much as many of the most successful people in business or a profession are likely to earn, and, what is more, it will be obtained for little effort. One will not have to be there all day. Just slipping in on one's way to the City, to Harley Street or to the office will suffice. Moreover, if one presents apologies for absence, as it were, if one is sick or on Parliamentary or even public business——

The Temporary Chairman (Mr. John Brewis)

Order. The hon. Gentleman is drifting rather far from regional representation. Will he please come back to his Amendment.

Mr. Sheldon

I apologise, Mr. Brewis. I had in mind the great advantage which the likely system of remuneration will confer on the London-based peer as opposed to the peer with his roots and his residence in the regions. The £50 picked up between flat and office, in passing, would not be available to the peer residing in Scotland, Yorkshire or the North-West. Such peers will have to travel from the regions to London and it is my experience that these are the people to whom the £2,000 will not bring anything like the remuneration which London-based peers will receive, because the former will have to put up at hotels and may make a whole day, or two or three days, of it to justify the expenditure of time. These people will be put at a serious disadvantage.

We all know of the disadvantage suffered by provincial Members of the House of Commons, but at least to some extent it is offset by the fact that we have a full working week, which is not the aim for the House of Lords. Furthermore, we do not have such easy ways of raising the money as slipping in and out as we pass by. We all know that we have been here for the last 24 hours, or whatever it is, and we certainly earn our money in a way which is not proposed for certain peers.

Certain disadvantages will be attached to those members of the House of Lords who happen to live in the regions and who will be rather harder to recruit. It will be easy to recruit members of the House of Lords, but the truly valuable members of the House of Lords who reside in the regions will be the hardest to recruit. These will be the people who are already playing important parts in the lives of their regions, and if we are not to have a differential, which would obviously be impossible, there will be considerable unfairness between a London-based peer, who will be in the majority—60 per cent. are to be London-based—and to whom a further incentive is to be given, and the peer from the regions.

Mr. John Ryan (Uxbridge)

Why does my hon. Friend regard it as impossible to have a differential payment to regional peers? Will he examine that further?

Mr. Sheldon

This is such an appallingly complex and mixed-up Bill that I hesitate to introduce further complications when the present complications have not been cleared up. If I thought that we were getting near the stage of having a Bill which we might admire, I might agree that it was possible to refine it. But there are so many things wrong with the Bill and it has so many anomalies that I hesitate to add yet another burden.

As with so much else in the Bill, this is a problem which has not been properly thought out. Everyone paid lip-service to the idea that the new peers in the House of Lords would provide adequate regional representation. We all felt very happy, because at the time we were all region-conscious and we understood that the problems in one part of the country were not the same as the problems in another, and we understood why. It is only when we analyse the result of remunerating the peers that we can see that it will give a further incentive to the already large incentive for London-based peers.

We need to change the incentive to give regional-based peers some recognition of the services which they can bring to the deliberations of the House of Lords and to provide some encouragement for them. I admit that the Amendment may be imperfect, but at least its intentions are on the right lines.

Mr. MacArthur

I have much sympathy with the objective of the Amendment. On the face of it, it would appear that it is much the same as what my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) is trying to secure in his Scottish Amendment. But there are, I think, some important differences, and the primary one is the fact that the representation of Scottish peers in the House of Lords is already protected by Statute, and has been in one form or another since 1707.

I appreciate, of course, that there is a great deal of attraction in trying to lay down that a set number of peers should be drawn from each of the standard regions in England and Wales. I believe, though, that if we were to extend what I might call the Scottish principle, where there is a special case, right through the various regions of England and Wales, we should be inviting the sort of complications which my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, Southwest (Mr. Powell) described and which the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) called our attention to earlier in this debate.

Already the problems arising from the curious formula set out in the White Paper are going to be serious enough. If we had to superimpose on the figure formula a regional representation drawn as tightly as in the hon. Gentleman's Amendment, I think we should be in trouble indeed.

I would remind the Committee that unless I totally misunderstand the hon. Gentleman, there is a very significant consequence which will flow from the Government's determination to make these provisions effective before the next General Election. If the House of Lords is reformed before the next General Election on the basis of 230 voting peers, and if at the General Election, which no doubt will follow quite soon afterwards, the Conservative Party is victorious, the new Conservative Government will find it necessary to create 52 or more voting peers in order to retain the ten per cent. majority formula set out in paragraph 48 of the White Paper, and within that year regional representation will have to be looked at all over again, and I think we should find that any room for manoeuvre would have disappeared altogether.

Having said that, I should like to comment for a moment on the speech the Minister made some time ago. I must confess that I thought he had missed the statutory point completely, and had failed to understand why my hon. Friend had introduced one-tenth as the proportion of the voting peers who should be normally resident in Scotland. The Minister suggested that this had some-thing to do with population. That certainly was a part of the argument, but a very small part indeed. I believe that the one-tenth figure suggested by my hon. Friend is crucial to the whole argument, and I would like to give what I think were the reasons for reaching that proportion.

In order to understand why one-tenth appears in our Amendment, it is necessary for a moment to look at the arguments which lead up to the creation of 16 as the number of Scottish peers who would come to represent the Scottish peerage in another place after the Act of Union in 1707.

The contemporary evidence is not conclusive, but it is clear that the Commissioners who came together to discuss this question—the number of members who should come to join the two Houses of Parliament at Westminster—had regard to the level of revenue and to the level of population also.

8.45 a.m.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ayr spelt this out, and I will not go through it again, but the ratio agreed for the House of Commons was approximately 1:11, and the ratio agreed for the House of Lords was approximately 1: 12. This compared with a very different pattern in population and revenue terms. The population was in the ratio, so far as it can be assessed today, of 1: 5½, whereas wealth, reflected in Customs and Excise revenue and the Land Tax yield was in the ratio of about 1: 38.

It is difficult to find precise comparisons, but some of the comments of the time show that the Commissioners were satisfied that they had achieved a reasonable relationship between the level of taxation and the level of representation, and between the size of the population and the size of the representation.

One of the standard works for that period is Bishop Burnet's "History of His Own Time." On page 281 of the 1833 Edition, Bishop Burnet writes this: It is held a maxim, that in the framing of a government, a proportion ought to be observed between the share in the legislature, and the burden to be borne; vet in return of the fortieth part of the burden, they offered the Scotch near the eleventh part of the legislature; for the peers of Scotland were to be represented by sixteen peers …. It was argued by some that the representation of the Scots peerage should have regard to the influence of the Scottish peers in Edinburgh in bringing about the Treaty of Union. Bishop Burnet has an interesting comment on this method of assessing the extent of the Scottish representation: It was visible, that the nobility of that kingdom suffered a great diminution by it; for though it was agreed, that they should enjoy all the other privileges of the peers of England, yet the greatest of them all, which was the voting in the house of lords, was restrained to sixteen, to be elected by the rest at every new parliament; In all fairness, this view has been questioned, and there is a footnote to the 1833 Edition, but not elsewhere, by the Earl of Dartmouth. He pointed out that this opinion was the Bishop's and his only, and he went on to say that the voting of the Scots peers— for a representation in the house of lords was more than an equivalent for sitting in their own parliament; where they sat with the commons, and had only an equal vote with the rest of the company. The chief of them thought themselves sure of being elected; the generality were very poor, and had been mostly raised by high commissioners to serve a term; and the privilege of not being arrested was a valuable one to them; besides the being triable by the house of lords only was a vast security to the best of them, who were entirely at the mercy of the court before; with a great many other immunities they had never been entitled to. The impartiality of the noble Lord may be questioned, because the next sentence reads: For in truth there was little distinction between them and the commons but high titles, that had been liberally bestowed, and afterwards used for a lame leg to beg with, That note is sufficient to end my references to Bishop Burnet and my comments on his writing.

Mr. Powell

Will my hon. Friend allow me to insert at the end of that quotation the fact that in the election of Scottish representative peers many of the Scottish peers were so poor or insignificant that they were purchased by the dozen by those who contracted to produce the votes?

