Questions are given in writing to the Clerks at the Table. “A question,” according to the Standing Orders, “must not contain any argument, inference, imputation, epithet or ironical expression.” The judge of the regularity of a question is the Speaker. He disallows it if in his opinion it is an abuse of the right of questioning, the sole object of which is to obtain information from the Government. Questions are sometimes altered by the Clerks on the ground of impropriety of expression. Members occasionally complain of this censorship. The Irish Party once resented the insertion at the Table of the word “Roman” before “Catholic” in a question handed in by one of their Members. Mr. Speaker Lowther was greatly surprised that they should have regarded the word as offensive, but promised, in deference to their feelings, it would not be used again. On the other hand, they rejoiced over their success in having the term “land-grabbers”—one of ill-omen, in Irish agrarian agitation—passed in a question and thus appearing for the first time on the official records of Parliament. I can also recall instances of Members who refused to put questions as they appeared in print. They were so different from the form in which they had been given in manuscript to the Clerks that their authors absolutely disowned them. But however questions may be sub-edited, it is rarely that one is rejected altogether by the Speaker. A question addressed to a Minister must, of course, relate to some public affair with which he is officially concerned, or to a matter of policy or administration for which he is responsible. Subject to these limitations a Member may put down four questions daily interrogating Ministers on any subject, no matter how local or trivial, for there are little things as well as great things in regard to which the House daily exercises supervision or requires to be informed. The Minister, however, may decline to answer a question on the ground that it is against the public interest. This stops the irresponsible interference of Members in the most delicate functions of the Executive, which, if allowed, especially in foreign affairs, might be productive of embarrassing and perhaps hazardous consequences.
Questions of an urgent character, or of exceptional importance, may be asked without being printed in the “Orders of the Day,” provided private notice—or notice, by letter—has been given to the particular Minister and the consent of the Speaker has been previously obtained. These special interrogations are always put when the printed questions are disposed of. But the usual custom is for two or three days’ notice to be given, in order to afford time for the preparation of the replies. It is not the Ministers who discharge the task of obtaining the information that is asked for. The questions are sent to the different departments, to whose parliamentary chiefs they are addressed, and the answers are drafted by the permanent staff. In most cases all the Minister has to do with the replies is to read them in the House of Commons. The day’s questions are printed, as I have said, in the “Orders of the Day.” They are prefixed with the names of the Members responsible for them and are also numbered. The way in which they are put is direct and simple. Each Member rises in his place when called on, in succession, by the Speaker, and says: “I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department question No. 1,” or, “I beg to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty question No. 40.” The Treasury Bench, be it understood, is crowded with Ministers, each of them in possession of a bundle of typewritten answers supplied to him by the clerks of his department. Accordingly, the Home Secretary looks up question No. 1, or the First Lord of the Admiralty question No. 40, from his bundle and reads it to the House.
The growth of this practice of questioning Ministers has been very remarkable. It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that it became an established feature of the proceedings of the House of Commons. In 1849 a special place was assigned to questions in the “Orders of the Day.” Before that year they were few in number; they referred mainly to the arrangement and progress of business, and were rarely printed. The first time a question appeared in the “Orders of the Day” was in 1835. But after 1849 questions were printed regularly in the “Orders of the Day,” and the subjects inquired about—confined, previously, to pending legislation—extended gradually to public affairs and matters of administration. Still, it was rare to see more than twelve, or at the most twenty, questions on the paper for thirty years subsequently. In the session of 1860 the number of questions asked was 699; in 1870, 1,203; in 1880, 1,546; in 1890, 4,407, and in 1920 over 5,000. The questions occasionally exceed 200 per day. The average number is about 150. All this shows how interpellation, like other functions of the House of Commons, came almost haphazardly into operation, and now rests immovably on the foundation of privilege. And the Committee on National Expenditure reported during the Great War that each question costs the country thirty shillings.
