The rule is a guide not a guillotine

Feb 08, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – There was a curious development that attended the maiden address by the Leader of the Opposition in our National Assembly. When the Leader of the Opposition was making his presentation, amid the chorus of heckling, a steady objection was that he was reading his speech.

The Standing Orders discourages reading one’s speech. And so, at intervals, the Speaker was reminded of this venerable rule against reading prepared remarks.

To an outsider, it must have seemed a quaint insistence. But it is worth pausing to parse the matter, for those who invoked this rule — and invoked it with such relish — that they were perhaps not entirely au fait with its origins, its purpose, or its enforcement in the world’s great legislatures.

The rule in question had its roots in the long, organic evolution of the Westminster parliamentary system. The House of Commons, as we know has developed its own customs and conventions. Somewhere in its long history there arose a tradition in which members were discouraged from reading their speeches verbatim from a script.

The rationale was straightforward. It was intended to encourage debate that was responsive, immediate, and imbued with the “cut and thrust” of conversation rather than the dry recital of prewritten text. In time, resolutions were adopted in the Commons noting that the practice of reading prepared speeches was “alien to the custom of this House” and, some said, “injurious to the traditional conduct of its debates.”

But it is worth stating plainly that customs, in the parlance of Parliament, is not the same as law; it is not a bullet with which to fell an opponent. The authoritative procedural treatise known as Erskine May — a text revered as a kind of parliamentary bible — described the tradition against reading as a ‘convention’, a guide to the style of debate rather than a statute with teeth.

Indeed, the modern practice of the Speaker was not to leap from the Chair, gavel in hand, and declare a member in breach. Instead, the Speaker might gently note that a member’s notes were somewhat lengthy — but that was usually the extent of enforcement. Or as was done in the case at hand, the Speaker reminded the Leader of the Opposition of the rule.

If one drills just a bit deeper into the Commonwealth experience, the picture becomes even clearer. The rule against reading one’s speech was never intended to be scrupulously enforced. In Australia’s federal House of Representatives, there once had been a standing order very much like ours, forbidding the reading of speeches. Yet in 1965 that provision was deliberately deleted out of recognition that precision, especially on complex or technical matters, often required prepared text, and that it was neither practical nor necessary to enforce a hard ban.

In Canada, the House never embodied such a prohibition in its standing orders at all; the discouragement of reading derived from tradition, reinforced by Speaker guidance and historical resolution, not by a rule that carried penalties. There, too, the Chair allowed reference to notes and permitted prepared texts in many circumstances.

In India’s Parliament, the manuals of decorum – what we call Standing Orders – spoke of avoiding the reading of prepared speeches, but even there the practice was qualified by the Chair’s leave: a direction, not a prohibition, enforced at the Speaker’s discretion.

In the case of the PPPC’s eagerness to demand that the Leader of the Opposition not read his speech, one cannot help recalling past moments when this familiar invocation had been wielded, not to uphold the spirit of debate, but to embarrass a political rival. In a bygone era, Desmond Hoyte, mostly in jest, invoked this rule but to embarrass a certain PPPC parliamentarian. But Hoyte never insisted repeatedly that the rule be complied with. He used it as a tactical relish to poke fun at and embarrass the PPPC parliamentarian.

There is always a place for the traditions that reminds us that representative debate ought to be lively and engaged — responsive rather than rote. But there is also a place for common sense, and for historical understanding.

To wave the rule against reading speeches like a cudgel, without acknowledging its origins as a guiding convention, is to miss the point of what parliamentary debate is meant to be. The rule was never enshrined to police the letter of delivery but to shape the norms of discourse: to encourage members to speak to each other, to respond to the arguments of their fellows, and to make the chamber a forum of living conversation rather than a public reading room.

When the Leader of the Opposition stood to deliver his address, reading from prepared text or not, he participated in a tradition far older and far richer than a single item in the Standing Orders. The spirited interchange that followed — the rejoinders, the heckling and even the procedural protests — forms the essence of parliamentary life.

It is worth remembering, then, that the rule against reading speeches had always been a guide, not a guillotine; a compass, not a cage. In the end, it was the quality of the debate that mattered not whether every word had been memorised, improvised, or carefully written and read from a prepared script.

To brandish a rule without seemingly understanding its origins or how it is actually applied is rather like citing scripture without having read the book. It may sound impressive in tone, perhaps, but be thin in substance.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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