HL Deb 05 May 1953 vol 182 cc228-44

3.36 p.m.

VISCOUNT STANSGATE rose to call attention to the new powers and responsibilities accruing to this House in consequence of recent changes in legislative procedure; and to move for Papers. The noble Viscount said: My Lords, the Motion on the Order Paper for the consideration of the Commons Amendments to the Lords Amendments to the Transport Bill, prompted me to offer one or two remarks to your Lordships about the growing powers of this House. It did not seem suitable that I should speak on the Motion for the consideration of those Amendments, because I desired to travel a little more widely than the Transport Bill. Indeed, the Transport Bill is immaterial for my purpose, because it is to changes in constitutional structure or incipient changes in constitutional structure to which I wish to draw attention. I would add that these observations and appraisements are my own, and I am not entitled nor am I seeking to involve any of my noble friends in them. I suggest, however, that they are factual, and I offer them to your Lordships for your consideration. I trust that they will be examined by the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton (who is himself a very distinguished Parliamentary statesman here and has been in both Houses) on the basis of facts and whether they are true and accurate.

As I say, the stimulus for making these remarks is that during the Transport Bill we found that a large portion of work which is normally done elsewhere was made the sole responsibility of this House. There was not sufficient manpower elsewhere to set up the system of Standing Committees and, therefore, it was necessary to leave to this House a great deal of work which is normally done elsewhere. That is the reason why I put on the Paper a Motion that I would call attention to the increasing powers and responsibilities of this House. I shall be brief, and some of the matter to which I shall refer is well known.

First of all, the House of Lords is constantly increasing in power. It is increasing in power because, for one thing, it is increasing in numbers. Every Party contributes to that. I myself am a happy and proud beneficiary of that system. But I daresay that your Lord ships would be surprised if you looked at the numbers. I have taken the last four quinquennia, and the number of Members of your Lordships' House has increased remarkably. In 1936 it was 749; after the next five years it was 761; it then rose to 812 and now stands at 835 fully qualified Lords of Parliament, able to come here at any time and exercise to the full their privileges as Members of this House. Now that, in itself, must be a source of strength, and must be a source of strength to that type of what we in this House should call, I suppose, the stable opinion to which these noble Lords will naturally incline. We do not look for it to be a pool of revolutionary sentiment; we know that at any time it can be called upon by leaders of conservative opinion—I mean conservative with a small "c"—as a reserve against any changes which they do not like.

It is sometimes said, "You complain of the increasing power of the House of Lords, but you have forgotten the Parliament Act." I have not forgotten the Parliament Act at all. The Parliament Act delimited the extreme boundary beyond which your Lordships were not allowed to go. In point of fact, it is interesting that the first Parliament Act (which, of course, the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, remembers so well) was used on only one occasion, and that was for the passage of a Bill already much tested, an excellent Bill—the Welsh Church Bill. Beyond that, it covered no Bill except one a few years later—the second Parliament Act, which was passed, under the first, for the purpose of getting the Steel Bill through; but in point of fact the Bill never had any shelter from the second Parliament Act. The Parlia- ment Acts must be regarded as a perimeter. I do not think your Lordships have shown the least sign of wishing to transgress beyond it. The third thing that makes for great strength in this House is that we, the 835 Lords of Parliament, have entire control of our own procedure. We have control of this House and therefore it is quite possible—indeed it is happening—to get far greater power for this House by methods of procedure than by any changes of law which might be forbidden by the Parliament Act.

There are four ways in which the procedure of the Chamber is governed. First, there are Statutes—there are in practice only two. The second is by rulings of the Chair. We have no Speaker here in that sense, and no recorded rulings of Order in this House, so that that cannot govern us. The third way is that of Standing Orders. Standing Orders are frequently suspended. They are very interesting Standing Orders, and some of them are effective, although, as has happened to-day, they are frequently suspended. The fourth is by practice; and if any noble Lords share my serious alarm at the growing power of the House of Lords it is because they fear that by the use and practice in relations between the two Houses the power of this House may be increased in a way that many of us would think undesirable. It must be recognised that in the relations between the two Houses of Parliament it so happens that one House makes the claim and the other does not resist: the one encroaches and the other recedes. The relative powers of the two Houses were defined in 1671.

