1.  The Committee has asked for a note on the practicality of deferring all divisions which might otherwise occur after 10 o'clock (or 7 o'clock on a Thursday). This note is a speedily prepared immediate response. I would be happy to supplement it in writing or orally, if the Committee found that helpful.

When deferral is permitted under present practice

  2.  Deferral of divisions is occasionally permissible under present practice. Standing Order No 54 (Consideration of estimates) permits deferment till 10 of a division on a debate which may have ended about 7. There have been a few of these since the SO was adopted in 1982, though not very many. The Procedure Committee in its sixth report of the current session was critical of such an arrangement and thought it should be ended: "the House should not be expected to grant the billions the government needs as a formality tacked on some time later [than the conclusion of the debate.]"

  3.  Other examples are divisions in the House arising on debates held elsewhere, such as in Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation or on European Documents: or in Grand Committees on the principle of a bill. These happen regularly.

  4.  The temporary order governing sittings in Westminster Hall envisages questions proposed there and not unanimously supported being brought subsequently to the House. There have been no examples of these.

  5.  In a slightly different way, grouping of amendments may also give rise to separation of debate from decision, even before 10 o'clock. I have in mind the case where a group of amendments are debated together, where the group includes two or more themes, and where the amendments occur at widely separated parts of a bill. The Chair's power of selection may be exercised to permit a separate division on an amendment on a subsidiary theme once the point at which it stands in the bill is reached, though the debate (strictly speaking on the lead amendment in the group as a whole) might have concluded much earlier.

The procedural difficulties of deferral

  6.  One of the difficulties of deferral is that I suspect it would be impracticable to devise a system which would without fail deliver the desired end. Others are the effect it might have on the transparency and complexity of the House's business, and the potential increase in the time required to complete business at present levels.

  7.  Perhaps the most obvious (though not the greatest) problem to be overcome is that of the procedural motion. If all divisions after 10 were to be disallowed, it would be unlikely that either a closure motion or a dilatory motion (to adjourn debate, for example) could be successfully moved. The alternative would be to continue debate until all those who wished to speak had spoken—more than once, if the House were in Committee.

  8.  There are other kinds of procedural motions with a higher profile. They include the motion for suspension of a Member moved in response to a naming by the Chair after 10—something which has in fact happened.

  9.  A much more tricky problem however is raised by legislation at Committee and report stage. Nearly every list of selected amendments contains groups linking amendments closely related by topic, which nevertheless fit into the bill at different places. Some decisions will therefore depend on others which arose earlier. This situation may arise in the form of lead and subsidiary amendments, or of clauses setting out the principles of a schedule, while the latter contains the details. Whatever the circumstances, the House could not proceed in a logical sequence, connecting principle and details if, because of the proposed rule, a decision on the main issue were not taken because a division was demanded but could not be granted after 10. Either all the business on the bill would have to stop, or the business would fall into real complexity if the House abandoned one group and went on with the next. Any single Member who called a division after 10, on report stage, on the last, technical, government amendment to a bill, would inevitably make it impossible to go on to third reading that night—even if both front benches wished to do so.

  10.  There are other circumstances in which the same problem arises. They include inter-dependent clauses, where the later clauses could not be embarked on for fear of doing something which would be inconsistent with a decision to amend or negative the lead clause, which was contentious and had been deferred. Similarly if, as is often the case, a portion of a bill was affected by both a contested opposition proposal to make an amendment of substance and a series of uncontroversial government amendments of a technical character, it is likely that both sets would have to be deferred if the first were to give rise to a division. Picking up the threads, here as elsewhere, might not be easy to understand.

  11.  A further issue to be resolved is how far the rule would permit a division at 10 to give rise to others immediately after that time. For example, suppose a closure on a second reading at 9.59: then a vote on second reading; and finally a vote on a special committal motion at say 10.25. To break the sequence up would be hard to justify.

  12.  Problems inherent in a 10 o'clock cut-off for divisions might be specially acute before a holiday adjournment or at the end of a session. It is then that the House has what is often described as "ping-pong", exchanging messages with the Lords before a Royal Assent, sometimes in a situation where an order has been made not to adjourn until there is agreement, which implies activity at uncertain times but late in the evening.

  13.  Prolonging a day's business, hoping to "break" the next day and dispose of its business is not always easy to accomplish (and is in any case a rare event nowadays). However, a series of deferred divisions on the second day (at whatever time they were to come on) might have an almost similar dislocating effect on business, would be relatively easy to arrange, and would risk involving the House in an apparently unproductive use of prime time.

  14.  Even when the House is operating under a programme motion, a rule such as is proposed might cause difficulties. Suppose the motion stipulated that a question should be put six hours after the beginning of a debate, but that a statement at 3.30 deferred the beginning of the debate till 4.15—not a very unusual circumstance. A really watertight rule would defer the division, perhaps against the wishes of the House at large: but a rule which was not watertight would simply import more complexity.

  15.  Sometimes there are motions which are complex and closely inter-linked, and attract many amendments—those on Members' pay or standards and privileges come to mind. They may have also attracted great public interest. A rule against divisions after 10 in those circumstances would not make the House's proceedings easy to explain.

  16.  It seems important that procedural solutions to the House's problems should work in any political circumstances. The present Parliament in that context should be compared with the 1992 Parliament, when for example a division on a budget resolution (after 10, if I recall) went against the government: and proceedings on the Maastricht bill were procedurally and in terms of time after 10 often unpredictable.

CONCLUSION

  17.  In concluding my observations on the procedural consequences of a ban on divisions after 10, I have assumed that the rule proposed would have to be nearly unbreakable in order to deliver the degree of certainty which is wanted. But even if this were not so, and some post-10 o'clock divisions were allowed by Business Orders, it seems probable that there would have to be some, presently unquantifiable, increase in the House's sitting year, or a lessening in the pressure of business. There would surely be a cost in terms of the extra time required not only for deferred divisions but, more significantly, for business which was not concluded because it was in some way related to or affected by a decision which was itself deferred.

9 May 2000