House of Commons Speaker at centre of growing storm

Press, 29 February 1984, Page 11

House of Commons Speaker at centre of growing storm

NZPA staff correspondent London The Speaker of the House of Commons, Mr Bernard Weatherill, is at the centre of a growing row over accusations of “moronic” behaviour by British members of Parliament.

Concern is being voiced that Mr Weatherill cannot control unruly members and there are suggestions that Liberal and Social Democratic Party members of Parliament are not getting a fair deal.

David Buchan, the political editor of the “Daily Star” newspaper, reported yesterday that an almost unprecedented move to sack the Speaker was being considered by senior members of Parliament. Mr Weatherill had been left in no doubt that, unless he acted quickly to restore order, he would be asked to quit, Mr Buchan said.

He quoted one leading Tory as telling him: “There is a growing feeling that Mr Speaker is not up to the job.”

Mr Weatherill, who has been Speaker since the retirement of Mr George Thomas, now Viscount Tonypandy, at last year’s General Election, was in Wellington for the Commonwealth Speakers’ Conference last month.

Growing concern at the conduct of members of Parliament follows particularly unruly scenes last week when the S.D.P. leader, Dr David Owen, had a job to make himself heard and a Labour member of Parliament sat on the laps of two S.D.P. members as they jostled for seats. Mr Robert Rhodes James, a Conservative back-

bencher, protested in a speech in his constituency about the “disgusting clamour” in the House and the “moronic uproar” which, he said, made Question Time a farce. He called on members of Parliament to support the Speaker in dealing with a situation which was “rapidly getting out of control.” Mr Norman Atkinson (Labour) said that it was the worst Parliament he could recollect in 20 years. But the Leader of the House of Commons, Mr John Biffen, disagrees. “I believe that this House, no less than its predecessors and I suspect no less than its successors, will have that capacity to discriminate between the serious and the less than serious,” he said. “If occasionally it acts as if it were on the terraces that is no more and no less than what it has. been doing for generations. “I do not believe that this Parliament is any worse than its predecessors and, in that respect, it is part of its vitality that we would lose

to our disadvantage.”

Compared with the New Zealand Parliament, the House of commons is undoubtedly a much noisier place—even allowing for the fact that it has seven times as many members. Both Viscount Tonypandy, when he was Speaker, and Mr Weatherill have been much slower than New Zealand Speakers to shut up members of Parliament. There have been times when journalists in the press gallery in Britain have found it almost impossible to hear what an member of Parliament on his feet was saying because of the bubbub.

One of the reasons for the unruly scenes is the fact that there is seating for only 437 of the 650 members of Parliament on the green leather benches.

This has led to a regular battle between far Leftwing Labour members of Parliament and S.D.P. members for possession of front row seats below the gangway on the Opposition side of the House.

Dr Owen is frequently heckled loudly when he speaks by some of the Labour members of Parliament squeezed into the bench with him.

Fellow S.D.P. member and former Labour Cabinet Minister, Roy Jenkins, often gets the same treatment.

The S.D.P., which has only six members of Parliament compared with Labour’s 209, complains that Labour and the Conservatives are trying to freeze out the S.D.P. and their Liberal allies who have 17 seats.