These are the British

by Drew Middleton

The big debates on such issues as foreign affairs and economic policy are the summit of parliamentary effort. Government and opposition put forward their leading spokesmen on the issue under debate. But debates also provide an opportunity for the back benchers of all parties. The back benchers—Members who are not in the government or in the opposition's shadow cabinet—rise to make their points on the issue, and often remarkably good speeches, as well as bad ones, are delivered.

But parliamentary business is concerned with much more than questions and debates. Bills must be passed. This procedure is involved and lengthy, paying due attention to the rights of the House and the people it represents.

The bill receives a formal First Reading on its introduction and is then printed. After a period varying from one to several weeks, depending on the bill's nature, it may be given a Second Reading as the result of a debate on its general merits. Then the bill is referred to one of the standing committees.

During the committee stage, Members can amend the bill if a majority of the House agrees. When this stage is finished, the bill is reported to the House and a further debate takes place during which the Committee's amendments may be altered, additional amendments may be suggested and incorporated, and, if necessary, the bill may be recommitted to committee. Finally, the bill is submitted for a Third Reading, and if passed, it is sent on from the Commons to the House of Lords. There it enters upon the same course.

There, also, it may awaken the interest of Lord Cholmondeley, my favorite peer. Lord Cholmondeley spoke in the House of Lords recently for the first time in thirty-two years. What he had to say—about rabbits and other small game—was brief and to the point. To many, Lord Cholmondeley must symbolize the vague absurdities of the House of Lords.

Yet this peculiar institution has its defenders, and these are not all peers. There is something to be said, it is contended, for an upper chamber that debates on terms other than partisan politics the great issues of the day. The House of Lords, like the Crown, has influence but, as money bills must be introduced in the House of Commons, little direct power. From the standpoint of active politics its limited power is of a negative nature. It can, for instance, delay the passage of legislation by rejecting a bill previously passed by the House of Commons.

This occurred when the Lords rejected the bill to nationalize the steel industry and the bill to abolish capital punishment. These delaying actions demonstrated that, although the powers of the House of Lords have been drastically curtailed, they can still have considerable political importance. Inevitably, such action evokes dark mutterings from the Labor Party about the ability of hereditary peers to flout the will of the people. The Lords retort that the bill in question is not the will of the people at all, but the will of some of the people's representatives.

Theoretically, the House of Lords is a good deal larger than the House of Commons, consisting of 878 peers. Only about one tenth of them, however, take an active part in the work of the House of Lords. The peers include princes of the royal blood, who by custom take no part in proceedings; 26 spiritual peers, the archbishops and senior bishops of the Church of England; all hereditary peers of England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom; 16 hereditary peers of Scotland elected from their own number for each Parliament; 5 representative peers of Ireland elected for life; and the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary appointed to perform the judicial duties of the House and holding their seats for life.

Such are the bare bones of the parliamentary system of Britain. Like many other British institutions, it conceals beneath a façade of ceremonial and tradition an efficient, flexible machine. The debates, the great speeches, and the days of pomp when the Queen rides amid the Household Cavalry to open Parliament are in spectacular contrast to the long grind of unremitting and, by modern standards, financially unrewarding work by Members of both Lords and Commons.

When the visitor sits in the gallery high above the well of the Commons and hears a minister patiently explaining some point connected with an obscure aspect of British life, it is well to remember that this system is one for which men fought and suffered, that this House is the cradle of liberties and freedoms.