JOINT COMMITTEE ON INDIAN CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM. (Hansard, 9 May 1933)

THE MARQUESS OF LINLITHGOW
My Lords, I rise to move, That leave be given to the Select Committee appointed to join with a Committee of the House of Commons on Indian Constitutional Re-form to lay upon the Table from day to day or otherwise the Minutes of Evidence taken before them and also such other records as they may think fit; that such Minutes of Evidence and records be printed, and delivered out; That, if the Blouse be not sitting, such Evidence and records shall be deemed to have been laid upon the Table of the House when 798 delivered to the Clerk of the Parliaments. I need only detain your Lordships for a few minutes in order to explain the circumstances which have led to this Motion. The Committee have given anxious consideration to the arrangements for the inquiry and to what is best to be done having regard to all the circumstances. At present the sittings of the Committee are being held by the gracious permission of His Majesty the King in the Royal Robing Room. That room will accommodate the Committee and their colleagues from India along with the witnesses and the several persons in attendance upon the Committee, but it would not be possible as well as those to accommodate therein members of the public. If it were to be decided to open the doors to the public it would be necessary to remove to a larger room. The Committee therefore considered the expediency of holding the inquiry in the Royal Gallery, but while the use of that place would largely surmount the difficulty of providing adequate space, it appears to the Committee that such a course would involve most material disadvantages.
The acoustics of the Royal Gallery are known to be bad, and if the Committee were to sit in that Chamber it would be necessary, we are informed, to install loud speakers. Conditions of that kind may be appropriate to certain occasions. They are not, I think the House will agree, appropriate to the carrying out of the task laid upon the Joint Committee. That task must consist in, the prolonged and detailed examination of problems of very great complexity. Physical conditions of the sort described seem to us to be quite unsuited to the appropriate conduct of the kind of work that lies before the Committee. In those circumstances it is proposed to continue to hold all sessions of the Committee in the Royal Robing Room and not to admit the public. If this House and another place are pleased to pass the appropriate Motions to-day it will be open to the Committee to lay upon the Table Minutes of Evidence. That means, as your Lordships are no doubt aware, that such Minutes as are laid will be available to your Lordships and to members of another place in the Printed Paper Office of this House and in the Vote Office of the other House, and will thereafter immediately be on sale to the public. I beg to move.

§ THE EARL OF HALSBURY
My Lords, I rise not to criticise this Motion at all but to ask the noble Marquess what it means. If your Lordships look at the terms of the Motion you will see it is quite doubtful what it does mean. It reads in this way: …lay upon the table from day to day or otherwise the Minutes of Evidence taken before them and also such other records as they may think fit. What does that mean? Does that mean that only those parts of the evidence that they think fit are going to be laid before us— that is to say, that the evidence is going to be edited? If it is, I should think it would give rather a bad impression to the country at large, because it would mean only those portions of the evidence that the majority of the. Committee thought would be good for us would be put before us. Surely if it is to be done at all and we are going to have the evidence it must be all or nothing. Otherwise let us have it quite clear that it is only the evidence as edited. I am only asking the noble Marquess to tell us which of these two things is meant. Is it to be little bits which he or his Committee think fit for our ears, or what does it mean?

THE MARQUESS OF LINLITHGOW
Full unrevised transcripts of evidence.

§ THE EARL OF HALSBURY
I am very much obliged to the noble Marquess.