The Government of England Part 28

Before describing the organisation and procedure of the House it may be well to explain the method of voting, because frequent reference must be made to it, and the terms are technical. After stating the question to be voted upon, the Speaker, or the Chairman, calls in the ordinary way for the ayes and noes. According to the apparent preponderance of voices he then says, "I think the ayes (or noes) have it." If no objection is raised, he adds a moment later, "The ayes (or noes) have it," and the vote is so recorded. If, on the other hand, any of the minority doubt the result, or wish the numbers and names recorded, they cry out contrary to the Speaker, "The noes (or ayes) have it." Whereupon the Speaker directs strangers to withdraw (except from the places reserved for them), the division bells are rung all over the building, the two-minute sand-gla.s.s is turned, and when it has run the doors are locked, and the question and vote are repeated in the same way.[253:1]

If the Speaker's opinion of the result is again challenged--and this is almost always done--he orders a division of the House, that is, he directs the ayes to go to the right, the noes to the left; and he appoints two tellers from each side, one of each pair to count the ayes, and the other the noes, in order to check one another. The ayes then go into the lobby that runs parallel to the House on the Speaker's right, the noes into that on his left; and until 1906 every member in the House, except the Speaker, was obliged to go into one lobby or the other, unless he was physically disabled, when his vote might be counted in the House.[253:2] The tellers, standing at the door of each lobby, count the members as they pa.s.s between them in returning to the House, while clerks at tables in the lobbies take down their names.

Ever since 1836, when the method of taking a division a.s.sumed its present form, the names of members voting on each side have been printed and preserved, although curiously enough these division lists are not included among the parliamentary papers. The process may seem a clumsy way of counting votes, but under the system in force until 1906 it took, on the average, only twenty minutes, and under the new system, whereby the recording of names begins when the sand-gla.s.s is turned, it takes not much more than half as long. This is less time than would be consumed by a roll-call, and the system has been found so satisfactory that it was adopted by the House of Lords.

Until recently a division was the only means, apart from an oral vote, of taking the sense of the House; and any one member could force a division by challenging the result of an oral vote, or rather any two members could do so, for a division cannot take place unless two tellers can be found for each side. In 1888, however, as a part of the movement to prevent obstruction and waste of time, the Speaker or Chairman was empowered, if he thinks a division frivolously or vexatiously claimed, to call upon the ayes and noes to rise in their places. He can then count them, and declare the result;[254:1] but this is in fact rarely done.

The names of the men selected as tellers indicate the political nature of the vote. If the government intend to treat the question, I will not say as one of confidence, (for there are cases of secondary importance where a ministry may be beaten without feeling that they have lost the confidence of the House and must resign), but if they intend to treat it as one where an adverse vote is a defeat for them, if they desire to rally their followers to vote solidly upon it, then the government whips are appointed tellers. If in the same way the Opposition want to treat it as a party question, their whips are appointed tellers upon the other side. But if on one side or the other this is not the case, private members who have made or seconded the motion or taken an active part in debate are selected by the chair as tellers, and if so any member may, without disloyalty to his party, vote according to his own unaided convictions.

[Sidenote: Standing and Sessional Orders.]

Like other legislative bodies the House of Commons has printed rules, and the most important of these, the standing orders, are published every year among the parliamentary papers. But the standing orders are by no means a code of procedure, for they cover only a fraction, and so far as they relate to public business a small fraction, of the subject.[255:1] The procedure rests essentially upon custom, to be gathered in part from precedents and the rulings of Speakers, in part from unrecorded tradition known by personal experience. Many standing orders have, in fact, been adopted from time to time in order to modify or forbid an existing practice, and hence their effect is mainly negative. No particular formality is required for the adoption of these rules, but in 1902, when extensive changes were made, the proposals were read several times, and were, in fact, submitted to a procedure similar to that for the enactment of a bill.[255:2]

[Sidenote: Standing Orders Endure from One Parliament to Another.]

The standing orders differ from the rules of legislative bodies in some other countries in two important respects. In the first place they do not have to be adopted afresh by each new House of Commons, but once established they continue in force from Parliament to Parliament until repealed. There are, indeed, sessional orders which require to be renewed at the beginning of each session, and sometimes a new rule after proving its utility in this way is given the permanent form of a standing order. Orders or resolutions without any fixed duration are also adopted at times. These expire upon prorogation, but it sometimes happens that without being formally revived they continue to be observed as a part of customary practice of the House.[256:1]

[Sidenote: They Can be Suspended by a Simple Vote.]

