Room for the Hon. Members?

While U.S. legislators worry about whether to put their in-laws on the office payroll at salaries up to $16,000 a year and how to use up all the room in two new office buildings costing $90 million, Britain's mother of parliaments has become a legislative slum. "The conditions under which we work," declared one indignant Labor M.P., "are a public scandal." Last week, at the insistence of Labor's fiery, red-haired Boadicea, Barbara Castle, members of the House of Commons were at long last determined to do something about their own welfare.

No other M.P.s in the Commonwealth --not in India or Ghana or far-off Tonga --would have put up so long with so many hallowed inconveniences. The Houses of Parliament, which grew out of Edward the Confessor's Palace of Westminster, sprawl over eight acres of Gothic mazes, including 1,100 rooms, eleven quadrangles and 100 staircases. But aside from Ministers and the Leader of the Opposition, not one of the 630 M.P.s has an office all his own--or even rates a permanent desk.

Give Them Air. About the only thing that the M.P. can call his own is a single locker that is not even big enough to hold an ordinary briefcase. But a special loop of pink ribbon hangs beside the locker--dating from the days when Members were required to check their swords outside. If a Member has a secretary (whose salary he pays himself), he applies to the sergeant at arms for a place where she can work. This might turn out to be in one of the palace's three "secretarial rooms," where 40 or more girls are packed in as tight as on the underground during rush hour. At the end of each of these rooms is a row of six or seven telephones that must do for everyone present, and where conversations are apt to be overheard by all within earshot. Under such circumstances, it is not easy for an Honorable Member to keep his business to himself.

When the "secretarial rooms" are full, the M.P. and his staff descend to one of the stifling little cubicles located in an area called "Queen Mary." Five years ago a parliamentary select committee complained of the "bad ventilation" of these cubicles, and last week Minister of Works Lord John Hope solemnly noted that one recommendation this committee made was to have the doors of four of the cubicles removed. Though reform went through, most Members still prefer to do their dictating in an airier place--on a bench in the House of Commons lobby.

Running Water. "Logic," Winston Churchill once quipped about the House, "is a poor guide compared with custom." And that, in fact, is just the trouble. By an act of 1536, Westminster "is reputed and called the King's Palace at Westminster forever." Its administrative head is the Lord Great Chamberlain, the Marquess of Cholmondeley, who declares that "my first duty is to the sovereign who appointed me," his second to the palace, and his third to doing what he can for M.P.s.

Not until after 1954 did the House first get a "women members' rest room" or the antiquated little "first-aid room" a basin with hot running water. There is neither nurse nor doctor on duty for Members or staff, and since Westminster is a royal palace, not even an M.P. has the prerogative of dying there. At such moments, the Queen's Coroner is summoned, the body is whisked away, and the coroner discreetly records that death occurred in the ambulance.

For the moment, Barbara Castle and her colleagues are not primarily concerned with their meager salaries (-L-1,750, or $4,900 a year), or the fact that they must pay for their long-distance telephone calls, postage stamps, ink and typewriters. What Crusader Castle is after is nothing less than a "unified control" of the palace, headed by an official directly "responsible to the House." That might even mean doing away with such colorful eccentricities as the white-tie-and-tailed "messengers," who have been known to wander about the corridors of Westminster for a full two days before finally finding the Honorable--but officeless--Members to whom their messages are to be handed personally.

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