§ THE PRIME MINISTER AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (The Marquess of SALISBURY)My Lords, I have put down this proposal for a Standing Order of the House in order to stop up a gap—not a very large one—in the working of our machinery. At present there are a certain number of Commissions and other bodies which have legislative powers to this extent—that they can make a scheme and lay it on the Table of the two Houses of Parliament, and then it becomes law at the end of a certain time if no Address is presented against it. It is obviously a considerable abuse, and if the matter was more important it would be a grave abuse, that by the delay of the printer in circulating a scheme nobody knows of its existence until a few days before the power of arresting it has expired. I have known it run very near to the edge of the time that is allowed. That, clearly, is an abuse, the possibility of which ought not to exist. I want to avoid using any language which would intimate that any serious miscarriage of justice or of public policy has taken place; but, still, it is an error that ought to be prevented, and it will be prevented by saying that the laying on the Table—a matter over which we have control—shall not take place until the scheme is printed, and that, when it is printed, it shall be circulated to peers.
§ Ordered, That where by Statute any scheme before it can be sanctioned by Order in Council is ordered to lie on the Table for a prescribed number of days, it shall be laid on the Table in a printed form, and not otherwise; and thereupon shall forthwith be circulated to the Members of this House.—(The Marquess of Salisbury.)