Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 18 March 1965.
I appreciate the words you used, Mr. Speaker. I cannot believe, in any case, that the decision we are asked to make now would prejudice a Select Committee which is examining the general question of procedure. For that reason, I think that it is wrong to raise that argument. Surely it is the House which makes a decision. That decision I personally do not think was the best decision. As a Member of the Standing Committee, I believe that it would have been wise for the Standing Committee to have completed the Committee stage of the Bill and then for the whole House to consider on Report the Amendments that hon. Members wished to make.
I do not say that all matters ought to be considered in Standing Committee. I do not go as far as one of my hon. Friends who thought that all Bills and all questions ought to be discussed in Committee upstairs. We should be careful before we take away the right of the House to discuss on the Floor matters like the Finance Bill and questions of a wide variety affecting the whole of the population.
The right hon. Member for Rushcliffe (Sir M. Redmayne) made one or two remarks which we should consider carefully. He said, for example, that for the House to meet in the morning would interfere with hon. Members who wished to follow their professions. I have felt for some years that when we have had Committees appointed to consider Bills upstairs quite a number of hon. Members on both sides of the House have not pulled their weight. The argument applied against morning sittings of the House that hon. Members might have to attend the courts applies just as much to Committees. I was absent from Standing Committee C on only one occasion when I agreed to pair with a lawyer. I have no doubt that this happens in all the Committees upstairs and on the Floor of the House where we have now to consider these matters.
The argument about the convenience of hon. Members should not have precedence. I take the view, which I know is not entirely popular, that membership of the House is a full-time job. I argued this 20 years ago on a Motion which I supported against my own Labour Government at that time. I believe that, especially now, hon. Members must realise that the general public are watching us carefully. They say that hon. Members are being paid £3,250 a year. They, at any rate, work it out at £60 a week, though we know what arguments we can put in reply. But I do not think that we can plead that hon. Members ought to be able to put their professions before their duties to the House. This applies not only to lawyers and doctors but also to company directors.
One argument put forward against morning sittings is that they would make the Government's position difficult by forcing Ministers to be here. As I understand it, hon. Members would not be so willing to pair with members of the Government to relieve them of attendance. I have no doubt that we shall find in practice, however, that large numbers of hon. Members opposite will wish to follow professions and lucrative positions of responsibility outside.
Although I greatly wish the Bill to remain in Committee upstairs, I must either agree that the Bill shall be discussed on the Floor of the House during our normal hours or that we shall meet as a House in the mornings to discuss it. I have come to the conclusion that, in all the circumstances, it is better on this occasion—though I do not say that this would apply to all occasions—that we should discuss the Bill on the Floor by starting our proceedings in the morning. This seems to me a sensible arrangement and I do not believe that it has political complexities.
The only alternative would be to discuss the Bill on the Floor during the present normal hours of sitting. The right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton spoke about the Finance Bill coming along and the difficulties of going through all-night sittings. He was in an earlier Government, and he will remember how my colleagues and I were kept up night after night. I remember one night when we were kept here until 4 o'clock in the morning discussing porridge when Scottish oatmeal was put on points and all the Scottish Members rose as a body and we had four hours to consider the protein and vitamin value of Scottish oatmeal. My hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) is not now present, but heaven preserve us if Scottish Members put forward proposals which came up for discussion at 6 o'clock or 8 o'clock in the morning.
I do not see how a matter of this kind can be discussed properly in the early hours of the morning of an all-night sitting. There should be proper and adequate time for discussion and I therefore congratulate my right hon. Friends on their decision to take the only course open to them. If my right hon. Friends had decided that they would refuse to accept a decision made in the House, even on a private Members' Motion it would have been a serious constitutional question. I do not believe that they have been wrong constitutionally or discourteous in what they have done. I hope therefore that this Motion will be carried.