Volume 1 / Part 1 — CHAPTER XVI
Reading edition
PROCEDURE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
Sittings and Order of Business
Sittings of the House.
After describing the processes of legislation, a word must be said about the order of business for each day and for the session as a whole. On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday the House now meets at a quarter before three, and sits until half-past eleven, when it is automatically adjourned unless business specially exempted is under consideration. But the sitting is divided by the mystic hour of a quarter past eight into two parts which are reserved on certain days for quite different kinds of business. On Friday the House sits from noon till half-past five, and on Saturday it does not meet at all unless by special vote on very rare occasions.[302:1]
Interruption of Business.
With the exception to be noted in a moment, all business upon which the House may be engaged is interrupted at half-past five o'clock on Friday, and eleven on other days; but unopposed business may still be taken up until the hour arrives for adjournment. During that interval the orders of the day are read, and each of them may in turn be debated and even voted upon, unless a division is challenged, or some member objects.[303:1] In short, work can be done after the time for interruption only by universal consent, a single member having power to prevent the consideration of any measure to which he is opposed. Yet a certain amount of business is transacted at these times; and, in fact, a private member's bill would stand little chance, even if no one had any serious objection to it, unless it could pass through some of its stages in this way.
Exceptions Thereto.
To the rule that no opposed business can be taken after eleven o'clock there is an important exception. A minister may move at the beginning of the afternoon sitting that any specified business shall not be interrupted at that hour, and the question must be put without amendment or debate. This is often done toward the close of the session, and results in sittings that run far into the night. Bills originating in Committee of Ways and Means, and proceedings taken in pursuance of a statute[304:1] or standing order, are also exempted from the rules about interruption, about taking up no opposed business after eleven o'clock, and about adjournment at half-past eleven o'clock.[304:2] It must be remembered also that closure may be moved after the hour for interruption has struck.[304:3]
Order of Business for the Day.
The first sitting of each day is opened with prayer. The Speaker then takes the chair, and certain formal or routine business that occupies little time is taken up in the following order.
1. Private business, that is, bills relating to private or local matters. Private business, which is unopposed, and therefore takes no appreciable time, is taken up first. Opposed private business is not taken up at all on Friday, and if not finished by three o'clock on other days is postponed to a quarter past eight on such day as the Chairman of Ways and Means may determine.[304:4]
2. Presentation of public petitions (if presented orally instead of being dropped silently into a bag behind the Speaker's chair). As a rule no debate is in order, and hence this process is also short,[304:5] and must be finished by three o'clock.[304:6]
3. At that hour, on the afternoon sittings, the important business of putting questions to ministers begins.[305:1] The character and political effect of these questions will be examined in Chapter XVIII, but from the point of view of parliamentary time it may be noted that the practice has grown so much during the last thirty years as to require some limitation. In 1901 the questions asked numbered 7180, and consumed 119 hours, or the equivalent of fifteen parliamentary days of eight hours each.[305:2] The new rules of 1902 sought to check the tendency in two ways; by giving the option of requiring an oral or a written answer, the question in the former case being marked in the notice paper with an asterisk; and by fixing a strict limit to the time consumed. Forty minutes are allowed for putting questions, the answers to those not reached by a quarter before four, like the answers to questions not starred, being printed with the votes of the day.[305:3]
4. If there is a vacant moment before three o'clock, or between the time questions come to an end and a quarter before four o'clock, it may be used by motions for unopposed returns, for leave of absence, or for similar unopposed matters that would otherwise have to be taken up after the interruption of business.[305:4]
5. Immediately after questions, a member rising in his place may make the portentous motion "for the adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance."[305:5] This is usually, but not necessarily, made in consequence of a highly unsatisfactory answer that has just been given to a question. It may seem strange to move to adjourn before serious business has begun, but as such a motion has not been carried for nearly a score of years that feature is unimportant, and its real significance in giving a chance to discuss at short notice some action of the government will be explained in Chapter XVIII. Formerly the debate upon the motion took place immediately; but now the member merely obtains—by the support of forty members, or by vote of the House—leave to make his motion, while the debate itself is postponed to a quarter past eight o'clock.
