§ LORD NEWTON rose to call attention to the method of publishing House of Lords Debates. The noble Lord said: My Lords, in drawing attention to this matter, which is one of not solely domestic interest, perhaps it would be as well if I shortly explain the different practices which obtain in the two Houses. In the House of Commons the Official Report is printed and circulated on the morning following the debate. The Reports are, of course, in an uncorrected form, and they remain in that condition until sufficient material accumulates for a Volume to be produced. In this House the practice is as follows. Any one who has taken part in a debate receives on the morning of the third day after the debate a proof 836 of his speech, and of his speech only. He is allowed a very generous margin of time for correction, as much as two days being allotted for that purpose; and eventually the report appears in what is known as the Daily Part after an interval of at least seven days from the date on which the debate took place. That is to say, if a debate takes place in this House on a Monday, the report would not appear in its complete form until the following Monday afternoon, or possibly even later. There cannot be any doubt as to which is the better method.
§ The method which prevails here is one which contains two very obvious defects. The first defect is this. Supposing such a thing as a totally unscrupulous Peer were possible he could completely alter his speech and it would be quite impossible to detect him because, as I have already explained, it is only the proof of your own speech which is sent to you. You have no opportunity of seeing what other people have said; and, if I am not mistaken, the proof is a privileged document which is not communicated to any person but the deliverer of the speech himself. That is one obvious objection. The other and much more important defect is that no member of the public, and no Peer as far as that is concerned, is able to see for more than a week what has actually taken place in this House. Take, for instance, the case of one of the more serious newspapers—the case of a weekly newspaper. That newspaper would be quite unable to obtain in time any information with regard to a debate which had taken place in this House unless, of course, it had been reported in the Press. Members of this House are under the same disability, because if they desire to refer to the report of a debate which has recently taken place there are no facilities for their being able to do so, and they have to wait as long as the public has to wait—namely, a week.
§ The reply to this objection might be, "Oh, but you have the Press reports." But I think it must be perfectly obvious to everybody by this time that there is a strong tendency on the part of the Press to curtail the reports of all Parliamentary debates. Personally I am quite prepared to believe that I shall live to see the day when there will be no proper Parliamentary report at all and when the daily Press will merely publish a sort of descriptive account of the proceedings much as is done in the 837 case of the French newspapers. At any day it might enter into the brain of Lord Northcliffe, or whoever it may be who controls the hydra-headed Harmsworth Press, that the public was far more interested in Police Court intelligence or news of that kind than in the Parliamentary debates. We have rattler an instructive instance of that in the Press to-day. I have looked at most of the morning papers and I notice, with, I think, only two exceptions, of which The Times is one, that there is a great deal more about "Brides in Baths" than there is about the debate—the very important debate—which took place here yesterday with regard to the operations of our Armies at the head of the Persian Gulf, in East Africa, and in other parts of the world. And yet, strange to say, the very organs which treat the news in this way would probably be the first to accuse the people of this country of not taking the war seriously.
§ The fact is that the Press only reports what it believes, rightly or wrongly, to be "good copy." An instance of this took place only a short time ago. Just before we adjourned for the Easter recess, in accordance with what I am sorry to say is now almost a well-established practice, a vast amount of business, sufficient for a whole week, was crammed into one afternoon. Several Bills, all presumably of a fairly important nature, were introduced from the Front Bench opposite and passed through all their stages, and those Bills were explained in comparatively lengthy speeches by some of the occupants of that Bench. I do not think that a single word, or at all events hardly more than a line or two, appeared in the newspapers with reference to those measures, and the conscientious student of proceedings in Parliament, if he had wanted to know what those Bills were about, would have had to wait, as I have said, for a week or eight days before he was able to find out. Perhaps there is one other obstacle encountered by the Press here with which I have omitted to deal. Judging from the frequent recurrence of such sentences as "The noble Lord, who was indistinctly heard in the Gallery," or "The noble Lord was understood to remark." or "The noble Lord, whose remarks were imperfectly heard," it is possible that there are physical obstacles in the way of a report of our proceedings of which I have not taken sufficient account.
