Sir Thomas Erskine May's treatise on the law, privilege proceedings and usage of parliament

The creation of new Parliaments within the Commonwealth and the develop THE ment of others has so stimulated the demand for Erskine May's work on parliamentary practice that for some time the fifteenth edition has been out of print. In comparison with the activity which followed the report of the 1946 Committee on Procedure, the details of which were described in the fifteenth edition, the last seven years have seen no far reaching change in the organisation relation or procedure of either House of Parliament. The House of Lords have, however, engaged in two important inquiries. The first was into their to the attendance of their powers in own members. The Report, though an extremely interesting document, was not followed by any action. The second resulted in a comprehensive revision of their Standing Orders and confirmed an important alteration of practice in the manner of putting the Question which had been adopted in 1951. But the fact that there have been no sweeping changes does not imply that procedure has been static. A considerable body of new practice has supplemented or replaced that which existed in 1950. At a glance, it will be seen that in spite of the drastic elimination of obsolete passages, the present volume contains nearly a hundred more pages than the last. The value of a new edition, however, though it supersedes the texts of its forerunners, does not diminish their value as repositories of the former practice. Indeed, the earlier editions of May's treatise, taken together, form a continuous guide, and are deliberately edited in such a way that a process of procedure can easily be followed from edition to edition down the years.

The most important change in the law of Parliament since the last edition is in the matter of disqualification for membership of the House of Commons. In Chapter XI those aspects of disqualification (pp. 190-9) which have not been affected by new legislation have been separated from those which will now be superseded. A brief survey has also been given of the Report of the Select Committee on the House of Commons Disqualification Bill of Session 1955-56. After the text of the new edition had gone to press, the House of Commons Dsqualification Bill, which is dealt with in some detail but necessarily incom pletely in Chapter XI, received the royal assent. That Chapter should therefore be studied in conjunction with Appendix II (p. 1078) which contains a summary of the House of Commons Disqualification Act, 1957. The new Act will ensure greater certainty and simplicity in disposing of recurring questions regarding the validity of a Member's election which have vexed successive Parliaments since the seventeenth century and have involved many Acts of indemnity to protect Members who have been adjudged, after anxious inquiry, to be disqualified through legal circumstances so obscure that they were themselves unaware of the fact.