HC Deb 03 February 1976 vol 904 cc1139-50

2.35 p.m.

Mr. Speaker

I wish to say something to the House in amplification of my statement 14 days ago indicating my intention to relinquish this office.

I begin by thanking all those who have served the House and myself during my period of office. I shall not name anyone, thereby maintaining my record while in the Chair. I want to thank my Deputy Chairmen and the Panel. I am grateful to the Departments of the Clerk and the Serjeant at Arms, the Library staff and Hansard, the Vote Office, the police and custodians, the staff of the Refreshment Department and all those engaged in the maintenance and cleaning arrangements in the House, people not always in the public eye but who do a great deal to keep this building functioning. Last, but not least, I am under a special debt to my personal staff.

As to the House itself, one of my illustrious predecessors, Speaker Lowther, who left this office in 1921 after 15 years' service, said that he was conscious that he had obtained the confidence of the House during the early period of his Speakership and was grateful for its continuance. He went on to say that he had sought to preserve the authority and dignity of the Chair and had endeavoured to construe the rules with common sense and without pedantry, although he had been slow to mark what was said amiss. Although the House was not a perfect institution, it was admirably fashioned to express the will of a high-spirited and free people.

Having listened to yesterday's debate, or part of it, and having read the rest of it in the Official Report, I am quite certain that I should not be able today to get away with saying that the House is admirably fashioned. I think that the House is aware of its collective faults—long-windedness, sedentary interruptions, points of order which are not points of order, inability to scrutinise Bills and Statutory Instruments as they should be scrutinised and many other matters which were pointed out yesterday.

On the credit side, however, I think that most hon. Members work extremely hard, and they are a very important, and increasingly important, link between the ordinary citizen and Government Departments and public bodies. They at least can get an answer even though it may not always be a satisfactory one. Although the volume of business means that the check on legislation is far from being as good as it should be, Ministers can be questioned, they can be called to account, and if a majority of the House so decides, it can turn the Government out. These are not inconsiderable matters. Therefore, although politicians as a species have never been popular, do not let us denigrate ourselves too much.

My final admonition is that I hope that every hon. Member will study the fascinating debate we had yesterday. At one stage I nearly decided to change my mind and stay on. However, I am resigning, and doing so primarily because I think that five years is as long as anyone should be expected to occupy this office with its many strains and stresses.

Having made that decision, I had to consider my position as a Member of Parliament. I firmly believe that the Speaker should be elected for a constituency, as are other hon. Members, so as to keep personally in touch with the hopes and fears and the personal and individual needs of many thousands of ordinary men and women, meeting them face to face from time to time, and to know the problems of the area which he represents.

To mark the fact that I am an ordinary Member I have decided, as is my right, to stay on as a Member of this House. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I am grateful for that response. I have also noticed the uneasiness on the surfaces of the usual channels at the prospect of having yet another floating voter. Although I shall stay on, it will be only for a few days. This time next week, or thereabouts, I hope to be unprofitably employed either in the Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham or perhaps in the Manor of Northstead.

Finally, and very seriously and sincerely, I want to thank the House for its tolerance and kindness.

2.39 p.m.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Wilson)

I beg to move, That this House tenders its gratitude to the right hon. Selwyn Lloyd for his skilful, reasonable and firm guidance of our affairs; offers thanks for his personal kindnesses, hospitality and friendship; records appreciation of the clarity of his decisions and his success in achieving fairness to all Members; and unites in wishing him well on his retirement from the Chair to which he has brought such distinction. Having spoken once from that Bench, Mr. Speaker, and twice from this one to express my own pleasure and that of my right hon. and hon. Friends at your election to the Chair, I know that I shall be representing the views of Members on both sides of the House, and of all parties in the House, when I express the sense of loss we all feel arising from your decision, now confirmed as an irrevocable intention, to retire from the Chair.

The whole House will appreciate the emotion you must have felt as you addressed the remarks you have just made to the House. After just over five years in your high office—an office which, as some of us have pointed out on past occasions when you have been elected to the Chair, is often lonely and always onerous—your feeling that the time has come to relinquish the responsibilities and burdens which you have borne with such distinction is one with which the House may sympathise and share.

This is our opportunity to give full expression to the debt of gratitude owed by the House to you personally for the way in which you have presided over our proceedings during the last five years. It is the Government's intention to move a suitable motion in the House later today to mark your retirement, but it is appropriate now to pay tribute to the many skills which you, Mr. Speaker, have brought to the Chair.

You have presided over the deliberations of this House in three successive Parliaments, each very different in character—one where there was an assured and substantial majority for one party, another characterised at the time as a Parliament of minorities, and this Parliament with its blend of minority parties and a small—but enduring—overall majority.

