HL Deb 08 February 1861 vol 161 cc181-92
EARL GRANVILLE

, in rising to move the appointment of a Select Committee on the Public Business of the House said, it would be in the recollection of the House that the noble Earl opposite (the Earl of Derby) at the close of last Session, made some suggestions tending to secure a more rapid despatch of their Lordships' Parliamentary business; since which—on the last evening—as their Lordships were aware, a debate had taken place on the same subject in "another place." The question well deserved the attention of their Lordships. No doubt, the position of the two Houses in respect to the business brought before them was not identical; at anyrate the charge of delay could not be urged against the proceedings of the House of Lords. The number of Peers who took part in the debates was not too great, on the contrary it would add much to the importance of the proceedings if it was the habit of more Peers to attend and to take their share of the debates. Nevertheless, the beginning of every Session was absorbed by various discussions, many of them very interesting and instructive; but with regard to legislative measures very little progress was made, and the consequence was that at the end of the Session there was an inconvenient pressure of business. This evil it was very difficult to meet. He had hardly ever heard of any Government that was not willing to bring in its own Bills at a sufficiently early period. And it had been proposed as one remedy that more Bills should be originated in their Lordships' House. But, whatever might be the cause, he believed it was a fact that Bills originating with their Lordships were not regarded with the same favour by the House of Commons as the measures that were first introduced there; and, no doubt, from the greater number of Members in the other House engaged in the active business of life, and from its different constitution as an elected body, the House of Commons was, in many respects, better adapted for originating measures than the House of Lords. It had also been suggested that measures still pending at the Prorogation of Parliament should be allowed to be resumed in the next Session in the stage they had reached when Parliament was Prorogued. That permission had been already given in the case of a dissolution of Parliament with regard to certain private Bills, and the question whether the principle might not be extended to public Bills, suspended by a prorogation, was a proper subject for the consideration of the Committee. The noble Earl (the Earl of Derby) had suggested a joint Committee of both Houses; but he thought, himself, it would be more conformable to practice and more convenient to have two Committees sitting concurrently and in constant communication with each other. Such a mode of proceeding would give more force and character to their inquiries and recommendations. His Lordship then moved,— That a Select Committee be appointed to consider and report, whether, by any alterations in the Forms and Proceedings of this House, the Despatch of Public Business can be more effectually promoted.

THE EARL OF DERBY

said, that this subject had occupied his anxious attention for a considerable time. He would not then enter into the discussion of any particular plan—the more so because he concurred in the suggestion that the whole subject should be referred to a Committee. He presumed Her Majesty's Government had found some insuperable difficulty in the way of appointing a joint Committee of both Houses; and probably the object in view might be attained by an inquiry before two Committees, provided the fullest and freest communication were secured be- tween them. But as the noble Earl had observed, the cause of their Lordships' difficulties arose simply and solely from the great lack of business at the commencement of the Session, and the unmanageable accumulation of it at the close. The chief thing their Lordships had to consider was how they were to deal with the mass of business which they must receive at the end of the Session. The noble Earl must bear in mind that whatever might be the recommendations of their Committee they must altogether depend for effect upon the course taken by the House of Commons. It would be perfectly easy for this House to act upon a rule, which he believed they might adopt of their own authority, of suspending Bills at the termination of one Session, and resuming them in the next; but it would be useless to do so if the House of Commons should think it necessary when they sent Bills back to them to pass them through all their stages again. It would, therefore, be important before their Lordships' Committee made any recommendations on that subject to ascertain in what manner the House of Commons would be likely to act. Let them agree as to the question of principle, and it would be easy to settle the details and the limitations under which the plan should be carried out. With regard to the Resolution moved every year by his noble Friend the Chairman of Committees (Lord Bedesdale), fixing the day after which their Lordships declined to proceed with Bills unless they were of an urgent character, the noble Earl said that it worked well, providing that they allowed a little elasticity as to the meaning of the word "urgent." But it appeared to him (the Earl of Derby) that there was a great deal of difficulty about that very elasticity. For instance, an important measure like the Bankruptcy Bill might come up to their Lordships at the end of July. In a certain sense it might be said to be urgent; that was to say, it was urgent that such a measure should become law; but if the noble Earl were to move that their Lordships should take into consideration a Bill of 500 clauses at that period of the Session, though the subject might be an urgent one, it would be a matter of supreme impolicy to deal with it at such a time and under such circumstances. It might be a matter of urgency that a Bankruptcy Bill should pass, but it was not urgent that it should pass at that particular time; on the contrary, it would be of great advantage for such a Bill to lie on the table during the recess of Parliament, and next year to be taken into deliberate and careful consideration by the House, in which there were so many noble and learned Lords amply competent to deal with such a measure. But if they were called upon to pass such a Bill at the end of the Session, it was impossible that proper consideration should be given to it, and those noble and learned Lords must either allow the measure to pass without moving these Amendments which they might deem desirable, or if their Lordships did make those Amendments, and send the Bill back, it would be impossible for the House of Commons to consider them; or they must take the only other alternative and reject the Bill altogether, and then all the time and labour which the House of Commons had bestowed upon it would be absolutely lost. It was not therefore desirable to carry the principle of elasticity too far; but the rule of urgency should be considered as applying only to those particular classes of cases which it was not only desirable should be considered, bat that they should be considered at that particular time. If the rule of postponing that class of cases of urgency which did not require to be taken into consideration at any particular time, and then resuming them at the stage at which they had been left were adopted, it would allow of the ground of urgency being more freely applied. He would not enter at that moment into the merits of any particular scheme. He was glad that it was proposed to refer the matter to a Committee; but he ventured to think that it would not be necessary—on the contrary, he thought it would not be desirable—that the Committee should meet until some progress had been made by the Committee of the House of Commons.

