Recall of MPs Bill

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

Considered in Committee

[Dame Dawn Primarolo in the Chair]

Clause 1

How an MP becomes subject to a recall petition process

16:56

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I beg to move amendment 1, in clause 1, page 1, line 3, leave out from “becomes” to end of clause and insert—

“the subject of a recall referendum where—

(a) a notice of intent to recall, signed by a number of persons not less than the effective number (5% of persons in member’s parliamentary constituency entitled to vote), in accordance with section (Notice of intent to recall) of this Act, has been deposited with a petition officer, and

(b) 20% of persons entitled to vote have then validly signed a recall petition in accordance with section (Notice of intent to recall) of this Act.

(3) In this Act “recall petition” means a petition calling, in terms determined under section 9(4), for a member to be subject to a recall referendum.

(4) The member’s seat becomes vacant and a by-election held where, in accordance with section 15 of this Act, the majority of people who have voted in a recall referendum, vote in favour of the member being recalled from Parliament.

(5) The provision made by or under this Act does not affect other ways in which a Member’s seat may be vacated.”.

This amendment changes the Bill to remove the proposed conditions of recall on the grounds of imprisonment or suspension by the House to the decision making of constituency voters. It sets out the essential three stages - notice of intent to recall (5% of voters), recall petition (20% of voters) and then a referendum. Only if all three stages are passed is there a by-election.

[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 42, page 1, line 4, leave out “or second” and insert “, second, or third”

Amendments 42 and 43 and NC6 and NC7 form part of a group of amendments and new clauses which provides a route for recall for members of the public independent of any parliamentary committee, or criminal convictions. It allows for an alternative and additional trigger for the recall process which provides direct access whereby one hundred constituents may petition an Electoral Court in the case of improper behaviour or gross dereliction of duty on the part of an MP, and seeks to avoid any conflict with the provisions of the Bill of Rights.

Amendment 48, page 1, line 4, after “second”, insert “or third.”

Amendment 41, page 1, line 10, at end insert—

‘(2A) No action shall be initiated against an MP in relation to a recall petition process on the basis, or as a result of votes cast, speeches made or any text submitted for tabling by such an MP, within, or as a part of, a parliamentary proceeding.”

Amendment 47, page 1, line 16, at end insert “or,

(c) the MP has been convicted of any offence under section 10 (Offence of providing false or misleading information for allowance claims) of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009.”

This amendment adds a further recall petition trigger to the Bill, where an MP is found guilty of an offence under section 10 of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009 for making a claim for expenses or allowances that they know to be false or misleading in some material respect.

Amendment 45, page 1, line 18, leave out subsection (4) and insert—

‘(4) The second recall condition is that the House of Commons orders the suspension of the MP from the service of the House for a specified period and—

(a) where the period is expressed as a number of sitting days, the period specified is a period of at least 10 sitting days, or

(b) in any other case, the period specified (however expressed) is a period of at least 14 days.”

This amendment reduces the length of suspension required to trigger a recall petition from 21 sitting days to 10 sitting days and from 28 days to 14 days.

Amendment 39, page 1, line 18, leave out “orders” and insert “has ordered.”

Amendment 43, page 1, line 24, at end insert—

‘( ) The third recall condition is that—

(a) an election court has considered a petition claiming that the MP has committed an act which, had it been committed in England and Wales, would have constituted misconduct in public office, and

(b) the court has determined, prima facie, there is a case to be answered, and

(c) the court has notified the Speaker of its decision under sub-section (b).”

Amendments 42 and 43 and NC6 and NC7 form part of a group of amendments and new clauses which provides a route for recall for members of the public independent of any parliamentary committee, or criminal convictions. It allows for an alternative and additional trigger for the recall process which provides direct access whereby one hundred constituents may petition an Electoral Court in the case of improper behaviour or gross dereliction of duty on the part of an MP, and seeks to avoid any conflict with the provisions of the Bill of Rights.

