Sittings of the House.

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 22 January 1930.

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Photo of Mr John McShane Mr John McShane , Walsall

I rise with some reluctance following the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain). I thank those who heard him will agree that, if there was anything at all to be said for the continuance of the present practice, his extraordinarily rich and varied speech, in which he drew upon a wide experience, would have convinced any who may still have been doubtful about the continuance of the present system. I think that the Motion which has been moved this afternoon is so narrow in character that, as previous speakers on the Back Benches here have mentioned, it does not enable us to deal with or attempt to deal with the remedy which, in my opinion, inevitably must come. It is true that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham showed that those who sought to be revolutionaries in this matter were actually going back 300 years, but he also used another argument which mutually excluded his first point. He showed how rich was this constitution which was built up from the wisdom of centuries.

Similarly with regard to the Postmaster-General. I think, with great respect, that he was guilty of a perfectly clear non sequitur. He said that from the date that the time of the sittings had been changed from 12 o'clock to 11 o'clock a number of suspensions of the Eleven o'Clock Rule had taken place. It is not because the hour has been changed from 12 o'clock to 11 o'clock that a number of suspensions of the Eleven o'Clock Rule have taken place. It is because of the increasing amount of business thrown upon this House. It is that which has made it necessary. Every Government is so overwhelmed with work that it must safeguard itself by moving the suspension of the Eleven o'Clock Rule. Is not that precisely one of the most serious criticisms that can be made at the present time against the continuance of the present practice? If there is a formidable Opposition that cares to prevent business from being done, as I have in my short experience already seen in this House, it can on the most trivial and ridiculous matters, and with very serious detriment to the dignity of this House, carry on discussions for hours, when it is notorious that there is scarcely a quorum in the House to listen. Many Members are to be found asleep in the libraries—wisely so—and others may be attempting to pass the time in whatever way they possibly can find.

There were two speeches in the earlier part of this afternoon against this proposal both of which were extremely capable and well-delivered. They were the speeches of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Oxford (Captain Bourne) and the hon. Member for Middlesbrough West (Mr. K. Griffith). There were two things, which were the main burden of both speeches, with which I totally disagree. The first was that the work of this House is so exhausting and so compelling that if anyone is really sincere and anxious to do his duty as he ought to do it, he must be here at 11 o'clock in the morning and must continue in the House as long as the House sits, so compelling and so insistent is the work. Having put forward that as a reasonable argument in favour of the continuance of the present system, they both laboriously sought to show that that was not so. They showed how it was necessary sometimes for the enrichment, intellect and experience of this House that we should have within it men, who, in the earlier part of the day, were still in contact with the life of the country earning their own living. They cannot have it both ways. If it is so insistent and so compelling that one needs actually the whole day and part of the night to do the work, surely that excludes the possibility of any man earning his livelihood outside, and therefore being able to do this work well and intelligently and as speedily as he ought to do it. Does not that also bring us to the same point which they make in favour of the continuance of the present system?

It was stated, I think on the part of the hon. and gallant Member for Oxford, more or less with a sneer, that one should not care to be a professional politician. If I may strike a personal note, I had, when I was young, a very hard life. I managed through my own efforts—if I may jump over what I shall never forget in a sentence or two—ultimately to get to the university. I became the headmaster of a large school. I was secure in my position. I was comfortable. I need not have troubled about anything at all. Yet no thoughtful person—and it is only a digression to show how it bears on the point with which I am dealing—with any imagination at all can look at our country and at the mass of our people to-day without being profoundly moved and urged, at any rate, to do something. It was therefore in that spirit, and in that spirit alone, that I jeopardised my whole future in order to do what I thought I might be able to do to help humble working men and women, the class from which I sprang. How can anyone suggest with a sneer that the life to which I have dedicated myself can be in any sense a life inferior to the life of any other professional man? How also can it be suggested or implied that we who deal here with the making of laws to protect children from poisonous food should in some extraordinary fashion be looked upon as inferior to the doctor who goes to prevent that child also from being poisoned from some other source? How can it be suggested that we who deal with maternity, with hospitals, and indeed with the whole ambit of human life in our law-making, are in any sense inferior in dedicating our lives to that work to those members of any other profession?

The truth is that the difficulty in which the House finds itself this afternoon is due, as I have said, to the narrow nature of the Motion. This Motion cannot be divorced from the procedure of the House. I have looked on with amazement when the British House of Commons of 600 Members has sat in Committee. I have always heard it said that the best Committee is a Committee of three, with two of the members always absent. How it can possibly be suggested that with 600 Members acting as a Committee, with each of the 600 Members in the House having a right to speak, you can get efficient and effective business done is beyond me altogether. I think that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, to whom we all listened with such profound attention, got close to the point when he hinted at the extension of the Committee system. It is upon the extension and development of the Committee system that we are bound to make progress. Here, as my hon. Friend the Member for Silver-town (Mr. J. Jones) suggested, large numbers of the Members of the House remain more or less voting machines, and in a sense unemployed. We are anxious to do what we can to help in the work of this House, and to mould legislation which will benefit this country. There might be Committees upon which we might be specially interested, education, health or transport. If there were Committees set up based upon each Department, and upon which we should be distributed according to our predilections, I suggest that each day that passed we should save an enormous amount of the time of this House, and we should be able to work more intensively in regard to the business which we ought to undertake.

If a Division takes place, I shall certainly vote in favour of the Motion mainly because I consider, as has been said, that if the nation's work is to be done well, there must come a change in the procedure of this House. It is because I want to see the hope of democracy realised, and the machinery made more elastic that I have given expression to these opinions, and I shall certainly vote for the Motion.