Procedure (Hansard, 12 July 1994)

§ The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Tony Newton)
I beg to move, That—(1) Standing Order No. 37 (Procedure on divisions) be amended, in line 7, by leaving out 'this direction' and inserting 'the nomination of tellers'; (2) this House approves the Third Report of Session 1992–93 from the Select Committee on Procedure (House of Commons Paper No. 880 (1992–93)) so far as it relates to the printing of, and the presentation of, Private Members' Bills; and (3) Standing Order No. 13 (Arrangement of public business) be amended, at the end, by adding— '(12) An Order appointing a day for the second reading of a private Member's bill shall lapse at the rising of the House on the preceding sitting day if at that time the bill has not been printed and delivered to the Vote Office, and the House shall make no further order appointing a day for the second reading of the bill until it has been printed.'.

§ Madam Speaker
I have selected the amendment standing in the name of the right hon. Member for Hcniton (Sir P.Emery).

§ Mr. Newton
I shall try to be brief.
The three procedural questions that we are debating this evening all originate from recommendations from the Select Committee on Procedure. I am glad to have this further opportunity to express again the House's appreciation to my right hon Friend the Member for Honiton (Sir P.Emery), as Chairman of that Committee, and to his colleagues for their work.
The first paragraph of the motion, relating to Divisions, implements a recommendation from the Committee's second report of the 1991–92 Session. Standing Order No. 37 stipulates that at least six minutes should elapse before the occupant of the Chair orders the doors to the Division Lobby to be locked. The Committee thought this was anomalous, because for nearly 20 years a period of eight minutes has been allowed in order to give Members whose offices are in other buildings time to reach the Lobby.
The Committee also pointed to an ambiguity in the wording of the Standing Order, and the proposed amendment corrects both defects by remedying the anomaly and providing that the six minutes should run from the nomination of the Tellers. Two minutes from the calling of the Division to the appointment of Tellers, plus a further six minutes to the order to lock the doors continues to give a total of eight minutes. The amendment is therefore a helpful clarification of the Standing Order.
As you said, Madam Speaker, my right hon. Friend the Member for Honiton has also tabled an amendment and I must say, straightforwardly, that I speak with a bit more caution about it. The Standing Order provides that. two minutes after the Speaker's direction to clear the Lobby, she should put the Question again and then appoint Tellers. My right hon Friend's amendment would enable the Speaker, at her discretion, to appoint Tellers at any time within that period of two minutes. The second part of his amendment would ensure that the total period of time before the locking of the doors into the Division Lobby remained unchanged.
I acknowledge, of course, that, on a few occasions, my right hon Friend's proposal would allow Members to begin leaving the Lobby a little earlier than they can at present. The number of occasions on which it would be sensible to make use of this provision, however, is limited.
936 First, there would have to be no initial uncertainty about who the Tellers were to be. Secondly—perhaps this is the more important point—it would be necessary to ensure that the Division Clerks were on the spot. In practice, we are probably talking only about Divisions which are expected and which follow immediately after another Division.
We need to consider what might happen if Tellers were appointed, as could easily occur, before the Division Clerks were on the spot. Some of the places where Division Clerks may be on duty—for example, in Committee—are a considerable distance from the Chamber. It would be very difficult for them to get to the Lobby within the allotted two minutes. The failure to arrive in time, where Tellers had been appointed early, could aggravate the irritation caused to Members, and at the same time cause difficulty for the Clerks. Those are the points that some people have made.
We should also bear in mind the fact that such a provision would depend on an exercise of discretion by the Chair, which it is by no means clear that the Chair would wish to have. I have the Chair's authorisation to say that the Speaker has considerable reservations about the proposal. In practice, the Chair would find it very difficult to exercise that discretion. In those circumstances, where the gain to Members would be limited and fairly infrequent, we should at least think carefully before making such a change. I put those points before the House.
The second and third paragraphs of the motion which we are debating this evening relate to the Committee's third report of the previous Session. It is the practice of the House, for obvious reasons, not to give a Second Reading to a Bill which has not been printed. Many private Members' Bills are never printed—they may well have served the sponsor's purpose by giving him or her an opportunity to make a speech under the ten-minute rule.
That is not a criticism—the private Members' Bill is a perfectly legitimate political device, even if it is introduced with no serious expectation that it will be passed into law. As the Procedure Committee points out, however, on many Fridays the Order Paper contains the titles of a number of Bills which could not possibly make progress, but it is not apparent from the Order Paper which Bills those are.
The Committee has therefore recommended that, if a Bill is not printed by the rising of the House on the day before that on which it is set down for Second Reading, it should be dropped from the Order Paper and only revived when eventually printed. That in no way diminishes the rights of the Member promoting the Bill, because his Bill cannot in any case be read a Second Time until it has been printed, and as soon as it has been printed, he can revive the Bill and have set it down again for Second Reading. The third paragraph of the motion makes the necessary consequential change to Standing Orders.
The Procedure Committee's third report also considered what it regarded as a loophole in the rules, which allows a Member who has been refused leave to introduce a Bill under the ten-minute rule then to present substantially the same Bill from behind the Chair under Standing Order No. 58. A Bill with an identical long title cannot be presented from behind the Chair, but a Bill with only a marginally changed long title can.
The Committee's view was that that was an abuse, and recommended that the refusal by the House of leave to bring in a ten-minute Bill should be treated as the rejection of that Bill at a substantive stage, with the effect that a Bill with the same or a similar long title could not be presented 937 again in the same Session. If the House approves that part of the Committee's report, it will give effect to that recommendation.
I hope, in this rather hasty fashion, that I have given the House some flavour of the fact that these are modest and unspectacular but sensible modifications to our Standing Orders. With the reserved note that I have expressed about my right hon. Friend's amendment, I commend the motion to the House.

