Westminster Commentary
LORD STANSGATE is 81 years old. What is more,- he is remarkably active, quick-witted and hale for a man of that age, and particularly for a man of that age whose life has been fully and vigorously occupied with fighting the good fight—the only good fight, that is, the fight for his beliefs. The single concession his mortal coil has made to age is a tendency to deafness. There is nothing re- markable in this; many a man suffers far worse physical disabilities as the years settle more heavily on his shoulders, and I myself, though I can give Lord Stansgate several decades, am quite unable to run a mile in less than four minutes—or, for the matter of that, in less than half an hour. And there is certainly, I should have said, nothing funny in it. Yet the tenth Earl of Selkirk, who, I am told, is a member of the Government—though I am not, be it noted, told why—saw fit to laugh loudly on 'Monday at Lord Stansgate's obvious difficulty in hearing what was being said during the discussion of the proposed new Standing Order for the House of Lords. I am often told, largely by people whose duties do not take them to the House of Lords even as often as mine do me, that the bad manners of the Lower House, about which I am frequently to be heard com- plaining, are by no means to be met with in the Upper. Then will some intellectual heir of William of Ockham kindly explain to me the difference between the MP who laughs at Mr. Bevan's stam- mer and the Lord who laughs at Lord Stansgate's deafness?
For myself, I laugh at the Lords. They were discussing, if you please, a motion to provide for leave of absence to be granted to such of their number as may indicate no desire to attend their proceedings. Since those who want leave of absence have hitherto taken it au f rancais, and since those who want it frequently or all the time compose the overwhelming majority of their Lordships' House, I could not at first see the point of the hours allotted to this discussion, except perhaps as an attempt at an empirical proof of Parkinson's Law. Close examination of the pro- posed Standing Order, however, revealed a clue. Peers who do not reply within twenty-eight days to the Lord Chancellor's request to them to say whether or no they wish to -apply for leave of absence may be granted it automatically. So here, then, is after all these years a method of keeping the backwoodsmen out of the House. The Lord Chancellor writes and asks them whether they want leave of absence; those of them who are incarcerated in lunatic asylums (a much higher proportion than you might think) or otherwise unable or unwilling to reply make no answer; and they are automatically granted leave of absence and thus debarred from the House for the re- mainder of the session, or for whatever other period of time the leave runs.
Oh, yes? That is what you think they decided, is it? Then kindly attend to the debate, as I did. A peer• who is granted leave of absence is then not `expected' to turn up, speak or vote. But there is no sanction whatever to prevent his doing so, and he does not even have to give notice that he proposes to ignore the leave of absence he haS been granted. In other words, every second of the debate was, quite literally, a waste of time. Nothing has changed in the position of peers who do, do not, may, wish to, can, cannot, will or won't attend sittings of the House some of the time, all the time, or never. And every man Jack —Lord Jack, I suppose it should be—present at the discussion could claim his three guineas sola- tium. I counted eighty-six of them at one point, which means that you and I have forked out £270 I 8s. in order that this nonsense might be carried on. Not much, really? You are entitled to your open-handedness; for my part, I begrudge every penny of it. Apart, that is, from a tenner, which I would gladly pay again to hear again the Fourteenth Earl of Home apologise for not hear- ing some point or other by saying that 'The joke of the noble Lord behind me was so good that I could not hear what the noble Viscount said.' The joke in question was as follows; there was some discussion of whether peers who turned up after being granted leave of absence should be seated above or below the bar. 'In the bar!' cried some latter-day Beumarchais, and pandemonium en- sued, several of their Lordships laughing them- selves literally silly, and a number (including his Fourteenth Lordship) coming dangerously close to death from auto-asphyxiation. As for me, I got up and went to the opera.