Mr. MacArthur

I am sure that my right hon. Friend will forgive me if I do not pursue that point, which does not help the argument I am advancing.

There was very hard bargaining, although the opponents of union—and they were many—had little regard for the stand taken by their Commissioners debating the terms of the Treaty.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr pointed out, the English Commissioners were originally prepared to promise 38 Members of the House of Commons to Scotland, a figure which in the negotiations was raised to 45 which which was finally included in the Act.

The number of peers, however, remained at 16. There is no record of this figure having been argued about at any length.

Lockhart, the Jacobite, whose memoirs read like a Scottish Nationalistic election address still, felt that the Scots had been had, because he said: It consisting with my certain knowledge that the English did design from the beginning to give the Scots 45 Commoners and a proportionable number of peers. But had the Scots stood their ground, I have good reason to affirm that the English would have allowed a much greater number of representatives and abatement of taxes; for the English saw too plainly the advantage that would accrue to England by an union of the two Kingdoms upon this scheme, and would never have stuck at any terms to obtain it. True or false, I do not know; but what is clear, from all the accounts of that time, is that the figure of 16 was reached apparently without great discussion or great opposition. What is significant is that that figure, after the Act of Union, became so entrenched a part of the constitution that it remained unchanged for 256 years. The number of Scots in another place increased as peerages of Great Britain and, later, the United Kingdom were bestowed upon them, but the original figure of 16 remained unchanged during all the vicissitudes of those 256 years, surviving Reform Acts, preceding and outliving the totally different system of representation for the Irish peerage. Indeed, the number remained unchanged until the Peerages Act, 1963. While that Act removed the representative principle, it improved the representation of the Scottish peers in another place, because it provided that all of them should sit in the House of Lords.

In 1963 there was no breach of the principle of the Act of Union, because the Scottish peers, for the first time, obtained a representation of 100 per cent. of their number.

But the Bill of 1969, wretched in so many ways, breaches the principle of the Act of Union, because it makes no provision at all for Scottish representation in the reformed House.

If we accept the Bill without this, or a similar Amendment, we shall destroy a principle which has been carefully protected by our predecessors for 262 years. By doing that, we shall break the spirit of the Treaty which brought our two nations together.

I agree with those who have said that the Act of Union is not immutable. Of course it is not. What I believe is a matter for regard and respect is the spirit in which the Treaty was devised and in which the Act was finally passed. The spirit of that Treaty brought our two nations together, and we should be careful to protect it.

I recognise that the Prime Minister is aware of the need to have the various nations and regions of our countries represented in one way or another in the reformed House of Lords. My hon. Friend the Member for Ayr referred to the Prime Minister's statement on this matter, and I am sure that the Prime Minister was speaking frankly. The White Paper makes similar references. In paragraph 23 there is this forthright authoritative statement: The Government certainly thinks it essential to include in the reformed House members from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and from the regions of England, but does not believe that it would be desirable or practicable at this stage to establish a reformed second chamber on a regional basis. Paragraph 50 says: There are strong constitutional arguments, based on the presence of Scottish peers in the House of Lords ever since 1707, and practical arguments arising from the existence of separate Scottish law, which make it particularly important that the reformed House should include a suitable number of Scottish peers. With respect to the White Paper, to the Prime Minister, and to the Preamble of the Bill, that is not an adequate assurance. The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale said that he wanted to know how many, and how, and that is precisely what my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr and I want to know. We believe that the answer to "how many?" and "how?" is for this Amendment or one very like it to be incorporated in the Bill. The Bill must provide specifically for Scottish representation

There is another significant sentence in paragraph 50 of the White Paper: There is at present in the House of Lords a considerable number of peers who can speak with authority on the needs of the different parts of the United Kingdom, and the objective must be to ensure that this situation continues in the future. That is right. The interests of Scotland cannot be defended in another place unless it includes an assured minimum number of peers who can speak with authority on Scottish needs.

Perhaps I might give a few examples to show how important this is. If another place is considering the Scottish economy, it is essential that there should be a minimum number of voting peers present in the House who can speak with knowledge and authority on the impact of the Selective Employment Tax on the Scottish economy. They, and only they, can really know the impact that this wretched tax has had on service industries in Scotland. We must have in the other place people who live in the country, who can see the damaging policies of the Government at work, and who can comment sensibly and authoritatively on the effects of a tax such as this.

Equally, we need peers who, when debating employment in Scotland, know from their own experience what is happening in their localities to the local employment figures——

Mr. Emrys Hughes

The hon. Gentleman should bear in mind that Scottish peers who may be industrialists gain from the S.E.T.

Mr. MacArthur

The hon. Gentleman may advance that argument if he likes. I assure him that the impact of the S.E.T. is very damaging indeed, and that this is something which ordinary people know. Industrialists aside, ordinary people know what an impact the S.E.T. has had on the cost of living, and on all the services on which they depend.

Mr. Emrys Hughes rose——

Mr. MacArthur

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will allow me to continue this part of my speech.

The other place also needs peers who know what is happening in Scotland where they live so that they can comment on the other aspects of the employment scene. They would know, and I submit that an English peer would not know, that since the right hon. Gentleman became Secretary of State for Scotland, employment in Scotland has dropped by 30,000 people, which is contrary to all the declarations of the Government.

9.0 a.m.

Scottish residents would know that in order to achieve the Secretary of State's own published target, 90,000 new jobs will have to be provided by next year. It is most unlikely that that will happen and it is important that a minimum number of Scottish voting peers should be provided so that that sort of opinion can be put before another place.

It seems likely that before long there will be a debate in another place about British Standard Time. Is it not important that another place should have a minimum number of Scottish peers who will have experience in their own homes of Standard Time, dark mornings, the extra cost and the misery it has brought. There are many other aspects of daily life which these peers can speak about with authority: the impact of fuel duty on costs in Scotland and the collapse of so many governmental policies and programmes.

The White Paper called attention in paragraph 50 not only to the constitutional argument based on the presence of Scottish peers ever since the 1707 Act, but to the practical argument arising from the existence of a separate Scottish law which my hon. and learned Friend dealt with admirably just now.

Many Scottish Bills are passing through Parliament. In the last long Session, the Scottish Grand and Standing Committees met 71 times considering Scottish matters, and above all legislation. A Standing Committee is now upstairs dealing with the Education (Scotland) Bill which will go to the House of Lords in due course. It is essential that when that is considered in another place, there should be a minimum number of Scottish peers who can vote with authority.

This Bill will deprive Scottish local authorities of the right to charge fees for local schools and this is a serious interference with the principle of freedom of choice in education. It is important, on principle, that local education authorities should have some discretion in shaping the pattern of education in their areas.

Without a minimum number of Scottish peers to speak in debates with authority, Scottish topics would not be properly debated, nor debates on them properly attended.

Mr. Emrys Hughes

If the hon. Gentleman takes that argument to its logical conclusion, he will be advocating Home Rule.

Mr. MacArthur

Not at all, but that Scottish interests should be properly represented in the Lords. There is another reason for suggesting the one-tenth. The figure is reasonably in accord with the basis of the Commissioners' work of 1707. Whether or not it relates to the Scottish contribution to the Exchequer, the 10 per cent. is not unreasonable. The population point also occupied the Commissioners, and the one-tenth means that this is about Scotland's share of the population at present. About 10 per cent. of noble Lords now in another place reside in Scotland. They declare an address in Scotland, which would qualify them for inclusion in another place under the Amendment. Of the 1,062 peers in another place, 115 have addresses in Scotland; that is, 108 whose addresses I have been able to identify and seven others who do not disclose a Scottish address but who I know live in Scotland.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. William Ross)

Are they all Scots?

Mr. MacArthur

Not all, but there is nothing new in this. Over the years since 1707, the 16 peers have not always all been Scots. Sir James Ferguson makes this point forcibly in his book "The Sixteen Peers", which I recommend to the right hon. Gentleman——

Mr. Ross

Of the 16 peers elected in 1959, two gave English addresses.

