§ I pass to the second Resolution, which deals with general Bills, or in other words with all business except business of a financial character, about which I shall say a word presently. We ask your Lordships to put side by side and to contrast the plan which is suggested in the Government Bill and the plan embodied in this Resolution. Under the Government Bill the House of Lords is to be permitted to reject a Bill three times within a space of two years. After that there is no more to be said, and if the House of Lords persists in its objection the House of Lords is overruled without further parley. We, on the contrary, propose that the House of Lords should be content with two rejections, and with an interval of one year. But we propose that if during that interval the matter has not been settled, resort should be had to procedure by a joint sitting of the two Houses, and in a certain class of cases to procedure by way of Referendum.
§ We say nothing in this Resolution about conferences between the two Houses, but that is not because we attach no importance to procedure by conference. On the contrary in our view it is essential that not only when the difference has reached an acute stage but at any stage in the progress 841 of a measure there should be opportunity for conference between the two Houses of Parliament. And by conference I mean what is described in the text-books as a. free conference devoid of all those formalities by which conferences were at one time characterised and as little rigid as possible in its procedure. We do occasionally resort to conferences under our present system. But I think the noble Earl, and other members of the House who have taken part in such conferences will agree with me when I say that at present they are usually held under circumstances which offer as little prospect as possible of bringing about a satisfactory result. They are usually held at the very end of a session, when opinions have crystallised and when owing to the shortness of the time available it becomes almost impossible really to discuss, in the manner in which such discussion is desirable, the matters at issue. The question which presents itself to those who take part in these conferences is too often not so much how can we convert the measure before us into a perfect piece of legislation. One side asks itself rather whether it is worth while to make such and such a sacrifice in order to save the Bill and the other side asks itself whether it really can afford to lose the Bill, and so the parties either agree, or agree to differ. That has very often happened within my knowledge. We must, then, take it for granted that conferences will be resorted to, but I hope under more propitious circumstances than the conferences with which we are usually familiar.
§ Then if the conference leads to nothing we come to the joint sitting. The idea of a joint sitting of the two Houses seems to me, I must say, eminently natural and reasonable. If two great bodies cannot agree, what can be more reasonable and more natural than that they or some of their members should meet and debate together that which they have been unable to settle when they were debating by themselves? The noble Earl knows that this procedure is resorted to and forms part of the Constitution of some of our great self-governing Colonies, notably of the South African Constitution granted by the noble Earl and his colleagues not long ago. The noble Earl told us the other evening that there are great difficulties in the way of making use of this procedure by Conference; and I am quite ready to admit that those difficulties are real. One difficulty that occurs to us at once is the difficulty arising out of the number 842 of the two legislative bodies concerned. In our case you hive a numerous House of Commons and a numerous House of Lords, and a joint sitting of these two bodies in their full strength would obviously lead to a somewhat unwieldly and perhaps unbusinesslike gathering. But we have drafted our Resolution in such a way as to make it plain that upon that question our mind is open. It is evident that there may be a joint sitting of the plenum of the two Houses, or again there may be a joint sitting in which part will be taken by a delegation from either House, or you may conceive a case in which one House would be represented by the whole of its members and the other House only by a delegation of its members. We regard that as eminently a point for examination, and we merely say that the joint sitting should be composed of members of the two Houses. But if I want to justify the latitude which is left in this Resolution I think I can do so by pointing out to your Lordships that this particular question of the manner in which the joint sitting is to be composed cannot possibly be settled in so far as it affects this House of Parliament until we know how this House of Parliament is to be composed.