Amendment 40, page 2, line 2, after “starts”, insert “or started”

Amendment 49, page 2, line 5, at end insert—

‘(5A) The third recall condition is where an MP is also—

(a) a Member of the Scottish Parliament,

(b) a Member of the National Assembly for Wales,

(c) a Member of the Northern Ireland Legislative Assembly,

(d) a Member of the London Assembly,

(e) a directly elected Mayor,

(f) a local government Councillor,

(g) a member of a Parish Council, or

(h) a member of the European Parliament

and the Speaker receives or otherwise takes notice of the fact that that such an MP has been

suspended from a role mentioned in this subsection for a period equivalent to, or greater

than, that specified in subsection (4).

(5B) The Secretary of State may amend the list of bodies in subsection 5A by an order laid before the House of Commons and made under the affirmative resolution procedure.”

This amendment adds a further recall petition trigger to the Bill, where an MP has been suspended from another elected role or office for an equivalent or greater number of days than is set out in Clause 1, subsection (4). (NB Amendment 45 seeks to reduce that period.)

Amendment 46, in clause 2, page 2, line 16, leave out paragraph (b)

This amendment removes the exemption from recall petition in the case of an MP who receives a custodial sentence but for a crime committed before this Act comes into force.

Amendment 44, in clause 5, page 4, line 11, leave out “second” and insert “, second, or third”

New clause 1— Notice of intent to recall—

‘(1) A notice of intent to recall is to read as follows—

“If you agree that [name], the member of the House of Commons for [constituency] should be subject to a recall petition, please sign below”.

(2) A notice of intent may be deposited with the petition officer by a person who promotes the call for the member to be recalled from Parliament (“the promoter”).

(3) A notice of intent to recall deposited under subsection (2) must be accompanied by a declaration made by the promoter, verifying that to the best of that person‘s knowledge the notice is in accordance with this Act and any regulations made under it.

(4) A person who makes a declaration under subsection (3) where that person knows that the declaration is false or is reckless as to that fact, commits an offence.

(5) As soon as reasonably practicable after a notice of intent to recall has been deposited with the petition officer—

(a) the petition officer shall, in accordance with subsection (6) determine whether the notice of intent to recall is effective, and

(b) if so, the petition officer shall send a copy of the notice to the member.

(6) A notice of intent to recall is effective for the purposes of this Act if the petition officer is satisfied that the number of persons who have validly signed the notice of intent to recall is not less than the effective number determined in accordance with subsection (9).

(7) But subsection (5) shall not apply if it would require the petition officer to determine that the notice of intent to recall is effective at a time—

(a) within the period of 7 months ending with the polling day for the next parliamentary general election;

(b) when the MP is already subject to a recall petition process, or

(c) When the MP’s seat has already been vacated (whether by the MP’s disqualification or death, or otherwise).

(8) For the purposes of this section a person (“P”) validly signs a notice of intent to recall if—

(a) P signs the notice within the period commencing 28 days prior to the date upon which the notice is deposited with the petition officer and ending on that day, and

(b) P signs the notice on a day on which P would be entitled to vote as an elector at a parliamentary election in the constituency.

(9) In each year, the petition officer of each constituency in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland shall on the relevant day, determine the number that is equal to 5% of the number of persons entitled to vote as an elector at a parliamentary election in the constituency (“the effective number”).

(10) “The relevant day” for the purposes of subsection (9) means, the day on which the registration officer publishes a revised version of the electoral register under section 13 of the Representation of the People Act 1983.”.

This New Clause adds in the process for notices of intent to recall; who is eligible to sign such a notice and how the petition officer is to determine whether it is effective, leading on then to a recall petition notice being issued.

New clause 2—Promoter’s statement of reason and Member’s statement in reply—

‘(1) A notice of intent to recall may be deposited with a petition officer by a person (“the promoter”):

(a) who promotes the recall from Parliament of the member to whom the notice relates;

(b) who is entitled to vote on the day it is deposited as an elector at a parliamentary election in the constituency to which the notice relates; and

(c) whose name appears on the notice.

(2) The promoter must ensure that the signing sheet for a notice of intent to recall include s a statement of reasons for calling for the member’s recall to Parliament (“The promoter’s statement of reasons”).

(3) The member may respond to the statement of reasons in a written statement in reply (“member’s statement in reply”) sent to the petition officer after the notice of intent to recall has been deposited with that officer.