Before I conclude, I want to draw attention to something which has nothing to do with any particular Government but which adds very considerably to the influence and power of this House, and that is delegated legislation. In the modern State it is quite impossible to pass specific Acts for every purpose, and so what is done is to delegate to the Minister power to propose to both Houses of Parliament what are in fact miniature Bills—and not, indeed, always miniature: sometimes they are quite substantial measures. That power is conceded by the mother Act and exercised by the Minister as time goes on; and when it comes to the use of those powers there is no question about inequality between the two Houses, On the contrary, there is complete parity. Recently the noble Viscount, Lord Elibank, made a speech about the control of exports to China. An order had been made causing ships to require a licence to carry goods to China. It was in the power of this House by one single vote to bring to an end that action of the Government.

There is a much more dangerous side from the point of view of those who do not agree with the current opinion, and that is the Affirmative Resolution. Many Acts say that the Minister can do this or that, subject to an Affirmative Resolution of both Houses. There is such a provision, although I am not sure how it will work, in the present Bill for the Federation of Central Africa. Certain things will be subject to Affirmative Resolution. So long as the political view of the other place is the same as that of this House it does not matter: we can work together in company and in harness. But supposing that the political view elsewhere differs from that here, and supposing that an Act passed by the Government demands an Affirmative Resolution of this House, then noble Lords on the Government Front Bench will see that there will have been placed on their successors the duty to secure assent to things to which the House might not normally be sympathetic. Last year there were over a thousand of these orders. Under the system of delegated legislation the powers of the House of Lords are constantly subject to increase.

Finally, I come to what happened the other day in connection with the Transport Bill. I know nothing of the technical aspects of the Bill, but I listened to the debate with great interest. I am not expressing, any view on the merits of the Bill: it is the procedure I am talking about. The Transport Bill was introduced into another place. It was a very heavy measure. A good deal had to be done. Unfortunately, as the result of the Election, there was not the manpower available to the Government to set up a Standing Committee. The Bill, therefore, had to be taken on the Floor of the House and discussion was limited, and so a great deal of work which normally would have been given to the House of Commons was transferred to this House. We had particularly interesting debates and long sittings. I enjoyed myself, for it is always a privilege to be here when this House is having a debate. We had speeches from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth: speeches of very great ability, expounding one point of view; and speeches from noble Lords on the other side of the House expounding another. We sat late—until after twelve o'clock midnight on one occasion—and a great deal was done. When we came to the finish, the noble Lord, Lord Leathers, said (OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 181, col. 313): …the manner in which this Bill has proceeded and the improvements which have been made in it are very strong evidence that this Chamber has a most valuable part to play in framing of legislation. He had just said (col. 312): …nearly a hundred Amendments out of a total of 211…will have been incorporated in the Bill in its passage through your Lord ships' House and, of these, over thirty must rank as major or important items. Your Lordships brought experience, skill, and knowledge to the subject. But our discussions lacked one thing, and that was public authority. I am not speaking of the Minister. Noble Lords, speaking in this House, speak for themselves and not for anybody else. No one sends them here. They bring all their skill and experience, as I have said, to the public service; and they produce, as Lord Leathers said, some most useful results. All they lack is public approval. The Amendments we made were sent back to another place, and then we found that a Time Resolution had been passed. So no sooner had our Amendments gone back for public approval than they all tumbled into the pit; few were discussed, although several of them came under the Resolution of 1678, which asserted that changes in finance must originate in another place.