Mr. MacArthur

I do not dispute this, but 115 Lords in another place today live in Scotland. Some will be English peers living in Scotland, but the vast majority are Scots. If I read out the list, in every name the right hon. Gentleman would hear the skirling of the pipes——

Mr. Ross

But many valuable Scottish peers who participate in another place are ordinarily resident in England, and the Amendment would exclude them.

Mr. MacArthur

Not at all. If they are worthy contributors to the workings of another place, they will be able to stay there. But not less than one-tenth should have their normal residence in Scotland The 115 represent 10.82 per cent, of the composition of another place, so that figure is about right on all counts.

We should pay special regard to the pattern of history and the care with which our predecessors guaranteed Scotland's representation in both Houses of Parliament. This can only be done through the Amendment or a similar one.

Mr. Callaghan

The speech of the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur) was comprehensive, and, I am sure, interesting, but some of his arguments sounded very familiar. Perhaps, in the middle of the night, coming events cast their shadow before. Many of the points have been dealt with.

This group of Amendments covers a wider range of affairs than Scotland, although that has predominated in the debate. Some English Members have spoken, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon). There is no difference between any of the speakers on the need for strong regional representation for England, strong Welsh representation for Wales and strong Scottish representation for Scotland.

I thought, at one point, that the hon. Member was going to march with us, because he said that the spirit was more important than the actual terms. If I can satisfy him that the spirit is there and should be carried out, I hope that he will translate him speech into action when we come, as I shall shortly invite the Committee to do, to a conclusion.

There is no difference between us about the need for a suitable number of peers with a knowledge and experience of Scotland, as well as other parts of the United Kingdom, to be in the Upper House. I agree that it is very important in the case of Scottish peers, because of the need to secure proper examination of Scottish Bills. I leave aside the Treaty of Union at the moment. I do not wish to argue about it; I thought that the case was strongly made out. As for the spirit of the matter, from the calculations made in the discussions we had there is little doubt that Scotland will have more than 16 and more than the 10 per cent. which has been put forward in the Amendment. It almost certainly follows that this would be the case. That being so, I claim that the spirit of the Amendment is being met.

I can see no reasons—except technical ones—why it should not be written into the Bill, but it could be disadvantageous to Scotland. It could present difficulties for the House of Lords, and it seems fair to operate on the basis of the spirit and understandings to which the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire referred.

If the Bill were to lay down minimum proportions of both voting and nonvoting peers for about a dozen different regions or countries of the United Kingdom it would be extremely difficult to comply with them all and at the same time to observe the conventions and the political balance of the House. That is a practical consideration, because there is no difference in principle about what we want to do; there never was in our discussions, and there is not now.

There was hardly a word of the hon. Member's speech with which I disagreed—certainly not on the point to which he referred at the start, namely, the difficulty of drawing English regions as tightly as the Scottish ones. That is quite right, so we should rely on the convention and upon the spirit in which it is being approached.

The only other major difference I have with the hon. Member is that he seemed to be unduly condemning a number of former Scottish Ministers by his insistence on the need for residence in Scotland. The former James Stuart would not have qualified; nor would Lord Drumalbyn, nor Lord Craigton. [An HON. MEMBER: "Lord Reith?"] Lord Reith was a Minister of sorts, but not in the strict party sense. Sticking to those that we have known in this Chamber, it would be a bold man on either side of the Committee who would claim that because they did not reside in Scotland they did not understand Scotland's needs. That is the case that the hon. Member was making. The names to which I have referred illustrate the difficulties that would arise if an Amendment of this sort were to be put into the statutes.

The hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Mr. Wylie), to whom I listen on legal questions with great interest and profit, seemed to dismiss rather lightly, with a wave of his Order Paper, the difficulty of defining those who are ordinarily resident in Scotland and those who are domiciled in Scotland. The meanings of the phrase "ordinarily resident" and the word "domiciled" he will probably know better than I do but, as I discovered in my time with the Treasury and the Inland Revenue—and as the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) will confirm—the courts are littered with cases concerning domicile and residence. It would be very poor advice from any Government if they asked the Committee to accept an Amendment that attempted to write in this phrase, which has been so productive of litigation in Inland Revenue cases, without a great deal more elucidation than we have had up to now.

Mr. Wylie

The Minister should recollect that I never used the word "domiciled". I agree that that is a very different thing. The phrase "ordinarily resident", as defined, is much simpler.

Mr. Callaghan

I am obliged to the hon. Member, but one Amendment refers to domicile. Those who tabled the Amendment were conscious of the difficulties. This is a practical problem, and none of the speeches from hon. Gentlemen opposite about Scotland, while I agreed with them in principle, overcame the difficulties inherent in the Amendment. In other words, it cannot be shown that Scotland would do as well under the Amendment as it will do under the Bill as drafted.

9.15 a.m.

Although hon. Gentlemen opposite have spoken in good faith and from a desire to assist, I do not believe that Scotland's interest would be served by accepting the Amendment. It would be better to rely on the spirit of the convention which has governed, and will continue to govern, this matter. The difficulty was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne, who said that successful people naturally gravitate towards London. Hon. Members may consider that to be either sensible or mad. I prefer to live outside London. It is all very well wanting to live in the centre when one is in one's 20s, but at my advanced age I would sooner be away from the place.

Both parties—and certainly the Prime Ministers of both parties—have found it difficult to get people to serve in the Lords if they live and work in the provinces, Scotland or in Wales. It is a continuing difficulty to find the appropriate people. This problem can best be overcome by making a conscious attempt—which is made by those concerned with these matters and which has been made by former Administrations—to ensure a fair balance from the regions.

We should be getting ourselves in a lot of trouble if, as one Amendment in the group suggests, we imposed a statutory obligation on the Lords in certain circumstances to accept a resolution praying Her Majesty to create more peers. Constitutional difficulties would arise if, for any reason, it wished to refrain from accepting such a resolution, if it felt that that was the best course to take.

For these reasons I must advise the Committee, on the basis of what has taken place so far and on the basis of the acceptance of the principle involved—and no hon. Member has challenged the strong desire of all the parties to see strong regional representation—to leave matters as proposed, coupled with the safeguard, if it is needed, contained in paragraph 31 of the White Paper, which says: The Government does however see attraction in the possibility of a committee which, while possessing no power of nomination, would review periodically the composition of the reformed House and report, either to the Prime Minister or to Parliament, on any deficiences in the balance and range of the membership of the House. It goes on to refer to its membership, and adds: Its reports would enable Parliament and the country as a whole to satisfy themselves that the powers of patronage were not being abused. I betray no secret in saying that when the three parties discussed these matters this was regarded as a committee which would look at this balance and see that it was being preserved, so that if Wales or Scotland fell behind—I do not believe that they will; and the same applies to the regions—it could draw attention to the fact. I believe that we shall find Prime Ministers careful in this matter, especially in view of the growth of regionalism, of which I am in favour and which—leaving Scotland and Wales for the moment—is a desirable development. Therefore, I do not feel that the Committee will ever have much to challenge—at least, not in my time.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

The right hon. Gentleman used, no doubt inadvertently, the word "safeguard". On reflection, does he really feel that a statement in a White Paper, itself not embodied in the Bill, and amounting to no more than a Government saying that they see attraction in a committee, can compare as a safeguard with a statutory provision in the Bill?

Mr. Callaghan

The right hon. Gentleman is comparing like with unlike.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

Exactly.

Mr. Callaghan

Then there is not much point in making the comparison.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

The right hon. Gentleman is.

Mr. Callaghan

I am not making the comparison between putting this in the Bill and having a committee to safeguard these matters. I have explained before and will not go over it again—the right hon. Gentleman is acute enough to understand what I said—that I think that Scotland could come worse out of this as a result of the Amendment. For those practical difficulties I

invite the Committee to turn it down. The committee would be a safeguard as to whether the proper balance was being maintained.

I say to the right hon. Gentleman, who is a lawyer, that he must at times get away from the letter of the law and look at its spirit. The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.

