§ 6.15 p.m.
§ EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGHMy Lords, if I may make the first move, I wonder whether I may ask: are we to expect a statement on Business from the noble Viscount the Leader of the House?
§ VISCOUNT HAILSHAMMy Lords, I knew privately that the noble Earl was expecting a statement from me, but I was not actually aware that I was to make one. I am happy to discuss any item of Business which the noble Earl wishes to raise with me, but I have no particular statement to make. If he will tell me what he has in mind, I will try to deal with it.
§ EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGHThat makes it very awkward for me. However, we had rather long conversations yesterday, through the usual channels, and for some time towards the end of those conversations the noble Viscount the Leader of the House was present, although some of the earlier business, perhaps, did not come up before 1362 him then. But I understood that we were to have some idea as to what it had been possible to arrange in regard to the future Business before Whitsuntide, and that a statement about it was to be made after the Royal Commission.
EARL ST. ALDWYNMy Lords, I am sorry the noble Earl should be under that impression. I was hoping to make a Business statement to-morrow. I did mention, in the discussions that I had with him, that we should not be in a position to make a complete statement until to-morrow, and that I will do at the beginning of Business to-morrow.
§ EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGHMy Lords, I am under the clear impression—I am sorry we are a little at cross-purposes—that that was in connection with Business in general, as well as this other particular matter that I wanted to raise.
§ VISCOUNT HAILSHAMMy Lords, I know that there is a particular matter on the noble Earl's mind, and that is why I asked him. I shall not be in a position until to-morrow to make a general statement about Business between now and Whitsuntide, but I know that the noble Earl has raised with me privately the question of the ecclesiastical Business which is on the Order Paper for tomorrow. Unfortunately, I have no statement to make about this. It is not Government Business: we did not put it down. We are not responsible for it: the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Chester is. I have asked the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Newcastle to be here, because the Bishop of Chester is away in his diocese; but I myself cannot say anything about it. The position is that a Member of this House has put down an Order for discussion and, so far as I am concerned, he will have to discuss it, because I have no power to dissuade him from doing so. In this, the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Chester has neither more nor less rights than any other Member of the House. All I should like to tell the noble Earl is that, for once, it is not my business.
§ EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGHI think it is rather necessary, anyway, at this very convenient opportunity, to bring to the notice of the House the curious position we face to-morrow. The House will be very 1363 busy indeed, as it has been now for many days, with the London Government Bill, and we have had no time to do anything about anything else. You have your numbers and your aides, which we have not got, and we are in an exceedingly difficult position.
Now we find that a Motion has been set down on the Order Paper for tomorrow in connection with an Ecclesiastical Measure, the details of which have only just begun to infiltrate into the mind of the general public since there has been a sufficient number of days for the circulation of the Report of the Ecclesiastical Committee of both Houses upon the actual Measure which is now proposed—a very long and important Measure, with well over 80 clauses. Whilst it deals with a very great number of changes in purely ecclesiastical procedure, it also traverses ground by which the rights of the individual citizen in the country are to be changed, and it cannot receive amendment in your Lordships' House or in the other place because it is a Measure and not a Bill.
This is vastly important. The noble Viscount the Leader of the House has spoken to us feelingly to-day. He wants our help—and for a moment I want his—in order to get the Business through. What we are to have to-morrow, squeezed in somewhere between the Business on the London Government Bill, is a discusssion of a Measure which raises grave constitutional questions in the minds not only of the ordinary citizens but also of lawyers, as shown in the letter issued recently by six lawyers, headed by the professor of London University, protesting against the contents of the Bill on extended legal questions. The public are just beginning to understand what an extraordinary change this is, in substance, in what is called an Ecclesiastical Measure as distinct from a statutory Bill. I do not want to make even the beginning of the speech which I shall have to make when the Measure is introduced; but it is absolutely impossible, in the course of Government Business for to-morrow, to have an adequate discussion on a Measure of this importance in the ecclesiastical sphere to which we cannot move an Amendment: we must either accept or reject it.
1364 In the light of the circumstances, as reported to me by a member of the Ecclesiastical Committee, that the last paragraph of the Report of the Ecclesiastical Committee leads us to believe that everything is all well, and that the Committee just recommend it, I would say that I understand there was opposition in the Committee. The man who told me (who was opposing) asked expressly for a note to be made that the Report was not unanimous. The usual course in such circumstances is to ask for the Measure to be taken back, and to see if it could be amended before being submitted to Parliament. That has not happened. If the House of Lords has been taken as a House of first instance in this matter (though the Measure raises constitutional matters which, in my judgment, ought to be raised in the elected Chamber of Parliament), then surely there is a case for postponement. I do not want to do anything out of the way, but there is a right reverend Prelate here who represents his Church—perhaps not on this particular point—and I beg him to consider what a disaster it would be if continuous religious controversy, otherwise unnecessary, were to be raised in Parliament because we are to rush through a matter of this kind to-morrow as an Ecclesiastical Measure which cannot possibly be fully discussed, to which no Amendment can be made, and which we must either accept or reject.