LORD REDESDALE

thought that, as far as that House was concerned, they had no difficulty in getting through any business that was brought before their Lordships, and if the other House would follow their Lordships' example there would be no difficulty in the way of sending up Bills in time to be dealt with by both Houses in the same Session. It was, then, for the House of Commons to suggest means to enable them to send up Bills in sufficient time for discussion by their Lordships. It must not be forgotten that it was not only the Bills that originated in the House of Commons which suffered from the present system, but amongst those measures which were dropped in the annual ceremony which was sometimes called "The Massacre of the Innocents," there were many which their Lordships had considered with great care, and had sent to the other House in ample time for their consideration, but which were withdrawn by the Minister because that House could not find time to attend to them. He was not prepared to admit the expediency of the noble Earl's suggestion, that Bills should be suspended during the recess and resumed in the ensuing Session. There might be inconvenience, if not danger, in such a course. There were many Bills—such, for instance, as a Reform Bill—which might be sent up from the House of Commons at a late period of the Session, and, if such a measure was to remain suspended during the recess, its ultimate passing depending upon their Lordships' decision, an amount of agitation would be indulged in which would hardly be desirable. He thought the old constitutional principle should prevail, that measures should be begun and finished in one and the same Session. He would venture to suggest that the House of Commons might do a great deal for facilitating public business if they were disposed. For instance, though it was the old constitutional maxim to associate the redress of grievances with the granting of Supplies to the Crown, he could not see how the passing of the Estimates could be considered a grant of supply, and it would be much better in many ways if, on the days appointed for going into Committee on Estimates, the chair was taken at the time appointed, and the early part of the evening devoted to their consideration, instead of permitting Members to introduce discussions upon any subjects they pleased until the House was too much fatigued to deal with that or any other business. There were other ways in which the public business might be much expedited. No ill effect had been found to result from the custom of allowing any Peer to introduce a Bill which might at once be read a first time; whereas in the other House great delay was often occasioned in the preliminary stage of getting leave to introduce the Bill. With respect to the Bankrupt Bill, he wished to say that he did not think any Bill ought to have 500 clauses. It would have been very well if that Bill had been divided into two parts. Parliament, he thought, had of late deviated too much into the mode of occupying itself with unimportant details. The noble and learned Lord had that evening laid upon the table the rules which the Chancery Judges had agreed upon for the conduct of their legal business, and he (Lord Redesdale) thought that that was far better than introducing the regulations into the Bill itself. Any measure comprising 500 clauses ran a great risk of not being passed at all.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

said, he thought that many of the matters which had been referred to had much better be postponed till the Committee was appointed. There was a great deal of difficulty connected with the suggestion for a joint Committee of both Houses. The forms of the two Houses would hardly admit of such a proceeding; but, with a good understanding between both branches of the Legislature, the substantial advantages of such a Committee might, nevertheless, be obtained. For that purpose he thought it most desirable that the two Committees should proceed pari passu. The annual Resolution proposed by the noble Lord the Chairman of Committee no doubt worked very beneficially in practice, but theoretically, he thought, it encroached both upon the privileges of the House of Commons and the prerogative of the Crown. He hoped that some effectual substitute would be found for it free from that objection.