Until 1880 it was the practice of Members to read every question when putting it to the Minister, although it was printed in the “Orders of the Day.” On July 8, 1880, after question time, Joseph Cowen called attention to the fact that two hours had been occupied in asking and answering questions. Yet the number of questions put that day was only thirty. He added that, having taken the time on his watch, he had found the mere reading of the questions occupied an hour; and he asked the Speaker whether, as the questions were printed in the “Orders of the Day,” it was necessary they should be read. Mr. Speaker Brand, in reply, said: “It has been the general practice for many years for hon. Members, in putting questions, to read these questions, and it has been generally found to be a convenient course. There is, however, no absolute rule on the subject.” From that day, however, the reading of questions was gradually discontinued; and questions were put simply by a reference to the numbers as they appeared in the “Orders of the Day.” It was only a month later that an Irish Member, named Finigan, on reading a question, was received with loud cries of “Order!” The Speaker was asked whether it was not “a great abuse of the rules of the House” for the hon. Member to have read his question. “The matter is not so much one of order as of propriety,” replied Mr. Speaker Brand. “I consider that the hon. Member in reading the question of which he has given notice was, strictly speaking, not out of order. With regard to the propriety of his doing so, I give no opinion.” This was the last occasion a question appearing in the “Orders of the Day” was read on being put to the Minister.
Often the real interest of a question and answer only develops when the Minister has read his typewritten reply. This arises from the custom of putting what are known as supplementary questions. “Arising out of the right hon. gentleman’s answer, may I ask ——?” the Member begins. His purpose is to extract further information from the reluctant Minister. If the subject is controversial, the Minister is made the target of inquisitorial arrows, which he meets or parries as best he can. Mr. Speaker Peel never attempted to set up any limit to the liberty of a Member—dissatisfied with the answer to the question he had placed on the paper or, as often happened, anxious to show off his humour—to cross-examine, as it were, the Minister by means of supplementary questions.
I remember many instances of Arthur Balfour, when Chief Secretary for Ireland, being subjected for a quarter of an hour to a harassing fusillade of supplementary questions arising out of the question on one paper, and Mr. Speaker Peel saw no occasion for interference. But a totally different line was taken by Mr. Speaker Gully. When a Member rose to put a supplementary question, Mr. Speaker Gully interposed with a cry of “Order, order!” and informed the hon. gentleman that his question did not arise out of the question on the paper. The rule regulating supplementary questions previously was that they must arise out of the answer of the Minister. Some Members, notably the most pertinacious hecklers of the Government, chafed under this unwonted restraint, and occasionally showed signs of a disposition to revolt against the Chair, but Gully had might on his side, at least, and could not be trifled with. Mr. Speaker Lowther was disposed to follow the precedent set by Gully. “If,” he said on one occasion, “questions are at all important they should be put on the notice-paper, and if they are not important, they should not be asked.” Under Peel there was no limit to the duration of question time. It was limited to an hour under Lowther, and a point he repeatedly urged was that supplementary questions were unfair to Members who had questions on the notice-paper because they lessened the chance of these questions being reached within the time allowed. The answer to such questions as are not reached within the hour, and therefore are not read by the Ministers, are printed with those orally given by the Ministers in the official report of the proceedings of the House. Of questions generally it may be said that while great principles are frequently raised or indirectly suggested by them, many of them are concerned with what appears to be small details of administration interesting only to the individuals whom they affect.
3
New Members are introduced after questions. Quaint indeed are the contradictions of parliamentary procedure. Rules that are entirely different regulate the taking of the oath of allegiance and their seats in the House of Commons by M.P.’s returned at the General Election, and M.P.’s who come in at by-elections. We have seen on the opening days of Parliament hundreds of men appear at Westminster and being permitted to take the oath and their seats without any examination of credentials or any evidence of identification. It was quite possible, on the occasion of a large influx of new representatives, unknown by appearance to the officials, for a “stranger,” impudent enough and sufficiently strong of nerve, to pass in with the crowd, and snatch the fearful joy of sitting on the sacred Treasury Bench or Opposition Bench—in front even of the brass-bound box associated with leadership and quite close to the Mace—without anyone saying him nay. On the other hand, there is an elaborate ceremony of introduction prescribed for those returned at by-elections. The new Member has to be escorted to the Table, to take the oath of allegiance and sign the Test Roll, by two full-blown Members of the House. This custom has survived from a remote past when, in order to prevent personation, two Members of the House were required to identify the claimant of a seat after a by-election as the person named by the returning officer in the return to the writ. This precaution has been unnecessary for many a year. But such is the reluctance of the House of Commons to part with any of its historic ceremonies, such is its scrupulous regard for ancient precedents—no matter how incongruous they may appear owing to the changes effected by time—that this formality is still retained; and though a representative may appear at the Bar of the House as the unanimous choice of a constituency of 20,000 electors, and produce the certificate of the official return of his election, he will not be sworn in and permitted to take his seat unless two Members act as his sponsors, and so declare that, as the conjurers say, there is positively no deception.