(4) The notice of petition sent out under section 8(1) must be accompanied by—

(a) the promoter’s statement of reasons, and

(b) any statement in reply if provided to the petition officer within 2 working days of the notices being sent out.

(5) The statement of reason and any statement in reply must not exceed 200 words each and must be made available by the petition officer at the designated places throughout the signing period.”

This amendment makes provision for the person who deposits the notice of intent to recall with the petition officer, known as the promoter, to include with the notice, a statement of reasons. The member then has a right of reply and both the statement of reasons and any statement in reply must be available with a recall petition throughout the signing period.

Amendment (a) to new clause 2, line 11 at end insert—

“(a) the statement of reasons shall not include reasons relating to the Member’s freedom of expression within his/her Parliamentary role such as those expressed through speeches and votes.

(b) Where the petition officer considers that a statement may contravene (a) he may refer the statement to the Speaker whose decision shall be final.”

To ensure that recall procedure is not commenced because a constituent does not agree with the Member’s political or personal views.

New clause 6—The third recall condition; method of petitioning an election court—

‘(1) This section applies when persons allege conduct by an MP which constitutes misconduct in public office.

(2) A petition under this section may be presented by one hundred or more of those who are registered as electors in the relevant constituency.

(3) The petition shall be in the prescribed form, state the prescribed matters and be signed by the petitioners, and shall be presented to the High Court, or to the Court of Session, or to the High Court of Northern Ireland, depending on whether the constituency to which it relates is in England and Wales, or Northern Ireland.

(4) The petition shall be presented by delivering it to the prescribed officer or otherwise dealing with it in the prescribed manner; and the prescribed officer shall send a copy of it forthwith to the Speaker and to the relevant MP.

(5) The election court shall be constituted as if it were constituted under section c123 (constitution of election court and place of trial) of the Representation of the People Act 1983 and sections 124 and 126 of that Act shall apply as if it were so constituted.

(6) “Prescribed” has the same meaning as in section 185 (Interpretation of Part III) of the Representation of the People Act 1983.”

New clause 7—The third recall condition; consideration by election court—

‘(1) This section applies when a petition alleging conduct by an MP which constitutes misconduct in public office is considered by an election court under section (The third recall condition: method of petitioning an election court).

(2) The court may consider such conduct whether or not it is committed in England and Wales, and whether or not it is committed directly in carrying out the office of member of parliament.

(3) The court must examine evidence adduced of misconduct, and any evidence produced in rebuttal by the MP.

(4) The court must consider whether, on the basis of such evidence, a person might properly be indicted for the common law offence of misconduct in public office.

(5) For the purposes of this section, gross dereliction of duty as an MP may be considered misconduct in public office.

(6) If the court considers, on the basis of such evidence, that the allegation of misconduct is—

(a) not supported by the evidence; or

(b) trivial or vexatious in nature; or

(c) brought for party political purposes;

then the court must dismiss the petition.

(7) If the decision of the court is that the alleged behaviour is such as to satisfy subsection (4), then it must notify the Speaker that it has so determined.

(8) Nothing in this section shall be construed as affecting any provision of the Bill of Rights 1689.”

Amendments 42 and 43 and NC6 and NC7 form part of a group of amendments and new clauses which provides a route for recall for members of the public independent of any parliamentary committee, or criminal convictions. It allows for an alternative and additional trigger for the recall process which provides direct access whereby one hundred constituents may petition an Electoral Court in the case of improper behaviour or gross dereliction of duty on the part of an MP, and seeks to avoid any conflict with the provisions of the Bill of Rights.

Amendment 34, in schedule 1, page 17, line 6, leave out from “effectually” to end of paragraph 1 and insert

“carrying out the functions under this Act and Regulations made under it in relation to notices of intent to recall, recall petitions and recall referendums”

This amendment extends the general duty on the petition officer to reflect the addition of the notice of intent to recall and referendum stages to the Bill.

Amendment 6, in clause 7, page 5, line 22, leave out “receives a Speaker’s notice” and insert

“has determined that a notice of intent to recall is effective”.

This amendment makes clear that the date upon which the petition officer determines that a notice of intent to recall is effective is the relevant starting date for the recall petition process.

Amendment 7, page 5, line 36, leave out “received the Speaker’s notice” and insert

“determined that the notice of intent to recall is effective”.