I am not complaining of another place, or attacking the Government. I am merely attempting to establish the constitutional fact that something has happened, which appears to have cast on this House increased powers and responsibilities, including powers and responsibilities for finance. I have not put any tail to my Resolution. If I had, I think I should have used the form of the old Resolution that was passed, I believe, in the seventeenth century, that the powers of the House of Lords have increased, are increasing and should be diminished. But I do not want to enter into any controversial matter at all. I merely want to mention the facts that I have mentioned. I ask the noble Viscount, from the wealth of his Parliamentary experience, to say whether he can find anything factually wrong with what I have presented to the House this afternoon. I beg to move for Papers.

3.51 p.m.

VISCOUNT SWINTON

My Lords, I must say that, when I saw the noble Viscount's Motion on the Order Paper, I was rather puzzled as to what it was all about and what it meant. After listening to his charming and interesting speech, I must admit that I am still completely at sea as to what he is after. He has travelled very wide and I certainly want to pay him and the House the courtesy of dealing, so far as I can at a moment's notice, because I had not the faintest idea what the noble Viscount was going to say, with the points that he has raised. In the course of his speech, he said that the powers of this House had greatly increased because a great many more Peers had come here in the last seven or eight years. Well,—they have. Nearly all of them are sitting on the Opposition Benches, and I am delighted that they have come here, because they have contributed very greatly to the value of our debates. They have certainly, if I may say so (I am not quite sure that this was not a slight condemnation on the part of the noble Viscount), acquired the conservative—or some similar adjective—spirit of this place. But, of course, if he says that there are too many noble Lords with legislative powers in this House, I must remind him—though he said, quite fairly, that he was not speaking for his Party in this matter—that we did invite the noble Viscount's Party and the Liberal Party, who were most anxious to come into consultation with us, to take part in a three-Party Conference at which the whole question of the composition and the powers of the House could be discussed. I very much regret, and I think some noble Lords opposite equally regret, that that invitation was not accepted; but certainly the opportunity was offered.

Then the noble Viscount said that our power increases because there is no one to control our procedure. That is true. There is not even anybody to control the noble Viscount, but we get on, I think, pretty well. The remarkable thing is that, although in a sense there are no Rules of Order, except one about reading speeches (which I wish were more observed), and another about irrelevance or impertinence, which might sometimes be brought to our attention, we get on very well, because we are an orderly, practical and common-sense Assembly.

The noble Viscount went on to say that lie found a very good example of the increase in the powers of this House in what had taken place on the Transport Bill. He said that, because of lack of manpower in another place, this Bill came to us with a good deal of it undiscussed, and that that gave to this House a new power. One of the advantages of this House, surely, is that if measures have not been fully discussed in another place, there is the opportunity to discuss them here. But both Parties, as well as the country, have found that extremely convenient. If the noble Viscount really wants me to discuss the Transport Bill, I would venture to remind him that, though it is true that a certain amount came to us here which was undiscussed, it was nothing compared to the amount of the Transport Bill of 1947 which came to us here undiscussed in another place. I am speaking from memory, but I think am right in saying that, when the Transport Bill of 1947 came to this House—one of the Ministers who was in charge will correct me if I am wrong—no fewer than thirty-five clauses of that Bill had never been discussed at all in another place. The total number of clauses in my noble friend's Bill which the House has just passed is thirty-four—so we certainly start a good deal better in that matter.

There is nothing novel in all this. The noble Viscount said that things had not been discussed. The last thing I am going to do to-day is to criticise procedure in another place; I am certainly not going to do that; but I think it is fair to say, as this question has been raised, that there certainly was nothing novel or unusual, and certainly nothing improper, in our proceedings upon the Transport Bill here, and I am sure the Leader of the Opposition will bear me out in that. As was right, we devoted a great deal of time to it, time which the Leader of the Opposition said he thought ought to be devoted to it; and day by day we agreed on how much should be taken during the day, and we did devote a good deal of time to it. I think it was something like thirty-eight hours altogether. We passed a certain number of Amendments, and a certain number of Amendments were rejected because the Government felt that those contravened the broad structure and purpose of the Bill. The ground of criticism from the Opposition here was not on the Amendments which we passed, because—I think I am right—every single Amendment which this House sent down to another place was passed without any Division.

