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In the case of a contested election for the Speakership, Members would of course have to vote without having been sworn. What, it may be asked, would happen in the event of a Member, after the election of the Speaker, sitting and voting without having taken the oath and signed the Roll? The penalties provided by an Act passed in 1866 are a fine of £500 for each commission of the offence of voting, and the immediate deprivation of the seat, which, ipso facto, becomes vacant. The payment of the fines, when the offence has been committed through mistake, ignorance, or inadvertence, can be remitted by an Act of Indemnity, but it is contended that nothing can avoid the instant vacating of the seat. I remember hearing it persistently whispered that one Member elected at a certain General Election had never taken the oath or signed the Roll. The matter, however, was never brought to the notice of the House. A peer who takes his seat and votes without having previously subscribed to the oath is likewise liable for every such vote to a penalty of £500. Peers have so inadvertently violated the law. Each explained that having taken the oath and signed the Roll on his accession to the peerage he thought he was not obliged to do so again when a new Parliament assembled. This excuse was accepted in the case of four peers in 1906. Bills of Indemnity were then said to be no longer necessary.
The swearing-in of Members returned to the House of Commons at the General Election of 1918—the first after the World War—had one new feature. It was introduced owing to changes in the law of election made by the Reform Act of 1918. It is provided by that Act that a candidate must lodge £150 with the returning officer at his nomination, which sum is not given back until the returning officer is officially informed that the candidate, if elected, has taken the oath and signed the Roll. Accordingly, to provide a means of ready discovery as to whether a particular Member had or had not subscribed to the oath, two clerks sat at the Table, with printed lists of the names and constituencies, which they ticked off as the name and the constituency of each Member was announced by the Clerk of the House in the course of the introduction of the Member to the Speaker.