The second peculiarity of the standing orders lies in the fact that they can be suspended by a simple majority vote. Notice of a motion for that purpose is usually required and given, but it may be dispensed with; and it is not even necessary to refer in the motion to the standing orders at all. Any order or resolution, inconsistent with their terms, has, if adopted, the effect of suspending them,[256:2] and the House is, in fact, constantly adopting special orders which change the course of procedure as prescribed by the standing orders or the customary practice. This has often been done when the government has needed to take, for its own measures, part of the time allotted to private members, or has wanted to extend the sitting beyond the usual hour. Many of these cases are now provided for by the new rules adopted in 1902; but the most effective form of cutting short debate, the process known as the "guillotine," although now regulated by standing order in the case of supply,[256:3] is still applied in the case of all other bills solely by a special order of the House adopted for a particular bill on the motion of a minister.

[Sidenote: Tendency of Changes in the Standing Orders.]

Most of the changes in the standing orders made during the last fifty years have been aimed at preserving order, or preventing waste of time, or altering the distribution of time.[256:4] Those of the first cla.s.s, such as the provisions authorising the suspension of a member for disorder, arose from the conduct of the Irish members, and may be regarded as an accident unconnected with the normal evolution of the parliamentary system. This is not true of the rules designed to prevent waste of time; for although the provisions to cut off debate grew out of Irish obstruction, the subsequent history of closure has shown that some process of this kind was certain to come sooner or later in the natural course of things, and that the Irish merely hastened it.[257:1]

[Sidenote: Efforts to Save Time.]

The changes made in order to save time are commonly attributed to the increase in the amount of business the House is called upon to despatch, and if in that business be included the enlarged control of the House over administrative detail by means of questions and otherwise, this is undoubtedly true, but so far as legislation is concerned, it would be more accurate to attribute the changes to the fact that it requires more time to transact business than it did formerly. There are a far larger number of members who want to interrogate and criticise the ministers, and to take part in debate. The pages of Hansard are more numerous in proportion to those of the statute-book. Now the old procedure was very elaborate. In the pa.s.sage of an ordinary public bill through the House there were, apart from amendments, more than a score of different steps, upon each of which debate might take place, and a division might be claimed. Then motions to adjourn, and other dilatory tactics could be used indefinitely. Moreover, the general rule that amendments and debate must be relevant to the question before the House[258:1] was subject to wide exceptions, if, indeed, there could be said to be any such general rule at all. The debate upon a dilatory motion, for example, was not limited to the motion itself;[258:2] and every time a motion was made to go into Committee of the Whole on Supply, any grievance could be brought forward and discussed.[258:3]

All this was unimportant so long as the battles between the parties were confined to occasional full-dress debates, and the rest of the time was devoted to the real work of legislation. But when systematic obstruction arose, and when without any intent to obstruct it became the recognised business of the Opposition to oppose, and in the case of measures that aroused strong party feeling to oppose at every step, the opportunities for doing so were too numerous to endure. Some of the steps in the enactment of a bill, such as engrossment,[258:4] pa.s.sage,[258:5] and first and second reading in the Committee of the Whole,[258:6] have been discontinued altogether. Others, such as taking up the consideration of a bill,[258:7] or going into Committee of the Whole on a bill,[258:8] or bringing up a report from Committee of the Whole,[258:9] are taken as a matter of course without question put. In other cases again the question is put, but no debate is allowed.[258:10] With the same object debate upon a dilatory motion has been limited to the subject-matter of the motion, and the Speaker or Chairman has been empowered to forbid debate upon it, or even to refuse to put the question at all, if he considers the motion an abuse of the rules of the House.[258:11]

The opportunities for criticising the government both in going into Committee of Supply, and by other means, have also been limited in various ways, and above all the system of cutting short debate by means of closure has been brought of late years to a condition of great efficiency. These matters, and the distribution of time between the government and private members will be considered more fully hereafter, and it is only necessary to remark now that the tendencies noted are permanent, because although a party while in Opposition may object to changes in the rules that enhance the control of the government over the conduct and time of the House, it finds itself compelled to maintain them when it comes into office. The tendencies are, in fact, the natural result of the more and more exclusive responsibility of the ministry for all public action, legislative as well as executive.

[Sidenote: The Speaker.]

The Commons are always summoned to the bar in the House of Lords to hear any formal communication from the Crown, and when after a general election they meet on the day appointed, they are summoned there to hear the formal opening of the new Parliament. They are then desired in the name of the sovereign to choose a Speaker, and retire to their chamber for the purpose. As soon as he has been chosen, the mace is placed on the table before him, as a symbol of his authority and a token that the Commons are sitting as a House. But he is still only Speaker-elect, until the next day, when, followed by the Commons, he again presents himself at the bar of the Lords, announces his election, and asks for the royal confirmation, which is now, of course, never refused.