The criticism of us by the Opposition—a perfectly fair criticism from their point of view—was not that we had made Amendments in the Bill, but that we either had not accepted Amendments from the Opposition or that, where we had made Amendments, we had not gone as far as the Opposition would have liked us to go. That is a perfectly fair criticism from any Opposition. That is what took place under the Bill. In passing, I may say that though another place did not discuss all our Amendments, they did devote to it there—this is purely factual—more time than we without any closure or guillotine devoted to it here, on the Committee and the Report stages. But certainly I think it was in all our minds that the Amendments which we had passed, many of which were in answer to matters raised by the Opposition, others of which were in order to give effect to, or to consider, undertakings given in another place, would be generally acceptable—indeed, as your Lordships have seen to-day, all our Amendments were accepted in another place. Only two or three small Amendments in lieu have come back, and they are really qualifying or adjusting Amendments.

Then the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, said that a new power had been exercised by this House with regard to privilege Amendments. It is important that we should be quite clear as to the position between the two Houses over privilege Amendments. Where matters of finance and charges upon the public are raised, of course the other place has a predominant position; and if an Amendment is made here which imposes upon the public a charge, a financial obligation, that is a privilege Amendment. It is for the Speaker of the House of Commons to decide whether an Amendment is what is technically called a privilege Amendment, and the other place can always reject an Amendment of this House on the ground of privilege. I do not remember a case where an Amendment has been objected to on the ground of privilege, where this House has insisted. But that does not mean that large numbers of privilege Amendments are not passed. They are passed because it is the common desire, both of the other place and of this House, that those Amendments should be made. I may say, in passing, that the privilege Amendments in this particular Bill were very small, in the sense that they affect only a very small amount of money—I am told that it is something like £50,000.

In the structure of the levy your Lordships amended the one-ton figure to 30 cwt. Another Amendment gave an extra £2 million to the Transport Commission, which I admit I asked the House to do at the last moment, because it had only just been discovered; but we all agreed that it was right. And we also gave an extra six months of interest to the Transport Commission. But those Amendments affected only the levy, which itself is not a charge, in the sense of privilege. It is not a charge on the public, it is a charge on the owner of the vehicles. The issue of privilege arises, as it were, only by a side wind because a small proportion of the vehicles which will be subject to the levy are owned either by Government Departments—it may be the Post Office or perhaps the War Office; I think certainly the Post Office pay the levy—or by local authorities. Therefore the Speaker ruled that, by that side wind, there was introduced into those Amendments a small element of privilege, merely by reason of the fact that a very small proportion of the vehicles concerned were Government or local authority owned.

But let the noble Viscount observe that the passing of privilege Amendments is something which the House of Commons would be most unwilling to see this House part with—for a reason which your Lordships will see is very plain. Once a Bill has come here from another place the only way in which an Amendment can be made which the other place may very much want to have made in the Bill, is by this House passing an Amendment and sending it down to the other place. The Leader of the Opposition will certainly remember that for decades all Parties have maintained that procedure, in which this House has passed a privilege Amendment in order to give the other place the chance of having made in the Bill an Amendment which everybody wants to have made. Therefore it is nothing novel or revolutionary; it is a procedure which has always been followed, and I think always will be followed, as long as we have a revising Chamber—and certainly a revising Chamber I am sure this country will always wish to have. That is not a matter which gives rise to any conflict between the Parties, and there has been no sort of accretion of new powers to this House in recent months or years in that respect.

