The pageant of Parliament, vol. 1 of 2

by Michael MacDonagh

2

Business begins the moment the Speaker takes the Chair. It is noted for its miscellaneous character. Private Bills—or Bills introduced on behalf of the promoters of commercial or municipal undertakings which interfere with rights of property—are first considered. But the proceedings are formal, and devoid of interest. Petitions are also presented to the House at this stage of the sitting. A Member rises in his place and, stating that he has a petition to present, reads a brief summary of its purport. It invariably ends with the phrase, “And your petitioners will ever pray, etc.” No one has ever seen the sentence completed. What, then, can “etc.” imply? It seems a slovenly and irreverent way of saying one’s prayers, reminiscent of the backwoodsman who chalked up his pious wishes at the head of his bed, and, when tumbling in at night, jerked his thumb over his shoulder saying, “Lord, them’s my sentiments.” “Will the honourable Member bring it up?” says the Speaker, referring, of course, to the petition. The Member walks up the floor and drops the roll into the yawning mouth of a big black bag, hanging at the back of the Chair. More often than not there is no public mention whatever of the petition in the House. The Member to whom it is sent contents himself with privately stowing it away into the bag, without anyone being made a bit the wiser as to its nature or signatures. Through the yawning mouth of this big black bag petitions may be said to drop out of sight and out of mind into the limbo of waste and forgotten things. Their presentation is recorded in the Journals of the House. But they make no impression whatever on the minds of Members as to the grievances they are intended to expose, and they are heard of no more, except the Committee on Petitions, before whom, in due course, they come for scrutiny, find some of the regulations have been violated—that, for instance, the prayer of a petition, instead of being in writing, is printed, or lithographed, or typewritten, or that several of the signatures are in the same handwriting, or denote persons manifestly fictitious, such as “Charles Piccadilly,” “John Trafalgar Square”—put down by jokers—when the petition is either returned for correction to the Member who presented it or its rejection is recommended. Two municipal bodies have the privilege of presenting petitions ceremoniously at the Bar of the House of Commons—the Corporation of the City of London and the Corporation of Dublin. In the early decades of the nineteenth century petitions were read in full by Members who presented them, and there were great debates arising out of them on such questions as Negro slavery within the Empire, the political emancipation of Catholic or Jew, and parliamentary reform. I have seen, in the later years of the same century, huge petitions with hundreds of thousands of signatures trundled up the floor of the House like enormous cartwheels or big drums. They related usually to proposed changes in primary education or the liquor laws—the two chief subjects of controversy in the dull and happy time I speak of. But the sending of petitions is almost a thing of the past. The House has become indifferent to any form of persuasion save that of elections.

The Chamber has now rapidly filled up for “question time,” which is often the most interesting part of a sitting. One of the most precious and highly cherished privileges of a Member is the right to question Ministers—before the House proceeds to business—in relation to public affairs, matters of administration, policy or legislation. Moreover, these interrogations and replies are an unfailing source of interest and also of entertainment. The House then invariably wears an alert and animated aspect. The benches on both sides are thronged. Every Member is supplied with a copy of the official programme called the “Orders of the Day”—a white folio paper of many pages, in which the questions are printed, with other matter relating to the business arranged for the sitting—and one of the most characteristic sights which the House affords is the flutter of these papers on the crowded benches, as the questions are put and answered. The proceedings are followed with the closest attention, with, in fact, an absorbed interest which during a debate is evoked only by a really great speech on a subject of the first importance. The questions deal with all sorts of topics, illustrating at once the freedom of inquiry within the House and the jurisdiction of Parliament within the far-spreading Empire.

Questions are given in writing to the Clerks at the Table. “A question,” according to the Standing Orders, “must not contain any argument, inference, imputation, epithet or ironical expression.” The judge of the regularity of a question is the Speaker. He disallows it if in his opinion it is an abuse of the right of questioning, the sole object of which is to obtain information from the Government. Questions are sometimes altered by the Clerks on the ground of impropriety of expression. Members occasionally complain of this censorship. The Irish Party once resented the insertion at the Table of the word “Roman” before “Catholic” in a question handed in by one of their Members. Mr. Speaker Lowther was greatly surprised that they should have regarded the word as offensive, but promised, in deference to their feelings, it would not be used again. On the other hand, they rejoiced over their success in having the term “land-grabbers”—one of ill-omen, in Irish agrarian agitation—passed in a question and thus appearing for the first time on the official records of Parliament. I can also recall instances of Members who refused to put questions as they appeared in print. They were so different from the form in which they had been given in manuscript to the Clerks that their authors absolutely disowned them. But however questions may be sub-edited, it is rarely that one is rejected altogether by the Speaker. A question addressed to a Minister must, of course, relate to some public affair with which he is officially concerned, or to a matter of policy or administration for which he is responsible. Subject to these limitations a Member may put down four questions daily interrogating Ministers on any subject, no matter how local or trivial, for there are little things as well as great things in regard to which the House daily exercises supervision or requires to be informed. The Minister, however, may decline to answer a question on the ground that it is against the public interest. This stops the irresponsible interference of Members in the most delicate functions of the Executive, which, if allowed, especially in foreign affairs, might be productive of embarrassing and perhaps hazardous consequences.