All my hon. Friends, with our Baptist and even our Methodist backgrounds, know these texts. I commend them to the right hon. Gentleman. I repeat again—it is the essence of the scheme, which we cannot avoid, whatever arguments right hon. and hon. Members may advance, that it depends on conventions, good faith and understandings. Hon. Gentlemen opposite may dismiss all that. I agree that one cannot have good faith among people who are not gentlemen. [Interruption.] If the right hon. Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Hugh Fraser) is trying to attract that title to himself, he can.

What we have done is to insist and ensure that this good faith and these conventions will continue. When the right hon. Member for Stafford and Stone is in a less excitable frame of mind he will quietly admit that this is so, and he knows it.

In Scotland's interest, I genuinely could not advise that the Amendment should be accepted. It is far better that we should operate on the basis laid down by the Government in the speeches that have been made.

Several Hon. Members rose——

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury and Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Silkin) rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question put, That the Question be now put: —

The Committee divided: Ayes 130, Noes 39.

Division No. 93.]	AYES	[9.23 a.m.
Alldritt, Waller	Binns, John	Brooks, Edwin
Anderson, Donald	Bishop, E. S.	Brown, R. W. (Shoreditch & F'bury)
Archer, Peter	Blackburn, F.	Buchan, Norman
Bagier, Gordon A. T.	Boardman, H. (Leigh)	Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)
Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood	Boyden, James	Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James
Bennett, James (G'gow, Bridgeton)	Bray, Dr. Jeremy	Carmichael, Neil
Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara	Howarth, Robert (Boiton, E.)	Oram, Albert E.
Coe, Denis	Hoy, James	Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, S'tn)
Coleman, Donald	Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)	Parker, John (Dagenham)
Concannon, J. D.	Hunter, Adam	Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)
Crawshaw, Richard	Irvine, Sir Arthur (Edge Hill)	Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred
Cullen, Mrs. Alice	Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)	Pentland, Norman
Dalyell, Tam	Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)	Perry, Ernest G. (Battersea, S.)
Davidson, Arthur (Accrington)	Jones, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn (W.Ham, S.)	Probert, Arthur
Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)	Jones, J. Idwal, (Wrexham)	Rees, Merlyn
Davies, Dr. Ernest (Stretford)	Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, West)	Richard, Ivor
Davies, Ifor (Gower)	Lawson, George	Roberts, Albert (Normanton)
Delargy, Hugh	Lestor, Miss Joan	Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy
Dell, Edmund	Lever, Harold (Cheetham)	Robinson, Rt. Hn. Kenneth (St. P'c'as)
Diamond, Rt. Hn. John	Lipton, Marcus	Ross, Rt. Hn. William
Doig, Peter	Loughlin, Charles	Rowlands, E.
Edwards, William (Merioneth)	Lubbock, Eric	Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)
Ellis, John	MacColl, James	Short, Rt. Hn. Edward (N'c' tle -u-Tyne)
English, Michael	Macdonald, A. H.	Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)
Ennals, David	McKay, Mrs. Margaret	Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)
Ensor, David	Mackenzie, Alasdair (Ross & Crom'ty)	Skeffington, Arthur
Evans, Fred (Caerphilly)	Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)	Steele, Thomas (Dunbartonshire, W.)
Evans, Ioan L. (Birm'h'm, Yardley)	Mackie, John	Thomas, Rt. Hn. George
Fernyhough, E.	Maclennan, Robert	Thomson, Rt. Hn. George
Fowler, Gerry	McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)	Thornton, Ernest
Fraser, John (Norwood)	McNamara, J. Kevin	Tinn, James
Freeson, Reginald	MacPherson, Malcolm	Urwin, T. W.
Gardner, Tony	Marks, Kenneth	Varley, Eric G.
Greenwood, Rt. Hn. Anthony	Millan, Bruce	Wainwright, Edwin (Deame Valley)
Grey, Charles (Durham)	Miller, Dr. M. S.	Walker, Harold (Doncaster)
Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)	Milne, Edward (Blyth)	Watkins, David (Consett)
Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)	Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)	Watkins, Tudor (Brecon & Radnor)
Hamilton, James (Bothwell)	Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)	White, Mrs. Eirene
Hamling, William	Morris, John (Aberavon)	Woodburn, Rt. Hn. A.
Hannan, Willam	Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick	Woof, Robert
Harper, Joseph	Murray, Albert
Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)	Neal, Harold	TELLERS FOR THE AYES:
Hart, Rt. Hn. Judith	Ogden, Eric	Mr. Alan Fitch and
Haseldine, Norman	O'Malley, Brian	Mr. Neil McBride.
Healey, Rt. Hn. Denis
NOES
Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)	Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)	Ridley, Hn. Nicholas
Birch, Rt. Hn. Nigel	Harvie Anderson, Miss	Ridsdale, Julian
Black, Sir Cyril	Holland, Philip	Russell, Sir Ronald
Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John	Hughes, Emrys (Ayrshire, S.)	Ryan, John
Cooke, Robert	Iremonger, T. L.	Sheldon, Robert
Dalkeith, Earl of	Jopling, Michael	Smith, Dudley (W'wick & L'mington)
Deedee, Rt. Hn. W. F. (Ashford)	Kerr, Russell (Feltham)	Taylor, Edward M. (G'gow, Cathcart)
Farr, John	Monro, Hector	Ward, Dame Irene
Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)	Orme, Stanley	Wright, Esmond
Fortescue, Tim	Page, John (Harrow, W.)	Wylie, N. R.
Fraser, Rt. Hn. Hugh (St'ford & Stone)	Paget, R. T.
Galbraith, Hn, T. G.	Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch	TELLERS FOR THE NOES:
Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)	Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James	Mr. George Younger and
Goodhart, Philip	Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon	Mr. Ian Mac Arthur.
Hall, John (Wycombe)

Question put accordingly, That the Amendment be made: —

The Committee divided: Ayes 34, Noes 131.