§ Before I leave the Resolution dealing with ordinary legislation I desire to point out the provision which is made in the second part of the Resolution for dealing with matters which are of great gravity, and which have not been adequately submitted to the judgment of the people. In our view some special procedure is essential in the ease of matters which can be so described. I shall no doubt be asked by the noble Earl—and the question is a very reasonable one—how we define matters which are grave and have not been adequately discussed. I say at once that I do not believe it is possible either in a Resolution or in an Act of Parliament, so to speak, to rail off by strict defiinition questions which can be described as grave questions from questions which stop short of being grave. But nevertheless I believe there will be a general concurrence in your Lordships' House that there are questions obviously of such a character—capital questions, if I may so describe them—which deserve special treatment, and with regard to which greater safeguards are necessary than the safeguards which will suffice for ordinary routine legislation of the year. That observation applies with special force to legislation dealing 843 with the Constitution of the country. By Constitutional questions I mean, speaking in general terms, proposals for altering, not the laws of this country, but the Parliamentary machinery by which those laws are made. It seems to me that there is a difference in kind between measures which come within that category and measures which do not. Questions of that sort—Constitutional questions—are, so far as I am aware, specially safeguarded in the Constitutions of almost every foreign country of which we are aware. The precautions taken in some of these countries to safeguard Constitutional change are so strict as to render such change not only difficult but in some cases almost impossible. But there are questions which do not fall within the category of Constitutional questions and with regard to which we believe that it is essential that an appeal should be made to the people of the country before a new departure is made. I cite as an illustration of my meaning such questions as compulsory service or the disestablishment of the Church. It seems to me impossible to contend that matters of that kind should be dealt with except under the protection of safeguards greater than those which are provided in the case of ordinary legislation.
§ Then what do we mean when we talk of a measure not having been adequately submitted to the judgment of the people? What we have in our minds is the case of a Bill dealing with one of these capital questions, sprung on the country at a moment of excitement and when perhaps half-a-dozen policies are being laid at the same time before the constituencies, a Bill perhaps supported by a majority which cannot be considered as really decisive. How then, I shall be asked, do we propose to determine whether a given matter is a grave matter and has not been adequately submitted to the country? It seems to me obvious that there are more ways than one in which that question could be determined. For example, a Resolution of either House of Parliament might be sufficient to transfer a question from the joint sitting to the constituencies. In that case I presume the Government that proposed the measure would have to consider whether they would persevere with it, or whether they would submit it to the verdict of the electors.
§ But another course suggests itself also. You might without much difficulty set up a Parliamentary tribunal which would be 844 competent to decide in each case whether the measure in question was or was not a measure calling for special treatment. I venture to say, speaking for myself, that if this procedure by Referendum were to be introduced I should hope to see it resorted to not only for the sake of settling differences between the two Houses, but also for the purpose of affording if need be a check upon legislation even when both Houses are agreed. That is a very important point; and let me say in passing that the Referendum is used in more foreign countries than one, not only for the purpose of settling differences, but of putting a check upon structural or organic legislation. It appears to me, therefore, that an arrangement of that kind would afford one mode of meeting the complaint which is so constantly made on the other side of the House that when a Conservative Government is in power and the two Houses are consequently agreed so far as Party principles are concerned, you have virtually single-Chamber government, and that at such a time and under such conditions any measure which the Conservative Government support can be carried through Parliament.
§ I will not detain the House with a disquisition on the merits of the Referendum, but I venture to say this of it—that it seems to me to afford the only means of correcting what always appears to me to be the weakest point in our Parliamentary system. How does that system work? We are constantly told that a member of the House of Commons has a mandate from the constituency that returns him. How does he obtain it? He is chosen by a body of electors who may be extremely ill-informed with regard to many of the questions before the public at the time. He is chosen amid the turmoil and excitement of a General Election, when perhaps a good many different questions are simultaneously agitating the country, and he may be chosen by a very small majority of his constituents. Upon the strength of that choice he is regarded as having a mandate to represent, or perhaps to misrepresent, his constituents for a term of years. Is it possible for the gentlemen who is elected always to feel sure that lie interprets the wishes of his constituents correctly? Is it, again, possible for the electors to feel sure that the gentleman whom they have returned to Parliament will correctly interpret their views? It cannot be possible either for the electors 845 or for the elected to have foreseen the whole of the political developments and complications which may take place within the space of five or six years. In such circumstances a vote of the House of Commons may be no real reflection of the views and wishes of the people of the country, and for that reason it seems to me eminently desirable that in the case which I am supposing there should be an opportunity of obtaining an expression of the views of the country without putting it to all the trouble and expense of a General Election. I have seen it constantly stated that a Referendum is objectionable on account of its great cost. My impression is that the estimates of the cost of the Referendum are very much exaggerated; but I humbly express my own conviction that if we had this power of resorting to the Referendum, the Referendum would not be very often resorted to. My strong impression is that the knowledge that the Referendum is there in the background would, in five cases out of six, lead to what I might describe as a settlement out of Court, and that the Referendum would be resorted to only in a case where there was reason to suppose confidently that an appeal to the people would be a successful appeal.