REPORT.

The Select Committee appointed to consider the present allocation of time for such Public Business (whether Bills or Motions) as is not Government Business, and to report whether any alterations in the Standing Orders relating to the transaction of such business are desirable have agreed to the following Report :

1. The Committee sat on four days and heard the evidence of the Right Honourable J. H. Whitley, Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir T. Lonsdale Webster, K.C.B., Clerk of the House, Commander the Right Honourable B. M. Eyres-Monsell, M.P., Major-General Sir Robert Hutchison, K.C.M.G., C.B., D.S.O., M.P., and Mr. Scott Lindsay.

2. The two most important questions considered by your Committee have been whether any change should be made, first in respect to the Motions moved by Unofficial Members, and secondly in respect to the Bills introduced by Unofficial Members.

3. According to existing procedure Unofficial Members' Motions are considered at 8.15 p.in. on Tuesdays and Wednesdays before Easter, and on Wednesdays between Easter and Whitsuntide. Unofficial Members' Bills are considered for Second Reading on the Fridays before Whitsuntide, and on the third and fourth Fridays after Whitsunday for their later stages, and on these two Fridays the Bills are arranged according to the stage of progress which each has reached; those which have progressed furthest thus having priority.

4. In respect to Motions your Committee are unanimously of opinion that it would be better to give one whole day in each week up to Easter instead of giving two evening sittings up to Easter and one evening sitting between Easter and Whitsuntide in each week as under the existing rules. Your Committee therefore advise that one whole day should be set apart for Unofficial Members' Motions until Easter. Your Committee further recommend that on the day on which Unofficial Members' Motions have precedence, the first Motion should be considered until 7.30 p.m., when Mr. Speaker should interrupt the business and the Motion should either be disposed of or should stand adjourned until a future day, thus enabling the second Motion to come under consideration at 7.30, or so soon as the necessary divisions on the first Motion shall have been completed. Your Committee recommend that the day appointed should be Wednesday.

5. The advantage of this change would lie mainly in the better opportunity which would be afforded for the discussion of the first Motion. The discussion would be opened in a full House and would be conducted by Members whose attention would be still fresh and not exhausted by an earlier debate. This would not only make the debate more satisfactory to the Member who initiated it and his supporters but (what is more important) would make it more worthy of the House of Commons and more consonant to the dignity of its traditions. It must be recognised that if the House of Commons is to express its opinion by a resolution formally agreed to, the deliberation preceding the adoption of such a resolution ought not to be a perfunctory business beginning in the dinner hour and hustled through by tired and inattentive Members.

6. Your Committee in making these recommendations, do not desire either to add to or to diminish from the total amount of time devoted to the consideration of business in charge of Unofficial Members. The proportion between Government time and the time given to Unofficial Members should in their opinion remain substantially as it is.

7. About the consideration of Bills introduced by Unofficial Members a difficulty arises. A Bill introduced by an Unofficial Member may be a simple uncontroversial proposal which it is reasonable to expect to pass into law within the opportunities for discussion which are available to Unofficial Members; or or it may be a proposal so important, so controversial, or so complicated as to make it unreasonable to expect or desire that it should be passed in unofficial time, but which nevertheless may reasonably be brought in by an Unofficial Member in order to obtain a discussion in the House upon its subject matter. Indeed it may be said that in respect to a legislative question, the best possible method of public discussion is by discussing an actual legislative scheme which must somehow or another deal in full detail with all the difficulties of the problem intended to be solved, whereas a Motion may often pass these over with a general phrase. There is thus a two-fold usefulness in Unofficial Members' Bills. Unofficial Members may carry simple and uncontroversial Bills; they may also bring forward complicated or controversial questions for discussion in legislative form.

8. This has a bearing on the problem of procedure, for in order that Unofficial Members may usefully raise great questions by the excellent method of propounding a Bill it has now been for many years the practice of the Chair to allow them to claim the judgment of the House on the Second Reading of their proposals after only an afternoon's discussion. Again, if Unofficial Members are to carry into law small and uncontroversial Bills, it is plain that they must have sufficient time to dispose of the later stages of those Bills. But it is obviously not in the public

interest that Bills of a controversial and complicated character should be carried into law if they are in charge of Unofficial Members by a much more abbreviated procedure than if they are in charge of the Government. And it is difficult so to regulate procedure that the Unofficial Member may have a brief discussion and speedy decision on the Second Reading of his Bill, and may have sufficient time to pass a small and uncontroversial Bill through the House, and yet may not be able to use his favourable opportunities for the purpose of dealing with grave questions more hastily and with less deliberate care than is possible for a Government.

