HL Deb 28 March 1957 vol 202 cc879-87

3.57 p.m.

Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.

Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(The Lord Chancellor.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

House in Committee accordingly.

[The EARL OF DROGHEDA in the Chair]

Clauses 1 and 2 agreed to.

Clause 3 [Reserve and auxiliary forces, et cetera]:

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

I beg to move the first Amendment on the Marshalled List. It is a drafting Amendment the purpose of which is to deal with a lacuna in Clause 3 (2). The Spens Committee considered that the Armed Forces disqualification under Clause 1 of the Bill should apply only to Regular members, including National Service personnel engaged in full-time service duties. Clause 3 (2) accordingly exempts from disqualification any Naval, Army or Air Force pensioners recalled for whole-time service in a national emergency. The Amendment secures similar exemption for recalled pensioners of the Royal Marines, whose position appears to have been overlooked by the Spens Committee. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 3, line 31, after ("army") insert ("marine").—(The Lord Chancellor.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 3, as amended, agreed to.

Clauses 4 to 10 agreed to.

Clause 11:

Amendment of Parliamentary Elections Rules

11. The Second Schedule to the Representation of the People Act, 1949 (which contains Parliamentary Elections Rules and Local Elections Rules) shall be amended by the addition at the end of Rule 9 of the Parliamentary Elections Rules of the following paragraph, that is to say— (2) A candidate's consent given under this rule shall contain a statement that he is aware of the provisions of the House of Commons Disqualification Act, 1957, and that, to the best of his knowledge and belief, he is not disqualified for membership of the House of Commons.

4.0 p.m.

LORD SILKIN moved to leave out Clause 11. The noble Lord said: I explained to the House on the occasion of the Second Reading my view that Clause 11 went much further than I thought was necessary or justified. The purpose of this Bill is to set out the disqualifications from being a Member of the House of Commons. Clause 11 goes much further than that: it requires that a person who is a candidate for election should certify that he has read all this formidable list of disqualifications, and that he is, at the moment of being a candidate, eligible for election. He may be one of those many people who are disqualified, and, of course, realises that if he is elected he will have to give up the particular office he holds. But it is a great handicap to a person who is seeking to get into the House of Commons that he should give up his office simply on becoming a candidate.

I explained to the House on the Second Reading that many of us who have been through the House of Commons fought one or more seats, without the slightest hope of being returned, merely for the purpose of either getting the experience or preventing the person whom we were fighting from giving his attention to other constituencies, or for other equally worthy reasons. But we knew in advance that we were not going to get in, and I think the noble and learned Viscount himself quoted his own experience of a seat which he fought in his young days, the fighting of which gave him that wide experience of which we have evidence at the present time in his conduct of affairs in this House. If the noble and learned Viscount at that time had held one of these many offices, he would have been faced with the choice of giving up the office or not standing as a candidate. I think that is rather hard, and it seems to me wholly unnecessary.

Of course, such a person who stands as a candidate must be ready to give up the office if returned, but it seems to me that it is going too far to insist that he should give up the office on becoming a candidate, even when he knows that he is not in the least likely to be returned. I hope the Government will think again about Clause 11. I suggest that the clause be deleted and that some other clause, which would require the candidate to say that he knows of the disqualifications and, if returned, would give up any office he may hold, should be substituted for this particular provision. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Leave out Clause 11.—(Lord Silkin.)

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

As I said on Second Reading, I have every sympathy with the intention of the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, in moving this Amendment. He is quite right in saying, as I confessed, et ego in Arcadia vixit, and all of us who have had the experience of fighting a seat know how valuable a preparation it is for political life. There are, however, cogent arguments on the merits against the noble Lord's proposal with which I shall deal in a moment, but I think it is right—and I say this in no niggling spirit—that one should have the history of this clause before us. Clause 11 was added to the Bill by a unanimous decision of the last Committee, the Spens Committee, on the Motion of one of the noble Lord's honourable and learned friends in another place. This unanimous decision was accepted in another place, and in a matter of such importance, concerning the Membership of that House, I think that we should have to be satisfied that an overwhelming case existed for altering a provision that had found general acceptance there. I say that in no denigration of the position of your Lordships' House, but with the comity of the two Houses, which is so helpful a part of our constitutional working, very much in mind.

As to the merits of the noble Lord's proposal, there seem to me to be two powerful arguments against it. The first is incompatibility. A great many of the offices set out in the Schedules to the Bill disqualify for membership of another place because the holding of them is incompatible with active participation in politics. It is just as undesirable, in my submission, that the holder of such an office should identify himself openly with a particular political Party by presenting himself for election in that interest as it would be for him to become a Member of another place. To stand as a candidate, as the noble Lord and I know so well, means a good deal more than merely spending three weeks at an election campaign. The nursing of a constituency means that one must make as many friends as one can in the constituency. One can well see that offices which are incompatible with membership of the House of Commons can well be equally incompatible with that aspect of a candidature. If the holder of an incompatible office did so, he might well find his problem solved for him by his summary removal from office. The basic point I am making—and it is a very serious one—is that the Bill, as I have said, is largely based on incompatibility.

The other point is a very interesting historical point (I hope your Lordships will bear with me), and that is, what is the definition of a "hopeless" seat? The noble Lord's Amendment, in fact, covers all candidates, whether the seat is hopeless or not, but he said quite frankly that he was mainly concerned with the candidate for the hopeless seat. Three times in my lifetime—and I am glad to think that it brings in all the great Parties that are represented in your Lordships' House—in 1906, in 1931 and in 1945, the results of a General Election, both in the number of seats that changed hands and in the size of the majorities in individual constituencies, were almost wholly unexpected. I do not think that we have yet reached that state of rigidity in our political institutions in which the results of elections can be so accurately predicted that we can dare to place on the Statute Book a definition of what is a "hopeless" seat. Therefore, we must look at what happens, under the Bill, if the noble Lord's candidate gets in, as so many of my own Party unexpectedly did in 1931, the noble Lord's Party in 1945, and the Party of the noble Lord, Lord Rea, in 1906.

