Former MP for Sowerby
Further to the point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Standing Order provides that the Third Reading shall be taken without debate unless six hon. Members put their names down to a motion to the contrary. The question is what opportunity has occurred of six Members putting down their names to take advantage of the Standing Order to have a debate on the Third Reading? Are you willing now, Mr....
I am trying not to be a nuisance, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but under what authority is the Question, "That the Bill be now read the Third time" being put immediately after Report? The Bill was reported to you unamended by the Chairman of the Committee. You then asked "Third Reading, what day?" and a voice said "Now". What authority lies behind that call of "Now"? Has the House agreed to take the...
This is a short Bill and a very important Bill, but it is hideously complex. There is hardly an intelligible clause in it. It is a good thing that we are considering this Bill late at night because only a few hon. Members on both sides of the House are present to misunderstand it. It is always a great encumbrance in our debates when a large number of hon. Members are trying to understand a...
I suppose that my credentials to speak on the Bill will meet with the approval of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English). I am not a solicitor and I am not a barrister, but it was thought by my colleagues that it was desirable that a layman's point of view on the Bill should be put from the Opposition Front Bench. The two forerunners of the Bill ran into trouble. They...
I come to the disciplinary tribunal. From a consumer point of view, this is perhaps the most important clause of the Bill. The Solicitor-General explained that the disciplinary committee is converted into a solicitors' disciplinary tribunal. The membership is enlarged. It extends to solicitors of not less than 10 years' standing and provides for lay members who are neither solicitors nor...
Then I think that it should be extended, for all sorts of reasons. What is proposed in the Bill in that connection has a message to others. Some of us take the view that it is undesirable for a trade union, for example, to have the sole right of discipline over a member against whom misconduct or other default has been alleged when that trade union can, by exercising its disciplinary right,...
In the unavoidable absence of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition I have been asked to associate my right hon. and hon. Friends very warmly with the motion. We wish, too, Mr. Speaker, that you will convey to the Clerk of the House on his pending retirement the deep appreciation and, indeed, the affection of my right hon. and hon. Friends. There are two parts to the motion....
I sought to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, after the right hon. Gentleman had spoken only because he was kind enough to mention to me earlier that he would refer to new matters affecting the House of Commons, which he did in the last few minutes of his speech. I shall detain the House for only a few minutes, because there is no point in my ranging over the whole debate or the speech of...