838§ But to return to the alternative methods, I think there can be no doubt that the practice which prevails with regard to the publication of the House of Commons Debates is infinitely the better, and, if it were possible, it would no doubt be very desirable if we could follow the same practice here. But, unfortunately, it is quite impracticable to make any suggestion of that kind. I understand that in order to secure the publication of the Commons' Debates upon the following day a very large staff is required, and I should imagine that the annual expenditure on reporting must represent £5,000 or £6,000, and probably more. In this House the staff is very limited. In fact, it is so limited that I am under the impression that the entire responsibility devolves upon one gentleman, and the total expenses in connection with the reporting of the debates here do not amount to more than £1,000. If we were to endeavour to imitate the example of the Commons I believe that it would necessitate an additional expenditure of something like £1,700. The present is obviously not a moment when any one ought to demand increased expenditure, and if we were to do so the chances are that with the House of Commons as at present constituted there would not be the remotest prospect of such a request being complied with.
§ What I desire to put forward is an alternative suggestion in the nature of a compromise which would not necessitate any increase of expenditure at all. I have explained the method which prevails now. If, instead of sending to each Peer separately a proof of his speech and then waiting until he returns it corrected, what is known as the Daily Part were issued at once, then the Report of the proceedings here would be obtainable at a reasonably early date. Such a Report would, of course, be an uncorrected Report. That is clearly understood. But it would be an improvement upon the present conditions to this extent—that whereas we now have to wait for a week or more in order to obtain the Official Report, under the system which I am proposing, in the event of a debate taking place on a Monday, the Daily Report would be available possibly on the Wednesday but certainly on the Thursday following. And, of course, the same method with regard to corrections would be employed as prevails in the Commons. The Daily 839 Parts would continue to accumulate until there were sufficient of them to make up a Volume, and before they were actually bound up in volume form noble Lords would have an opportunity of making corrections, as in the case of the House of Commons.
§ I have been informed privately that this plan has already been put forward, but was rejected because there was a number of Peers who resented the idea of not being allowed adequate time to sufficiently polish up their observations. I have no recollection myself of any incident of the kind. I do not remember the matter ever being debated here; and so far as I am concerned, I certainly never had any opportunity of pronouncing an opinion on the subject. But with regard to this question of corrections, anybody who has taken the trouble to look into the matter will have seen that upon the whole the number of corrected speeches form a very small proportion of the total number. Such speeches as are corrected and are marked by an asterisk to indicate revision by the Peer are chiefly speeches which have been made either from the Front Bench or from the Front Opposition Bench; and no doubt I shall be told that these are official utterances, and that they should he treated with great respect and that every opportunity should be allowed to correct them. To this objection I respectfully suggest that serious correction is not in the least degree necessary. In this House the official reporting is conducted—and here I am sure everybody will agree with me—in a remarkably accurate and intelligent manner. In fact, I do not think it would be possible to improve upon the way in which the official reporting here is carried out. The official reporter, I gather, is not only a reporter but he is an editor as well; and I confess that on the rare occasions when I have taken the trouble to read over my own speeches I have been almost amazed at the lucidity of my expression and argument, and I cannot help thinking that many other noble Lords must have experienced the same feeling. Therefore there is really not the same excuse for insisting upon correction in this House that there is in the House of Commons. And with regard to these important official statements, what I have always noticed is that when a Minister has any really very important statement to make he reads it out. The present 840 Secretary of State for War makes no mystery about it at all, and I think it is a very desirable thing to do. If you have a statement to which you are liable to be pinned down eventually, it is clearly desirable that you should take every precaution. Well, these precautions are taken, and I really do not think that noble Lords enjoying official positions need have any fears upon the subject.
§ Again, it is really more desirable to know what a man actually said at the time than to read what at a subsequent period he thought he really meant to say. I do not know that there is any necessity to advance further arguments in favour of allowing so-called uncorrected reports to appear. But what I would venture to urge, with respect, is this—that as the legislative powers of this House have been very largely curtailed its chief value really consists in its debates, and if we acquiesce in any practice which diminishes the importance of those debates we only encourage those misguided people who are under the impression that this is a totally unnecessary institution. I hope that the suggestion which I have put forward will not be resented but will be put before the House of Lords Offices Committee, which I believe is the body which deals with these questions, and I trust that it may commend itself to them. I would submit, in conclusion, that the present moment is a favourable one for dealing with this question, because I understand that the contract with the printers terminates with the end of this year.
