BE IT RESOLVED by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, as follows:--
1. Section 5 of the Rules of Order is hereby repealed.
2. In Section 4 of the Rules of Order, a new Subsection shall be inserted after Subsection D, reading as follows: "The quorum for all business of the House shall be thirty percent of the total number of members of the House."
My Lords and Gentlemen,
I agree with the introduction of this resolution.
My Lords and Gentlemen,
I however have to raise an objection to this Resolution, for the following reasons. My primary concern with this Resolution is that the entire point of a quorum is to have an actual minimum number of persons required to pass or reject Bills and the like, not a percentage. If we use a percentage system, a census or roll call must still be taken of active citizen's much more regularly than on a yearly or even bi-yearly basis. It also would require a larger amount of work for the Speaker of the House who, I would assume, would be responsible for finding out exactly how many active citizen's there are at any one time and calculate what number of citizen's constitute 30%. I understand however where Mr. Smith is coming from, but it will be easier in the long run to use a set number of active citizen's to vote in Parliament.
My Lords and Gentlemen,
I must respectfully disagree with the noble lord's suggestions. Any type of quorum--whether a fixed number or a percentage--is an effort to gauge the "active members" of this House, or any other legislature. The actual number of Members of Parliament can be quite easily ascertained by counting the number of people who have taken the Affirmation of Loyalty in the appropriate forum thread, and subtracting those who are no longer subjects of His Majesty or have resigned their seats.
After that, we would work just as we would with the fixed number proposal the noble lord himself suggested. If thirty percent of the number arrived at for membership of the House voted on a bill, it would be sufficient for passage or failure. If not, a quorum would not be present.
I must concur with SIr Carson in that the majority of legislative bodies ( even entities that require a vote) have quorums that must be present in order to conduct business. If a quorum is not met then a minority group could legislate according to its desires. For a while there Prince Justin and i were the only ones active on the forums. If Prince Justin would have been offline for 2 weeks I could have changed Hanover's system by virtue of my one vote. If the Speaker can not maintain a quorum then Parliament should be dismissed. If the Speaker does not wish to keep records of a quorum then the person should not be speaker. No where does it state how often the Speaker must determine a quorum.
An option would be to a member roll call once a month.
My Lords and Gentlemen,
Perhaps I should have clarified my position. I do not reject a quorum system, but I believe that a percentage is not the way to proceed. I suggest what the Noble Lord the Baron of Oldenburg originally suggested, namely a three person quorum. This would solve everyone's problems. If there are only two active citizen's or one active citizen, Parliament would not be able to pass any new legislation and theoretically could be dismissed (although that would require a different piece of legislation). I believe that those citizen's who are inactive for a period of 30 days should be prohibited for voting in parliament and there should be a simple procedure for regaining the right to vote in Parliament if the citizen becomes active again. According to Section 4 Subsection 1 of The Naturalization Act of 2006, a citizen will remain so until 365 days of inactivity or a special writ from His Majesty or an act of the Courts, therefore there are citizen's who are still His Majesty's subjects, and have not given up there seat in the House but remain inactive. With Mr. Carson's suggestion those persons who remain inactive but are still full citizen's would be included in the equation to find the quorum of 30%, thus making the quorum disproportionate to the number of citizen's who are actually active in the Kingdom. Also, nowhere in the proposed Resolution does it say precisely who will be responsible for calculating the quorum. And nowhere in the Rules of Order does it mention that such things would be under the Speaker's responsibilities. Perhaps it should be the Home Office that should be in charge of finding precisely how many active citizen's there are at any one time, given that according to Section 5 Subsection 1 the Home Office is required to keep a list of Citizen's, and it is but a small step to keep a list of active citizen's, within say a 30 day time period. And since the current list of citizen's is private and information on the list is only available to those the information pertains to, it would not be possible for any one else but the Home Office to update and keep the List.