EARL GREY

agreed with the Chairman of Committees that the principal difficulty in this matter arose in the House of Commons, and that the great object was to discover some means by which Bills might come up from that House earlier in the Session than they usually did. Still, he rejoiced that the President of the Council had moved for this Committee, because he thought it absolutely necessary that something should be done to render legislation more easy and more satisfactory than it was at present, otherwise great discredit would be cast upon the whole system of Parliament. Only those who looked a little closely at what went on could be aware to what an extent the existing obstructions to legislation interfered with the public interests. There were multitudes of subjects, in themselves apparently not of very first-class importance, but which yet affected the daily welfare and prosperity of the country, on which new laws were required. On many of those questions no difference of opinion, no party feeling, existed; but still they demanded a good deal of consideration, and legislation upon them was habitually postponed from year to year, because under the present arrangements Parliament could not find time to deal with them. To choose an illustration of this at random, he might mention that successive Governments had long been alive to the defective state of the highways; they knew that under the existing management more money was spent, or rather thrown away, in different parts of the country upon detestable roads than would suffice to maintain them in excellent condition. Bills had been brought in for the last twenty-five years to remedy this evil, but they had all to be dropped, simply from the want of time to discuss them. Another subject of complaint was the careless and unsatisfactory manner in which a great deal of the work of Parliament was done. No man could look at the Acts which were passed without seeing how full they were of blunders. When the Judges came to apply them, they found their task extremely difficult from the inconsistencies and inaccuracies which had crept into them during their progress through both Houses. Something, therefore, was required, not only to expedite the progress of legislation, but to secure its more perfect accomplishment. As to the first of those objects, he continued of the same opinion as he was some years ago, when the noble Earl (the Earl of Derby) brought in a Bill which passed that House—namely, that in some way or other—he did not say in the precise form proposed by that noble Earl—provision ought to be made for preventing all the legislative labour of a Session being thrown away merely because it could not be brought to completion before the prorogation. Whatever valid objections there were to the Bill passed by their Lordships in 1848 might be obviated by another mode of attaining the same end. But, turning to the unsatisfactory manner in which legislation was accomplished, he thought some change ought to take place in the way in which complicated Bills were carried through Committee in both Houses. He believed that a very large proportion of the blunders and incongruities afterwards detected in Acts of Parliament resulted from Amendments being made in Committee, the full effect of which was not seen at the time, and which there was no subsequent opportunity of having properly considered by the persons who originally drew the Bills. They wanted a greater amount of scientific assistance—if he might use the expression—for revising their Bills before they were finally passed. It was also desirable that Committees of both Houses should abstain from going into the most minute details of the wording of measures. His experience of business in both Houses of Parliament did not supply him with one case in which that verbal criticism and long discussion of the mode of framing a particular clause ever had any good effect. On the contrary, the Amendments thus inserted, after taking up a great deal of time, generally left the Bill considerably worse than when it came from the hands of its original framers. But, whatever changes might be made in the machinery of legislation, for an effectual remedy they must chiefly look to the manner in which the House of Commons discharged its duty. For many years past the House of Commons had been getting more and more into the practice of mistaking what its proper functions were. It was absolutely impossible that a popular Assembly, consisting of 500 or 600 Gentlemen, could deal effectually with details either in Government or in legislative business. Yet there was a growing disposition in the House of Commons to trust less and less to any other authority. That body wished to arrogate too much to itself. It refused its confidence to the Ministers of the day, whoever they might be, or to any other persons, and in that way it embarrassed itself with an amount of labour which it could not perform. An instanee of this was afforded by the managment of the financial business of the country. Since he had been in Parliament a very great change had taken place in that respect. There was now a continual demand for a greater sub-division of the Votes, the annual Estimates bringing more and more before the House in Committee of Supply all possible details of the public expenditure. He believed there could be no greater blunder. He had never known any advantage to arise from the House of Commons attempting to deal in that way with details. And when great credit was taken for throwing upon the Estimates charges that were formerly on the Consolidated Fund, and for requiring the House of Commons to vote in Supply all the salaries of the revenue officers, while the gross revenue was paid into the Exchequer—in his opinion all these alterations, on which certain persons glorified them- selves, tended to divert the House of Commons from its legitimate functions, and to embarrass it with matters which it could not adequately handle. For his own part, he was persuaded that all that pretence of close scrutiny of the public expenditure instead of being favourable to economy and forming a check upon jobs, was the way to facilitate extravagance, and afford a cover for jobs. He had known many questions of expense to be proposed and carried in the Estimates from which a Government would have shrunk if it had had to act solely on its own responsibility. These changes were, therefore, in the wrong direction. He thought the House of Commons would do well to consider whether, by giving a little more confidence to the Ministers, whoever they might be, as long as they were Ministers, by avoiding so much discussion of details, and confining itself more to general principles and arrangements, it could not do more good than by the present system. A great many years ago—so long since as 1828—he had the good fortune to sit opposite with the noble Earl (the Earl of Derby) on the Finance Committee appointed in that year by the House of Commons, and he remembered that Committee applied itself most laboriously to the work assigned to it. It chose to go into the details of the Ordnance Estimates, and after many weeks of most arduous labour it presented a Report which he was not aware had ever saved one shilling to the country, or been of any practical use whatever. But the same Committee, after many weeks expended on details, had brought before it by the Government of the day the great question of the Sinking Fund—how it should be dealt with. The question was admirably discussed in the Committee by Messrs. Herries, Huskisson, and Tierney, and several other Members, and a most able Report was presented, which established the wiser principle which had prevailed ever since. That was the result of three or four sittings of the Committee. The proper function of a legislative body was to superintend Government and to enforce great principles of legislation; but it was utterly powerless to deal with the details of expenditure, or transact business which more properly belongs to the Executive Government. He was quite persuaded that if the House of Commons would act on the principle he had pointed out, a great deal of useful time would be obtained for the proper work of legislation which was now thrown away. He had mentioned this now because it was a subject which, of course, could not in any way come before the Committee which was about to be appointed; it was a question entirely for the discretion of the House of Commons, with which it was impossible for their Lordships to deal. Before sitting down, as they were on this subject, he could not help saying that he hoped the attention of the Government would be directed, not only to the public, but to the private business of Parliament. He did not ask his noble Friend to extend the functions of this Committee, whose time would, he thought, be sufficiently occupied by the inquiry he proposed to entrust to it; but he was persuaded some more effective arrangement with respect to the private business of the country, was very urgently necessary. In 1858, a Committee of that House had sat on the subject, and very considerable improvements had consequently been made in the arrangements of the transaction of the private business; but still with all the changes then made these arrangements were totally insufficient to insure the proper transaction of business, and especially of that most important section of business which related to railways. They had hitherto done nothing to enforce the adoption of a steady and consistent policy on the part of Parliament with respect to railways; and the amount of loss to private individuals and the public—the immense waste of money belonging to individuals, and of the time and convenience of the public by the unsteadiness of the policy pursued by Parliament with regard to railways—it would be utterly impossible to calculate. The waste of money must be reckoned not by thousands, but by millions. He repeated, therefore, that the proper arrangement of the private as well as of the public business urgently required the consideration both of the Government and of Parliament.