[Sidenote: His Election.]

If only one person is nominated for Speaker, he is called to the chair without a vote. If more than one, they are voted upon successively, a majority being required for election.[259:1] The proposer and seconder are always private members, for it is considered more fitting that the ministers should not be prominent in the matter.[259:2] The Speaker is, however, always selected by the government of the day, and a new Speaker is always taken from the ranks of the party in power. Sometimes the election is not uncontested, and this happened when Mr. Gully was chosen in 1895. But although the Speaker may have been opposed when first chosen, and although he is elected only for the duration of the Parliament, it has now become the invariable habit to reelect him so long as he is willing to serve. The last cases where a Speaker's reelection was opposed occurred in 1833 and 1835, and on the second of those occasions he was defeated. The principle is well ill.u.s.trated by the career of Mr. Gully. He was elected by a small majority, during the last few months of a moribund Liberal cabinet. His selection had not pleased the Conservatives, and he was warned that they held themselves at liberty not to reelect him if they came to power in the next Parliament. Contrary to the ordinary rule his const.i.tuency was contested at the next general election, but although the Conservatives obtained a large majority in the new Parliament, he was returned to the chair without opposition.

[Sidenote: His Powers over Debate.]

The Speaker is purely a presiding officer. He has nothing to do with appointing any committees, or guiding the House in its work. He is not a leader but an umpire, otherwise he could not remain in the chair through changes of party. As an umpire, however, his powers are very great, and in some cases under the modern changes in the standing orders they are autocratic. He decides, for example, whether a motion to closure debate may be put, or whether it is an infringement of the rights of the minority;[260:1] he can refuse to entertain a dilatory motion if he considers it an abuse of the rules of the House;[260:2] and he can stop the speech of a member who "persists in irrelevance, or tedious repet.i.tion."[260:3] Moreover, from his decision on those matters, or on any points of order, there is no appeal.[260:4] The House can suspend or change its own rules by a simple majority vote, but it cannot in a concrete case override the Speaker's construction of them.[260:5] This is a general principle of English parliamentary law, which is applied in almost all public bodies.[261:1] It may render a conscientious man more careful in his rulings, but it certainly places in his hands enormous power.

[Sidenote: His Power to Preserve Order.]

Familiarity with representative bodies seems to breed contempt, for the last half century has been marked by an increase of disorderly scenes in the legislatures of many countries. In England such things were brought about by the growth of the Irish Home Rule party, which regarded the government of Ireland by the British Parliament as unjust on principle, and oppressive in fact; and which, to say the least, was not distressed by loss of dignity on the part of the House of Commons. In 1880 the Speaker was given the power to repress disorder, now embodied, with subsequent modifications, in Standing Order 18. He can name a member who disregards his authority or obstructs business, and then a motion is in order, to be decided at once without amendment or debate, to suspend that member.[261:2] When the standing orders were revised in 1902 they contained a clause prescribing the duration of the suspension for the first and subsequent offences, but this was struck out during the discussion, and a suspension is now indeterminate. It is obvious that to a party, in a hopeless minority, which denies the authority of Parliament, a disorderly scene followed by a suspension, and an opportunity to go home and make stirring speeches, may not be an undesirable form of protest.

Apart from occasional outbursts chiefly, though not exclusively, on the part of the Irish members, a stranger in the gallery is much impressed by the respect paid to the Speaker, and by his moral control over the House.[262:1] His emoluments are in proportion to the dignity of his position. He enjoys a salary of five thousand pounds a year, with an official residence in the Houses of Parliament and other perquisites; and although standing aloof from political leadership, he is regarded as the first commoner of the realm. He is, indeed, on the threshold of the House of Lords, for it has been the habit of late years to make him a peer when he retires.

[Sidenote: He Votes Only in Case of a Tie.]

[Sidenote: The Chairman of Committees.]

As late as 1870 the Speaker occasionally took part in debate, when the House was in Committee of the Whole where he does not preside;[262:2]

but it would now be thought inconsistent with his position of absolute impartiality to speak or vote in committee. He therefore never votes unless he is obliged to do so by a tie occurring when he is in the chair. It is commonly said that he always gives his casting vote in such cases so as to keep the question open; but this is not strictly true.