Let us look at the Bill and the practice, because there are practical difficulties in requiring a candidate to give up his disqualifying office, not before he stands for election, but before he takes his seat in the House. If he waits until he is returned, he will be too late. If the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, will look at clause 6 (1) (a)—which, incidentally, reproduces the effect of the existing law—he will see that, if a person elected to the other place was disqualified by the Bill, then his election would be void. Your Lordships will appreciate that such avoidance of elections is the only practical method of applying the disqualification law to newly elected Members.

May I also remind the Committee that under Rule 51 (2) of the Parliamentary Election Rules the nomination of an unopposed candidate constitutes itself his election. I have once had the pleasure, which so seldom occurs in political life, of an unopposed return. If your Lordships will bear with me for a moment, I will tell your Lordships of an extremely exciting moment when, there being no other candidate, one of my friends dashed in with a packet of notes, of which I think only the top two were real, in order to pretend that he was a last-minute candidate against me. However, even in the haste of that moment, I recognised him and my anxiety soon subsided. But I had, as I say, that rare pleasure in politics of once being returned unopposed. If your Lordships will forgive that personal digression, which will be the last, the point is that under that Rule the nomination of the unopposed candidate constitutes itself his election.

The fact that the act of nomination is of such potential importance is another reason why it is essential that a candidate should divest himself of any disqualification before nomination. Clause 11 is designed to ensure that all candidates do so. It follows from what I have said that I cannot recommend this Committee to accept the noble Lord's Amendment, but I come back to the point that I have made: that it is not unreasonable to expect a candidate to give up positions the holding of which is expressly declared by Statute to be incompatible with membership of another place. I hope that on reflection, the noble Lord will agree to withdraw his Amendment.

LORD SILKIN

The noble and learned Viscount has produced some very good reasons in favour of this clause and one or two reasons which I think are not favourable. I referred to the candidate fighting a hopeless seat but, of course, that was not really my case at all. That was perhaps giving an extreme example of the unfairness of this provision. Perhaps the strongest case the noble and learned Viscount made was that this particular clause was inserted in another place by one of my own political friends, and was accepted unanimously. It is, of course, much more a House of Commons matter than a House of Lords matter, and in view of the fact that the House of Commons were prepared to accept this without any division of opinion I think it would be somewhat impertinent for me to press the point in this House. In those circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 11 agreed to.

Clauses 12 to 15 agreed to.

First Schedule [Offices disqualifying for membership]:

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

This is a drafting Amendment to bring the First and Third Schedule entries covering United Kingdom High Commissioners into line with those covering Ambassadors. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 14, line 46, leave out ("appointed by") and insert ("representing").—(The Lord Chancellor.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

First Schedule, as amended, agreed to.

Second Schedule agreed to.

Third Schedule [Modifications of this Act in relation to Senate and House of Commons of Northern Ireland]:

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

This Amendment deals with the same point that I have just mentioned. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 24, line 21, leave out ("appointed by") and insert ("representing")—(The Lord Chancellor.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Third Schedule, as amended, agreed to.

Fourth Schedule [Enactments repealed]:

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

This again is a drafting Amendment, which concerns the Election Commissioners and is consequential on some of the difficulties presented by a Consolidation Act. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 28, line 24, at end insert—

("15 & 16 Vict. c. 57. The Election Commissioners Act, 1852. In section one the words "being Members of Parliament, or".")
—(The Lord Chancellor.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

This also is a drafting Amendment. It arises out of Section 92 of the Municipal Corporations Act, 1882, which provided for the appointment of barristers as members of Election Courts to hear petitions concerning the conduct of municipal elections. Such barristers were to be appointed by judges for the time being on the rota for the trial of Parliamentary election petitions. Subsection (2) declared certain categories of barristers to be ineligible for appointment. These categories included Members of the House of Commons, and a reverse disqualification was thus imposed by the words to be repealed. The repeal of this reverse disqualification is already implicit in Clause 1 (4) of the Bill, and the Amendment completes the process. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 28, line 52, column 3, at beginning, insert—

("In section ninety-two, in subsection (2), the words "is a Member of the Commons House of Parliament, or".")
—(The Lord Chancellor.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

This Amendment, together with Amendment No. 8, is also drafting. The purpose of the present Amendment is to remove from the Repeals Schedule the existing entry which repeals Section 19 of the Nurses Act, 1948. That section exempts from disqualification the members of the General Nursing Council, the Assistant Nurses Committee, the Mental Nurses Committee and the area nurse-training committees and sub-committees. The repeal is no longer necessary because the whole of the Nurses Act, 1948, has just been repealed by the Consolidation Act which received the Royal Assert on March 21. The purpose of the second Amendment (if I may take the two together) is to remove from that consolidating measure the four provisions which replace Section 19 of the Act of 1949. Those exemptions from disqualification are no longer needed, because the "office of profit" disqualification is to disappear and there is no longer any risk of the General Nursing Council and the other bodies having their members disqualified. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 32, line 26, leave out lines 26 and 27.—(The Lord Chancellor.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

I have already spoken on this Amendment. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 33, line 46, at end insert—

("5 & 6 Eliz. 2. c. 15. The Nurses Act, 1957. In the First Schedule, paragraph 14.
In the Second Schedule, paragraph 7.
In the Third Schedule, paragraph 11.
In the Fourth Schedule, paragraph 11.")
—(The Lord Chancellor.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Remaining Schedule, as amended, agreed to.

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