The Government of England Part 30

[Sidenote: Their Procedure.]

A peculiar provision was made for the designation of the chairman. At the beginning of each session the Committee of Selection appoints a chairman's panel of not less than four nor more than six members, and this body selects from among its members the chairmen of the standing committees[270:1]--a device intended to secure continuity of traditions and experience in the presiding officer. For the rest, the standing orders prescribed that the procedure in standing committees should be the same as in select committees;[270:2] but it would be more accurate to say, as May does,[270:3] that their proceedings were a.s.similated, as far as possible, to those of a Committee of the Whole House, for they were created to do precisely the same work.[270:4] They were to collect no evidence, examine no witnesses, but simply to debate the clauses of the bill in detail, being in fact a subst.i.tute for the Committee of the Whole; that step in the procedure upon a bill being entirely omitted when a bill goes to a standing committee. For this reason they are miniatures of the House itself, representing all the parties there in proportion to their numbers. They are samples that stand for the complete House, and like the Committee of the Whole they do not report their opinions, but report the bills referred to them with or without amendments.

In one respect only does their position differ materially from that of a Committee of the Whole. If the Committee of the Whole makes any amendments in a bill, they can be considered again, and further amendments can be made, upon the report stage. But if it makes no amendments, there is no report stage. This was equally true of the standing committees, so that if they did not amend a bill referred to them, the House never had an opportunity to do so, but must pa.s.s or reject the bill as first introduced; and, in fact, standing committees have been charged with refraining from minor changes in order to prevent amendments, which might hinder or delay the pa.s.sage of the bill, from being proposed in the House itself.[270:5] This raised so much objection that in 1901 the standing orders were changed so as to require a report stage in the House on all bills from standing committees whether amended or not.[271:1]

[Sidenote: Kind of Bills Referred to Them.]

The standing committees were designed primarily to deal with a technical cla.s.s of bills, where the discussion of details would not be of general interest.[271:2] For reasons that will be described hereafter, it has been recognised that the bills referred to them ought to be of a non-contentious nature, that contentious measures, which arouse strong party feelings, are not suited for their consideration. This is the general principle, not always observed in practice, and there is sometimes a sharp difference of opinion upon the question whether a particular bill is contentious or not.

[Sidenote: Their Utility.]

Within their limits the utility of the standing committees in legislation cannot be doubted. On the average about one seventh of the public bills enacted year by year have pa.s.sed through their hands, and the proportion has shown a slight tendency to increase.[271:3] Moreover, the pressure for time in the House of Commons has become so great that a bill has a better chance of getting through if referred to a standing committee than if it has to undergo the ordeal of a long debate in Committee of the Whole. Every year the government is obliged by lack of time to drop something like one third of the bills it has introduced, but those of its bills that are referred to the standing committees rarely fail to be enacted. In the case of bills brought in by private members the contrast is even more striking; for while scarcely one tenth of all such bills become law, more than one half of those among them fortunate enough to reach a standing committee are enacted.[271:4] In fact these committees furnish by far the best chance of pa.s.sing private members' bills through the House of Commons.[272:1]

[Sidenote: Standing Committee for Scotland.]

When the two great committees were revived in 1888, motions were made to create others to consider bills relating to Scotland and Wales. The motions were all rejected at the time; but in 1894 the Liberal government took the matter up in the case of Scotland, and in that year and the next carried resolutions establishing such a committee for the session. It consisted of all the members for Scotch const.i.tuencies, seventy-two in number, and of fifteen or twenty others appointed by the committee of selection. On each occasion the plan was vigorously opposed,[272:2] the chief objections being; that it tended toward legislative dismemberment of the United Kingdom; that such a committee would not, like the other standing committees, reflect fairly the proportion of the parties in the House, because two thirds of the Scotch members were Liberals;[272:3] and that the bills referred to it would not be exclusively of a non-contentious nature. When the Conservatives came to power they quietly dropped this committee. Even had they felt no other reason for doing so, it would, no doubt, have been enough that, in spite of considerable losses at the general election of 1895, the Liberals were still in a majority among the Scotch members. The creation of such a body ill.u.s.trates, however, the exceptional position of Scotland in the British Parliament; and any one who has followed a debate on an ordinary Scotch bill, and observed how largely it is confined to Scotch members, will realise that practically the resolution of 1894 did little more than sanction formally by means of a standing committee the kind of discussion that habitually takes place in the Committee of the Whole.

[Sidenote: The Four Standing Committees of 1907.]

