Emergency Debates

Introduction

The Standing Orders provide members with an opportunity to give their immediate attention to a pressing matter by moving a debatable adjournment motion. The matter at issue must however relate to “a genuine emergency” that the Speaker deems worthy of debate at an early opportunity.

As one Speaker noted, an emergency debate should be on a topic “that is immediately relevant and of attention and concern throughout the nation”. Any member who wishes to move the adjournment of the House to discuss a specific and important matter requiring urgent consideration must give the Speaker one hour’s written notice before rising in the House to make the request. Having heard an application for an emergency debate, the Speaker decides without debate whether or not the matter is specific and important enough to warrant urgent consideration by the House. The Speaker is guided by the Standing Orders, the authorities and practice and is not required to give reasons for the decision.

During his term, Speaker Parent received only a limited number of requests for an emergency debate, and few of these were approved. At the same time, the House frequently resorted to an innovative new form of debate called “take-note” debates. Such debates, the result of interparty agreement, enabled the House to react rapidly to a number of potentially serious events, and served, in some measure, as an alternative to emergency debates.

The example in this chapter deals with a case involving the use of the Speaker’s discretionary power to hold a debate over from a Friday to the following Monday.