Division No. 94.]	AYES	[9.30 a.m.
Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)	Goodhart, Philip	Ridley, Hn. Nicholas
Birch, Rt. Hn. Nigel	Harvie Anderson, Miss	Ridsdale, Julian
Black, Sir Cyril	Holland, Philip	Russell, Sir Ronald
Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John	Iremonger, T. L.	Smith, Dudley (W'wick & L'mington)
Cooke, Robert	Jopling, Michael	Taylor, Edward M. (G'gow, Cathcart)
Dalkeith, Earl of	Lubbock, Eric	Ward, Dame Ircne
Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F. (Ashford)	Mackenzie, Alasdair (Ross&Crom'ty)	Wright, Esmond
Farr, John	Monro, Hector	Wylie, N. R.
Fortescue, Tim	Osborn, John (Hallam)
Fraser, Rt. Hn. Hugh (St'frord & Stone)	Page, John (Harrow, W.)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES:
Galbraith, Hn. T. G.	Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch	Mr. Ian Mac Arthur and
Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)	Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James	Mr. George Younger.
Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, East)	Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon
NOES
Alldritt, Walter	Greenwod, Rt. Hn. Anthony	Morris, John (Aberavon)
Anderson, Donald	Grey, Charles (Durham)	Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Archer, Peter	Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)	Murray, Albert
Bagier, Gordon A. T.	Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)	Neal, Harold
Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood	Hamilton, James (Bothwell)	Ogden, Eric
Bennett, James (G'gow, Bridgeton)	Hamling, William	O'Malley, Brian
Binns, John	Hannan, William	Oram, Albert E
Bishop, E. S.	Harper, Joseph	Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, S'tn)
Blackburn, F.	Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)	Parker, John (Dagenham)
Booth, Albert	Hart, Rt. Hn. Judith	Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)
Boyden, James	Haseldine, Norman	Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred
Bray, Dr. Jeremy	Healey, Rt. Hn. Denis	Pentland, Norman
Brooks, Edwin	Howarth, Robert (Bolton, E.)	Perry, Ernest G. (Battersea, S.)
Brown, R. W. (Shoreditch & F'bury)	Hoy, James	Probert, Arthur
Buchan, Norman	Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)	Rees, Merlyn
Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)	Hughes, Emrys (Ayrshire, S.)	Rhodes, Geoffrey
Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James	Hunter, Adam	Richard, Ivor
Carmichael Neil	Irvine, Sir Arthur (Edge Hill)	Roberts, Albert (Normanton)
Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara	Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)	Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy
Coe, Denis	Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)	Robinson, Rt. Hn. Kenneth (St.P'c'as)
Coleman, Donald	Jones, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn (W.Ham, S.)	Ross, Rt. Hn. William
Concannon, J. D.	Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)	Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)
Crawshaw, Richard	Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, West)	Short, Rt. Hn. Edward (N'c'tle-u-Tyne)
Cullen, Mrs. Alice	Lawson, George	Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)
Dalyell Tam	Lestor, Miss Joan	Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)
Davidson, Arthur (Accrington)	Lever, Harold (Cheetham)	Skeffington, Arthur
Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)	Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)	Steele, Thomas (Dunbartonshire W.)
Davies, Dr. Ernest (Stretford)	Lipton, Marcus	Thomas, Rt. Hn. George
Davies, Ifor (Gower)	Lomas Kenneth	Thomson, Rt. Hn. George
Delargy, Hugh	Loughlin, Charles	Thomson, Ernest
Dell, Edmund	MacColl, James	Tinn, James
Diamond, Rt. Hn. John	Macdonald, A. H.	Urwin, T. W.
Doig, Peter	McKay, Mrs. Margaret	Varley, Eric G.
Edwards, William (Merioneth)	Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)	Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne Valley)
Ellis, John	Mackie, John	Walker, Harold (Doncaster)
English, Michael	Maclennan, Robert	Watkins, David (Consett)
Ennals, David	McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)	Watkins, Tudor (Brecon & Radnor)
Ensor, David	McNamara, J. Kevin	White, Mrs. Eirene
Evans, Fred (Caerphilly)	Macpherson, Malcolm	Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)
Evans, Ioan L. (Birm'h'm, Yardley)	Marks, Kenneth	Woodburn, Rt. Hn. A.
Fernyhough, E.	Millan, Bruce	Woof, Robert
Fowler, Gerry	Miller, Dr. M. S.
Fraser, John (Norwood)	Milne, Edward (Blyth)	TELLERS FOR THE NOES:
Freeson, Reginald	Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)	MY. Alan Pitch and
Gardner, Tony	Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)	Mr. Neil McBride.

The CHAIRMAN, being of the opinion that the principle of the Clause and any matters arising thereon had been adequately discussed in the course of debate on the Amendments proposed thereto, forthwith put the Question, pursuant to

Standing Order No. 47 (Debate on Clause or Schedule standing part), That the Clause stand part of the Bill: —

The Committee divided: Ayes, 125, Noes 42.

Division No. 95.]	AYES	[9.36 a.m.
Alldritt, Walter	Crawshaw, Richard	Greenwood, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Anderson, Donald	Cullen, Mrs. Alice	Grey, Charles (Durham)
Archer, Peter	Dalyell, Tam	Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)
Bagier, Gordon A. T.	Davidson, Arthur (Accrington)	Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood	Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)	Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
Bennett, James (G'gow, Bridgeton)	Davies, Dr. Ernest (Stretford)	Hamling, William
Binns, John	Delargy, Hugh	Hannan, William
Bishop, E. S.	Dell, Edmund	Harper, Joseph
Blackburn, F.	Diamond, Rt. Hn. John	Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
Boyden, James	Doig, Peter	Hart, Rt. Hn. Judith
Bradley, Tom	Edwards, William (Merioneth)	Haseldine, Norman
Bray, Dr. Jeremy	Ellis, John	Herbison, Rt. Hn. Margaret
Brooks, Edwin	English, Michael	Howarth, Robert (Bolton, E.)
Brown, R. W. (Shoreditch & F'bury)	Ensor, David	Hoy, James
Buchan, Norman	Evans, Fred (Caerphilly)	Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)	Evans, Ioan L. (Birm'h'm, Yardley)	Hunter, Adam
Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James	Fernyhough, E.	Irvine, Sir Arthur (Edge Hill)
Carmichael, Neil	Fitch, Alan (Wigan)	Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)
Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara	Fowler, Gerry	Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)
Coe, Denis	Fraser, John (Norwood)	Jones, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn (W.Ham, S.)
Coleman, Donald	Freeson, Reginald	Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)
Concannon, J. D.	Gardner, Tony	Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, West)
Lawson, George	Mulley, Rt, Hn. Frederick	Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)
Lestor, Miss Joan	Murray, Albert	Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)
Lever, Harold (Cheetham)	Ogden, Eric	Skeffington, Arthur
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)	O'Malley, Brian	Steele, Thomas (Dunbartonshire, W.)
Lipton, Marcus	Oram, Albert E.	Thomas, Rt. Hn. George
Lomas, Kenneth	Parker, John (Dagenham)	Thomson, Rt. Hn. George
Loughlin, Charles	Pavitt, Laurence	Thornton. Ernest
Macdonald, A. H.	Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)	Tinn, James
McKay, Mrs. Margaret	Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred	Varley, Eric G.
Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)	Pentland, Norman	Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne Valley)
Mackie, John	Perry, Ernest G. (Battersea, S.)	Walker, Harold (Doncaster)
Maclennan, Robert	Probert, Arthur	Watkins, David (Consett)
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)	Rees, Merlyn	Watkins, Tudor (Brecon & Radnor)
McNamara, J. Kevin	Rhodes, Geoffrey	White, Mrs. Eirene
MacPherson, Malcolm	Richard, Ivor	Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)
Marks, Kenneth	Roberts, Albert (Normanton)	Woodburn, Rt. Hn. A.
Millan, Bruce	Roborts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy	Woof, Robert
Miller, Dr. M. S.	Robinson, Rt. Hn. Kenneth (St. P'c'as)
Milne, Edward (Blyth)	Ross, Rt. Hn. William	TELLERS FOR THE AYES:
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)	Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)	Mr. Charles R. Morris and
Morris, John (Aberavon)	Short, Rt. Hn. Edward (N'c"tle-u-Tyne)	Mr. Neil McBride.
NOES
Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)	Hell, John (Wycombe)	Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James
Biggs-Davison, John	Harvie Anderson, Miss	Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon
Birch, Rt. Hn. Nigel	Holland, Philip	Ridsdale, Julian
Black, Sir Cyril	Hughes, Emrys (Ayrshire, S.)	Ryan, John
Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John	Iremonger, T. L.	Sheldon, Robert
Braine, Bernard	Jopling, Michael	Smith, Dudley (W'wick & L'mington)
Dalkeith, Earl of	Kerr, Russell (Feltham)	Taylor, Edward M. (G'gow, Cathcart)
Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F. (Ashford)	Lubbock, Eric	Waddington, David
Farr, John	MacArthur, Ian	Ward, Dame Irene
Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)	Mackenzie, Alasdair (Ross & Crom'ty)	Wright, Esmond
Fortescue, Tim	Monro, Hector	Wylie, N. R.
Fraser, Rt. Hn. Hugh (St'fford & Stone)	Osborn, John (Hallam)
Galbraith, Hn. T. G.	Page, John (Harrow, W.)	TELLERS FOR THE NOES:
Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)	Paget, R. T.	Mr. Nicholas Ridley and
Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)	Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch	Mr. George Younger.
Goodhart, Philip

9.45 a.m.

The Chairman

The next Amendment selected is No. 20.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

On a point of order. Mr. Irving, when, on Clause 1, you exercised the discretion entrusted to you by Standing Order No. 47, I understood you to indicate at the time that it was not open to any hon. Member to challenge the exercise of your discretion save by the tabling of a substantive Motion.

For the guidance of the Committee, as you have again—and I am not at this stage voicing a criticism—exercised that discretion so that no debate on the Question, That Clause 2 stand part of the Bill, has been possible, will you tell me whether those of us who are profoundly disturbed by these decisions are left with the unhappy choice between either acquiescing in the decisions which, with great respect, we regard as wrong, or taking a course which I personally must very much regret having to take?

The Chairman

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. The procedure is that he must submit in the normal way a substantive Motion which must go on the Order Paper.