Which, it turned out, was what I might have done on Tuesday, instead of going to hear the Prime MinisCer's promised statement about the Cyprus plan in the House of Commons. A House packed almost Budget-full (though with the differ- ence that Mr. Nabarro was the last, instead of the first, to enter) got noticeably rowdier as the end of question-time approached; the tension had clearly proved too much for most of them. Mr. Macmillan rose to a muted cheer and announced that the statement was postponed until Thursday (by the time you read these words you will know whether further grace was asked for when Thurs- day came round). Mr. Gaitskell leaped—got—to his feet and claimed credit for the idea of bringing NATO into the problem, and after Mr. Herbert Morrison, of all unlikely people, had asked whether the fact that reports of the Government's intentions had been appearing in various news- papers meant that there had been a leak (if Mr. Macmillan's reply meant anything at all—an un- likely supposition, in the circumstances—it meant that there had been) members desirous of taking their seats were asked to come to the Table, which three members so desirous duly did (the Tory getting a much louder cheer than the two Opposi- tion recruits) and Tapers desirous of going some- where else went somewhere else. Leaving this dis- appointing rendezvous with destiny, I shared a taxi with a back-bench member who launched, the minute the cab had started, into a catalogue of complaints about the present condition of the House (I should explain that he did not know who I was). 'It's dead from the neck up,' he said; 'it's got no life in it at all, and son, ething will have to be done if we don't want the same sort of thing as happened in France. The fact is, people are losing all respect for the place. Do you know [indeed I did] that I've seen men voting for things 1 knew they didn't believe in, and when I asked them why, they've said, "Oh, what would happen if the party threw us out; what would we do for a living at our age?" But what's to be done about it, eh? That's the sixty-four-dollar question.' I reached for my wallet, but all the instincts of my Lithuanian peasant ancestors rose to stop me. After all, 1 had just, as I have said, forked out £270 18s. to keep the Lords happy, and I had no firm faith, in any case, that a satisfactory answer would be forthcoming for my sixty-four dollars. But it is always nice to hear such unsolicited tributes to the accuracy of one's assessments.
Meanwhile, the Finance Bill homeward plods its weary way, frequently leaving the Press Gallery to Hansard and to me. The other day I telephoned a member and was told at his home that he was away. Would he be back this afternoon? He would not. Or tomorrow? Alas, no. But he'll be back the day after, of course, for the Finance Bill. Of course? Of course? To hear Mrs. Eirene White say that 'Our main argument has been concerned with the competitive position of the button'? You may say, if you like, that they make buttons in Mrs. White's constituency, and that she is there- fore keen to have the purchase tax on them re- duced, or at any rate to look as if she is trying to. But this problem could easily be solved by having members who find• themselves in this position go before a notary public and make a statutory declaration to the effect that they are strongly in favour of buttons, and indeed of press-studs, snap- fasteners, zips, hairpins and curlers (all of which got their need of attention during the debate). This could then be published in the form of a supplement to the London Gazelle and, suitably enlarged to fit on a double-crown poster, fly- posted throughout the appropriate constituencies. This procedure would have an added advantage in that it would enable us all to avoid exchanges like this: MR. A MORY : 'I have no doubt whatever about the importance of buttons. Since coming into the House today 1 have had the misfortune to lose a button, and all 1 can say is that it creates an
uncomfortable feeling in one's mind.'
M R. H. WILSON: 'Is the Chancellor aware that the phrase coined by the former Financial Secre- tary for such a circumstance Is "a yawning gap"?
MR. AMORY : 'In view of the absolute necessity of replacing this button, I am not sure whether I ought not to say that 1 have an interest to declare.. .
MR. H. WILSON: . . It was my hon. Friend the Member for Flint, East (Mrs. White), who, 'before Whitsun and again tonight, asked the Chancellor to give way on buttons. It has become clear that the Chancellor's button had to give way on him before he felt disposed to accept the proposals that were urged upon him. . . . I was a little afraid that suspicious-minded people might think that we were trying to cover up the right hon. Gentleman in some way because he felt it impossible to rise until he had dealt with the problem of the missing button.'
I suppose there is no chance that the Lower House will institute a scheme for the compulsory granting of leave of absence to some of its mem-
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