DISCONTINUANCE OF STANDING COMMITTEE. (Hansard, 22 June 1910)

THE EAEL OF CAMPERDOWN
My Lords, I ask your Lordships to give your approval to the Report which has been presented by the Select Committee whom your Lordships appointed to consider and report upon the Standing Orders relating to Standing Committees. This Committee met; the noble Earl who leads the House and the noble Marquess the Leader of the Opposition, together with other members, † Earl Beanchamp was appointed Lord President of the Council on June 16 in the place of Viscount Wolverhampton, resigned. 948 were present; and we took into consideration the Standing Orders, ultimately arriving at the decision to advise your Lordships— That it is not expedient, under present circumstances, to continue the Standing Committee, and that Standing Orders Nos. XLV to LIII inclusive be repealed. The Standing Orders in question are those under which the Standing Committee was appointed, and under which it conducts its procedure. I do not think that I need detain your Lordships at any great length, and therefore I will very briefly recapitulate the history of the Standing Committee and the circumstances in which the Select Committee ask your Lordships no longer to continue it.
The Standing Committee took its origin in the year 1889. It was the late Lord Herschell who moved that the Standing Orders relating to these matters be considered, and he himself took an active part in establishing the Standing Committee. He considered that it would be very advantageous that your Lordships, acting as a court of revision, should go more minutely into the details of all the Bills which are submitted to this House, and especially of the less important Bills; and he also considered that an additional stage in the passing of a Bill through the House was desirable as a means of looking into its contents. That was approved, and the Standing Orders were passed in, I think, the month of February, 1889. But under the Standing Orders that were then passed the Standing Committee took priority over the Committee of the Whole House, and became much more important than, I think, Lord Herschell had originally contemplated. I myself happen to have been a member of that Committee from the beginning. During the first two or three years it was very largely attended, and considerable deliberation took place on the Bills that were submitted to it. Amendments of importance and of substance were introduced in the Standing Committee, and after that Committee had considered the Bills they returned to the whole House. The result was that members of your Lordships' House who were not members of the Standing Committee took exception to this procedure. They pointed out that when they wished to raise matters in Committee of the Whole House the reply was not infrequently made that the matter bad been considered in the Standing 949 Committee, and that already an Amendment had been adopted or rejected with regard to the particular point in question.
Owing to that and to other matters another Committee was appointed, I believe on the motion of Lord Cadogan, who was Lord Privy Seal at the time, to look into these Standing Orders, and the late Lord Salisbury, in the debate that then took place, said he thought that one means of meeting the difficulty which had arisen was to postpone the Standing Committee stage until after that of the Committee of the Whole House, and he expressed the opinion that the Standing Committee would not be too modest or unwilling to deal with Bills after they had been through Committee of the Whole House. The Committee appointed to look into the matter reported in favour of that procedure, which was adopted, and the Standing Orders were passed in the form in which they now stand. But then it was found that what Lord Salisbury had expected would happen did not happen, and from the year 1891, when the new Standing Orders came into force, the proceedings of the Standing Committee excited less and less interest, the attendances became very much smaller, and then the practice arose of moving that the Standing Committee be negatived. Those of your Lordships who have been members of the House for the last few years know how much more common that Motion has become, until, indeed, it is the ordinary Motion to make. If a noble Lord who has a Bill does not make that Motion the only result is that his Bill is delayed for a week, or it may be for a fortnight, and I do not know that any commensurate public advantage is derived from that process; and with regard to Bills emanating from the Government and other important Bills, they would not be altered in Standing Committee unless it were a mere verbal alteration. Therefore from every point of view the Standing Committee, at all events in its present form, has ceased to be of any practical use to legislation.
The Select Committee considered the Standing Orders from this point of view, and, speaking generally, the conclusion they arrived at was that the Standing Orders in question should be repealed. Let me point out that if your Lordships should adopt this Report it does not preclude any noble Lord hereafter, if a 950 Bill comes up in which he takes especial interest or which, he thinks ought to be examined very minutely, from moving that it be referred to a Select Committee. Nor, again, is there anything to prevent any of your Lordships hereafter, if you think that some additional procedure is required, from submitting to the House any proposal which you may wish to make in this direction. I think that is all I need trouble the House with, at the present moment at all events, and I beg to move that your Lordships approve of this Report.

