Reference to a Select Committee
or Standing Committee.
Normally a bill goes either to the Committee of the Whole or to a standing committee, but after it has been read a second time a motion may be made to refer it to a select committee. Such a reference simply adds a step to the journey of the bill, for when reported it goes to a standing committee or to the Committee of the Whole. A standing committee, on the other hand, is, as already explained, a substitute for the Committee of the Whole. It deals with the bill in precisely the same way, reporting it back to the House amended or unchanged.
Report.
When a bill has been reported from the Committee of the Whole with amendments,[276:1] and when it has been reported from a standing committee whether amended or not,[276:2] it is considered by the House in detail, upon what is known as the report stage. The object is to give the House an opportunity to review the work done in committee, and see whether it wishes to maintain the amendments there adopted. But the House is not restricted to confirming or reversing the changes made in the bill, and although the process of going through the measure clause by clause is not repeated, fresh amendments may be proposed and new clauses added.[276:3]
If the bill is reported from a Committee of the Whole without amendments, it is assumed that the details are satisfactory to the House, and there is no report stage.
Third Reading.
The next, and now the last, stage of a bill in the House of Commons is the third reading. Like the second reading, this raises only the question whether or not the House approves of the measure as a whole, and the moves for compassing its defeat are the same. Verbal amendments alone are in order, and any substantial alteration can be brought about only by moving to recommit.
Usually the several steps in the enactment of a bill are taken on different days,[277:1] but there is nothing in the rules of the House of Commons to require this, and urgent measures have at times passed through all their stages in both Houses in one day. The last case was that of the Explosive Substances Bill passed in 1883 under the pressure of the dynamite scare.[277:2]
Lords' Amendments.