BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE (Hansard, 15 July 1957)

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS AND LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (THE EARL OF HOME)
My Lords, I beg to move the Motion which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

§ VISCOUNT STANSGATE
My Lords, I am not opposing the Motion in any form, but I thought that I might be allowed in a few minutes to comment on the trend which this Motion indicates in the Business of the House. Standing Order No. 41 is one of the oldest of our Standing Orders. It goes back (I have looked it up) to 1715, and the purpose is that every point of view should be put at every 1082 necessary stage. It is a sort of morality of Erskine May. It also emphasises the fact that the business in this House runs parallel with the business in the House of Commons. When Sir Charles Parry designed the Houses of Parliament he arranged the whole plan so that the Speaker and the Lord Chancellor faced one another when the doors were open. In that way the two Houses were running side by side at every stage of every Bill. That was so when I first entered Parliament fifty years ago. Many stages were bitterly contested. Between 1906 and 1910, for example, the Committee stages of our Bills were very important. In modern times all that has gone, and this is the strongest example of the abrogation of the rights of the House of Lords in parallel legislation which I remember. I may be wrong; there may be others. I have added it up and I find that the Lord Chancellor will have to put fifty-one Questions from the Woolsack on the Bills that now stand on the Order Paper and profit by this Motion. I am not complaining about that now; I am only pointing out that it certainly does not look as if the House of Lords was retaining its position of legislative parity with the House of Commons.
But there is another point; we have not any closure. Things are going very well; the House of Lords is much more interesting than it was. Many more people participate in the debates from the Chamber, and others from without the Chamber. I think I am only following the courteous practice of this House when I express the hope that Miss Vivien Leigh will make many more contributions to our debates. But we have no way of closure. Now there is a new device. I am not imputing malice in the least; I am only very much interested, and I should like to stress the point that there is no closure but something else has been devised—a Royal Commission. We are told that there will be a Royal Commission at six o'clock on Wednesday. So all these fifty-two Questions which the Lord Chancellor is going to put to us should be resolved before six-thirty on Wednesday.
I think that that is a very good thing. I think it is high time that this part of the structure of the House of Lords was dismantled; and that is what the Government are busy doing by this Motion. They are really saying that that part 1083 which pretends to be a parallel assembly has ceased to function for thirty or forty years and that it is high time that it was taken down. That is all that this Motion is doing. It is doing it for a very good reason: because the House of Lords in discussing Motions is extremely interesting. I was glad to note that Lord Killearn's Motion is to be preponed to other business and the Motion of Lord Silkin on the Arts on Thursday also took a precedence which was not its own. I hope that the passing of this Motion means that we are going to get more time to discuss more interesting things than a number of details of Bills which no one has examined and about which no one cares at all. If you want to know what I am thinking of, look at the pages with the names of "mute Miltons" who have Motions down for which there is "No day named." The subjects of those Motions are excellent, but there is no time to discuss them. With these remarks, which I hope are accurate in fact, I beg leave to support the Motion of the noble Earl the Leader of the House.

LORD SALTOUN
My Lords, the noble Earl who moved this Motion will know that it is a Motion which has been opposed from this side of the House on many previous occasions. We have always tended to object to it. I have looked at the list of the Bills which we have to discuss to-day and I do not think that any of them is very controversial. But if we are asked at this period to dispense with this Standing Order, I think I should like to ask the noble Earl for an assurance that there is no Bill which is at all controversial and which is to be hurried up in this way.

THE EARL OF HOME
My Lords, for a good many years in another place, I admired the vigilance of the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, in protecting and standing up for the rights of Members, and I hope that I shall never be behind him in that respect. Nobody is more determined to carry out what I take to be the first duty of the Leader of this House—that is, to protect the rights of Members. The Motion to which the noble Viscount has drawn attention has no sinister purpose at all, however, because I take it that my second duty as 1084 Leader of the House is to facilitate Business and meet the convenience of Members. Of course, we have not put this Motion on the Order Paper without consultation through the usual channels, and, in reply to my noble friend Lord Saltoun, I think I can say, having jointly looked at this list, that there is not room for much controversy in any of these Bills; but should it prove otherwise, of course we retain the right to adapt our procedure. So I do not think that we are really dismantling anything or setting any very dangerous precedent.

§ VISCOUNT STANSGATE
My Lords, I did not say "dangerous"; I said "excellent". I welcomed the Motion.

THE EARL OF HOME
My Lords, I could not have told that from the way in which the noble Viscount opened his speech, but I was going to say that I hope I may be allowed to join with him in the concluding part of what he had to say—namely, that we should agree to this Motion.