Mr. Ian Gilmour

May I have your guidance, Mr. Irving?

Like several of my hon. Friends I attended the debate at 9 o'clock last night and, save for a brief interval for a bath and a shave, I have been here ever since. I aimed to make a speech on the general subject of the payment of peers, but the Closure was moved by the hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. O'Malley). I aimed to make a speech on the regional qualifications of peers, but the Closure was moved by the Government Chief Whip, who had an agreeable night in bed following on a party. There was then no debate on the Question, That the Clause stand part of the Bill, and I was wondering whether this did not cause you as much distress as it caused me and many of my hon. Friends.

I know how keen the Chair is to safeguard the rights of private Members, and I am sure that you personally are even more anxious than normally, but it does seem that the rights of private Members are being infringed, in that they stay up for hours and are never likely to be called to make a speech during the debate on the entire Clause. I wonder what arrangements there are for overcoming this difficulty.

The Chairman

I am sorry that I cannot help the hon. Member. I advised his right hon. Friend about procedure. I cannot hear the hon. Member further on this matter, which, indeed, is a criticism of the Chair.

Mr. Hugh Fraser

Further to the point of order. We are in great difficulty, Mr. Irving, about the whole of the Bill. Neither Front Bench will say whether there is to be payment of peers. We do not know what to tell our constituents. We do not know what to tell the country. It is impossible to proceed——

The Chairman

Order. I am not sure what the right hon. Gentleman is addressing me about. It does not appear to be a point of order.

Mr. Fraser

This is a point of order, I submit, Mr. Irving, in so far as it affects the reputation of the House of Commons.

We are attempting to legislate without any clarity of what either Government or Opposition objectives are. This surely must be a point of order, because the reputation of the House of Commons is at stake. We simply cannot go on in this fashion, making a monkey of the constitution, without telling the country what it will cost.

The Chairman

I cannot help the right hon. Gentleman. That is not a matter for the Chair.

Mr. Biggs-Davison

Further to the point of order——

The Chairman

It was not a point of order.

Mr. Biggs-Davison

On a point of order, Mr. Irving. I know that most of us who have been through the night in Committee are, perhaps, becoming a little jaded, and we all have the greatest sympathy with you in the task which has been placed upon you and are full of admiration for the way in which you are taking the Chair.

I am sure that the last thing that my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, Central (Mr. Ian Gilmour) wanted to do was in any way to come into conflict with the Chair, or to reflect upon the conduct of the Chair. His difficulty does not arise from the way in which the Chair has been taken—and, in my opinion, it has been taken in the most admirable manner. It arises from the insistence of Her Majesty's Government in applying the Closure to our debates.

We are debating a constitutional change to upset the growth of centuries and the Government expect this to be forced through within a few days. This is the difficulty in which we are placed. I appeal to you, Mr. Irving, to allow this point of view to be expressed in the hearing of Ministers so that they may reflect upon the way in which they are conducting these debates and allow free speech in the Committee, because it would be a tremendous reflection upon the House of Commons, and it would not look well in the history books of the future, if this great Measure is forced through in this unseemly manner. Indeed, it is becoming quite absurd that we are now still sitting——

The Chairman

Order. I have the gravamen of the point that the hon. Member is making. I am grateful to him for his earlier remarks. I cannot comment on the action of the Government. I might, however, comment on the question of the Closure which was raised by his hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, Central (Mr. Ian Gilmour). The rules of the House recognise that in the exercise of the Closure it will not be possible for every hon. Member who wishes to speak to do so.

Mr. Ridsdale

On a point of order. I sympathise with you, Mr. Irving. I know that your task has been very difficult, as we have had such a long sitting, but my point of order is a simple one. I have wished to speak on some of the Amendments to Clauses 1 and 2. Every time I have got up to speak, the Closure has been moved.

I wonder, therefore, Mr. Irving, whether it is possible for you to protect the rights of back-benchers like myself who wish to speak on an important constitutional Bill so that we may express our opinion about it. Three times I have been thwarted by the decision of the Chair. Each time as I have got up to speak, the Closure has been moved.

I hope that when you are considering the future conduct of the Bill you will bear in mind the rights of back-benchers, and will consider allowing us, if it is possible, to debate the Question, That the Clause stand part of the Bill. If we are allowed to debate this on further parts of the Bill, back-benchers like myself will be able to take part in what to many of us is a most important Constitutional Bill.

The Chairman

I am sorry if the hon. Member was unable to get in to the debate. I cannot comment further on that, and I cannot give any undertaking for the future. I have heard what the hon. Member has said.

Mr. Sheldon

On a point of order. It may be of advantage to the Committee to know, and certainly I wish to know, whether, when you accept the Closure Motion, you consider the difference between this Bill and an ordinary one. Is this something that you take into account? If we could be informed whether the Chair recognises this as a rather different kind of Bill, perhaps we might adjust our speeches accordingly.

My second point relates to the selection of Amendments. Does this also——

The Chairman

Order. The hon. Member has expressed both those points to me on more than one occasion during the course of the discussions on the Bill. I cannot discuss these matters beyond saying, as I have already said during this sitting, that the Chair, in exercising its discretion to accept such Motions, takes all the circumstances into account.

Mr. Powell

On a point of order. Mr. Irving, may I seek your guidance, and, with respect, put a point to you? In the terms of Standing Order No. 47,1 entirely appreciate that the purpose of a Standing Order is to avoid a repetition of the debate where one or more discussions on an Amendment to a Clause have in effect gone to the substance of the Clause.

The difficulty which I wish to put to you, and on which I think I am not the only Member who would, if you can give it, welcome your guidance, is this: before a Clause is passed there are often parts of the Clause on which elucidation is necessary. You will be aware that it is often the custom to seek that elucidation by putting down Amendments to leave out a subsection, with no intention that it should be left out, but simply to have the opportunity of asking the Government, or a Law Officer, to clarify the meaning further.

Quite irrespective of Standing Order No. 47 and the judgment entrusted to you on that point, many of us are finding it difficult to get the elucidation which we require of parts of Clauses which have not arisen in the course of discussing Amendments, and which may not be part of the principle of the Clause. I am sure that any help you could give on that would be greatly appreciated.

The Chairman

The only way that I can help the right hon. Gentleman is by reiterating the terms of the Standing Order, which requires the Chairman to be satisfied about the principles of the Clause. Beyond that I cannot enter a discussion about the decision that I have taken.

Mr. Powell

Further to that point of order. I feel sure that one of the considerations which the Chair takes into account in selecting Amendments is this purpose of Amendments, and the fact that where Standing Order No. 47 is invoked the possibility of obtaining elucidation by means of such Amendments automatically appears to disappear.

The Chairman

I cannot say other than what I have said, that all the circumstances are taken into account, both in the terms of selection, and in the exercise of discretion under Standing Order No. 47.

Mr. Alison

On a point of order. Mr. Irving. You were kind enough to elaborate a moment or two ago the Ruling that you gave by indicating, with your customary delicacy and restraint, that hon. Members could not always expect to be called before the Closure was moved. As one who has been here, without having shaved or bathed, since 9 o'clock last night, I find it extremely unusual, having been accustomed to speak on Finance Bills, to have been called to speak by the Chair, perversely, to support a Motion to report Progress, instead of on the substantive——

The Chairman

Order. The hon. Member is going over again a point of order raised by one of his hon. Friends and with which I have already dealt.

10.0 a.m.

Mr. Philip Goodhart (Beckenham)

Can you tell me, Mr. Irving, when, in the future discussion on the Bill, we shall be able to discuss the general principle of the restriction of the right to vote in the Lords, the underlying principle of Clause 2, which has not yet been discussed?

The Chairman

I am sorry, but I cannot help the hon. Gentleman in this respect.

Mr. John Farr (Harborough)

May I put a fresh point, Mr. Irving? Some hon. Members have stayed here through the night during the discussions on Clause 2 and have not intervened, since the discussions so far have been largely on pay, regional representation and Scotland. There are several other points which many of us would like to raise on the Question, That the Clause stand part of the Bill, and we would have been out of order in doing so earlier in the evening. How can the points which we want to raise and have waited here for some time to raise be dealt with properly?