Lastly, this Resolution may in fact be unnecessary if there are no objections to the Noble Lord, the Baron of Oldenburg's accession to the post of Prime Minister. I would direct my Lord's and Gentleman's attention to the most recent Royal Court minutes in which the Noble Lord outlines his new proposal which would impose a new system for suffrage in Parliament. I do not believe Mr. Carson or the Noble Lord, the Count of Damoneigh, were there for that part of the Royal Court but if they would review it I think they might find this Resolution unnecessary at this point in time, considering that the Noble Lord, the Baron of Oldenburg's proposed system would be part of the new Government's platform. The Royal Court minutes can be found here:
http://www.kingdomofhanover.com/discussion...?showtopic=5691
And the proposal in question is almost precisely half way down the page, directly after the Noble Lord, the Count of Damoneigh's departure.
My Lords and Gentlemen,
With all due respect to my honorable friend, I must contradict his logic. I do not believe it is the Prime Minister's prerogative to impose new Rules of Order on this House; rather, such decisions ought to be made by a parliamentary vote. I am not sure what is "unnecessary" about this proposal and the corresponding debate. Furthermore, I ought to note that the noble Lord McQueeny of Oldenburg went so far as to withdraw his own proposed revisions to accomodate the introduction of this resolution, so it would seem that my proposal and his are not so separate.
I do not think we can throw this resolution by the wayside yet. Would a ruling by the noble and learned Lord, the Lord High Chancellor, be in order?
My Lords and Gentlemen,
I too believe that a set number of members (3) would be much more efficient than a quorom by percentage & it seems like a complication that is not really needed. Also, I agree that inactive citizens would not be able to vote if they have been inactive for more than 30 days prior to the vote, I agree with most of the Archbishop's statement.
My Lords and Gentlemen,
Indeed it is not the Prime Minister's prerogative to impose such things on the Parliament, but it is his prerogative to help revitalize Parliament and the Government of the Nation. The noble Lord, the Baron of Oldenburg, is not in any way imposing his ideas on Parliament but merely proposed a different way of regulating voting in Parliament, and one that of course would involve debate and voting in Parliament itself.
Just as the Roll Call system was proposed by the noble Lord, the Count of Damoneigh, so is the new system to be proposed by the noble Lord, the Baron of Oldenburg. The only way this Resolution would be "unnecessary" is if it was agreed upon to pursue the noble Lord, the Baron of Oldenburg's suggested course. On the subject of debate I think this amount of debate is very uncharateristic of the recently sluggish Parliament, and I encourage this debate wholeheartedly. Debate is the only way we can hash things out and come to agreements, and debate has been sadly lacking as of late.
It should also be noted that in the British House of Lords the quorum is three persons. On a similar topic; according to Erksine May, there is a precedent, in the House of Commons, for the House being allowed to be in session if only the Speaker and one member is present, but it is probably not advisable for this Parliament to allow for such a thing.
I also believe that it might be in this matters best interest to let things be until we have heard from the noble Lord, the Baron of Oldenburg himself.
My Lords and Gentlemen,
First I must apologize to the House for the brevity of this message; it was made under conditions of haste, with the goal of clarifying the conditions at hand rather than giving a definitive treatment.
It would appear that there is some misunderstanding concerning the proposal I put forth in the recent Royal Court session and the method is which it would be implemented. A Proposal to Create a New Writ could not of course be imposed by an executive decision by His Majesty's Government or from any personal authority of the Prime Minister; rather it will of course take the form of a Bill before this Parliament. It was my intention to discuss the matter in Cabinet following the formation of my Government and then only to produce a Bill if there was consensus. It was for this reason that I withdrew my resolution.
A motion of the Honorable Gentleman came as something of a surprise, while it is of course this House's right to discuss any matter it thinks needful, I would submit that it may be wiser not to make any decision at this time until the more far ranging proposal I made has been adequately discussed. I intended to broach this topic as the first order of business following my nomination because it will improve the efficiency of Parliament's consideration of the more grave matters which His Majesty's Government will bring before it.
Therefore, my Lords and Gentlemen, I beg to move that the discussion of this matter be now adjourned to this day, in one week.
This motion is not intended to quash free debate of this topic but rather to ensure that this House does not hastily enact a temporary measure before other more permanent options have been fully discussed. The current Roll Call system is, I believe, adequate for the current time, and thus there is no urgency in this matter.