This publication contains the Standing Orders of the House of Lords which set out information on the procedure and working of the House, under a range of headings including: Lords and the manner of their introduction; excepted hereditary peers; the Speaker; general observances; debates; arrangement of business; bills; divisions; committees; parliamentary papers; public petitions; privilege; making or suspending of Standing Orders.

This reference book is primarily a procedural work which examines the many forms, customs, and practices which have been developed and established for the House of Commons since Confederation in 1867. It provides a distinctive Canadian perspective in describing procedure in the House up to the end of the first session of the 36th Parliament in Sept. 1999. The material is presented with full commentary on the historical circumstances which have shaped the current approach to parliamentary business. Key Speaker's rulings and statements are also documented and the considerable body of practice, interpretation, and precedents unique to the Canadian House of Commons is amply illustrated. Chapters of the book cover the following: parliamentary institutions; parliaments and ministries; privileges and immunities; the House and its Members; parliamentary procedure; the physical & administrative setting; the Speaker & other presiding officers; the parliamentary cycle; sittings of the House; the daily program; oral & written questions; the process of debate; rules of order & decorum; the curtailment of debate; special debates; the legislative process; delegated legislation; financial procedures; committees of the whole House; committees; private Members' business; public petitions; private bills practice; and the parliamentary record. Includes index.

Currently, parliament as a political institution does not enjoy the best reputation. This book aims to recover less known political resources of the parliamentary mode of proceeding. The parliamentary procedure relies on regulating debates in a fair way and on constructing opposed perspectives on the agenda items. The British House of Commons provides the closest historical approximation for the parliamentary ideal type of politics. This book deals with the formation and conceptual change in the Westminster procedure, based on the way they are interpreted in the tracts on procedure. The tracts illustrate the changing parliamentary self-understanding from the 1570s to the present and the growing political role of procedural disputes. The parliamentary style of politics, as discussed in the tracts, can be divided into two genres: the politics of agenda-setting and the politics of debate. The book analyses their formation and overall conceptual change as well as the procedural responses to the increasingly scarce parliamentary time from the period after the 1832 parliamentary reform. It insists that in spite of claims on urgency and on government’s leadership the procedural resources of the House of Commons contribute to maintaining the debate-centred parliamentary style of politics.

The authors deal with the place of parliamentary politics in democracy. Apparently a truism, parliamentarism is in fact a missing research object in democratic theory, and a devalued institutional reference in democratic politics. Yet the parliamentary culture of politics historically explains the rise and fall of modern democracies. By exploring democracy from the vantage point of parliamentary politics, the book advances a novel research perspective. Aimed at revising current debates on parliamentary politics, democratization and democratic theory, the authors argue the role of the parliamentary culture of politics in democracy, highlighting the argumentative, debating experience of politics to recast both some of democratic theory’s normative assumptions and real democracies’ reform potential.

This book offers much-needed insight into the Oxford and Cambridge Unions and the important role they have played in nineteenth-century British political culture. Despite this role, or perhaps for that very reason, the Unions have received very little scholarly attention as to their political activities. This study will focus particularly on debating practices through which their members became knowledgeable of the parliamentary way of doing politics. More significantly, it uses the original Union records as primary research material to show that they also had unique political practices of their own. Presenting a detailed analysis of their debates, the book argues that the Unions should be appreciated as independent political arenas, not mere extensions of Westminster politics.

Joseph Maingot describes the parameters of the principal immunity enjoyed by Members of Parliament, that of freedom of speech, which is restricted to the context of a parliamentary proceeding and not beyond. He points out protections afforded members other than parliamentary privilege and the view of both the courts and the legislatures concerning parliamentary debates and proceedings as evidence in court. He also sets out in detail what the House of Commons considers to be and not to be a matter of privilege, as well as the corporate powers of the Houses of Parliament.