Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Bill (Committee Stage)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 18 March 1965.

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Photo of Mr Charles Mapp Mr Charles Mapp , Oldham East 12:00, 18 March 1965

I am suggesting that my right hon. Friend has put before the House a sensible compromise which he has developed having regard to his threefold obligation to the House, to which I shall refer in a moment.

I thought that my right hon. Friend's statement this afternoon, which I very much appreciated, was broad and constructive in approach. I listened with care to the speech of the right hon. Member for Rushcliffe (Sir M. Redmayne). It was, in brief—and this can be said of most of the speeches of hon. Gentlemen opposite—a speech for the maintenance of the status quo, and an attempt to find every conceivable reason, detailed and otherwise, why change is undesirable.

In the last few words of his speech the right hon. Gentleman was so forthcoming as to appeal to the Leader of the House to take the Motion back, and, in effect, to rely on the good will of the House. That appeal might well be responded to in certain circumstances, but, having been here on the Friday in question, and having listened to most of the debate today, I see no evidence at all of any good will on that side of the House. I see no evidence of anything other than a desire to embarrass the Government. Surely an appeal in that direction is one that cannot fairly be made.

I believe that this is an experiment in compromise. It is a typical decision of our race and country. I think that we should change places with my right hon. Friend and ask how we, as normal people, and without a party bias, would have responded to the contradiction with which the House was faced. As Leader of the House, my right hon. Friend has an overriding obligation to deal with Government business. In this case, he has an even greater difficulty in that the Government are given to change, which means more and more legislation. Had we had a Government of the Right the problem in that direction would have been less marked.

Secondly, my right hon. Friend has an obligation to the Opposition, who have the right to initiate discussions and debates. He must bear that obligation in mind. Thirdly, he is the custodian of the rights of us all as Members of the House. We, too, have the right to initiate debates and Bills.

Faced with that threefold responsibility, my right hon. Friend has had to try to deal with what I think was a contradictory decision a week or two ago, and to present the House with a compromise. I think that he has done his job in a workmanlike manner. I cannot discuss the merits of the Bill in question, but there was a substantial majority in favour of its principle. We must, of course, recognise that the decision that it should go upstairs was taken with a less noticeable majority, but it was not a majority of merely three or half a dozen. There was a clear direction from the House, and at that point—and not until that point—the matter became one for the Leader of the House.

The House having expressed its will, I believe that at that stage it became a matter for the Leader of the House; and the decision of the House was that the Bill should go upstairs. The main complaint from the other side on the Friday in question was, first, that upstairs there was a lack of publicity and, secondly, that in many cases individual Members were unable to participate. Let us look at the application of the Motion before us in relation to those two complaints. Those who wanted the Bill on the Floor of the House, with the publicity which they felt went with it, have succeeded in obtaining that.

The right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) was quite unfair in alluding this afternoon to the conditions of the Press and to the conditions of other staff, for those should not be determining factors in the decisions of this House. Those should be recognised as consequential but certainly not determining factors. Secondly, in regard to the other point made by the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, West (Mr. Hendry) each and all of us will have the opportunity on a Wednesday morning to put down Amendments and, subject to the Chair calling them, the right to debate them.

Has the hon. Gentleman achieved very much? I do not think that he has. I should have thought that those rights would have accrued to me as an individual Member and to others, on the Report stage provided each of us recognised that at that stage only vital matters should be brought up. What, then, have we lost? I cannot see that we have lost anything at all. Rather, the Leader of of the House has done the right thing.

The decision taken on that Friday brought my right hon. Friend to an awkward situation. He wanted to recognise the supreme decision of the House and yet perhaps his inclination might have been to resist it. What were the alternatives available to him? I suppose that he could have attempted to "kill" the Bill, but would that have been right in the light of the expressed desire of the House as a whole? Would it have been honourable? The Leader of the House would have been regarded as a dictator if he had attempted in any indirect way to "kill" the Bill though he might have spoken of pressure of Government business, and so on.

The Leader of the House might have taken a second course. He might have said, "I want to accommodate the House and will recommend that the Bill be dealt with by the House on Friday in private Members' time." That course would have been understandable but it might have been resisted on both sides of the House, and properly so; so in his capacity of Leader of the House he resisted it. Then, presumably, his mind worked in a direction in which mine might have done and he asked, "Is it possible that the House might sit on precisely the same day and at the same time as the Committee has been sitting upstairs?" I believe that because that appeared to be a workmanlike compromise he has been straightforward and has acted without any subtlety at all or any other purpose in bringing this Motion before the House.

I would remind the House that since we met in October last the Leader of the House has carried out his functions admirably. There has not been from either side of the House the slightest hint that he has misunderstood his rôle as Leader, as distinct from the other rôle he has. I feel that that compliment at least should be paid to him. That fact should be noticed and if there is any doubt in other people's minds, then we should give him the benefit of accepting that he has sought to think his way through this problem without subtleties of the kind that have been implied.

I wish to develop my personal reactions to this change, which might give some comfort to those on the other side of the House who feel that there have been some subtleties. I am delighted that this compromise has been reached and that the mind of the House is travelling in a direction which I and many others want to see the procedure of this House moving. Many of us feel that we are tied to Victorian procedure. I feel that that statement is justified in the light of what has been said on the other side of the House this afternoon and time and time again—that change is bad and is liable to cause dangers and difficulties.

Speaking for myself and, I believe, for a number of hon. Members on this side of the House, and without putting any pressure on our Front Bench, I say that I hope that this experiment will be very successful, successful for both sides of the House and for all shades of opinion and without prejudice to the Committees upstairs which have been sitting on this kind of problem. Since I came here five and half years ago, the constant problem has been that of modernising the House. Left to that side of the House, or at least to many hon. Members on that side, we should not have modernised anything. I am not suggesting that the Leader of the House has reached a decision by this Motion to modernise our procedure, for I have argued that he has reached his decision in this Motion on the basis of sheer compromise. I acknowledge and appreciate that, but I hope that we shall be able to look forward to successful morning meetings. Doubtless, the Select Committee will be influenced by the success which I am certain is around the corner for this innovation.

In conclusion, and possibly in the light of what I am saying, we are touching on the question of whether membership of this House should be full-time or part-time. I will not enter into any discussion of that matter. I believe that each Member has to make up his mind whether or not membership of this House is his primary task. It is for the Member to decide in his own conscience whether being a Member of Parliament is an overriding responsibility and all other considerations are secondary.

If that is the case, if there are meetings on Wednesday mornings and other great developments, it would seem that Members must decide whether there could be morning meetings of the House—as I hope there will be—and whether attendance will be a basic responsibility. We must move with the times. I welcome this as a sensible compromise. The House should not infer from what I am saying personally that these are anything more than the views of a number of back benchers on this side, but we are quite convinced that, come what may, the existing arrangements for the business of the House must in due course be changed. We welcome the fact that on this occasion, born out of necessity, a change is here.