The noble Viscount (I hope I managed to take the points he made) also said that this House had acquired new powers by reason of delegated legislation. My Lords, I am not fond of delegated legislation, any more than the Leader of the Opposition is—certainly not in the sense that you should delegate more than is necessary. I am equally certain that any Government that one can visualise as likely to be in power, not because of the size of its majority in one House or the other, will have, within reason, to make use of delegated legislation. I am also very sure that it is extremely desirable that in delegated legislation the delegation should be only so much as is necessary for the purpose of the Bill. What I may call the "Uncle Tom Cobley and all" clause—I mean the clause which gives the Minister power to make an order for anything hereafter his public servants may think is useful—is anathema. I am not claiming this as a Party point, but I would say that, on the whole, the trend is not to increase the amount of delegated legislation but, I should rather hope, to reduce it, because as we get into more normal times none of us wants unnecessarily to preserve controls.

We may differ on whether this or that control ought to go, but broad and large I think we may be able to get further away from the vast number of Orders in Council and, therefore, reduce the amount of delegated legislation. If we have to have delegated legislation, then, of course, we have to try to keep some control by Parliament over the Execu- tive. This is done, and always has been done, by the practice of being able to pray against an Order in Council. That has always been the power of either House. And where you get a very special case, something of particular importance that has to be done by Order in Council, there is the alternative of an Affirmative Resolution. I think that is a good plan. I am not going into it to-day, but we had an interesting debate, in which the Leader of the Opposition and I were the protagonists, as to how we should deal with the decentralisation scheme of my noble friend Lord Leathers when it comes forward. I think the Affirmative Resolution, in special cases, is a good thing; but there is nothing odd, certainly nothing new, in having that dealt with by both Houses of Parliament. After all, this is only the procedure which takes place on a Bill. The noble Viscount said it would cause great difficulty if the House of Commons passed an Affirmative Resolution and the House of Lords did not pass an Affirmative Resolution; or, conversely, if this House passed an Affirmative Resolution and the House of Commons did not. Clearly, if this House passed an Affirmative Resolution and the House of Commons did not, the Order could not be made, because there would not be an Affirmative Resolution of both Houses of Parliament.

I would remind the noble Viscount that he was dealing with hypothesis and not with any matter of fact. I do not recall—the noble Viscount will remind me if I am wrong—a case of an Affirmative Resolution being passed in the other place where this House has refused to pass a similar Affirmative Resolution. I think I am right in saying that. I agree you can put a hypothetical case; but the noble Viscount will forgive me if I say that he is not going to make our flesh creep by suggesting all sorts of things that might happen, when they do not happen in practice. You can say all sorts of things. You can say that every "backwoodsman" will come here and vote against every Bill that is introduced. I know that that is a possibility; but one knows that it does not happen. The sound thing about the English Constitution is the successful, though illogical, way it works. Things of this sort which you can conjure up do not, in fact, happen. I agree that in theory it would he possible for the House of Com- mons to pass an Affirmative Resolution and for this House to reject a similar Resolution. But it would be something very unusual, and a pretty strong case would have to be made out to bring that about. But supposing that it did so happen, it is not very different from the process that has always taken place with regard to a Bill. It is competent for this House to reject a Bill which the House of Commons has passed, subject, of course, to the process of the Parliament Act, though that is quite another matter.

EARL JOWITT

I think the noble Viscount is quite right. I do not think this House has ever refused to pass an Affirmative Resolution where one has been passed by the other place. But, theoretically, whereas in the case of a Bill you have got all the machinery of the Parliament Act behind you, in the other case, that of refusing to pass an Affirmative Resolution or differing from the other House in a Prayer, theoretically you have not the machinery of the Parliament Act. I think that is what my noble friend Lord Stan gate has in mind.

VISCOUNT SWINTON

I agree with that. The noble and learned Earl put it very fairly, but we are discussing what I believe is a purely theoretical thing. Of course, if a Government wished to insist on the provisions of an Order being made effective, when this House had rejected it, the Government could use the machinery of the Parliament Act. It would be easy to put a clause into a Bill, instead of having it made subject to a Resolution. Treating it as an academic point, I agree with the noble and learned Leader of the Opposition.

