[263:2] S.O. 81 (2). By S.O. 1 (9), the Speaker nominates a panel of not more than five members to act as temporary chairmen of committees, but this would seem to have been rendered less necessary by the new provision for a deputy chairman.
[263:3] May, 198.
[263:4] May, 195.
CHAPTER XIII
PROCEDURE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
Committees and Public Bills
The Committees.
No great representative assembly at the present day can do all its work in full meeting. It has neither the time, the patience nor the knowledge required. Its sittings ought not to be frittered away in discussing proposals that have no chance of success; while measures that are to be brought before the whole body ought to be threshed out beforehand, their provisions carefully weighed and put into precise language, objections, if possible, met by concession and compromise, or brought to a sharp difference of principle. In short, they ought to be put into such a shape that the assembly is only called upon to decide a small number of perfectly definite questions. To enable it to do so intelligently it may be necessary also to collect information about doubtful facts. Modern assemblies have sought to accomplish these results mainly by committees of some kind; and in England where the parliamentary form of government has reached a higher development than anywhere else, the chief instrument for the purpose is that informal joint committee of the Houses, known as the cabinet. But unless Parliament were to be very nearly reduced to the rôle of criticising the ministers, and answering yes or no to a series of questions propounded by them, it must do a part of its work through other committees. The reasons why those committees have not become—as in some other European nations that have adopted the system of a responsible ministry—dangerous rivals of the cabinet, at times frustrating its objects and undermining its authority, will be discussed in the [chapters] on the relation between the cabinet and the House of Commons. We must consider here their organisation and duties.
