§ 2.34 p.m.
§ VISCOUNT HAILSHAMMy Lords, I must say I regret to detain your Lordships with a purely personal explanation about a personal matter. Your Lordships are met to discuss public matters, and we do not come here to air personal grievances. I hope your Lordships will acquit me of any desire to do that, but there is a matter of principle about which a personal explanation is, I think, called for on my part. I must say that I was surprised and distressed yesterday to learn that the noble Lord, Lord Silkin—to whom I have given notice of what I wish to say to-day—allowed himself to make what I think I can, without rancour, describe as a personal attack on myself in my absence from the Chamber. I was surprised because I had not received any notice from the noble Lord that he intended to make such an attack. I had understood that it was customary to give such notice before an attack was made. I was distressed because the facts which the noble Lord told your Lordships were incorrect, and because the inferences which he sought to build upon them were most unfair.
There are three things which I must come here to correct to Lord Silkin's face about the facts to which he referred. In the first place, it is not correct that I come to your Lordships' House only to hear myself speak. In the second place, it is not correct that I went out immediately after my speech two days ago, and, in the third place, it is not correct that I made an attack such as he attributed to me on any section of your Lordships' community. I know too 258 well, and it is a great grief to me, that I attend your Lordships' debates less often than I should like, and I am deeply conscious of the fact that, in modern life, a young Peer with his professional living to make cannot, perhaps, attend so often in the House of Lords as he would like. I can only tell your Lordships that I deplore that fact, and I miss the chance of being with your Lordships more than I can say. It is also true that I tend to come to the House when debates are taking place in which I am interested and to which I think that I may have a contribution to make. Your Lordships' kindness (with one exception) to me has led me to understand, perhaps wrongly, that those of us who are placed as I am professionally, are given some indulgence on such occasions, and your Lordships are kindly, especially to younger Members of this House who have their living to make, as I have, in an exacting and competitive, if honourable, calling.
I was careful to be present throughout on the first day of the debate on the Motion for the Second Reading of the Life Peers Bill. I was in the Chamber before I spoke and I was there after I spoke. For a short time during Lord Moran's speech—a part of which I regret that I missed—I did go out for a cup of tea, and for the first two or three sentences of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Ellenborough, I was engaged outside the Chamber in speaking to a secretary who had come to the House with some urgent documents for me. I apologise to Lord Ellenborough for that absence. Apart from those brief absences I was in the Chamber from beginning to end of the debate. Lord Silkin distinctly told the House yesterday, as appears in Hansard, that I was not, and when my noble friend, Lord Winterton, corrected him, he told the House that he had been at great pains to discover the facts. The facts are as I have told your Lordships now, and the noble Lord was wholly incorrect. If my memory does not belie me, he was not actually present after I had made my speech and during the time that I was sitting here. That, no doubt, explains the mistake, which I fully accept was a perfectly honest one on his part. If only he had given me notice of what he was going to say, or really had been at pains to ascertain the true facts, he would not have made the attack.
259 It is unfortunately true, and I frankly confess it, that when I made my professional engagements in relation to this debate, which I have wanted for months to attend, I was not aware that it would be a two-day debate, and I made those arrangements I think before it had been actually arranged as a two-day debate. And I did so with great difficulty, because those of your Lordships who practise in my profession will know that a junior barrister who happens also to be a Peer must, if anything, show exaggerated respect for his tribunal, so that it may not be thought for an instant that he is taking advantage of his position. With great difficulty I managed to postpone a professional engagement which I had made in order to be present on what I understood was to be the only day of the debate. I was not here on the second day, and no one regrets that more than I do. I had told the Leader of the House of my difficulties. I had almost abandoned any thought of speaking, as some of your Lordships know, but I thought I could count on the good will of this House and that your Lordships would understand the difficulties of a man in my position. I find now that I was wrong. I regret that I should have had this experience. I should not have referred to this matter at all if it had been only, in my feeling, a spiteful and uncalled for attack upon myself; but I could not bear that your Lordships should think that I had treated your Lordships' House with disrespect in this matter. I ask your Lordships to believe that is not so. I did not treat you with disrespect.
It was a matter of great grief to me not to be present yesterday to hear Lord Silkin's speech. If he had only told me that he was going to attack me in any way, whatever the cost to myself or whatever inconvenience it might have caused to others, I should have been in my place here to hear him do it. But he did not give me notice. I understand that he has practised in a branch of the legal profession himself. I wonder what he would have said if some young barrister to whom he had entrusted important affairs of his clients had at the last moment deliberately upset those clients' interests and arrangements in order simply to attend somewhere where, for aught he knew, he would not be wanted. I cannot 260 believe that the noble Lord would have treated a young man who had done such a thing with very much consideration if the noble Lord had been acting as a solicitor. I do ask him seriously to consider whether, on mature reflection on this matter, what he said yesterday was something which ought to have been said at all. In your Lordships' House we have no Chair to appeal to for protection. We can rely only upon one another for our chivalry and good manners. My feeling is that for centuries we have relied upon that and never in vain.
