Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 18 March 1965.
I quite agree. I am not disputing that. I am asserting that, if the Bill is dealt with by a Committee of the whole House meeting in the mornings, we know as a fact that there are here, not on the Standing Committee but as Members of the House, a number of lawyers who will be too busy to come here.
It may be that we ought to alter the composition of the House. It may be that it can be argued, though I do not think that this is the place to argue it, that the House ought to change its character and become a place inhabited entirely by full-time professional politicians working factory hours, clocking in at ten o'clock and going on all day. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] I quite agree that it can be argued that the House ought to become that kind of assembly, but it is not that kind of assembly now. It may be that hon. Members opposite who think it ought to become that kind of assembly are entitled to say that we should transform it, but if we are to transform it let us do it with our eyes open and not by a subterfuge, as we are doing now. This is an attempt to have a pilot experiment for the purpose of making by subterfuge a radical change in the constitution of the House of Commons.
Obviously, one day a week is a pilot test, but I suggest that if we are to make that sort of change and turn the House of Commons from what it is now to something quite different we ought to do that only after careful and detailed discussion. Hitherto, for all the centuries that the House of Commons has existed it has been a place which did not expect to run itself entirely on full-time professional politicians.