§ LORD SOUTHWARKMy Lords, before the noble Marquess replies perhaps I may be allowed to make a further suggestion. The inconvenience which in my opinion this House suffers from is the delay in receiving the Official Report on the rare occasions when debates—and they are generally debates of considerable importance—extend beyond one day. On the second day of a debate it would be very useful if we could have access to the report of the speeches made on the previous day. That is not possible now. As the noble Lord opposite has stated, the newspaper reports of Parliamentary debates are considerably reduced. There was a time when, if a speech of importance was made in Parliament, you could rely upon a verbatim report appearing in the newspapers the following morning. Those days 841 have gone; and on the rare occasions when debates in this House extend over two or three days and you want to refer on the second or third day to what a particular noble Lord said on a day when you might have been absent there is nothing to which you can refer. What I suggest is that the question of the speeding-up of the publication of the Official Report on such occasions as those to which I have referred should be considered.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (THE MARQUESS OF CREWE)My Lords, I rather hoped that some other noble Lords would have taken part in this debate, because this is not a matter which particularly concerns the Government, or, indeed, the Front Benches. The matter is one, I take it, for the House as a whole. Each of us may have a private opinion as to the best method of reporting our debates, and noble Lords may hold different opinions as to the amount of public money which it is worth while to spend in obtaining a quite early and full report of what has been said here. Therefore I wish that some other noble Lords had intervened before I spoke, and I trust that others will express their views later.
The tendency, to which the noble Lord opposite alluded, which has been observed in the Press of late years—that is to say, the substitution of picturesque accounts of debates for verbatim reports of the speeches made—has, I am sure, been noticed by everybody. But that fact is subject to certain qualifications. The noble Lord himself mentioned cases of full reports. I cannot help thinking that as a general rule it will be found that when our debates include matters of general public interest there are some newspapers which give, if not precisely verbatim reports, except of one or two speeches, yet full reports, which do not omit the substance of anything that has been said. In addition to what the noble Lord said, I might mention—to take newspapers of quite different political views—that such papers as the Morning Post on the one hand and the Manchester Guardian on the other give, I believe, full Parliamentary reports of the more important debates in both Houses. It is important, of course, to, remember that any change which is made—and this was enforced by my noble friend behind 842 me (Lord Southwark)—has to stand the test of the not very frequent occasions on which our debates are late and on which they extend over a number of days. A system which might work with apparent ease in a state of affairs such as we are now conducting in Parliament would obviously run the risk of breaking down altogether on the occasions when we sit for several consecutive days up to midnight.
The noble Lord alluded to the fact that in the year 1909 the identical proposition which he has put forward was made and was for a short time actually adopted. The noble Lord stated that he had not had an opportunity of knowing what then occurred. He probably overlooked the fact that there was a Report presented to the House by the House of Lords Offices Committee, dated, I think, March 4, 1909, which explained precisely what occurred and the character of the complaints that were made. The Committee reported—
The system recently adopted, in conformity with the new practice of the House of Commons, of publishing the Daily Parts of the Debates before correction by the Peers has not given satisfaction. Complaints have been made of the issue of unrevised speeches and of the impossibility of making corrections on the Reports in their present form, and the Committee strongly recommend that the old system should be reverted to.The old system which was thereupon reverted to is that which we now enjoy, or, in the case of the noble Lord opposite, do not appreciate.It would not, as the noble Lord very clearly pointed out, be possible for us to adopt the precise procedure of the House of Commons without engaging in an expense which I am quite sure the House would not desire to undertake. It would mean, as he said, an additional expenditure of something like £1,700 a year. But apart from that, supposing that, in place of the proof slips which are now sent to Peers on the second day after the debate, the Daily Parts were circulated to all Peers, with, of course, the possibility for any noble Lord who had taken part in a debate to make a correction in his speech which would appear some months later in the bound Volume, the objection which was taken, and which weighed with the House of Lords Offices Committee, to that course was that the form of the Daily Part is such as to make any kind of extensive correction very difficult.
§ LORD NEWTONHear, hear.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWEI am disposed to agree with the noble Lord that that is an objection to which excessive weight ought not to be attached. It is not, I think, a desirable practice for noble Lords—or, indeed, for anybody in any Assembly—to attempt to re-write their speeches or to supply a perhaps long link in an argument which they may have omitted to give expression to when they were on their legs. There is possibly a temptation sometimes to go beyond anything which could be accurately called the correction of a proof, but I think there is this amount of substance in the objection—that the margins of the pages are very small and it is not an easy matter to make a coherent correction even of a line or so which May at any time be necessary in the Daily Parts. What course is taken by members of the House of Commons if they are, as I suppose they must be, subject to that necessity I do not know, but I can imagine that in some cases the proof correcting would be difficult and inconvenient.