The Chairman

I cannot add to what I have said. I cannot allow a discussion on the exercise of discretion under Standing Order No. 47.

Mr. Ridley

I am another who has been here all through the night. Although I was able to catch your eye on the Motion to report Progress, I was not able to speak on either Amendment. That shows, in passing, how many of us would like to contribute to these debates. Since this is a very important constitutional Bill, and since we are warned that we are unlikely to get a Report stage, this means that the only opportunity which hon. Members have to talk on various part of the Bill is on the Amendments as they come up one by one. particularly if you, Mr. Irvine, in your wisdom, do not allow a debate on the Question, That the Clause stand part of the Bill. This means that there is only one opportunity and that that has been closured by members of the Government. Surely it should not be allowed that the whole constitution can be changed in this way——

The Chairman

Order. The hon Member cannot speculate on the future stages of the Bill. I have already dealt with the rest of the substance of his point, so far as I am able to give guidance.

Mr. John Hall

I have listened carefully to the points of order which followed the Closure on this Clause. I cannot claim, as some of my colleagues on both sides have done, that I have been here all night, but I came here hoping to take part in the later stages of the debate on the Clause, since the question of voting peers was not covered by any of the Amendments.

We cannot challenge your Ruling, Mr. Irving, and go back on the Closure, which has been voted upon, but it would be helpful if you could give us some guidance for the future. If, on looking through the Amendments on any future Clause, we find that there are no Amendments covering various important aspects of a particular Clause, will you allow the debate to go wide enough to cover all these aspects, in case the Government closure the debate before we can make these points and you refuse to allow a debate on the Question, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.

If you do not allow such a concession, you can see the difficulty in which the Committee is placed. It will find itself, time and time again, unable to debate vital matters relating to the Clause which have not been covered by Amendments which have been exhaustively discussed. Many hon. Members who wish to raise specific points will be completely shut out of the debate.

The Chairman

I have dealt with that point. The argument is against Standing Order No. 47, and the House and Committee have already approved that Standing Order. I cannot allow my exercise of it to be debated in the Committee.

Mr. Lubbock

Are you aware, Mr. Irving, that during this sitting so far 9 hours 50 minutes have been spent discussing the reform of another place, and that if it had not been for the filibusters by hon. Members on both sides of the Committee plenty of opportunities could have been found to discuss the points of substance in the Bill?

Mr. Paget

My problem is that I have not been here all night but I have been recalled and, like many other hon. Members, have appointments for today—one not far from the residence of the hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr). It is very important for hon. Members to know the Government's intentions for today. I should, therefore, like to move, That the Chairman do report Progress and ask leave to sit again, so as to provide an opportunity for the Government to disclose to the Committee their intentions.

This is not merely a question of the convenience of hon. Members; it is a question of the convenience of many other people who are depending on the presence of hon. Members elsewhere. We have no idea whether we shall be able to keep our appointments, or what we shall be able to do. Now that we have disposed of the Clause and progress is being made, surely we should be allowed to provide the Government with an opportunity to express their intentions.

The Chairman

The hon. and learned Member has raised two points. First, the question of the timetable of business is a matter for the Government. On the second point—the submission by the hon. and learned Member of a Motion to report Progress—I cannot accept the Motion.

Mr. John Hall

May I put one point to you, Mr. Irving? Last night, or in the early hours of this morning, it will not have escaped your recollection that mild protests were registered by hon. Members on both sides of the Committee about the action of the Government Whip who closured a debate. During the course of the exchanges which followed you will recall that the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) attempted to move, That the Chairman do report Progress and ask leave to sit again.

At the same time, you will recollect that you said that if we were able to get on with the debate the Motion might be put again. The inference—at least in my mind and in the minds of many other hon. Members—was that if we made some progress during the night you would look favourably on a Motion to report Progress. I am distressed that at ten minutes past ten o'clock in the morning, when hon. Members are too jaded to give proper attention to the matters being debated, you will not accept such a Motion, moved by the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget). I hope that you will reconsider the question.

The Chairman

The Chair does not decide the Question. The province of the Chair is only to decide whether it accepts the submission. In the early hours of the morning the Chair rejected a submission made by an hon. Member, but that did not decide the issue and there was a long debate on the Motion. That the Chairman do report Progress and ask leave to sit again.

Mr. Paget

Further to my point of order You, Mr. Irving, cannot decide the Government timetable. That is entirely for the Government. The traditional opportunity for the Government to explain their timetable is on a Motion to report Progress. Such a Motion is regularly moved, for example, on Finance Bills, at which point the Government say how much progress they wish to make, how many Clauses they intend to get and how the time will be used. Would you agree, Mr. Irving, that the Government should use this opportunity to explain their position to the Committee so that hon. Members may inform those people with whom they have appointments elsewhere?

Sir Gerald Nabarro (Worcestershire, South)

On a point of order——

Mr. Hugh Fraser

On a point of order——

The Chairman

Order. I must call hon. Members in turn. Mr. Hugh Fraser.

Mr. Fraser

As the Leader of the House is in his place, and as it is the duty of the right non. Gentleman to protect the interests of hon. Members and the Committee, may I urge him, Mr. Irving, to explain the Government's intensions in this matter? It is absurd that Government spokesmen should sit silently sulking when there are people outside who are dependent on the movement of hon. Members but who cannot be informed about the likely intentions of the Government with regard to time. Will the Leader of the House now make a statement?

The Chairman

Whether or not the right hon. Gentleman will make a statement is not a matter for the Chair.

Mr. Emrys Hughes

On a point of order. I am in some difficulty. I ask you, Mr. Irving, to reconsider your Ruling in this matter. I have been here all night, protecting the interests of my constituents who are Members of the other place and who are anxious to know more about the emoluments which they may receive when the Bill becomes law. But I am in a dilemma. Like most hon. Members, recently I have received bulky documents representing the various Estimates, both Civil and Defence. These documents, which affect the financial affairs of the nation, must be carefully studied by hon. Members. We must——

The Chairman

Order. The hon. Gentleman is seeking to get me to change my mind on the Ruling which I gave to the submission made by the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget). I cannot do that.

Sir G. Nabarro

On a point of order——

Mr. Emrys Hughes

Order. I was in the midst of putting a point of order.

The Chairman

I will hear points of order in turn. Does the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) have new material to submit to me?

10.15 a.m.

Mr. Emrys Hughes

I probably have not made myself very clear. I do not wish to discuss in detail the contents of those bulky volumes. But we cannot devote our attention to the affairs of this House if we do not get the time and opportunity to consider the documents in preparation for the debates on the Defence Estimates, and there are other documents.

Having sacrificed myself during the night on the altar of my constituents who are Members of the House of Lords, I am now debarred, if the debate goes on, from giving the necessary attention to my other constituents who are interested in reducing public expenditure.

The Chairman

Order. The hon. Gentleman cannot debate on a point of order the Motion to report Progress.

Sir G. Nabarro

I am in some difficulty, Mr. Irving, and I seek your guidance on a point of order. Like the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget), I have just returned to the Committee after eight hours' sleep, and, appropriately refreshed I am, I am—[An HON. MEMBER: "Ready for the Select Committee."] If the hon. Gentleman will wait, I will deal with the Select Committee. That is the very point of order I am raising.

I seek your guidance, Mr. Irving. Which takes precedence—the affairs of this Committee on the Floor of the House or the Select Committee dealing with my affairs upstairs? As you know—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) goes on interrupting me my point of order will take——

Mr. Lubbock

It is not a point of order.

Sir G. Nabarro

If the hon. Gentleman——

The Chairman

Order. I must ask the hon. Gentleman to address the Chair.

Sir G. Nabarro

I am sorry, but I am being interrupted so heavily by Orpington that I cannot get on with my point of order.

Mr. Lubbock

It is not a point of order.

