That the question be not now put

When the House makes a decision about any motion, three key actions are involved. The question under debate must be moved, proposed and then put. First, a Member is called by the Chair to ‘move’ or ‘make’ a motion. A motion can be ‘substantive’ or ‘subsidiary’ but is basically a proposal made in order to elicit a decision from the House. Moving a motion often involves the Member making a speech in its favour, but in other circumstances may be done ‘formally’ without any supporting words. The Member should conclude their speech by formally moving the motion. On Monday, for example, Theresa May, the Home Secretary, did this by saying “I beg to move, That the draft Criminal Justice and Data Protection (Protocol No. 36) Regulations 2014, which were laid before this House on 3 November, be approved.” The next thing that happens is that the Chair – on Monday this was the Speaker - ‘proposes’ the question. This involves the Chair restating the mover's words to ensure that the House understands what it is being asked to decide “The question is, That the draft Criminal Justice and Data Protection (Protocol No. 36) Regulations 2014, which were laid before this House on 3 November, be approved”. At this point the House is deemed to be ‘in possession’ of the question and debate begins. Once the question has been proposed the House has to decide on the question one way or another (‘dispose’ of the question). A number of different things can happen to bring debate to an end. The House may run out of time or of Members wishing to speak, or a motion may be moved to bring debate to an end (either by ‘closure’ of the debate or by adjourning the House). At the end of the debate the Chair is required to ‘put’ the question to the House. On Monday John Bercow said “The question is, That the draft Criminal Justice and Data Protection (Protocol No. 36) Regulations 2014, which were laid before this House on 3 November, be approved.” The Chair then tries to work out whether a division (vote) is required by ‘collecting the voices’ (“As many as are of that opinion say ‘Aye’ and ‘As many as are of the contrary opinion say ‘No’”) and calls a division if there is obvious dissent (requiring MPs to file through the Aye and No lobbies to be counted). What happened on Monday was that after the motion on the EAW had been moved and proposed but before it had been put to the House for decision, Yvette Cooper moved a further motion known as ‘the previous question’. She asked the House to make a decision on the question ‘That the question be not now put.’ This procedural device is designed to allow the House to decide not to take a decision on a motion that has been proposed from the Chair. The reason it is important for the House to be able to do this is because there is a convention that the House should not be asked to decide upon a question which is substantially the same twice within the same parliamentary session. So from Yvette Cooper’s point of view, if a decision was made about whether to approve the draft regulations, it might be harder subsequently to table a motion on the EAW opt-in and to thus expose expected dissent within the Tory ranks over the issue. Once ‘the previous question’ has been moved, the House has to take a decision on it before doing anything else. ‘The previous question’ is a debatable motion, which was a saving grace for the government on Monday – enabling government MPs to speak for long enough to allow the Prime Minister and others to return to the House in time to participate in the ensuing vote (which happened about two hours before any vote that evening had been anticipated). Had ‘the previous question’ been agreed to, the Speaker could not have put the question on the main motion (about the draft regulations) to the House at that time as the House would have just refused to allow it to be put. However, the same motion could have been brought forward for decision on another occasion. Yvette Cooper was arguing that that should have happened on Tuesday – although in practice what she was actually arguing for was the opportunity for the House to take a decision on what she saw as a slightly different question – explicitly including all 35 measures on which the Government was proposing to ‘opt-in’. In the event the ‘previous question’ was not agreed to (it was ‘negatived on division’). This meant that the Speaker had to put the question on the draft regulations straight away – with the perverse effect that a device ostensibly being used to allow further debate on another occasion had the actual effect of curtailing it immediately.