To each Parliament you have brought not just the traditional virtues which the House has come to expect of its Speakers—impartiality, fairness, tolerance and a properly stern sense of the dignity and good reputation of this House, as well as what we have always called for, the occasional temporary attack of total deafness and selective deficiencies of sight. You have also shown qualities which are more personal to you—qualities of wit, good humour and charm—which have both lightened and enlivened the work of the House.

For those of us whose memories go back a few years in this House—I have no doubt of this—there will be total agreement that you have fully upheld the very high standards which all the postwar occupants of the Chair have maintained in the service of this House.

To others—I think particularly here of the two new intakes of Members of Parliament elected in 1974, who have known no other Speaker, and those, newly elected in 1970, for whom you have been Speaker for all but a very brief period in their parliamentary careers—you will be particularly remembered. The first Speaker one has known—the Speaker who first led one past the pitfalls of the rules of order, so forbidding to a new Member—becomes, of course, for each Member of Parliament the embodiment of all future occupants of the Chair.

The whole House will feel the loss of a Speaker who has always given so generously of his time and wisdom to help us all—senior Members, Privy Counsellors, those elected for the first time, the officials of the House, and visitors to this House from home and overseas. As individual Members we have benefited from your knowledge and experience, but as a House we have been enriched by the way in which you have presided over our deliberations.

It was on the last occasion when you were elected to the Chair, Mr. Speaker, that I acknowledged that your conduct of the Speakership had finally converted me from my view—indeed, it was a view held for over a century by the House itself—that a senior ex-Minister should not be elected as Speaker. When one was so elected some years ago there was much criticism in this House, but, Mr. Speaker, because of your conduct of the Chair, many of us have changed our views.

You have also been a Speaker during five years of changes and developments in our procedures—perhaps in some ways it has been a time of more rapid change than we have known in the whole postwar period—in which you have not been ready merely to acquiesce in change but ready also to take an active interest in promoting a more dynamic rôle for Parliament.

You have taken risks. You have created precedents. One that I particularly remember was on a point of order I raised about the operation of the sub judice rule in the case of the thalidomide children. Following your ruling, a subsequent report of the Select Committee on Procedure enabled the House to approve a noteworthy change in our rules and practices. But that, Sir, is only one example.

All of us have benefited from your ability to maintain the dignity and continuity of this House while endorsing change, and at times initiating change by your individual rulings—the most recent, in fact, and an important one, at the beginning of this very parliamentary Session—and in so doing refreshing the practices and procedures of this House.

I have said that the life of Mr. Speaker is a lonely rôle. You have not lacked friends from all parties. Your concern for individual Members, your guidance and help—and your willingness to seek advice—have been of benefit to each of us and to the collective welfare of the House as a whole. As you vacate the Chair for what we all hope will be a vigorous and happy retirement—I have no doubt at all that it will be vigorous—you take with you our best wishes and the warm affection and deep regard of this House.

2.47 p.m.

Mrs. Margaret Thatcher (Finchley)

I rise, Mr. Speaker, wholeheartedly to support the Prime Minister in the motion that he has moved. As the curtain comes down on this most distinguished period of your long and eventful career, I should like to extend to you the affection, gratitude and good wishes of my right hon. and hon. Friends and myself and to say how moving it was to hear you read the Prayers yourself at the beginning of our proceedings today.

In the Shakespearean phrase, you have played many parts. In any one of those parts, most people would have been glad to reach the height which you have attained in all of them. You have been a successful lawyer, a distinguished wartime soldier, a prominent politician, holding some of the highest offices of State, and, most recently, Mr. Speaker of the Mother of Parliaments—a position which, for two centuries of our history, ranked as First Commoner in the land. In case the Shakesperean allusion suggests otherwise, however, let me say that I believe you achieved eminence in each of your parts by dint of dedication and professional competence.

You served the House of Commons in many ways before becoming Speaker—as Leader of the House, and as Chairman of the Committee of Privileges and of the Services Committee.

You have served your country in time of war, to ensure that the Parliament of a free people may continue to meet in free debate. You have served it in peace time, particularly through voluntary work.

Just as the historian has trouble in keeping pace with your career, so have many of your colleagues—some younger than you—had difficulty in keeping up with you in the long-distance walks that you have undertaken on behalf of charity.

You have served your Church, in the tradition of your family. Indeed, Mr. Speaker, it would seem that Methodism bestows certain qualities on a man to make him most fit for Speaker. We must avoid this becoming a necessary qualification.

But it is of your Speakership that we specifically think today. You have presided over three Parliaments, two of which have involved small Government majorities, and you have had to use your casting vote. You have witnessed the passage of hard-fought legislation, with the heightening of tension—and temperature—that this produces, but, as evidence of your patient control over our proceedings and our emotions, you have never resorted to the ultimate weapon of suspending an individual Member—a record to which you have referred and of which we know you must be justifiably proud.