§ 6.23 p.m.
§ VISCOUNT HAILSHAMThe noble Earl must not put me in a position of speaking either for the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Newcastle, or for the Lord Bishop of Chester. It is fair to say that the right reverend Prelate probably has no authority to speak for the Lord Bishop of Chester. He is a Member of this House, and nothing else. The noble Earl probably speaks as an individual, because he has very great feeling about this subject and I do not know how far any political Party would wish to be associated with an ecclesiastical controversy. But if the noble Earl puts this argument to the Lord Bishop of Chester when he is here, or even by privately getting in touch with him, no doubt the Bishop will take cognisance of this; and if the House agrees with the noble Earl, that will have to be taken account of, too. What is 1365 quite certain—and I wish to make this abundantly clear—is that I cannot take off the Order Paper anything which a Member of the House has put on it, unless it is Government business; in which case, of course, I would act reasonably about it. If the noble Earl thinks that to-morrow is an unsuitable occasion, by reason of the lateness of the hour or by reason of short notice, or by reason of the matter to be discussed, and says so when the Measure is called on, then it will be for the Lord Bishop of Chester to agree to withdraw or postpone it; or, alternatively, for the noble Earl to vote it down. I will play a friendly part to all concerned, but as the Leader of the House I cannot do more than lay the position before the noble Earl.
THE LORD BISHOP OF NEWCASTLEMy Lords, I am authorised only to say that the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Chester is entirely averse to any postponement. That is my brief, and I say so on an inquiry made in the last twenty minutes. It has been hoped very generally that as this is a subject that has been under constant care and in the public debate in the course of the last ten years, most of the difficult points would have already been worked out and there would be no controversy in it. But I speak as a comparative layman, in respect of this legal matter. I am briefed now only to say that the Lord Bishop of Chester is averse to postponement.
§ VISCOUNT HAILSHAMMy Lords, I can only say, in the circumstances, that I am anxious not to be unhelpful to the noble Earl or to involve myself in the controversy. My function is simply to advise the House as to the position regarding the Order Paper. I am bound to say that the Order will have to be called on, I think, and then the noble Earl will have the opportunity of asking the proponent of this to take the Measure through or to withdraw it, or to explain it more fully to the House or to postpone it. Of course he will then have all the rights of a Member to oppose or to seek to defer the debate on it.
§ EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGHMy Lords, I have had no opportunity of speaking to the Lord Bishop of Chester; otherwise, perhaps, 1366 I might have put certain things to him. Perhaps what I have already said will be communicated to him, maybe to-night, by his brother Bishop (if I may so call him) and we may consider it. What I want to avoid is an unnecessary prolongation afterwards of religious controversy, because I think it is very wrong for this matter to come up in this connection and in this direction. Whatever general debate there has been in the Church Assembly has not been general knowledge to the wide British public, who are our masters in a matter of this kind. No details have been given to them. We ought to have a postponement in order that we could get a fair opportunity to discuss it and ensure that we get what is always a free vote to everybody in a religious question in both Houses. That is what I want. It ought to go first to the elected Chamber.
§ VISCOUNT HAILSHAMMy Lords, we have no control about that at all. I do not think it is normally considered that either one House or the other has precedence in the matter of these ecclesiastical Measures. It is largely the convenience of whichever House happens in order of time to take the business. They are not normally matters of political controversy. There are some feelings on one side and the other, both that Parliament ought to have jurisdiction in such matters—which it undoubtedly has—and that the Church should be given certain liberty to advance its own business before Parliament in its own way. I want to make it quite plain that the Government have nothing Ito do with this at all.
§ EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGHExcept on the question of Business. There will probably be a long debate on this subject, which is going to interfere with your time-table. That is surely within the province of the Leader of the House.
§ VISCOUNT HAILSHAMIt may be inconvenient to the Government that noble Lords in any quarter put down any other business than Government Business, but that is one of the inconveniences members of the Government must live with in this House. I will try to live with it. I cannot take off the Lord Bishop's Motion for the adoption of this Measure, even if I wanted to. I can do no more than I have the power to do; 1367 and that is to deal with Government Business.
§ EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGHWe must deal with it on the basis of appealing to the Lord Bishop of Chester to-morrow on something which he has already refused tonight. But I am sure it will lead to loud protestation all over the country against its being done in this way. In the end the sovereignty does not lie with the Church. It lies with Parliament.