Business of the House (Private Members’ Bills) — House of Commons, 2020-06-10
Topic: Government Operations
Peter William Bone (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a great pleasure to rise to support the Government’s motion. It is to the great credit of the Leader of the House’s Office that it revised the original schedule for the benefit of the House and—I am finding these words very difficult—I congratulate the Whips on their help in this matter What we have today is a Government who have allowed private Members’ Bills to proceed. The last time a Government attempted to stop private Members’ Bills—and I fear the original motion would have had the effect of ending private Members’ Bills in this Session —was in 1945, and for a very similar reason. The Government had a lot of Bills to get through following the war, just as the Government have a lot of Bills to get through now, with very limited availability and space in the House In those days, private Members’ Bills were written out in hand with a great deal of time and effort, put in red tape and placed on the Table. In due course, there was a ballot for them. The Government decided in 1945 that they were not going to do that, but one Member— Sir Alan Herbert, the Member for Oxford University—was very unhappy about that. In a speech on 16 August, he said: "I have worked very hard. Hon. Members may laugh at my little Bills, but I believe they will be a little more popular with a great many people than some of the proposals which will later be laid before us. I presented them in due order at the Table yesterday. I am not quarrelling with your Ruling, Mr. Speaker, but you said that they must not appear on the Order Paper. But look at what this House is doing to me after all the things I promised to my constituents, and all the things I have promised to the constituents of other hon. Members. I get a hundred letters a week, not from my own constituents but from poor people who are worried about their divorces." That was followed by laughter. He continued: "There is no laughter about this. They write also about the Poor Persons’ Procedure. I have a Bill here dealing with the provision of legal aid and assistance for the poor. That is something fundamental, but there is not a word about it in the Gracious Speech. What am I to say to all those people who write to me? I must tell them to stop sending their letters and to save their stamps, because I can do no more to help them if this Motion goes through; I might just as well be a Member of the German Reichstag or a stuffed exhibit in the Natural History Museum. If the House will not have my Bills on the Table I cast them on the Floor, as a monument to Parliamentary liberty and a challenge to despotic power."—[Official Report, 16 August 1945; Vol. 413, c. 143-144.] With a great flourish, he chucked his Bills on to the Floor of the House. Unfortunately, he had not tied them up properly, and they fell apart, only to reveal that every single one of them was blank. That speech got the Government to reverse their position on trying to kill off private Members’ Bills in 1945. Thankfully, this Government have not followed that and have listened By the way, I should say one other thing about poor old Mr Herbert. Although he got the private Members’ Bills back and it became part of standard procedure, which most Governments do not like, the Government got their own back—they abolished university seats thereafter, and he was no longer a Member of Parliament.