At any rate I have no reason to suppose that the attitude of the House has changed in this matter, and it was for that reason that I had hoped to hear what other noble Lords had to say. It is, I repeat, purely a matter for the House at large. Until some evidence has been produced that there is a general desire for this change—it being understood that no change is likely to be acceptable, as the noble Lord pretty well agreed, which involves a large expenditure of money—I, for one, should not feel disposed to suggest any alteration of the present practice. It will be open, of course, for the House of Lords Offices Committee to reconsider the question; and I observe that there is a Motion on the Paper to-day, which I trust will receive the unanimous agreement of the House, to add Lord Newton to the Select Committee. I should think it very possible that when the noble Lord gets there he will cause some fresh discussion of this subject. If that is so, it is perhaps not advisable that we should attempt to arrive at a definite conclusion on the subject to-day.
§ LORD PARMOORMy Lords, from my experience in the two Houses I agree with Lord Newton that the nearer we can get to the custom which at present obtains in the House of Commons the more convenient it will be. The practice in the House of Commons is this. The Daily 844 Part is issued on the following morning without correction, and though I do not think I ever took the trouble to make any corrections in the reports of what I said at any time, still any Member who desires to make a correction can do so, and the correction is made when the Volume is issued. The difficulty that I have experienced as regards the method of publishing House of Lords Debates is that one really never sees the Official Report of a debate as a whole until the interest in it has passed by. I do not want to go into the point which was raised by the noble Lord as regards the reporting of our debates in the daily Press. I think that depends on different considerations altogether. But I do not think it is possible to have what is done in this House fairly known by people outside who take an interest in the matters discussed here if the publication of the Official Report of our debates is delayed for something like seven or eight days. In modern days by that time, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the whole interest has passed by.
What Lord Newton has suggested is really a compromise. I cannot imagine that any noble Lord would feel hurt that his speech in the first instance should be reported in the same way as the speeches in the House of Commons—namely, without correction. I have never heard that the Prime Minister is in any way damnified or affected by the fact that his speeches in the first instance are given to the public without correction. In fact, I have very often heard references in the House of Commons to the uncorrected reports there, and mistakes have been pointed out in particular cases. As I say, the matter is one of convenience to members of this House, and what we do here should be fairly known outside. I cannot see any difficulty myself in adopting Lord Newton's suggestion, and certainly from my experience in another place I think it would be much more convenient in every way.
§ THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNEMy Lords, as the noble Marquess who leads the House has told us, this is eminently a question for the House at large and not for the two Front Benches to dispose of. The noble Marquess suggested that it might be again considered by the House of Lords Offices Committee, and that, I must say, seems to me to be an excellent suggestion. It is quite true that the Committee inquired into the whole question 845 not many years ago, but it may fairly be urged that since that time the reporting of our proceedings in the Press has become much worse than it was. The noble Marquess said that there were one or two newspapers which could always be trusted to give a fairly full account of a really important debate. I think that is so, as a general rule. But I am bound to say that within my own experience I have noticed cases in which debates, I will not say of the very first importance but of considerable importance—debates, for example, dealing with some of the social questions which have greatly agitated the public mind during recent years—have been very badly reported indeed. The speeches delivered from the Front Benches have been "telescoped," and the speeches delivered from the other parts of the House have simply not been reported at all. Therefore I think it is quite time for the Committee to reconsider its position with regard to this question.
The present system, as my noble friend has pointed out, is far from satisfactory. Under that system we have to wait a long time for the Report of our debates. When we get it, it is no doubt a Report which has been revised and perhaps touched up by some of the speakers, but we receive it at a time when it has ceased to have the same interest for us that it would have if it were in our hands within twenty-four or thirty-six hours of the time when the speeches were delivered. It conies to this, that owing to the failure of the newspapers to report our debates we are left virtually without any report at all until such time as the long delayed Official Report makes its appearance. The ideal system would be the one for which Lord Southwark expressed a preference just now—I mean the method followed in the House of Commons. That system is however, I am afraid, unattainable owing to the great expense which it involves, and my noble friend made it clear that he, at any rate, was not going to press for the introduction of that system in all its fullness.
My noble friend suggested a middle way, and that middle way is, I think, worthy of your Lordships' examination. I understand my noble friend to propose that the Daily Part should be in our hands as soon as possible—that is, within an interval of two or three days—uncorrected, and that the corrected reports should, as now, appear in the Volume which is periodically 846 published. I think upon the whole that ought to satisfy everybody. It ought to satisfy the orators who deliver speeches in this House. They will, of course, have to take their chance; and, in spite of the care bestowed upon them by the official to whom my noble friend referred in terms of well-merited eulogy, those speeches no doubt will sometimes read a little awkwardly and we shall find occasionally nominative cases and verbs standing greatly in need of restoration to their proper relation. Then, after a decent interval of time, noble Lords who make these speeches will have the consolation of knowing that they will go down to history in a properly polished and revised form. So much as to the persons who deliver the speeches.
