Suspension of Members.

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am ar 31 Gorffennaf 1923.

Danfonwch hysbysiad imi am ddadleuon fel hyn

Photo of Mr Stanley Baldwin Mr Stanley Baldwin , Bewdley

I beg to move, That the period of suspension from the service of the House of Mr. Maxton, Mr. Wheatley, Mr. Stephen, and Mr. Buchanan do terminate this day. I am afraid I must trouble the House with a few remarks on this Motion. It may be within the recollection of the House that Standing Order No. 18, Section (2), reads at present: If any Member be suspended under this Order, his suspension on the first occasion"— and there it stops. The reason of that is that, while for more than 20 years before 1902 the old Standing Order read that such suspension should vary as from a week for the first offence and so forth, in 1902 the Government of the day sought to make an alteration in the period, and to insert in the Standing Order what had not been previously inserted, namely, the necessity for an apology in any circumstances before a Member could be readmitted after suspension. That question was debated at great length in 1902, and there was so great a divergence of opinion that the Government finally withdrew all their proposals, and left the Standing Order in the form in which it is to-day. The result of there being no agreement arrived at with regard to periods was that the suspension would last for the Session if no Motion to the contrary were submitted; and the responsibility for making a Motion was not left to the suggestion of Mr. Speaker, nor to the Leader of any party, but to the Leader of the House, and it is rather invidious work for the Leader of the House, for he has to take into consideration, in the first place, what in his view is a reasonable punishment—for that is what the application of a period of suspension amounts to—a reasonable punishment in the absence of an apology; and, secondly, he has to consider how far the extent of that punishment commends itself to the general judgment, not merely of one party, but of that House against which the Members in question at various times have offended. I think it would be the greatest service in the future if, before very long, the House would make up its mind in what direction it would like to see that second Section of Standing Order No. 18 put into final and workable form.

I think we have to consider first the precedents since 1902, to see what the view of the House has been in dealing with cases—the House will forgive me for repeating it again—where no apology has been tendered, because the practice has always been that the tendering of an apology, even if it should be on the day on which the offence was committed, wipes out the offence, and the suspension is not put into force. About the time that the alteration was made in the Rules, in 1902, there occurred the suspension of Mr. Dillon, which lasted one week—I am only dealing with cases where there was no apology—and the Motion for the suspension was rescinded at the instance of Mr. Balfour, who was then the Leader of the House. In 1913 came the case, with which most hon. Members are familiar, of Mr. Moore, and his suspension lasted for three weeks. On that occasion the Motion was moved by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith), and it was supported by my right hon. Friend the Member for Central Glasgow (Mr. Bonar Law), who expressed it as his view that three weeks was an ample period for suspensions, and he hoped that it would be taken as a precedent. In 1920, Mr. Devlin was suspended, and his period of suspension was interrupted by the adjournment of the House—there was an Autumn Session that year; but the Motion for his restoration was put down within three days of the re-assembling of the House, so that the actual amount of Parliamentary time for which he was suspended was 13 days.

These were all three cases of Irishmen, and now we have to deal with cases of Scotsmen; but, before coming to them, I would like to say, if it be any comfort to any section of the House which believes that England always pays for everything, that the longest period of suspension was in the case of an Englishman, Mr. Albert Grayson, who was suspended in 1908, and whose suspension was allowed to run until the end of the Session, which made a period of nine weeks.