9. Faced with this difficulty your Committee considered whether it would be possible to classify contentious and uncontentious Bills according to some standard, and to afford better opportunity for the uncontroversial Bills, without making it more easy for Unofficial Members to pass Bills reasonably to be regarded as controversial or complicated. Two plans were considered. One was that Bills after Whitsuntide should be given priority in inverse order to the amount of opposition which they encountered on the Second Reading, Bills which passed the Second Reading without a division coming first, and Bills which were divided against being arranged in inverse order to the number of the minorities which voted against them. But the majority of the Committee were, after discussion, opposed to this plan since they thought, first, that the amount of opposition declared at the Second Reading did not always correspond to the amount of real opposition of which account ought to be taken; and, secondly, that Bills sometimes slipped through the Second Reading stage without a division after 11 o'clock which were really controversial or complicated. A suggestion that this last difficulty might be dealt with by allowing a notice of opposition on the paper. to operate as an objection, and therefore to prevent the second reading of the opposed Bill after 11 o'clock, received no support in the Committee, nor from Mr. Speaker.

10. Another plan for distinguishing the controversial from the uncontroversial Bill was suggested. This was that after a Bill had passed through the Standing Committee, the Speaker upon the advice of the Chairman's Panel should classify it as controversial or uncontroversial. But Mr. Speaker and other witnesses were opposed to this as throwing too invidious a burden. upon the Speaker even were it shared by the Chairmen's Panel, and your Committee came to the conclusion that upon this ground. the plan cannot be recommended.

11. The majority of your Committee thus decided that it was impossible to distinguish between controversial and uncontroversial Bills. But your Committee recommend that in place. of two Fridays which are now given to Second Readings two should be made available for the later Stages of Bills which had

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passed the Committee Stage. It would happen under the existing rules of priority that on the four Fridays thus made available a different Bill would usually get the first place on each Friday. Under this arrangement no Member could count on having for his Bill more than the whole of one Friday, though if all the business concerned were uncontentious he might get an hour or two on one of the other Fridays. The opportunity thus secured to Unofficial Members would, it is thought, be sufficient to allow at least four uncontroversial Bills to be passed.

12. The Chairman with regret feels unable to agree with his colleagues in this recommendation, believing that if it be impossible to distinguish between controversial and uncontroversial Bills it is better to leave the Rules regarding Unofficial Members' Bills as they now stand.

13. Your Committee recommend that the four Fridays assigned to the later stages of Unofficial Members' Bills should be the third, fourth, fifth and sixth Fridays after Whit Sunday in order that the Standing Committees may have sufficient time to complete the consideration of Unofficial Members' Bills committed to them.. Two Fridays between Easter and Whitsuntide now given to Unofficial Members should be assigned to the Government in place of the fifth and sixth Fridays after Whit Sunday.

14. Two small amendments of the Standing Orders which need no elaborate exposition must also be mentioned. Your Committee recommend that in respect to Friday Sittings, 1 o'clock be substituted for 4 o'clock as the time at which the House may be counted out if no quorum has been formed. Your Committee also think that the practice of meeting on Fridays at 11 o'clock and adjourning at 4 o'clock should be sanctioned by Standing Order instead of by order of the House made each. Session.

15. The amendments to the Standing Orders which would be necessary if these changes were carried out are stated in an Appendix to this Report.

[Adjourned till Wednesday, 18th May, at Eleven o'clock.]

Commander Rt. Honourable B. M. EYRES-MONSELL and Mr. SCOTT LINDSAY were examined.

[Adjourned till Wednesday next at 5.30.]

Wednesday, 25th May, 1927.

MEMBERS PRESENT:

Lord Hugh Cecil (Chairman).

Sir Robert Sanders.
Mr. Lees-Smith.

Sir Park Goff.

Mr. Thomas Kennedy.

The Rt. Honourable JOHN HENRY WHITLEY, Speaker of the House, Major-General Sir ROBERT HUTCHISON, A.C.M.G., C.B., D.S.O., and Sir T. LONSDALE WEBSTER, K.C.B., were examined.

[Adjourned till Monday, 27th June, at Five o'clock.]

Draft report, proposed by the Chairman, brought up and read the first time as follows:

Question, that the Draft Report be read a second time, paragraph by paragraph, put and agreed to.

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