Orders of the Day — Election of Speaker

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 8 August 1972.

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Photo of Mr Robert Carr Mr Robert Carr , Mitcham 12:00, 8 August 1972

The hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English) asked: why the hurry? I am glad that the hon. Gentleman thinks a delay of six months is hurrying. I take that as a compliment. That leads me to reiterate what the right hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) said: there is no hurry because we expect or want to have to use these procedures. Indeed, I reinforce what the right hon. Gentleman said and express the sincere hope that it will be many years before we have any need to use them.

However, having said that, such an exciting picture has been painted of what might happen under the new procedures that I hope that, although we all hope that it will be a long time before we shall have to use them, I shall be here to see them in operation. I further hope that I shall not be the oldest Member who is gaga and who must be detained in the Smoking Room. It strikes me, when I think back to the stormy days of the Industrial Relations Bill, that we might have problems of peaceful picketing even in this ancient Chamber.

The right hon. Member, on the brink of a holiday, is far from tired and jaded. When he attacked our ancient usages, he showed the youthful energy of radical reform which he told us earlier he inherited from his family tradition.

I come to the question of ancient usage and the problems of my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop). I had thought of this ancient usage in the Motion in a rather different sense. I had thought of the ancient usage as being the fact that hitherto we had followed custom and practice, whereas from now onwards we are to follow the written rule in our Standing Orders. I thought that that was a change. Indeed, in my opening speech I said that some of the procedures we were now recommending were more ancient than those we were replacing and that the real change was that we were moving from a tradition to having a rule about it and, in the future, following Standing Orders.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton will not oppose the Motion, because I know that he is one of those who believe that it is right that we should get this change properly affirmed by the House. If the Motion is agreed to tonight, I cannot give any undertaking to table another Motion in due course, but I certainly will not rule it out. I will willingly talk to my hon. Friend about it if he would care to do so. If I could, after certain soundings, agree on a more agreeable form of words in a few months' time, I would certainly not rule out tabling a Motion. I hope that we can complete the process tonight so that we have a proper new procedure for dealing with this, although we have no expectation of having to use it.

I come to the Amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Nottingham, West. I agree very much with the right hon. Member for Sowerby that, although we should not follow the recommendations of an all-party Select Committee slavishly, nevertheless we should not depart from such recommendations unless there is good reason for doing so. It is true that the Motion departs from the recommendation in two respects, for reasons which I explained earlier. I believe that there are good reasons for departing from the recommendations in these respects.

I do not wish to argue strongly against the Amendments. They are perfectly legitimate alternative views. I hope, however, that on the whole the House will stick to the proposals of our Procedure Committee. By his first Amendment, the hon. Member wants the Chair to be taken by the Chairman of Ways and Means and then, in descending order of precedence, by the other Deputy Speakers and the Panel of Chairmen. That would be a logical way of doing it. I agree that the Select Committee did not argue closely why it recommended against that, but it did recommend against it. I think that one of the reasons, although the Committee did not obviously adduce it, for not wanting to accept the hon. Member's proposal is that, as one sees in looking back over the history of the House, it would be a disadvantage that the Chairman referred to might well be among those who were most likely candidates for the Speakership. That might be a reason for preferring the Select Committee's proposals.

The hon. Member's next Amendment relates to the use of the word "continuously". This, I suppose, is a bit of the ancient usage which sometimes we would like to throw out, but here again I was not privy to the Committee's deliberations. Perhaps it is part of the wisdom of the House that although Select Committees normally publish the evidence they receive, they do not publish a transcript of their deliberations. This was the Committee's recommendation, however. No doubt it felt that this was the way in which the Father of the House was chosen and perhaps this would be the best way to define the Member with the longest service for this purpose. On the whole, I think we should stick to it.

I recognise that there might be a point in the hon. Member's third Amendment when he wishes to say that the person who takes the Chair cannot be nominated because he has accepted the Chair. I recognise that it could be embarrassing for the Member in the Chair to be nominated. On the whole, however, one cannot legislate in advance for every hypothetical circumstance. I imagine that what would have to be done in those circumstances would be to adjourn the House.

I could not, however, advise the House to accept that Amendment because, although it would be unlikely, it could happen that if we were ever to reach a deadlocked position the Member who had agreed to take the Chair might be the person whom, in the end, the House wished to choose. That might seem unlikely but it is possible. Under the hon. Member's Amendment, not only would that Member be the very person who would be debarred but the rest of us would be debarred from considering him.

Therefore, although not because the hon. Member's proposed Amendments are patently bad or can be argued against on strong logical grounds, I think that on the whole I would prefer the House to rest on the proposals of the Select Committee which were deliberated upon and, as far as we know, were genuinely supported by all the Members of the Committee. I hope, therefore, that the House will accept the Motion unamended.