With a view to enlarging the legislative capacity of Parliament a select committee on Procedure in the House of Commons reported on May 25, 1906, in favour of increasing the number of standing committees from two to four, and making the reference of bills to them the normal, instead of an exceptional, proceeding. In pursuance of this recommendation the House on April 16, 1907, changed standing orders 46, 47, and 48[273:1]

so that there should be four standing committees, one of which is in effect the former Scotch Committee, while the other three are to consider any bills that may be referred to them, and not as heretofore only those relating to law or to trade.[273:2] All bills, except money bills and bills for confirming provisional orders, are to be referred to one of the standing committees, unless the House otherwise order on a motion to be decided without amendment or debate; and the bills are to be distributed among the committees by the Speaker.

The object of the change was to give a better chance of enactment for measures which there is not time to debate in Committee of the Whole; and the provision that the House may vote not to send a bill to a standing committee was designed chiefly for the great party measures of the government which must always be debated in the House itself. The new procedure has not been in operation long enough to judge of its effects, but something will be said of its relation to the parliamentary form of government in the chapter on the "Cabinet's Control of the Commons."

[Sidenote: The Procedure on Public Bills.]

The steps through which an ordinary public bill must still pa.s.s are very numerous, but while formerly a debate and division might take place at each of them, of late years the opportunity for this--and practically the number of steps--has been much reduced by causing some of them to be taken as a matter of course without a vote, and by permitting no debate on others. This is well ill.u.s.trated at the outset of a bill's career, where, indeed, an old complex procedure and a later and simpler one continue to exist side by side.

[Sidenote: Introduction and First Reading.]

A bill may be introduced in one of three ways. A motion may be made for an order for leave to bring it in, accompanied by a speech explaining its objects, and followed by a debate and vote. This was formerly the only method, and debates lasting over several days have occurred at this stage.[274:1] Amendments might be moved hostile to the provisions of the bill. In fact the adoption of such an amendment to a militia bill caused the fall of Lord John Russell's ministry in 1852. Now only important government bills are introduced in that way; for by a standing order adopted in 1888 a motion to bring in a bill may be made at the commencement of public business, and after brief explanatory statements by the mover and one opponent the Speaker may put the question.[274:2]

From the length of time taken by the speeches this is known as the ten-minute rule. After an order to bring in a bill has been obtained in either of these ways, the question that the bill be read a first time is voted upon without amendment or debate.[274:3] Finally, in 1902, a still more expeditious process was established. It permits a member to present his bill, which is read a first time without any order or vote of the House whatever.[274:4]

[Sidenote: Second Reading.]

The next step, and, except on great party measures, the first occasion for a debate, is the second reading. This is the proper stage for a discussion of the general principles of the bill, not of its details, and amendments to the several clauses are not in order. The methods of opposing the second reading are somewhat technical. The form of the question is "that this bill be _now_ read a second time"; and a negative vote does not kill the bill, because it does not prevent a motion to read it being made on a subsequent day.[274:5]

In order to shelve the bill without forcing a direct vote upon it, the habit formerly prevailed of moving the previous question;[275:1] but this was open to the same objection, and had, in fact, the effect of the American practice of moving to lay the bill upon the table. A similar difficulty arises when an amendment is moved stating some special reason for not reading the bill. It may express the sense of the House, but it does not necessarily dispose of the measure. Of late years, therefore, it has been customary to move that the bill be read this day six months, or three months, the date being such as to fall beyond the end of the session. On the general principle that a question which the House has decided cannot be raised again, such a vote kills the bill. Nor does it make any difference that the House happens to be sitting at the end of six months, for that date is treated as a sort of Greek calends that never comes.[275:2]

[Sidenote: Committee of the Whole.]

After the second reading a bill, until 1907, went normally to the Committee of the Whole, with or without instructions,[275:3] and now it goes there if the House so decides. When the order of the day for the Committee of the Whole is reached the Speaker leaves the chair, and the House goes into committee without question put.[275:4] This is the stage for consideration of the bill in detail, and the clauses are taken up one after another, the amendments to each clause being disposed of in their order. Then new clauses may be proposed, and finally the bill is reported back to the House.

[Sidenote: Reference to a Select Committee]

[Sidenote: or Standing Committee.]

Normally a bill goes either to the Committee of the Whole or to a standing committee, but after it has been read a second time a motion may be made to refer it to a select committee. Such a reference simply adds a step to the journey of the bill, for when reported it goes to a standing committee or to the Committee of the Whole. A standing committee, on the other hand, is, as already explained, a subst.i.tute for the Committee of the Whole. It deals with the bill in precisely the same way, reporting it back to the House amended or unchanged.

[Sidenote: Report.]