You have, instead, exercised that very necessary quality of humour to break the tension—a humour that was always backed by sound judgment and swift decision. One of your most important weapons has been your pencil, tapping away in criticism of the "selfishness of the long-winded", indicating that time was passing and that many more right hon. and hon. Members had indicated their wish to speak.

You once remarked that the Chair had a memory—a warning which, if newspapers are correct, is backed up by a red ledger—your special little "Red Book" recording not the sayings of Members but the length of time that they took to say them.

While we honour you today as our Speaker, may I and my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Opposition side of the House thank you, as one of our Members, for your years of friendship, encouragement and guidance?

The office of Speaker commands our loyalty and support. Only the holder of this office can gain what you will take away with you today—our love and admiration. We shall miss you, our most devoted and faithful servant.

2.50 p.m.

Mr. Jeremy Thorpe (Devon, North)

Five years ago, Mr. Speaker, I was fortunate enough to catch your eye, as Speaker-elect, and to wish you in your very difficult task—your very great, your very important and your very lonely task—every possible success.

I do not see why we should balk the fact that your election was not exactly what might be called tranquil, and you yourself, on 12th January 1971, passed the remark: … my political past has not been entirely free from controversy."—[Official Report, 12th January 1971; Vol. 809, c. 25.] Indeed, we had the second contested election since 1895. If you thought that then, how wrong you would be to think it now, because there is no doubt that the whole House today salutes you as a Speaker who has been firm and impartial and who has upheld every one of the traditions of this House.

It is high praise indeed to say of a man that he brought to the Speakership all the qualities that were required of the occupant of the Chair, but I believe that it is even rarer to say that a man brought additional qualities to the Chair which enhanced and increased the prestige of the Chair itself. I believe, with respect, that you have done that.

Your powers, of course, are severely limited. John Wilkes once asked Mr. Speaker Onslow what was the effect of naming Members. The Speaker replied, "The Lord in Heaven only knows." In fact, the authority of the Speaker rests upon his ability to gain the confidence of his fellow Members of Parliament and their respect for his fairness, and the fact that he is held in the highest regard. By that test, your authority has been immense.

But it is not the task of the Speaker to wield power in an authoritarian sense. He has to gauge the temper of the House. He has to deal with a situation in which, from a moment of tranquillity, the House is cast into turbulence. He has to take not only the right decision but a decision that is based on common sense, not without humour, and sometimes with the necessary degree of firmness. That you have also achieved.

You have done something else; you have sought to see that in our debates all shades of opinion were fairly represented. Minorities within parties have always existed, and this has been something that all Speakers have come to accept. But in a situation now, in which there are more parties than there have been in 50 years, you have suggested that perhaps our procedures have not caught up as quickly as you would have wished. But it has been your task to see that, with the fairness with which you have held the ring, all shades of opinion have fairly been recognised. The scrupulous fairness is something for which I, as a member of a minority party, feel deeply grateful.

We do not know what the future holds for you, Mr. Speaker. We hope that you will not be too far away from us in this House. The first Welshman—the first of your distinguished race—to become Speaker of this House was Mr. William Williams of Llantrisant, in 1680. He was Recorder of Chester. You started as Recorder of Wigan. Mr. Williams had a rather more tempestuous career than you did. He had to expel two Members, the second of whom was Sir Robert Peyton. He knelt in front of the Speaker and, after a few well-chosen words from the Speaker—words of a highly partisan nature—he was expelled. At the Dissolution he was unwise enough to challenge Mr. Speaker to a duel. Mr. Speaker reported Sir Robert Peyton to the Privy Council, and he was committed to the Tower. You, Sir, have had no such grave problems.

You have held many, if not almost all, of the great offices of State. In that capacity you have been a great servant of the Crown. You have also, in perhaps some of the less glamorous positions—as Chairman of the Services Committee and of the Committee of Privileges, Leader of the House and, finally, Speaker of this House—also been the servant of the House of Commons. Your first great joy must be that never again will you have to listen to a speech as a matter of duty, but your second great joy must be that in serving Parliament you have served the cause of democracy. Therefore, those outside this House who believe in democracy have cause to salute you.

It remains only for us to assure you of our gratitude, our good wishes and our deep affection.

2.56 p.m.

Mr. Donald Stewart (Western Isles)

On behalf of my hon. Friends, Mr. Speaker, may I associate myself with the fitting tributes which have been expressed by other right hon. Members today and convey our sense of loss at your departure from the Speakership?

We are grateful for your fair and helpful attitude to us in the Chamber at all times and for your courtesy and unfailing assistance on the occasions on which we have had to see you in your office.

We were glad also that our views on the rights of minorities to be heard so often coincided with your own views.

Speaking as a Back Bencher—and this has not been mentioned so far—I think that it should be put on record that your interest in and your work on behalf of Back Benchers in improving amenities and working conditions in this House will be of great assistance to Members in the future.