On the whole merits of the case, on the reality of the points which the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, has raised, I think the noble and learned Earl who leads the Opposition will probably find himself in agreement with me, rather than with the noble Viscount. I apologise if I have spoken at some length, but as the noble Viscount was raising matters which did go rather deep into our Constitutional practice and the relations between the Houses, I thought that I ought to be clear as to what the actual position was, and clear on the bearing of recent events upon the position. I would sum up by saying that in fact no new powers have been conferred upon us; we have not sought to arrogate to ourselves any new powers. With the normal way in which the two Houses have worked together, and owing to the good sense in all parts of this House, it all seems to me to be working very well at the present time, and we need not be anxious about the way we are discharging existing responsibilities. I think we do it pretty well. Certainly no new powers and responsibilities have accrued to this House in consequence of "recent changes in legislative procedure." In fact, so far as I am aware, there have not been any changes in our legislative procedure. Therefore, I do not think we are on the verge of a Parliamentary or even a procedural revolution, and we can all sleep quiet in our beds.

4.16 p.m.

VISCOUNT SAMUEL

My Lords, we all regard the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, as the watchdog of democracy. Whenever he barks, I expect to find myself barking by his side. But on this occasion I cannot see that he has made out a case. He referred to a Resolution to the effect that: the powers have increased, are increasing, and ought to be diminished. That Resolution, by the way, was not, so far as I remember, a Resolution relating to the House of Lords. In the seventeenth century there may have been a Resolution—I do not recall it—but there was the famous Dunning Resolution in the House of Commons, in the time of George III. That was to the effect that The powers of the Crown have increased, are increasing and ought to be diminished That is only a small point, and I bring it up only for the sake of historical record.

There is, however, another Parliamentary point which I should like to mention, because it is of special interest to me. The noble Viscount observed that when the Labour Government introduced the Parliament Bill they did so in order to get the Iron and Steel Bill through. I ventured to suggest here, in this House, that that was so. But I was immediately replied to by Mr. Morrison, who said, in effect, that it was nothing of the sort; that the Bill was introduced on its own merits, and on grounds of constitutional principle. To that I well remember replying here by saying that I was not accustomed to using strong language but that, in the circumstances, I could not refrain from saying: "tut tut." Now the noble Viscount says quite frankly that they introduced it for the sake of getting the Iron and Steel Bill through.

VISCOUNT STANSGATE

My Lords, I was just making an observation. I said that that was frequently said. But I was not a member of the Government to which the noble Viscount refers, and I could not possibly commit my noble and learned Leader, or any of his distinguished colleagues on this Bench, as to the real purpose of the myself thought it might be for the purpose which I mentioned.

VISCOUNT SAMUEL

The noble Viscount only made an observation, and I only made an observation—the House will take note of both of them. As to the reasons why, according to the noble Viscount, the powers of this House have increased, one of those reasons is that the numbers of the House have increased, and increased with great rapidity. As he said, they now total well over 800. Indeed, I have mentioned in this House that the number of new Peerages in the present century has been 500. But can it be said that the powers of the House of Lords have thereby been increased? You may say that it increases the authority of the House because there are introduced Members of the first creation, like the noble Viscount himself, or myself, or other admirable people who lend fresh strength to the orations of your Lordships' House. But that is not an increase of power. It is the old Constitution, working, perhaps, with greater speed and rapidity.