When a bill has been reported from the Committee of the Whole with amendments,[276:1] and when it has been reported from a standing committee whether amended or not,[276:2] it is considered by the House in detail, upon what is known as the report stage. The object is to give the House an opportunity to review the work done in committee, and see whether it wishes to maintain the amendments there adopted. But the House is not restricted to confirming or reversing the changes made in the bill, and although the process of going through the measure clause by clause is not repeated, fresh amendments may be proposed and new clauses added.[276:3]

If the bill is reported from a Committee of the Whole without amendments, it is a.s.sumed that the details are satisfactory to the House, and there is no report stage.

[Sidenote: Third Reading.]

The next, and now the last, stage of a bill in the House of Commons is the third reading. Like the second reading, this raises only the question whether or not the House approves of the measure as a whole, and the moves for compa.s.sing its defeat are the same. Verbal amendments alone are in order, and any substantial alteration can be brought about only by moving to recommit.

Usually the several steps in the enactment of a bill are taken on different days,[277:1] but there is nothing in the rules of the House of Commons to require this, and urgent measures have at times pa.s.sed through all their stages in both Houses in one day. The last case was that of the Explosive Substances Bill pa.s.sed in 1883 under the pressure of the dynamite scare.[277:2]

[Sidenote: Lords' Amendments.]

When a bill pa.s.sed by one House is amended by the other, it is sent back for the consideration of those amendments. If they are agreed to, the bill is ready for the royal a.s.sent. If not, the bill is returned, and a committee is appointed to frame a message to the other House, stating the reasons for disagreement.[277:3] The other House may, of course, waive its amendments, insist upon them or modify them, and the bill might thus, with new changes, go back and forth between the Houses indefinitely. Formerly it was the habit, when the Houses failed to agree, to appoint managers to hold a conference, but this practice has fallen into disuse,[277:4] and in the case of government bills--almost all important bills to-day are government bills--negotiations are carried on between the ministers and the leading peers who oppose them.

[Sidenote: Summary of the Procedure.]

Leaving out of account the first reading, which rarely involves a real debate, the ordinary course of a public bill through the House of Commons gives, therefore, an opportunity for two debates upon its general merits, and between them two discussions of its details, or one debate upon the details if that one results in no changes, or if the bill has been referred to a standing committee. When the House desires to collect evidence it does so after approving of the general principle, and before taking up the details. Stated in this way the whole matter is plain and rational enough. It is, in fact, one of the many striking examples of adaptation in the English political system. A collection of rules that appear c.u.mbrous and antiquated, and that even now are well-nigh incomprehensible when described in all their involved technicality, have been pruned away until they furnish a procedure almost as simple, direct and appropriate as any one could devise. Many old forms remain, but they have been shorn of their meaning, and often amount to nothing but entries in the journal. Even the first reading, which seems anomalous, has its use. A real debate at that stage occurs only in the case of great party measures, where both sides of the House want to be familiar with the scope of the bill, the objections that may be made to it, and the way it strikes the public, before the first effective debate upon its merits opens. The procedure upon money bills, which appears at first sight still more arbitrary, and complex, is perfectly rational also, and the differences from the method of pa.s.sing ordinary measures arise from the nature of the case. There can be no doubt about the general principle of the annual appropriation bill.

Supplies must be voted to carry on the government, and the only questions arise over particular grants. Hence there is no object in opening with a first or second reading, and the procedure begins in committee. But in order to understand how this works out one must again go back to the technical rules.

FOOTNOTES:

[265:1] _Cf._ Redlich, 474-78.

[265:2] S.O. 33.

[265:3] _Cf._ S.O. 55.

[265:4] _Cf._ S.O. 56-57.

[266:1] Standing Orders (relative to private business), 98.

[266:2] "Seventy Years at Westminster," 267 _et seq._

[266:3] _Ibid._, 103-15.

[266:4] S.O. 75.

[266:5] S.O. 76-80.

[267:1] "At the commencement of every session an order is made 'That a committee of privileges be appointed,' but no members have been nominated to it since 1847." "Manual of Procedure of the House of Commons," prepared in 1904 by Sir Courtenay Ilbert, Clerk of the House, -- 110. There are also a couple of sessional committees whose work is wholly concerned with private bills and are described therewith.

[267:2] The question often arises whether inquiry shall be conducted by a committee of the House, or by a commission appointed by the government. When the matter is distinctly political a committee of the House is the proper organ; but when the judgment of outside experts is needed the other alternative is obviously preferable, several members of Parliament being often included in such cases. Naturally enough, the ministry and the members chiefly interested in pushing an inquiry do not always agree about the matter. One instance of a dispute on this point has already been referred to--that in relation to the grievances of Post Office employees. Another famous example occurred upon the charges made by _The Times_ against Parnell in connection with the forged Pigott Letters.

[267:3] May, 469-70.

[267:4] The private bill committees to be described in a later chapter are select committees.