As has been said already, you have occupied many high offices of State and these, of their nature, have been controversial at times. It is a fitting tribute, therefore, that in spite of that you have, as the coping stone of your career, occupied the high office of Speaker of this House.

May I convey to your our thanks and our very best wishes for the future?

2.58 p.m.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell (Down, South)

It is a privilege which may fittingly be claimed by members of minorities and even small minorities in this House to join in the tribute to that servant of the House whose especial care is for the rights of individual Members and for the rights of minorities, however small. We know how faithfully you have discharged that part of your duty, Mr. Speaker.

It might seem impossible, in respect to an office which has existed for 600 years and more at the centre of our constitution, for any individual occupant of it to shed lustre on that place. Yet you have done so.

Others have come to your Chair after occupying office. Others have left it to occupy office subsequently, including—and this may perhaps have caused a twinge when you announced your intention to remain a Member of the House —the Prime Ministership. You alone in the history of the Speakership have come from a series of the most distinguished offices of State to occupy that Chair as the crown and culmination of your career. By doing so you have enhanced —for it is still possible—the prestige and the honour of that place.

None of us believes that you will disappear from public life after today, but any office which comes afterwards will be a step down from the Speakership. Today, as by your own will you make that renunciation, all of us who have sat under you join in our tribute of thanks and of affection.

3.1 p.m.

Mr. Gwynfor Evans (Carmarthen)

It is natural that I, too, should wish to emphasise that one of the most important functions of your office, Mr. Speaker, is the protection of minorities and to ensure that they can contribute to debates and take part in the deliberations of the House. I am glad to testify, and I do so with gratitude, that your deep commitment to this most important function has enabled all the minorities of this House to take a full part in the debates of the House. You have protected the minorities and ensured for them a fair hearing in the deliberations of the House.

The pleasure I have in paying you this brief but sincere tribute is enhanced by the thought of your Welsh ancestry. In wishing you health and happiness in your retirement I hope that I may, on this occasion, address to you an englyn in the oldest British tongue, Welsh, which is normally ruled out of order in the proceedings of the House but in which I hope you will take some pride: Ti'r gwr fu'n feistr a gwas—yn llywydd Ac yn llaw gymwynas, Dy erwau'n driw i'r hen dras A gerddaist gydag urddas. That means: Thou the man who has been both master and servant—a chieftain Whose hand has granted many boons, Thy ways true to the old lineage, Thou hast trodden them with dignity.

3.3 p.m.

Mr. Edward du Cann (Taunton)

I am proud to support this motion and, naturally enough, chiefly in English. Yet this is the first occasion in all my time in this place that I should truly have preferred not to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker. For whatever facility or whatever competence any one of us may have developed over the years in fulfilling that dreadful invitation in our constituencies and elsewhere to say just a few words suitable for the occasion—you know the sort of thing so well, Sir—it is so much harder when the words one speaks come not from obligation but from the heart.

Hail then and farewell, those old words: Ave atque vale. However warmly we may welcome your successor, as indeed we shall, all of us on these Back Benches are sadly conscious that we say au revoir today to one who above all has been our best friend and counsellor. A Speaker walks alone and yet never did a lone walker have so many true friends. I am only one of many, Mr. Speaker, who have received much kindness at your hands and have been the richer and wiser for your friendship and your counsel. Perhaps I may quote one personal example. When I was appointed a Treasury Minister in the summer of 1962 your letter of good wishes and congratulations was almost the first that I received. To write in the terms that you did at that moment was an act of the greatest personal generosity, unforgettable indeed, and, all will agree, quite typical.

Alas, I have to remark on one shadow between us since that time—your complaint that by my marrying a constituent of yours I deprived you of a vote. Sir, I cannot regret or apologise for that but forgive me at last that impertinence if you will on this your final day. At least I know at first hand from my family the immense respect and affection felt for you in the North-West of England, on Merseyside and especially in your own constituency. Their only rival in our nation is in the membership of this House of Commons.

So, Sir, for your long service to our State, for the public weal; for your incomparable service to the House of Commons, your sympathy with the Back Benchers and their many problems, and above all for being such a good listener, our very best thanks indeed. For the future, my dear—as we say in the West Country—our very best wishes.

Mr. Speaker

I think I now have to put the motion. I have been thinking about the procedure and wondered whether the Chair itself might move the closure.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved, nemine contradicente, That this House tenders its gratitude to the Rt. Hon. Selwyn Lloyd for his skilful, reasonable and firm guidance of our affairs; offers thanks for his personal kindnesses, hospitality and friendship; records appreciation of the clarity of his decisions and his success in achieving fairness to all Members; and unites in wishing him well on his retirement from the Chair to which he has brought such distinction.

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