THE MARQUESS OF NORMANBY

said, if he for a moment protracted the discussion it was simply that he might be a witness to the evils which prevailed last Session. The noble Lord had rightly said that a very inadequate idea had been formed of those enormities. But he might say it was not the fault of that House, as it had always devoted the greatest attention to the measures sent up to it, and was only prevented doing so when the Session was so protracted that their Lordships were worn out. He could site many instances, but he would now speak of one only, which concerned a part of this country requiring the greatest consideration,—since it must be remembered that the Members representing Ireland could not always be in attendance. The Bill he referred to was that having reference to the relation of landlord and tenant in Ireland. That Bill was brought forward at a time which afforded the fullest opportunity for its due consideration; a proposal was made that it should be referred to a Select Committee; he agreed to that proposition; he thought it was the proper course; but the noble Earl opposite resisted it, and it happened that the Government on that occasion had a majority, and the Committee was refused. The Bill having been proceeded with, their Lordships made several Amendments, all of which were of the greatest importance, and received the assent of the Irish Members of this House, not only those who had voted for the Select Committee, but those who are the most steady supporters of the Government, but of every Member of their Lordship's House. The Bill was sent down to the House of Commons, and on the very last morning of the Session, at an unusual hour, with only thirteen Members in the House, all those Amendments were rejected, and their Lordships did not insist on their own Amendments. He could refer to a most able protest on this subject, drawn up by his noble Friend (Lord Monteagle) the whole of whose valuable life has been peculiarly devoted to the study of the practical welfare of his own country. It was a matter of public notoriety that there was no discussion elsewhere, but, on the representation, as stated, of the Attorney General and the Chief Secretary for Ireland; all the Amendments which had received so much consideration at their Lordships' hands were rejected by a majority of seven to six. The Bill—scarcely less important—relative to the licensing in Ireland, was also treated in much the same manner. These matters showed the peculiar evils of the present system, and that the blame was not attributable to that House; and, he must add that evil was aggravated by the composition of the Bench opposite, because, since the Union, there never had been an Administration formed so entirely without any practical knowledge of the affairs of Ireland.

Motion agreed to.

And on the Monday following the Lords following were named of the Committee:—

Ordered,— That the Committee have Power to communicate from Time to Time with the Select Committee of the House of Commons appointed to consider whether by any Alterations in the Forms and Proceedings of that House the Despatch of Public Business can be more effectually promoted.

House adjourned at Half-past Five o'clock, till To-morrow, Half-past Ten o'clock.