6. Then come what are called "matters taken at the commencement of public business." These are the presentation of bills without an order of the House or under the ten-minute rule, and motions by a minister relating to the conduct of business to be decided without amendment or debate.
7. Finally comes the regular business of the sitting, in the form of notices of motions or orders of the day. The distinction between these two classes of business is not easy to explain with precision;[306:1] but for our purpose it is unimportant, except so far as one class has precedence over the other. Now the government has authority to arrange the order of its own business as it pleases;[306:2] and in relation to private members, orders of the day practically mean bills, and notices of motion mean resolutions and other matters that are not bills. The application of the distinction comes, therefore, to this, that of the sittings set apart for private members, Friday is reserved for their bills, and Tuesdays and Wednesdays after a quarter past eight o'clock for their other motions.[306:3]
Order at Evening Sittings.
At a quarter past eight o'clock the first business is a motion for adjournment on an urgent matter of public business, in the occasional instances where leave has been obtained at the afternoon sitting to make it. Next follows any postponed private business that may have been assigned to that evening; and then come the notices of motions and orders of the day.
By the new arrangement with its definite time for certain business, the work of the House is better distributed. There is no longer the same danger that the discussion of a private bill or of a motion to adjourn, or an interminable series of questions, will unexpectedly cut a great piece out of the hours when the House is most crowded, and the leading men are waiting to debate a great public measure. At the afternoon sitting the regular business of the day is reached at a quarter before four, or very little later, and it proceeds without interruption until a quarter before eight. After that hour—unless there is an opposed private bill, which does not often take long, or by chance a motion to adjourn—the regular business, which may not be the same as at the afternoon sitting, begins again, and goes on until eleven. With the habits of slack attendance when nothing is expected, and the necessity for a presence in force when a division that touches the Treasury Bench may be taken, it is a matter of no small import to be able to forecast the business of a sitting.
The severe pressure for time has thus brought about a minute allotment of the hours at each sitting for definite kinds of business, and the same cause has produced a similar, although less exact, distribution in the work of the session as a whole.
Order of Business for the Session.
The regular session of Parliament opens about the beginning of February, and the first business is the address in reply to the King's speech. Formerly it was an elaborate affair, which referred to the clauses of the speech in succession, but since 1890 it has taken the form of a single resolution expressing simply the thanks of the Commons for his Majesty's most gracious speech. Amendments are moved by the various sections of the Opposition in the shape of additions thereto, pointing out how the government has done things it ought not to have done, and left undone things it ought to have done; and even members of the majority, who are disgruntled because their pet hobbies have been left unnoticed, follow the same course. The debates on the address take practically the whole time of the House for two or three weeks.[308:1] As soon as they are over, the Committee of Supply is set up, and sits one or two days each week, the rest of the sittings being taken up with government measures, and with business introduced by private members.
Hope springs eternal in the legislative breast, and every assembly undertakes more work than it can accomplish thoroughly. In some legislatures this results in a headlong rushing through of measures almost without discussion at the end of the session. But while, under closure by compartments and the supply rule, this may be true in England of certain clauses of bills and of large parts of the appropriations, it is not true of bills as a whole. Parliament is, primarily, a forum for debate, rather than a machine for legislation, and bills that cannot be discussed at some length are dropped. After the Whitsuntide recess every year, the leader of the House announces that owing to lack of time the government has found it necessary to abandon such and such measures, a proceeding familiarly known as the slaughter of the innocents. But it is not their own bills alone that the ministers are obliged to slay. In order to get through their own remaining work they have long been in the habit of taking by special order, after the Easter recess, a part of the sittings reserved for private members, and of seizing all the rest soon after Whitsuntide. The practice was regulated and made systematic by the new rules of 1902; but this brings us to the relation of the cabinet and of private members to the work of the House, which forms the subject of the following chapter.