Sir G. Nabarro

Would you, Mr. Irving, cause Orpington to stop bawling at me that it is not a point of order? It is a point of order.

As the Select Committee, dealing with vehicle excise duties, meets again at 4.30 tomorrow afternoon, and I have 16 hours' homework to do in preparation for it, and cannot be present on the Floor of the House, which is to take precedence—the Select Committee or the debates on this Bill? The hon. and learned Member for Northampton seeks to hunt with the Pytchley in a few hours' time and I seek to do my homework for the Select Committee. These are very important duties, his sporting and mine Parliamentary. Would not it be reasonable for the Leader of the House now to have an adjournment until 3.30? The right hon. Gentleman might hear me without nodding dissent, but at least I have his ear.

Which takes precedence, the sporting affairs of the hon. and learned Member for Northampton and my Parliamentary affairs outside the House, or the deliberation on the Bill? Is not it being extended beyond all human reasonableness to go on for this inordinate length of time? It is now 19 hours since the debates began. Many of my hon. Friends are asleep on their feet, or bottoms, and should be given a respite to enjoy the refreshment that I have enjoyed during the past eight hours—eight hours in my bed followed by a good breakfast, a shave and a bath, and then my return to the House properly refreshed. That is my point of order.

The Chairman

Order. Decisions on the questions that the hon. Member put to me are matters for him and the hon. and learned Member. I cannot help him.

Mr. A. Woodburn (Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire)

On a point of order. Is it not the case that the various Standing Orders which you have quoted have been made to prevent minorities in the House obstructing the business of the House? Have we not, as the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) rightly said, been subjected to ridiculous, stupid filibustering that brings the House of Commons into disrepute? Is there nothing in Standing Orders to prevent such disgraceful behaviour, which makes us look ridiculous in the eyes of the public?

The Chairman

Order. I cannot allow discussions on Standing Orders.

Mr. Dudley Smith (Warwick and Leamington)

May I again appeal through you, Mr. Irving, to the Leader of the House? There are ugly rumours going around that the Government intend going throughout the rest of the day, thus killing Question Time——

The Chairman

Order. That has nothing to do with the Chair. The hon. Gentleman must find an opportunity to address his question to the Leader of the House, but not in Committee.

Mr. Dudley Smith

My point is on the precedents. Ministers have come to the Committee, as did the Home Secretary, when he was Chancellor, on the Finance Bill, and given us an indication of the Governments intentions, not always firm, but saying that they thought it necessary to make a little more progress, or that they would go on much longer. While I have been here this morning, we have had no such indication.

The Chairman

Order. I must confirm what I have already said to the hon. Gentleman. This is not a matter for the Chair.

Mr. Edwin Brooks (Bebington)

Further to the point of order raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn). A good deal has been heard during the last few hours about the rights of minorities and the dangers of creating precedents. May I put it that, although the Bill does not have unanimous support from both sides, this is not an exceptional position? If it is to be the practice that the rules of order are to be so abused that a Bill is incapable of meaningful discussion, then this will be a precedent for those of us who may feel strong opposition to future Bills. We may feel that during the speeches of hon. Members, no matter how distinguished, points of order will occur to us in rapid and endless succession. The House will become a laughing-stock, requiring no doubt a Parliament (No. 3) Bill designed to protect itself. I ask you, in the interests of good government, whether this sort of nonsense cannot be put an end to forthwith under the rules of order.

The Chairman

Order. The hon. Gentleman's point of order, if point of order it was, is an argument for getting on to the next Amendment. Mr. Sheldon.

Several Hon. Members rose——

The Chairman

If hon. Gentlemen are raising anything new—Mr. Gilmour.

Mr. Ian Gilmour

It will not have escaped your notice, Mr. Irving, that it is nearly half past ten. At that hour a number of hon. Members of the Committee have to attend other Committees. These include my hon. Friend the Member for Chigwell (Mr. Biggs-Davison), my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald) and my hon. Friend the Member for Barkston Ash (Mr. Alison). I should like to draw your attention, Mr. Irving, to what was said by——

The Chairman

Order. I have ruled on this point of order which was submitted to me by the hon. Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir G. Nabarro). This is a matter for the hon. Member, not the Committee or the Chair. Mr. Sheldon.

Mr. Ridley

On a point of order. When this point was raised with you, Mr. Irving, and you gave your Ruling, the Leader of the House, in his kindness, said that he would make certain that hon. Members serving on a certain Scottish Committee would not be inconvenienced by the Scottish Committee sitting at the same time as a certain Amendment was being discussed in the Chamber. This has set a firm precedent. There are no fewer than four or five hon. Members on this side of the Committee—I cannot speak for hon. Members opposite—who intend to take a prominent part in that debate and in debates in Standing Committees.

Surely what the Leader of the House was prepared to do last week he must be prepared to do today for the same type of situation.

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons rose——

Mr. Paget

On a point of order.

Mr. Peart

Oh, no.

The Chairman

I think that the right hon. Gentleman is addressing me on a point of order.

Mr. Paget

That is precisely what I wanted to ask—on what Question is the Leader of the House addressing us?

The Chairman

I thought that I made it clear that he was addressing us on a point of order. That was why I did not call the hon. and learned Gentleman.

Mr. Peart

I may be able to help the Committee. It is obviously my task to bear in mind the interests of all my colleagues. I have to try to help to get Government business through and to protect the right of the minority.

Sir G. Nabarro

The oppressed minority.

Mr. Peart

I hope that my hon. Friend—I hope that I may still call him my hon. Friend——

Sir G. Nabarro

Certainly.

Mr. Peart

—will recognise that I intervene in good faith. We have had a very long sitting. Let us get along as best we can. I shall be delighted to have discussions with the usual channels. This is the way we must proceed. I hope that hon. Members will remember that Parliament is an important subject for discussion. I have listened to many debates throughout the night. I hope that those who oppose the Bill and those who accept it will let me have an opportunity to discuss matters with the usual channels. I shall be only too pleased to do so and to report to the Committee, but let us get on.

Mr. Iremonger

Further to that point of order.

The Chairman

Order. I should have thought that it was the wish of the Committee, in view of what the right hon. Gentleman has said, to give him the opportunity for which he has asked.

Mr. Iremonger

Further to that point of order. I ask your patience and indulgence for one moment, Mr. Irving.

The Committee will have appreciated the thoughtful and considerate intervention of the Leader of the House which we took in the spirit in which he gave it, but he has raised a slight difficulty for those who oppose the Bill. He said, manifestly helpfully, that he would consider what should be done in consultation with the usual channels. The great problem is that the usual channels are not operating for this Bill. It is difficult for us to feel that consultations, which are undertaken in the best of good faith between the right hon. Gentleman and the usual channels, are consultations in our interests.

The Chairman

That is not a matter for the Chair. Mr. Sheldon.

Mr. Paget

On a point of order.

The Chairman

Order. I called the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon).

Mr. Biggs-Davison

On a point of order.

The Chairman

I hope that neither hon. Gentlemen will persist. I have called Mr. Sheldon to move Amendment No. 20.

Mr. Biggs-Davison

On a point of order. I have no wish to intervene between the Committee and the hon. Member. I look forward to his speech.

However, the Leader of the House said that the future of our proceedings would be discussed through the usual channels. I am not clear whether there are any usual channels. If the right hon. Gentleman intends to find a way of doing what he says, well and good, but the usual channels do not now exist.

10.30 a.m.

The Chairman

I have already indicated to the hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger) that this is not a point of order.

Sir G. Nabarro

On a point of order. Reference has been made to the usual channels. Are you aware, Mr. Irving, that the Tory Party has a free vote in this matter? There are no Tory Whips on and there are no usual channels. I do not receive any guidance from my Front Bench on these important matters. Would you, therefore, inquire, for the protection of an oppressed minority in this matter, what the right hon. Gentleman meant by the "usual channels", for there is none on this side?

The Chairman

I have already ruled that that is not a matter for the Chair.

1. Clause 3
cc1637-87
1. VOTING DECLARATIONS 19,012 words, 1 division