There is the famous case of Dr. Kenealy, counsel for “The Claimant,” in the Tichborne Trial, who was disbarred by the Benchers of Grey’s Inn, and afterwards returned for Stoke-upon-Trent at a by-election in February 1875. He came to the Table alone. It is not clearly established whether he failed to find two Members who would accompany him as sponsors, or whether he wanted to put to the test a custom which, in his opinion, was no part of constitutional law. At any rate, the Speaker informed him that as he had not been introduced by two Members, in accordance with the ancient usage of the House—founded on a Standing Order dating from 1688—he could not be sworn in or take his seat. Kenealy was, therefore, obliged to withdraw from the House. No objection could be raised to Dr. Kenealy’s election. He produced the certificate of his return as Member for Stoke-upon-Trent. Everyone in the House knew that he was the person named in the official document. He laboured under no legal disability. Had he been returned at the General Election he could have taken, without question, the oath and his seat. But coming in at a by-election he was not allowed to do so solely because of his inability to comply with what, after all, in this age is but a mere ceremonial function. The position was, indeed, absurd. It was impossible that a duly elected representative of the people could be excluded from Parliament for so unsubstantial a cause. Accordingly, a special resolution, moved by Disraeli, who was then Prime Minister, was carried dispensing with the ancient introductory ceremony in the particular case of Dr. Kenealy. In the course of the discussion John Bright and another Member named Whalley intimated that they were willing to walk up the floor with Kenealy “out of deference,” as Bright put it, “to the will of a large constituency.” The Member for Stoke-upon-Trent once more came to the Table unaccompanied; the oath was administered to him and he signed the Roll—the sole instance of a departure from a custom observed since 1688. Kenealy then disappeared in the mass of Members among whom he could not count two friends. “He was in the House, but not of it,” said Joseph Cowen, speaking in 1881. He was effectually and completely boycotted.
Sometimes the new M.P., returned at a by-election, forgets to bring to the Table the certificate of the return to the writ. This document, which is sent by the Clerk of the Crown to the Clerk of the House, is given to the new Member on application at the Vote Office, in the Lobby, just before the ceremony of initiation, and must be presented to the Clerk of the House at the Table as evidence that he is the person named in the return to the writ as having been duly elected, before the oath can be administered to him. As a rule, therefore, the new Member takes care that he has this indispensable official paper in his possession before he starts to walk, between his two sponsors, from the Bar to the Table. But Hardinge Giffard, afterwards Earl Halsbury and Lord Chancellor, when elected at a by-election in 1877, found on reaching the Table that the little blue document was missing. In his consternation he hurriedly turned out all the contents of his pockets, piling them upon the Table—letters, a purse, some loose coppers and silver, a bunch of keys, a briar-wood pipe—all sorts of things but the essential certificate. In this case the Speaker refused to accept any evidence—not even the testimony of identification by the two sponsors—but the Clerk of the Crown’s certificate that the man at the Table was the man that had been duly returned at the recent election for Launceston. The House, of course, was amused at the spectacle. Happily, one of the Whips who went in search of the missing return found it in the hat of the new Member, under the cross-bench below the Bar, where Hardinge Giffard had sat with his sponsors awaiting the time for the Speaker to make the customary announcement—“New Members desirous of taking their places will, please, come to the Table.”