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Title

Ch19 Parliamentary privilege / PRIVILEGE DEFINED / Distinction between breach of privilege and contempt

Database

House Practice

Date

01-05-2005

Source

House of Reps

Parl No.

41

Chapter

Parliamentary privilege

Chapter No.

Chapter 19

Page

707

Section No.

 

System Id

procedural/practcer/chapter19.02.doc


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Ch19 Parliamentary privilege / PRIVILEGE DEFINED / Distinction between breach of privilege and contempt



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House of Representatives                                Ch 19                                                 p 707

 

Parliamentary privilege / PRIVILEGE DEFINED

 

Distinction between breach of privilege and contempt

‘Contempt’ and ‘breach of privilege’ are not synonymous terms although they are often used as such. May has this to say in respect of contempt:

Generally speaking, any act or omission which obstructs or impedes either House of Parliament in the performance of its functions, or which obstructs or impedes any Member or officer of such House in the discharge of his duty, or which has a tendency, directly or indirectly, to produce such results may be treated as a contempt even though there is no precedent of the offence. It is therefore impossible to list every act which might be considered to amount to a contempt, the power to punish for such an offence being of its nature discretionary. 1

The distinction is made clearer in Halsbury’s Laws of England :

The power of both Houses to punish for contempt is a general power similar to that possessed by the superior courts of law and is not restricted to the punishment of breaches of their acknowledged privileges . . . Certain offences which were formerly described as contempts are now commonly designated as breaches of privilege, although that term more properly applies only to an infringement of the collective or individual rights or immunities, of one of the Houses of Parliament. 2

It has been said that ‘All breaches of privilege amount to contempt; contempt does not necessarily amount to a breach of privilege’. 3 In other words a breach of privilege (an infringement of one of the special rights or immunities of a House or a Member) is by its very nature a contempt (an act or omission which obstructs or impedes a House, a Member or an employee of the House, or threatens or has a tendency so to do), but an action can constitute a contempt without breaching any particular right or immunity.



May , 23rd edn, p. 128.



Halsbury’s Laws of England , 3rd edn, vol. 28, p. 465; see also G. Marshall, ‘The House of Commons and its privileges’, in The House of Commons in the twentieth century , S. A. Walkland (ed), Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1979, pp. 205-9.



HC 34 (1967-68) 171.