Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 18 March 1965.
I wish to intervene only briefly, and, as a new Member, I do so with some trepidation because new Members are often told that they cannot understand procedure until they have been here for donkeys' years.
The crux of the debate is not the merits of the Bill itself. It is not even the question of Principle as to whether it should be brought for its Committee stage to the Floor of the House. The simple question is, the House having decided that it will be brought to the Floor of the House, should the Committee meet in the morning rather than at some other time? In attacking the Motion, the right hon. Member for Rushcliffe (Sir M. Redmayne) made the point, which has been followed by several speakers opposite, that meeting in the morning will deprive the House of the services of those who have a broadening of interest as a result of their activities in the City, in Fleet Street, or in the courts of law.
I think that I can speak here with the full support of practically every new Member on this side—[An HON. MEMBER: "And some old ones."]—and perhaps some old ones, too—when I say that, if one wants a broadening of experience and interest, if one wants, as the hon. Member for Windsor (Sir C. MottRadclyffe) said, to know something about the impact of our legislative activities upon ordinary people, one can get it not in the courts of law or in Fleet Street, but by coming with me each Friday night on a tour round the clubs, the "pubs" arid the townswomen's guilds of east Newcastle, or on Saturday mornings when I meet my constituents.
I make this observation on the question of full-time membership. There are now in the House, particularly as a result of the last General Election, a substantial number of Members who have come here determined to devote their full time and energies to serving the people they have been elected to represent. To most of us, meeting in the House in the morning will make no difference, because we are here at ten o'clock anyway. As for the argument raised by the Opposition Front Bench, that it will inconvenience Ministers, I can only say that it will not inconvenience the Ministers in this Government, because the vast majority of them are quite capable of dealing with their business here, where they have rooms, and of meeting their responsibilities to the House, whether it meets in the mornings or not.