§ THE LORD PRIVY SEAL AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (THE EARL OF CREWE)
My Lords, my noble friend who has just sat down acted as Chairman of the Select Committee which was appointed to consider this subject, and he speaks with an authority we all recognise, from the deep interest which he has always taken in the business of the House and from his long experience of it. I merely rise to say that after giving such consideration as I could to the matter I concur in practically everything that has fallen from the noble Earl. He has given a history of how the Standing Committee came into being, of how it flourished for a time, and how it has since fallen into decay, and I think the facts as he has stated them go to show that it is useless, and indeed undesirable, to attempt to keep nominally alive an institution such as the Standing Committee, of which the real usefulness has departed. I think, perhaps, there may be one rather hopeful and pleasant side to this. I do not know whether other noble Lords, looking back, will concur with me, but I think there has been of late years a greater willingness in the full House to consider carefully and at length Bills in Committee than there used to be in former years, and, so far, that is a fact with which we should all be pleased, and it tends to indicate further that the functions of the Standing Committee as such are not so important as they were formerly supposed to be.
I think it is quite clear that the date of the decay of the Standing Committee was the change, which the noble Earl has described, when its proceedings succeeded instead of preceding consideration in 951 Committee of the Whole House. Before that time, as I very well remember, its proceedings were often interesting, and sometimes, indeed, even animated, but it had the vice for a Committee of being too strongly composed. A majority of the noble Lords who take, or took at that time, a very active part in the business of the House served upon it, and the result was, as the noble Earl has described, that when Bills came back to the House after being considered there any noble Lord who did not happen to be a member of the Standing Committee was certainly in a weak position if he desired to make any material alteration in a Bill. That was the cause of the change, and the change was the cause of the gradual decay of the Standing Committee. I therefore have merely to say that we on this side are prepared to support the suggestion of the noble Earl, agreeing also with him that such a decision would be reached without prejudice to any subsequent changes which any noble Lord may be able to persuade the House to make with regard to the consideration of Bills.

THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF ONSLOW)
My Lords, I only rise to express my satisfaction that the noble Earl, Lord Camperdown, concluded his remarks by saying that if your Lordships adopt this Report and go further and rescind the Standing Orders which have been passed by the House for the constitution and proceedings of the Standing Committee, that action will not in any way preclude a revival of the subject at a later date, and the constitution of some form of Committee, different and distinct from the present Standing Committee, for the consideration of Bills. It has always seemed to me that your Lordships as a House of revision have, perhaps, not devoted that careful attention to the drafting and the phraseology of measures which might be expected of a Second Chamber, and I therefore feel that if any Committee of the kind is to be set up at a future date its main object should be the consideration of the way in which a Bill would be regarded by learned Judges on the Bench, and the way in which they would interpret it. It is common knowledge among your Lordships that learned Judges have often said that they have the greatest difficulty in interpreting the intentions of the Legislature by the phraseology put into Acts of Parliament; 952 and for that reason I venture to hope that, if the Standing Committee is abolished in this session, an opportunity will arise before very long for a reconsideration of the subject, and for setting up some other body of the same kind to examine into the details of the legislation which is submitted to the consideration of your Lordships' House.

§ THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE
My Lords, I have really nothing to add to what has been said by my noble friend behind me and by the noble Earl opposite. It seems to me to be clearly established that the moment has arrived for, if I may use the expression, decently interring the Standing Committee. It has not only ceased to be practically useful as an assistance to our deliberations, but the repeated habit of moving that the stage be dispensed with seems to me to be hardly a dignified addition to our manner of conducting business. My noble friend gave a correct account of the history of this question. I have no doubt it is the case that the Standing Committee began to lose importance from the moment when that stage of the Bill was taken after the stage of Committee of the Whole House. I therefore support the proposal of my noble friend, and I do so with the same reservation as the noble Earl the Chairman of Committees has made—the reservation, namely, that our decision this afternoon does not in the least preclude us hereafter from considering whether, perhaps in some other form, the proposal from which so much was originally expected may be usefully revived.