Amendments to be relevant

21.38The fundamental rule that debate must be relevant to a question (see para 22.15 ) also means that every amendment must be relevant to the question to which it is proposed.1

Stated generally, no matter ought to be raised in debate on a question which would be irrelevant if moved as an amendment, and no amendment should be used for importing arguments which would be irrelevant to the main question. Thus, the Speaker has ruled that on the third reading of a bill, when debate is limited to the contents of the bill, a reasoned amendment should not urge the rejection of the bill because of what it omits (see para 28.132 ).

The effect of moving an amendment is to restrict the field of debate which would otherwise be open on a question. Even an amendment that proposes to leave out all the words of a question and substitute a different (but, of course, relevant) proposition (see para 21.32 ) concentrates debate on the main question and the amendment as alternative propositions, excluding the consideration of other relevant alternatives. In practice, the Chair will often allow debate to range over both the amendment and the motion.

It would be impracticable to attempt to classify here all the grounds on which amendments have been held to be irrelevant to a question. Some examples are given elsewhere in connection with specialised forms of procedure such as bills, particularly in committee (para 28.67 ff).