The Government of England (Vol. I)

by A. Lawrence Lowell

Controversial Bills not Referred to Committees.

The most important government bills, and especially those of a highly controversial nature, are not referred to committees at all. They are debated only in the House itself; and in Committee of the Whole, which is merely the House sitting with slightly different rules, and not a committee in the sense in which the word is used in this chapter. To select committees few public bills are referred, and those as a rule are certainly not of a controversial character.[319:1] The only difficulty arises in the case of the standing committees. When he first proposed these in 1882, Mr. Gladstone said that they were not intended to consider measures of a partisan character;[319:2] and it has been generally recognised ever since that very contentious bills ought not to be referred to them.[319:3] A long debate on the subject took place recently, on the occasion when the bill to restrict alien immigration was sent to the Standing Committee on Law in 1904.[319:4] All the members who took part in the discussions, except Mr. Chamberlain,[319:5] agreed on the general principle; but they did not agree upon any test of contentiousness, and were sharply divided on the question whether the Aliens Bill was contentious or not. Mr. Balfour himself took the ground that the controversial character of a bill is a matter of degree, and that this bill was near the border line. The obstacles in its path proved in the end so serious that it had to be dropped for the session.

That a bill is non-contentious clearly does not mean that it is unopposed, or even that the opposition has no connection with party. Every one of the six government bills referred to standing committees in 1899, for example, had a party vote at some stage in its passage through the House.[320:1] These committees are expected to deal, not with questions of political principle, but with details that require technical skill or careful consideration, in bills where the general principle is either non-contentious, or may be regarded as settled by the House itself. They were intended to be used for measures on which the committee stage is not likely to raise any important questions of policy. The original intention, however, has not been wholly carried out. Highly contentious bills have not infrequently been "sent upstairs,"[320:2] as the expression goes, although this has never been done in the case of the most important government measures. Many people feel that the departure is unfortunate, and hence there was no little opposition in 1907 to raising the number of standing committees to four, and providing that all bills should be referred to them unless the House ordered otherwise. An amendment, to the report of the committee, that the provision should not apply to bills containing general controversial matter was rejected by a strict party vote,[320:3] and the change in procedure was put through the House itself by the use of closure.[320:4] If the standing committees were confined to non-contentious measures, they could create no serious embarrassment for the ministry, even if quite free from its control.

Party Complexion of Committees.

But in fact the committees are a good deal under the influence of the government. In the first place the government party is always given a majority of the members. Formerly it had on select committees a majority of one only,[320:5] but now it has become a general rule that both select and standing committees shall reflect as nearly as may be the party complexion of the House itself. Thus in 1894, when the parties were nearly evenly balanced in the House, the government majority on the committees was usually very small, but after the Conservatives came into power with a much larger majority, their share of members in the committees was correspondingly great.[321:1] The standing committees, and often the select committees also, are appointed by the Committee of Selection, which contains usually six adherents of the party in power, and five from the other side of the House. But they are members of great experience. They know the principles they are expected to apply, and with their discretion in the choice of individuals the ministers make no attempt to interfere.[321:2]

Influence of the Government in Committees.

The mere possession of a majority upon a committee is not always enough, unless the government can bring pressure to bear upon its followers. In select committees on bills this is not a matter of much consequence, because, as we have seen, they rarely have charge of important, or at least of contentious, measures. In select committees of inquiry one hears nothing of pressure—to the credit of statesmen be it said—and although the report of an English committee or commission of inquiry is often a variation on the theme that "no one did anything wrong, but they had better not do it again," still there are reports that contain severe criticism on the public administration.[322:1] In the standing committees the influence of the government is palpable. In fact these committees, when dealing with government bills, are miniatures of the House in arrangement as well as in composition. There are the same rows of benches facing each other; and the minister in charge of the bill sits in the corner seat at the chairman's right hand, accepting, or refusing to accept, amendments on behalf of the government.[322:2] Absent members are fetched in the same way to take part in divisions;[322:3] and when the Conservatives were in power, whips were sometimes issued imploring them to be present on the morrow, because an important vote was expected. The Liberals do not do this, and often have trouble in getting their partisans to attend. Moreover, a difficulty sometimes arises from the fact that the members who are most strongly interested in a bill and hence least under the control of the minister—the Labour men or the Irish Nationalists, for example, in the case of bills affecting their constituents—attend far more regularly than the rest. But although the influence of the government over a standing committee is distinctly less than over the House itself,[322:4] it is certainly very considerable.

Few Party Votes in Committees.

Nevertheless the voting in both select and standing committees runs little on party lines, decidedly less than it does in the House itself. Taking two recent years, 1894 and 1899, for which the writer has had statistics prepared, it appears that in 1894 there were in the select committees twenty-three party votes out of eighty-four divisions; and in the Standing Committees on Law and Trade[323:1] there were only seven divisions in all, of which only two were on party lines; whereas in the House itself there were one hundred and eighty-four party votes out of a total of two hundred and forty-six divisions. Moreover, the party votes in committees were mainly confined to a very few subjects. Thus seventeen of the twenty-three party votes in the select committees were given in the committee on the work of the Charity Commission, and four of the remainder were in that on Scotch Feus and Building Leases.[323:2] For 1899 the comparison is even more striking. In the select committees there was one party vote out of sixty-three divisions; in the standing committees six out of fifty-three—and those six were all on one bill[323:3]—while in the House there were two hundred and forty-two party votes out of three hundred and fifty-seven divisions.[323:4]