The noble Viscount's second point was with regard to the guillotine in another place. He said that that resulted in a good deal of undigested legislation coming here to go through enpeptic processes in your Lordships' House. But the guillotine procedure is not a new thing; it has been going on during the greater part of the present century. Whenever that happens, there comes a great deal of legislative material that has not been considered in another place and this House is required to consider it for the first time and make Amendments. Included in those Amendments, of course, as is usually the case, are a great number of Amendments which are acceptable to the Government, because every Government try to improve a Bill as it goes through; and if they cannot get their own Amendments accepted in another place, because they are there guillotined, representatives of the Government move them in this House. But that is not trying to control the other place or to enlarge the powers of your Lordships' House as against the other place. As the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, has just said, with respect to all the Amendments on the Transport Bill, they have been accepted by the other House and they were carried here mainly, or at least in great part, at the desire of the other House. Therefore, it would be entirely a false impression, if that Bill were cited as an example of tee encroachment of this House upon the powers of the other.

The third point raised was that there is so much more delegated legislation now than there used to be. Well, that is so. But the procedure is the same as it always has been. There always have been the Affirmative Resolution and the Negative Resolution, and this House has always had the powers of which the noble Viscount is now complaining. There is nothing new in that. It has gone on for as long as delegated legislation itself has existed; and if there is more of that kind of legislation, all that can be said is that this House has more numerical opportunities of using its powers. We cannot say that the powers themselves have been in any degree increased.

4.23 p.m.

VISCOUNT STANSGATE

My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, and my old friend Lord Samuel for the flattery of the kind and thoughtful attention which they have given the few remarks I addressed to your Lordships. I am sorry about my mistake in the quotation. That is a dreadful thing. I can only give Dr. Johnson's excuse—sheer ignorance. But it does not matter much about the power of the Crown. What matters here is the power of the Executive; and that power "is increasing and ought to be diminished." That is exactly our objection. It is exercised through a docile Upper Chamber. The wording of the correct version of the quotation which the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, gave me, is equally applicable.

With what the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, said about the way in which the Conservative Party use the powers of this House, I entirely agree. There are here a large number of old Parliamentary hands. Because there are 835 Peers, that does not mean that this House is stronger than when there were 721 Peers, but it means what in employing circles is called a large reserve of labour. Therefore, these noble Lords are always available for the Conservative Party when required. It may be that something happens in the minds of the electors and they may be called upon. But, of course, these powers have been exercised with a sense of fairness and a sense of consideration for all of us, which makes them all the more dangerous. The reasonable autocrat is a much more dangerous man than the unreasonable autocrat, and the Bench Opposite is an autocracy so far as all that matters is concerned. I think that fact, whether the Front Bench sits there or here, is not open to challenge.

Finally, a word about the guillotine Resolution. There is a great change here which has resulted in there being thrown on this House responsibilities which we did not have before. I would draw the attention of my noble friend Lord Samuel to this fact. Previously, in another place they frequently said, "We do not want these Amendments; reject them globally"—that was the word used by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman about the Amendments to the Education Act: I remember cheering it violently on the Back Bench. To say, "Reject the Amendments globally" is one thing, but to say, "Accept them without debate" is a totally different thing. I must say that I smiled at the astuteness of the Conservative Party in persuading this House to sit three nights until twelve o'clock while the Conservative Party composed their differences on the Transport Bill and transformed their position, and filled their unmanned Committees in another place. It was the finest example of a successful political manœuvre that I have ever known. As Mr. Speaker said in another place, the House has never been stopped from considering any legislation which originated here, including some dealing with finance, and compelled to take it at one gulp. They did not complain. That is their affair. We should not venture to criticise them. But they are the Government. Do you control the House of Commons?

VISCOUNT SWINTON

No, I do not control the House of Commons. I do not even control this House.

VISCOUNT STANSGATE

The noble Viscount is too modest. The Government control the House of Commons, and my complaint is that the Government have found a new way by which the labours of this House, and the talent, ability and sense of public spirit of this House, are being turned to such good purpose that, where the electors will not allow them to have enough men to man their Committees in another place, the work is to be done by this House. I am grateful for the kindness, the consideration, the courtesy and the vast know ledge I have evoked in this debate, and with your Lordships' permission, I now beg leave to withdraw my Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, with drawn.