§ Sir Peter Emery (Honiton)
I beg to move, as an amendment to the motion, in paragraph (1), to leave out from 'amended' to the end of the paragraph, and insert 'in line 4, by leaving out "After the lapse of and inserting "Not more than", and in line 7, by leaving out "six minutes from this direction" and inserting "eight minutes from the direction to clear the lobby".'. I thank my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House for arranging this debate, and for bringing forward two fairly small recommendations made by the Select Committee on Procedure, which have been waiting for debate for some time—since 1990–91 and 1991–92.
There are two factors relating to ensuring the eight minutes before a Division. We know that there is elasticity, in that Madam Speaker can elongate that time if she feels that it is necessary. That is not altered. The recommendation dealing with the publication of private Members' Bills follows the recommendation of the Committee, and I am delighted to see that the Government have brought that forward.
The motion has allowed me to table an amendment to follow a unanimous recommendation from the Procedure Committee, which is in paragraphs 18 to 26 of the third report of Session 1992–93 That report has been before the House for some time, so it is not new, and it has not been bounced on the House. I shall remind the House quickly of what the report says: Standing Order No. 37 provides that two minutes shall be allowed after the Speaker…has put the question and called the division (by saying 'clear the lobby'), before the Speaker shall put the question again"— that two minutes is absolute; it cannot be reduced— If Members against shout 'Aye' and 'No', tellers are then appointed by the occupant of the Chair. When they take up their positions, the doors are unlocked and the Division starts.
It goes on: The Committee has considered whether the Chair should be given the discretion"— it is not mandatory— to reduce the period of two minutes on occasions when the names of tellers are available at the Chair in less than that time. It is not proposed that the overall time of at least eight minutes before the doors are locked should be reduced. The second part of my amendment would ensure that that is the case.
The report goes on: Such a change would appear to us to have the advantage that it may well enable Members to leave the division lobby up to a minute or more earlier at the start of a division. We believe that this would be especially helpful in divisions involving a large number of Members at predictable times such as seven or ten o'clock. It would also overcome the frustration felt by Members standing waiting for the counting of the division to begin. On a number of occasions, I have heard hon. Members say, "How long are we waiting for?" It is like waiting for the kettle to boil.

§ Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North)
The right hon. Gentleman made the point that the recommendations in the report were unanimous. Bearing in mind some of the recent difficulties that we have had on the Procedure Committee, we should be grateful for that.
Are not the last two Divisions an excellent example of what the right hon. Gentleman is saying, especially the second one? When we knew that there was to be a second Division, hon. Members were waiting to vote before going home, except those of us who are left in the Chamber. No harm would have come—the Tellers were obviously ready, and the Clerk was ready. There is no reason why the second Division could not have been done as we recommended.

§ Sir Peter Emery
The hon. Gentleman puts clearly the main point of the Committee's report. We continued: We have sought evidence from the Government, Opposition and Liberal Democrat Chief Whips and from the Clerk of the House and the Serjeant at Arms. The evidence of the Clerk of the House and the Government Chief Whip is published with this report. The Serjeant at Arms told us that he had no objection to the proposal. No other replies were received. We understand that tellers are not always ready until the full two minutes have elapsed after the division is first called and that this period does enable Members to make a final decision on whether to press a matter to a division. We also appreciate that the division clerks have to reach the lobbies from wherever in the building they are carrying out their duties. If the two minute period is reduced, it may not always be possible for the clerks to get to their desks before the tellers get to the doors. On balance, we do not think these factors will apply in the circumstances when the House would most benefit from the Chair having discretion to appoint tellers earlier, namely when there are several Divisions, as was rightly pointed out by the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick).
At present, the exit doors of the Division Lobbies are not unlocked by the Doorkeepers until two Clerks and two Tellers are in position. We do not propose to alter that arrangement. We therefore believe that the occupant of the Chair should be given discretion to put the question the second time once the names of the tellers have been supplied to the Clerks at the Table at any point up to a maximum of two minutes".

§ Ms Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent, North)
Has the right hon. Gentleman sought the advice of the fire service on the health and safety considerations involved when doors are locked for so long between Divisions?

§ Sir Peter Emery
I am torpedoed. The answer is no, we have not. We did not think this matter one for the fire service, I must openly admit.
We take no powers away from the Chair. We do not insist that the Chair act in any particular way. All the amendment does is give the Chair the right to call the second Division in a shorter time. That would allow Members not to have to stand waiting in the Lobby while the Tellers—[Interruption.] Does the hon. Member for Jarrow (Mr. Dixon) wish to get to his feet and intervene?

§ Madam Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman had better make his comments standing up, or they will not be recorded.

§ Sir Peter Emery
That is what I was trying to suggest, Madam Speaker.
We are trying to help Back Benchers by ensuring that they are not in the Lobbies longer than necessary. This power, we believe, should be given to the Chair. I urge the House to accept the amendment.