HC Deb 28 April 1977 vol 930 cc1498-9

Motion made, and Question proposed, That, at this day's Sitting, proceedings on the Motion standing on the Order Paper in the name of Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer relating to the Committal of the Finance Bill shall not be subject to the provisions of Standing Order No. 40(3) and may be proceeded with, though opposed, for a period of three-quarters of an hour aften Ten o'clock or after they have been entered upon, whichever is the later, and at the end of that period Mr. Speaker shall proceed to put any question necessary to dispose of those proceedings.—[Mr. Frank R. White.]

3.58 p.m.

Mr. George Cunningham (Islington, South and Finsbury)

I am sorry that I shall not be able to speak for as long on this motion as the subject matter requires. If I were to do so, I might end up in St. Mark's Hospital in my constituency, or somewhere like that.

This is, of course, a debatable motion, and the debate could go on until 10 o'clock. I am not sure, on looking at it, that it is appropriate that we should break the normal rules, which would not allow us to consider this kind of business after 10 o'clock. It is suggested that, although debate on the Finance Bill would normally continue after 10 o'clock, we should allow the motion relating to the normal decision about which parts of the Finance Bill should be considered in Standing Committee and which parts should be considered here on the Floor to be considered after the appropriate time. I am not sure that that is wise.

It is one of the failures of our procedure in the House that we have no normal method for suspending Standing Orders. What this motion does, in effect, is to suspend Standing Orders, and we do it often. What we ought to have in Standing Orders is a regular and proper method for exceptional circumstances. If we had had that, we should not have the hoo-hah that we went through last year when we had to suspend Standing Orders to deal with the hybridity question on the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Bill. We make no distinction between suspending Standing Orders as a sort of normal operation, which we do to allow any opposed business other than finance business to be taken after 10 o'clock, and suspending Standing Orders because of some really exceptional circumstance.

The Committee of the House which have been charged with looking at our procedures ought to consider new ways by which, let us say, something like a larger than 50 per cent. figure of Members voting could suspend normal rules without actually taking the Standing Orders and putting them out of commission temporarily. In my view, this motion should not pass completely unopposed, and I intend to oppose it, if no one else does.

Question put:—

The House proceeded to a Division—

MR. FRANK R. WHITE and MR. HARPER were appointed Tellers for the Ayes, but no Member being willing to act as Teller for the Noes, MR. SPEAKER declared that the Ayes had it.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Ordered, That, at this day's Sitting, proceedings on the Motion standing on the Order Paper in the name of Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer relating to the Committal of the Finance Bill shall not be subject to the provisions of Standing Order No. 40(3) and may be proceeded with, though opposed, for a period of three-quarters of an hour after Ten o'clock or after they have been entered upon, whichever is the later, and at the end of that period Mr. Speaker shall proceed to put any question necessary to dispose of those proceedings.