HC Deb 19 May 1976 vol 911 cc1440-4
Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop

I wish to raise with you, Mr. Speaker, a point of order which I endeavoured to raise last night—I refer to column 1357 of Hansard—and which Mr. Deputy Speaker preferred not to deal with last night after you had left the Chair.

My point of order falls into two parts. The first is a request that you should declare the proceedings last night on the British Transport Docks (Felixstowe) Bill to be null by reason of failure to comply with the provisions of Standing Orders for Private Business—Standing Order 145 —and cause an appropriate correction to be made in the Journal of the House.

The second part is a request that you should draw to the attention of the parliamentary agents appearing on the Register the practice whereby Members can expect to be able to draw from the Vote Office copies of papers laid upon the Table of the House, especially the papers which Standing Orders require to be so laid when the Order Paper indicates that the House will that day enter upon business germane to such papers, as a matter of course and without Members being required to give special notice that they will require such papers to be made available.

Standing Order 145 is very short, consisting of only three lines. It states: The minutes of the proceedings of a committee on a private bill shall be brought up and laid on the Table of the House, with the report of the bill". The taking of evidence before a Private Bill Committee is a proceeding of Parliament.

It has been the practice of the House, certainly for as long as I can remember, that when any paper is laid upon the Table it is available in the Vote Office. This is for the convenience of the House, the Clerks and the Chair, so that instead of Members trying to scramble for the one copy on the Table to read it they can draw a copy from the Vote Office as they come into the Chamber.

The parliamentary agents in this case know perfectly well when such papers may be required, because they obtain copies of Notice Papers of forthcoming business and the Order Paper for the day which tells them when the business concerned is to be taken. In this case, further consideration of the British Transport Docks (Felixstowe) Bill was due to be taken at 7 o'clock in the House. Not to follow that practice and to deny Member fulfilment of that expectation is such a discourtesy to the House that, I submit, it approaches the frontiers of a contempt and it may even have crossed them.

It is totally unreasonable to take an interpretation of a completely different Standing Order, which is not really concerned with Members' access to the transcript of evidence but is concerned with the question whether it should be paid for by public funds or by the promoter, and suggest that Members should have to request such papers before the Committee stage begins, when they have no means of knowing whether they will need them until the Committee stage has ended. That is a point that was made last night.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths), among others, attempted to obtain from the Vote Office, from the Private Bill Office and from the Table a copy of the transcript, without success. Eventually, in the course of the debate, copies—not as many as were wanted by hon. Members, but some copies—were brought down. I can only conclude that the Table had not got a copy of the minutes of the proceedings and, thereby, the promoters had put themselves in breach of Standing Order 145. That being the case, the proceed- ings of the House were to that extent ultra vires and should be annulled.

Mr. Speaker

May I say how grateful I am to the hon. Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) who, with his usual courtesy, gave me advance notice of the point of order that he wished to raise. That enables me to give a considered reply to the points he has raised. Secondly, may I say that I am sorry that I left the Chair last night. I had not realised that the hon. Member was about to pursue his point of order after the Division. If I had known I would have remained. Happily I did not know. I am grateful, as always, to the hon. Member for the way in which he has raised this point of order. I make it clear, first of all, that I have no power to declare proceedings of this House null and void on my own authority. This can be done only by a motion agreed to by the House in the normal way. Private Business Standing Order 145 lays down that: The minutes of the proceedings of a committee on a private bill shall be brought up and laid on the Table of the House, with the report of the bill. The hon. Member quoted that.

In accordance with the normal practice the minutes of proceedings of the Committee dealing with the British Transport Docks (Felixstowe) Bill have been available in the Private Bill Office for inspection by hon. Members ever since the Bill was reported on 29th April. The Standing Order has, therefore, been properly complied with.

The minutes of proceedings are only a brief, formal record of the decisions of the Committee. The practice with regard to the minutes of evidence, on the other hand, was laid down by Mr. Speaker Morrison in a ruling on 30th June 1953 when he said: any Member whose constituents may he concerned with the provisions of a Bill should give notice in the Private Bill Office of the number of copies required before the first day on which the Committee sits.—[Official Report, 30th June 1953; vol. 517, c. 205.] This ruling is summarised in the passage in "Erskine May"—which Mr. Deputy Speaker quoted to the House yesterday.

No such notice was given to the Private Bill Office on this occasion. It is quite clear, therefore, that the parliamentary agent complied fully with the requirements of the practice of the House as laid down by my predecessor and as it has continued to this day. It may be, however, that these requirements are no longer adequate to meet the needs of the case. That is a matter that might be suitable for consideration by the Select Committee on Procedure.

Mr. Peyton

Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. The House will be grateful to you for your consideration of this point and for what you have said. I would like to congratulate you, respectfully, on your being unaware last night that my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) was about to pursue the matter—although I am sure that had you reflected upon the determination of my hon. Friend you would have known, without being informed, that it was quite likely he would do so.

The remarks you have made at the end of your ruling about whether this practice is satisfactory should perhaps be taken up because the Standing Order is quite clear and says: The minutes of the proceedings of a committee on a private bill shall be brought up and laid on the table of the House, with the Report of the bill. It is for those who sponsor a Private Bill very scrupulously to comply with the requirements of the House. I do not believe that they have done so, in the full spirit of the Standing Order, on this occasion, particularly as this was a contentious measure.

Mr. George Cunningham

Further to that point of order. Mr. Speaker. You have said that this would be a matter which it might be appropriate for the Sessional Procedure Committee to consider. The terms of reference of that Committee unfortunately limit it to matters which have been referred to it by the House. I ask you whether at the moment the Committee would be free to consider this matter without the House having first passed a resolution. Personally I think the Procedure Committee ought to be free, as it was between 1970 and 1974, to consider any matter either which has been formally referred to it or which it, in its judgment, considers it to be wise to take up. This worked very well from 1970 to 1974 and God alone knows why we do not do it now. Is the Pro- cedure Committee free, simply on your say-so, to consider this matter or do we need a motion explicitly referring the matter to it?

Mr. Speaker

I think I am right in saying that I have no authority to tell the Committee what it shall consider. That is a matter for the authorities in the House. The Leader of the House is here. He has heard this exchange. I do not know whether he is on the edge of his seat—

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Michael Foot)

indicated dissent.

Mr. Speaker

The matter has been heard by those responsible for the Committee and no doubt serious consideration will be given to what has been said from both sides of the House.

Mr. George Cunningham

Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Since it seems likely that in the light of this exchange the Leader of the House will be thinking about it and may be tabling a motion specifically to refer this point to the Procedure Committee, may I draw to your attention, Mr. Speaker, and to that of my right hon. Friend the other little fracas which occurred later last night with regard to the detestable hat which requires to be worn, contrary to the dignity of any hon. Member, when he wishes to raise a point of order during a Division? If the Leader of the House is proposing to table a motion referring the first, more important, matter to the Procedure Committee, could he also embrace the hat, so that the Procedure Committee should give that mighty trifle as much time as it deserves, which I would say is about 30 seconds, and recommend to the House an alternative and adult manner in which points of order can be raised during a Division without our behaving in the infantile manner in which we are obliged to behave at the moment?