But when it comes to the public—and I include amongst the public ourselves and all who are interested in our proceedings—I think the public would greatly gain, because we should under that system have at any rate a faithful, if not a very highly polished, account of what took place during our debates. Therefore it does seem to me, upon the whole, that some such arrangement as my noble friend has suggested might very well be adopted. But I certainly should be glad if the whole question could be once again examined by the House of Lords Offices Committee; and if, as I hope will be the case, my noble friend Lord Newton becomes one of its members we may be quite sure that it will be adequately dealt with by that body.
EARL RUSSELLMy Lords, if I am not mistaken as to the facts of the present practice, then Lord Newton and most of those who followed him are wrong in thinking that the course he suggests would not add to the cost of producing the Official Report. I believe that the present system is that members of this House may obtain free of charge either the Daily Parts or the Volumes, but not both. If that is so, the procedure of circulating the Daily Parts to every member of the House would involve an additional charge, because obviously you could not deprive noble Lords of the opportunity of obtaining the bound Volumes. I venture to think that no system which does not give you the Official Report the next morning is really any particular improvement. I do not see how it will help to have the Report on the third day rather than on the seventh day. Where speedier publication would be apt to be useful is in the prosecution 847 of a debate from day to day; but it is quite obvious that we cannot get that advantage unless the Report is published on the following morning. As I say, I do not see that there would be much improvement on the present system if the Report is not to be published until the third day after the debate. As regards the conscientious Parliamentary student to whom Lord Newton referred, surely his interest will not have evaporated in the interval between three and seven days. On the whole, I do not consider that any change is necessary. But I think the suggested difficulty as to the margin for corrections might be got over without very much trouble by continuing to send to noble Lords who have taken part in a debate the wide proof slips together with the unrevised Daily Part. It is the same set of type, and it is only a question of printing the speech on another slip of paper. I would further suggest that the Daily Parts should be sent only to those Peers who desire to have them, and that public money should not be wasted by their being sent to Peers who do not require them and who would only throw them in the wastepaper basket.
§ LORD NEWTONI have gone into the question of expense, and have been assured that the compromise which I have suggested will be no more expensive than the present practice. As regards the noble Earl's fear of additional cost, he does not seem to be aware of the fact that both the Daily Parts and the Volumes are now supplied free of expense to any Peer who wants them. Therefore I am unable to see that there is any justification for his fears. On the contrary I am greatly surprised; almost grieved, to hear such reactionary opinions expressed by a noble Earl who is supposed to be in full sympathy with everything that represents progress.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE)My Lords, arising out of what my noble friend has just said, may I enter one caveat. He has suggested that his scheme can be carried out with no additional expense. Is he quite certain that that is so? What is done now is this. On the second day after the debate proofs are circulated to those Peers who have spoken. It will obviously take longer, subject to the same expense, to circulate the Daily Part than it does to circulate a few sheets containing the proofs of a speech. To begin with, 848 it must take longer to print a number of Daily Parts than to strike off two proofs of each speech. Therefore if the noble Lord's scheme is adopted I do not think he can expect, at the same expenditure of money, to get the Daily Parts circulated as quickly as noble Lords now get the proofs. However, as the question has been raised I have no doubt the House of Lords Offices Committee will gladly go into the matter again; and if noble Lords agree to put Lord Newton on the Committee, as I hope will be the case, we shall doubtless have an early opportunity of doing so on his motion. At the same time I entertain great fear that we shall not be able to do much to meet the noble Lord's view without some increase in expenditure.
LORD LATYMERMy Lords, I merely rise to make a suggestion. I do not profess to have studied the subject, but it occurs to me that if more expense is required to meet our wants in this respect it might be met by the exercise of a little economy in another direction. I refer to the printing verbatim of counsels' speeches together with the evidence given before our Select Committees. I particularly lay stress on the printing of counsels' speeches. They are enormously long and contain a great amount of repetition, and if some economy could be exercised in that direction—
THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWNI am sorry to interrupt. But the noble Lord is speaking now of the printing of reports of the proceedings of Committees upstairs. I would point out that that cost is defrayed by the parties.