Questions of an urgent character, or of exceptional importance, may be asked without being printed in the “Orders of the Day,” provided private notice—or notice, by letter—has been given to the particular Minister and the consent of the Speaker has been previously obtained. These special interrogations are always put when the printed questions are disposed of. But the usual custom is for two or three days’ notice to be given, in order to afford time for the preparation of the replies. It is not the Ministers who discharge the task of obtaining the information that is asked for. The questions are sent to the different departments, to whose parliamentary chiefs they are addressed, and the answers are drafted by the permanent staff. In most cases all the Minister has to do with the replies is to read them in the House of Commons. The day’s questions are printed, as I have said, in the “Orders of the Day.” They are prefixed with the names of the Members responsible for them and are also numbered. The way in which they are put is direct and simple. Each Member rises in his place when called on, in succession, by the Speaker, and says: “I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department question No. 1,” or, “I beg to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty question No. 40.” The Treasury Bench, be it understood, is crowded with Ministers, each of them in possession of a bundle of typewritten answers supplied to him by the clerks of his department. Accordingly, the Home Secretary looks up question No. 1, or the First Lord of the Admiralty question No. 40, from his bundle and reads it to the House.

The growth of this practice of questioning Ministers has been very remarkable. It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that it became an established feature of the proceedings of the House of Commons. In 1849 a special place was assigned to questions in the “Orders of the Day.” Before that year they were few in number; they referred mainly to the arrangement and progress of business, and were rarely printed. The first time a question appeared in the “Orders of the Day” was in 1835. But after 1849 questions were printed regularly in the “Orders of the Day,” and the subjects inquired about—confined, previously, to pending legislation—extended gradually to public affairs and matters of administration. Still, it was rare to see more than twelve, or at the most twenty, questions on the paper for thirty years subsequently. In the session of 1860 the number of questions asked was 699; in 1870, 1,203; in 1880, 1,546; in 1890, 4,407, and in 1920 over 5,000. The questions occasionally exceed 200 per day. The average number is about 150. All this shows how interpellation, like other functions of the House of Commons, came almost haphazardly into operation, and now rests immovably on the foundation of privilege. And the Committee on National Expenditure reported during the Great War that each question costs the country thirty shillings.

Until 1880 it was the practice of Members to read every question when putting it to the Minister, although it was printed in the “Orders of the Day.” On July 8, 1880, after question time, Joseph Cowen called attention to the fact that two hours had been occupied in asking and answering questions. Yet the number of questions put that day was only thirty. He added that, having taken the time on his watch, he had found the mere reading of the questions occupied an hour; and he asked the Speaker whether, as the questions were printed in the “Orders of the Day,” it was necessary they should be read. Mr. Speaker Brand, in reply, said: “It has been the general practice for many years for hon. Members, in putting questions, to read these questions, and it has been generally found to be a convenient course. There is, however, no absolute rule on the subject.” From that day, however, the reading of questions was gradually discontinued; and questions were put simply by a reference to the numbers as they appeared in the “Orders of the Day.” It was only a month later that an Irish Member, named Finigan, on reading a question, was received with loud cries of “Order!” The Speaker was asked whether it was not “a great abuse of the rules of the House” for the hon. Member to have read his question. “The matter is not so much one of order as of propriety,” replied Mr. Speaker Brand. “I consider that the hon. Member in reading the question of which he has given notice was, strictly speaking, not out of order. With regard to the propriety of his doing so, I give no opinion.” This was the last occasion a question appearing in the “Orders of the Day” was read on being put to the Minister.

Often the real interest of a question and answer only develops when the Minister has read his typewritten reply. This arises from the custom of putting what are known as supplementary questions. “Arising out of the right hon. gentleman’s answer, may I ask ——?” the Member begins. His purpose is to extract further information from the reluctant Minister. If the subject is controversial, the Minister is made the target of inquisitorial arrows, which he meets or parries as best he can. Mr. Speaker Peel never attempted to set up any limit to the liberty of a Member—dissatisfied with the answer to the question he had placed on the paper or, as often happened, anxious to show off his humour—to cross-examine, as it were, the Minister by means of supplementary questions.

I remember many instances of Arthur Balfour, when Chief Secretary for Ireland, being subjected for a quarter of an hour to a harassing fusillade of supplementary questions arising out of the question on one paper, and Mr. Speaker Peel saw no occasion for interference. But a totally different line was taken by Mr. Speaker Gully. When a Member rose to put a supplementary question, Mr. Speaker Gully interposed with a cry of “Order, order!” and informed the hon. gentleman that his question did not arise out of the question on the paper. The rule regulating supplementary questions previously was that they must arise out of the answer of the Minister. Some Members, notably the most pertinacious hecklers of the Government, chafed under this unwonted restraint, and occasionally showed signs of a disposition to revolt against the Chair, but Gully had might on his side, at least, and could not be trifled with. Mr. Speaker Lowther was disposed to follow the precedent set by Gully. “If,” he said on one occasion, “questions are at all important they should be put on the notice-paper, and if they are not important, they should not be asked.” Under Peel there was no limit to the duration of question time. It was limited to an hour under Lowther, and a point he repeatedly urged was that supplementary questions were unfair to Members who had questions on the notice-paper because they lessened the chance of these questions being reached within the time allowed. The answer to such questions as are not reached within the hour, and therefore are not read by the Ministers, are printed with those orally given by the Ministers in the official report of the proceedings of the House. Of questions generally it may be said that while great principles are frequently raised or indirectly suggested by them, many of them are concerned with what appears to be small details of administration interesting only to the individuals whom they affect.