§ VISCOUNT BERTIE OF THAME rose to ask His Majesty's Government whether any Ministerial or Departmental Orders, Rules, or Regulations which by Statute are required to be laid before Parliament for a specified period have during the year 1936 been laid in the first instance in dummy; and to move for Papers.
§ The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I believe that the public intensely dislikes delegated legislation and looks upon it with the utmost suspicion. Therefore great care should be taken not to increase the suspicion by laying Papers in dummy. I think I may say that in the majority of cases in which Papers are laid they are annulable. That is to say, certain Papers have to be laid before both Houses and if no Motion is passed to annul those Rules or Orders, they automatically become law. Therefore they should be made as public as possible and made available to the public from the very first moment. I have no recent figures, but in 1920 there were eighty-two Public General Acts, and there were more than ten times the number of Statutory Rules and Orders. Those General Acts 46 were contained in 600 pages, but there were more than 3,000 pages of Rules and Orders. Since then there has been a great spate of both necessary and unnecessary legislation, so that probably the figures in both cases have been exceeded.
§ This question of laying Papers in dummy has often been raised in the House of Commons, but I do not recollect, anyhow since I have been a member of this House, now some seventeen years, that the question has been raised here. There have been many rulings in the House of Commons, and I propose to take your Lordships shortly through what has happened. On March 28, 1899, the Speaker said that no dummies were to be received at the Table and that the time for Orders to run was from the printing. On April 13, 1900, it was ordered in the Commons that a complete copy of any document must be laid in order to comply with any statutory condition. On July 5, 1901, one full copy was held to be sufficient, but on June 15, 1910—I do not know whether there was the same Speaker; I should think probably not—it was held that the period should run from the time honourable Members had had reasonable opportunity to avail themselves of it and to make themselves acquainted with it, and that it was the duty of the Departments to lay two copies, one in the Library and one for printing. That seems a good rule and one that ought to be applied in this House. Then the most recent case in the House of Commons was on June 24, 1936. The honourable Member for Chester-le-Street asked for but was unable to obtain the Draft Order in the Durham Scheme under the Coal Mines Act. On that occasion one honourable Member talked of the evasive secrecy of Government Departments.
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There is an obvious danger, because if you ever have an unscrupulous Minister or Department two Orders or sets of Regulations could be drafted, one of a more or less innocuous character and one very bad indeed which could be slipped in on the last day so that nobody would have a chance of getting it annulled. I am quite sure it would be a good thing if the provisions of the Rules Publication Act, 1893, were observed, especially Section 3, which reads as follows:
All Statutory Rules made after the 31st day of December next after the passing of this Act shall forthwith after they are made be sent to the Queen's printer of Acts of
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Parliament, and shall, in accordance with Regulations made by the Treasury, with the consent of the Lord Chancellor and the Speaker of the House of Commons, be numbered, and (save as provided by Regulations) printed and sold by him.
Then I am not quite sure, if Orders are laid in dummy and, perhaps for only two days in print, whether they ever become effective law, because they have not been on the Table for the prescribed number of days. Supposing the required period is one of twenty-eight days, which is the ordinary period, and the Order is first of all laid in dummy for twenty-six days, and then for two days in print, it in fact lies for two days only and I should like to know whether in such a case that is effective law or not. While I am on this subject I hope the day will arrive when there will be some uniformity in the period of days, and that more respect will be paid to the findings of the Donoughmore Committee. I beg to ask the Question standing in my name and to move for Papers.
§ THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (VISCOUNT HALIFAX)My Lords, I have no doubt that there will be very general sympathy in all parts of the House with the plea that has fallen from my noble friend. I do not think that he at all incorrectly diagnosed the feeling of public opinion about what he called, I think, delegated legislation. I was, as always, impressed by the exactitude of his researches into the numbers of General Acts and the obviously very much larger numbers of Rules and Orders made under them in the year that he selected. He will forgive me if I do not follow him in the distinction that he drew between necessary and what he was pleased to term unnecessary legislation. "Unnecessary" no doubt would be a term that would require closer definition if we were to reach agreement.
Having said so much, which will I trust suffice to show my noble friend that I am not lacking in sympathy for the attitude he adopts, I may tell him that after considerable research into what has in fact been the practice in this House during what has been taken for convenience as a research period, the past year, it has been found that there have only been two cases in the past year in which Papers that were required by Statute to be laid for a certain period have 48 been laid in dummy. Of those two cases, if it is of interest to my noble friend, one, on July 16 last, concerned the Supreme Court of Northern Ireland Order and related to Court fees, etc., and the other, on July 27, related to Land Registration (Northern Ireland) Orders and Rules made by the Chancery Judge. I think that we can all agree, and I certainly would agree with my noble friend, that it would be a matter for serious complaint if a Paper which is required by Statute to lie on the Table for a certain period either before an Affirmative Resolution was passed or an Address to the Crown was moved, or, again, one containing a rule or code which became elective by mere lapse of time, were laid in dummy and the full Paper were only to be presented at a later date. Whether, if any such procedure were followed, it would in fact constitute effective law, as my noble friend asked, is a question to which at the moment I am not prepared to make precise reply, and for a reason which I will give in a moment I do not think that my noble friend will consider that reply would be necessary.
It is quite true, of course, as he said, that the matter has been raised on more than one occasion in another place and that rulings in the sense which he indicated have been given by Mr. Speaker. That procedure, of course, does not obtain in your Lordships' House, but I would suggest for the consideration of your Lordships that it might be well to make an Order dealing with the matter that my noble friend has raised in some such terms as these: that when Papers are sent in under the provisions of a Statute which requires that they shall lie on the Table for a certain period, the period of time for which such Papers shall lie on the Table shall date from the presentation of the Papers in the form in which they are finally available for publication to members of the House. If my noble friend who has moved and others of your Lordships concur, I should be ready to put a Motion on the Paper to make an Order in those terms. That, I think, would pace the matter once for all on a basis that would be generally satisfactory.
I have only one other observation to make—it is perhaps worth making—and that is to point out that if that were done it would be unlikely that the practice of 49 laying any statutory Papers in dummy would, in fact, at all commonly prevail, inasmuch as it would be obvious that the object of a Department is that the period of days prescribed by Statute under the new conditions should commence to run at as early a date as possible. I hope that my noble friend may feel that I have been able to meet his request both for information and action in a way which he may consider not unreasonable.
§ VISCOUNT BERTIE OF THAMEMy Lords, I certainly feel that the noble Viscount has met me very fairly, and I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
§ Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.