I do not want to say anything personal about Lord Silkin, for whom I have a very great respect—he has held high office under the Crown—but I feel very strongly that when a personal attack is to be made by one Member in your Lordships' House on another, notice should be given. It should not go forth that a young man who has his living to earn and who is not in a comfortable position to be retired at an early age is to be abused or sneered at simply because he does not come to your Lordships' House on every occasion of your meetings. I can only reiterate my deep apologies for not having been here yesterday. I trust that if I have made nothing else plain in my speech I have made plain that in absenting myself from your Lordships' House, either on that or on any other occasion, I was not following the dictates of my heart in the matter, because here is the place I would have been. Nor would I treat Lord Silkin, and still less your Lordships' House, with disrespect. I wonder whether Lord Silkin, in the circumstances, feels now that an attack of this kind ought ever to have been made.
§ 2.43 p.m.
§ LORD SILKINMy Lords, I hope I shall be allowed your indulgence to say a few words in reply to the noble Viscount. First, may I say that I am very sorry that I should have caused him any distress at all? I should like him to know, if he does not already know, that I have always had a high regard for him and a great respect for his outstanding ability. I think that probably I may even have indicated that to him at some time in the past. The last thing I would have wished to do was to cause him distress or do anything which is unfair to him.
261 The noble Viscount complained that I did not give him notice that I was going to attack him; but, of course, the very essence of my so-called attack was that he was not here. I did not know he was not going to be here. If he had been here yesterday, what I said would not have been said; it was said because he was no there. I would ask the noble Viscount to consider the position as it appeared to me. He had launched a rather serious attack against my noble friends on this side of the House, as well as against his noble friends on the other side. I take it as a serious attack to be accused of insincerity. Like the noble Viscount, we are here because we regard it as a public duty to be here and to say what we honestly think: and say it with all sincerity. I regard it as the most serious attack that can be made on any noble Lord to say that he is saying here things which he does not really believe.
I do not want to quote the noble Viscount's speech at any length, but he did state this (OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 180, Col. 180):
Each Front Bench is completely convinced of the sincerity of the other. I frankly confess that I am not convinced of the sincerity of either. They are neither of them sincere.Then the noble Viscount had a few words to say about his own Leader, but that is not my affair. The noble Viscount does not exactly pull his punches, and he said some very hard things. He might have expected that in the course of a debate which was to continue into the next day there would be some replies to what he had said. I should like to make it clear that I did not come to the House yesterday prepared to say anything about the first part of his speech. I wanted to say something about the second part, the serious part, which I thought was an excellent contribution to the debate and worthy of consideration by noble Lords who spoke on the following day. The noble Viscount was not here and I did not feel justified in dealing with it.In the course of my remarks I did say that the noble Viscount had made a speech and walked out. That was what I honestly believed. He has now assured me that that was not the case and that he was here. Of course, I accept that statement without any reservation, and I withdraw that part of my speech which suggested that he was not here immediately after he had spoken on Tuesday. I 262 withdraw that unreservedly. I also accept the fact that in his position he found it impossible to come on the following day—of course, I accept that. What I would say to him—and may I say it with all respect, and as a friend?—is that if a noble Lord comes here and makes an attack on one side of the House or the other he ought at all costs to be here to hear the replies; and if he is not in a position to hear the replies he should refrain from making the attack, and there would be no criticism whatever. To the extent that I have been inaccurate in what I said, I withdraw it unreservedly. As to the rest, I feel that I have nothing to add or subtract.
§ 2.48 p.m.
§ VISCOUNT HAILSHAMMy Lords, perhaps I may be allowed to say that I do not want to pursue what is obviously a matter which your Lordships would feel distasteful, but it is really very difficult, when one's engagements fall at the same time, always to manage to do the right thing by everybody. I am conscious in my own professional position that people must suffer if at the last moment I do not attend to their business and nothing else would have prevented me from coming to hear the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, make his reply to what he described as "an attack"—I thought myself that it was rather more good-humoured and I did not notice any particular bad blood at the time. I noticed that most of the noble Lords on the other side were present and listened to it and were laughing heartily; but if I caused offence on that matter to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, I am sorry.
I certainly do not want to pursue the matter, but there comes a moment when one has to choose between different kinds of inconvenience, and the kind of inconvenience I might have caused to others by coming here would have meant a serious loss to quite innocent people. I feel that before launching a violent personal attack on me, it would have been easy for the noble Lord to communicate with me—I am on the telephone, and I should have been only too glad to give an answer, if the noble Lord thought any disrespect had been shown to him. I could have given him the reasons in greater detail than is possible in your Lordships' House. Though I accept his partial apology, I think he may feel, on reflection, that a greater measure of generosity and a greater attempt to understand 263 other people's difficulties would not come entirely amiss. I ask for no quarter myself. I do not pull my punches, and I do not expect anybody to pull his punches at me. But I hope that nobody will attempt the feat of hitting me behind my back and below the belt at the same time.