When, however, his vote involves a final decision, he bases it, not upon his personal opinion of the merits of the measure, but upon the probable intention of the House as shown by its previous action, or upon some general const.i.tutional principle;[262:3] and it may be added that the chairman of a Committee of the Whole, when called upon to break a tie, follows the same practice.[262:4] The chair in Committee of the Whole is regularly taken by the Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means--commonly called for that reason the Chairman of Committees--who, like the Speaker, withdraws, on his appointment, from political contests, speaking and voting in the House nowadays only on questions relating to private bills. He is nominated at the beginning of the Parliament by the ministry, from among their prominent supporters, and retires from the position when they resign. Considering that his duties consist in presiding, like the Speaker, with strict impartiality, and in a purely non-partisan supervision of private bill legislation, it is somewhat strange that he should go in and out of office with the cabinet, but in fact one hears no criticism of his conduct on that score, largely, no doubt, because he always takes the Speaker as his model. Since 1855 he has acted as deputy speaker, when the Speaker is unavoidably absent,[263:1] and in order to prevent any possible inconvenience from the absence of both of these officers from the House, or of the Chairman of Ways and Means from the Committee of the Whole, provision was made in 1902 for the election of a deputy chairman who can fill the vacant place.[263:2]

[Sidenote: Other Officers of the House.]

The only other officers of the House that need be mentioned here are the Sergeant-at-Arms, who acts as the executive officer and chief of police of the House under the direction of the Speaker; the Clerk of the House; and the Counsel to Mr. Speaker, who is a legal adviser, and has important duties in connection with private bill legislation. It is a curious survival that the Sergeant-at-Arms,[263:3] and the Clerk of the House with his chief a.s.sistants,[263:4] are appointed by the Crown, and hold office permanently. Their work is, of course, of a non-partisan character, and they do not always belong to the party of the ministry that appoints them. Sir Courtenay Ilbert, for example, the present Clerk of the House, although a Liberal, was appointed by the Conservative government, and not by way of promotion in the service of the House, for he was at the time Parliamentary Counsel to the Treasury.

FOOTNOTES:

[251:1] The question where the Peelites should sit in 1852 was much discussed among themselves. Morley, "Life of Gladstone," I., 422-23.

[253:1] Standing Orders 28-29, Com. Papers, 1905, LXII., 159. Under the new rule adopted in 1906 the Speaker orders the lobby to be cleared, and the members begin to pa.s.s through it at once.

[253:2] To refuse to do so has been treated as such a disregard of the authority of the chair as will justify suspending the member. May, "Parl. Practice," 10 Ed., 338.

On March 5, 1901, twelve Irish Nationalists, who refused to go into the lobby because they had had no chance to speak when the closure was moved on a vote on account, were suspended; Hans. 4 Ser. XC., 692-96; and on Aug. 5, 1904, the Welsh members refused to vote as a protest against the use of closure on the Education (Local Authorities Defaults) Bill. After they had persisted so far that the Chairman reported the matter to the House, they consented to withdraw altogether, and no further steps were taken against them. Hans. 4 Ser. Cx.x.xIX., 1259-68.

[254:1] S.O. 30.

[255:1] The standing orders relating to private business are much more elaborate and come far nearer to a code of procedure.

[255:2] This had not been the practice earlier; but the discussion of changes in the standing orders has sometimes been very long. In 1882 the new rules, which dealt with closure, the suspension of disorderly members and the creation of standing committees, were debated for thirty-three days. On the other hand, a change was made in 1901 on the motion of a private member, at a single sitting. Hans. 4 Ser. XCII., 555-75. In 1906 the changes were referred to a select committee and then each of them adopted on a motion by the government. Hans. 4 Ser. CLV., 197 _et seq._

[256:1] May, 145.

[256:2] _Ibid._, 145.

[256:3] S.O. 15.

[256:4] In his excellent _Recht und Technik des Englischen Parlamentarismus_--the only systematic history of procedure in the House of Commons--Dr. Redlich dwells on two tendencies in the evolution of the standing orders since 1832. One of these consists in giving to the ministry an ever greater control over the time, and hence over the activity, of the House; the other in keeping the House more and more strictly to its prearranged order of business for the day. Now the manifestations of this last tendency, which he makes very clear, can also be cla.s.sed as changes made to save time or to arrange the distribution of time. Whether in the form of forbidding motions to vary the prescribed order of business, or to confine amendments and debate to matters relevant to the main question, or to exclude dilatory motions and others that open an indefinite field for discussion, they have the effect either of preventing waste of time by debating trivial questions or matters that the House does not care to take up, or of preventing the use for some other purpose of time allotted to the government or to a private member.

Since this was written Dr. Redlich's book has happily been translated into English, but as the English edition has not yet been received the references to the German edition are left unchanged.

[257:1] This is also Dr. Redlich's opinion, _Recht und Technik_, 246.

[258:1] May, 299.

[258:2] _Ibid._, 301.

[258:3] _Ibid._, 571.

[258:4] _Ibid._, 471.