This amendment makes clear that the date upon which the petition officer determines that a notice of intent to recall is effective is the relevant starting date for the recall petition process.

Amendment 8, in clause 8, page 6, line 13, leave out subsection (2).

This amendment removes the power to make regulations requiring information on the recall condition to be included in the notice of petition to be sent to registered electors.

Amendment 9, in clause 9, page 6, line 27, leave out from “constituency]” to end of subsection (4) and insert

“to be subject to a recall referendum. If the recall referendum leads to the loss of his/her seat this does not prevent the member standing in any consequent by-election.”.

This amendment changes the wording in the recall petition to reflect that if successful there will be a referendum and that if the recall referendum leads to the loss of the member’s seat, he or she may still stand for election in any consequent by-election.

Amendment 10, in clause 10, page 7, line 9, leave out “Speaker’s notice is given” and insert “petition officer has determined that the notice of intent to recall is effective”.

This amendment has the same effect as those for Clause 7.

Amendment 11, page 7, line 22, leave out “Speaker’s notice is given” and insert

“petition officer has determined that the notice of intent to recall is effective”.

This amendment has the same effect as those for Clause 7.

Amendment 35, in schedule 2,  page 21, line 10, leave out “Speaker‘s notice is given in relation to a recall petition” and insert

“petition officer determines that a notice of intent to recall is effective”.

This amendment has the same intent and achieves the same effect as for the amendments to Clause 7.

Amendment 12, in clause 13, page 8, line 37, leave out “Speaker’s notice is given” and insert

“petition officer has determined that the notice of intent to recall is effective”.

This amendment has the same effect as those for Clause 7 and reflects the fact that the recall conditions and the role of the Speaker are removed.

Amendment 13, page 8, line 44, leave out “Speaker’s notice was given” and insert “petition officer determined that the notice of intent to recall was effective”.

This amendment has the same effect as those for Clause 7 and reflects the fact that the recall conditions and the role of the Speaker are removed.

Amendment 14, page 9, line 3, leave out subsections (4) and (5).

This amendment has the same effect as those for Clause 7 and reflects the fact that the recall conditions and the role of the Speaker are removed.

Amendment 15, page 9, line 9, leave out “receiving a notice under subsection (5)” and insert “becoming aware that this section applies”.

This amendment has the same effect as those for Clause 7 and reflects the fact that the recall conditions and the role of the Speaker are removed.

Amendment 16, in clause 13, page 9, line 16, leave out “receiving a notice under subsection (5)” and insert “becoming aware that this section applies”.

This amendment has the same effect as those for Clause 7 and reflects the fact that the recall conditions and the role of the Speaker are removed.

Amendment 17, page 9, line 22, leave out subsection (8).

This amendment has the same effect as those for Clause 7 and reflects the fact that the recall conditions and the role of the Speaker are removed.

Amendment 18, in clause 14, page 9, line 31, leave out subsection (2)(b).

This amendment reflects that the Speaker’s role in the recall petition process has been removed.

Amendment 20, page 9, line 44, leave out “Speaker’s notice is given” and insert

“the petition officer determined that the notice of intent to recall was effective”.

This amendment has the same effect as those for Clause 7.

Amendment 21, page 10, line 24, leave out subsection (8).

This amendment is consequential on the amendment removing subsection (2) of this Clause.

Amendment 22, in clause 15, page 10, line 27, leave out from “officer” to end of Clause and insert—

“determines that the recall petition was successful the officer shall issue a notice of recall referendum

(2) Where a notice of recall referendum has been issued, the petition officer shall hold a referendum on the question set out in subsection (3), within a period that is no less than 21 days and no more than 27 days after the date of the notice.

(3) The questions that is to appear on the ballot papers in a recall referendum is—

“Should [name of member of Parliament] be recalled from the House of Commons?”.

(4) A person is entitled to vote in a recall referendum under this Act if that person would be entitled to vote on that day as an elector at a parliamentary election in the constituency.

(5) A person who is entitled to vote in a recall referendum may do so in person, by post or by proxy.

(6) This subsection applies where more votes are cast in a recall referendum in relation to a member of Parliament in favour of the question asked in subsection (3) than against.

(7) Where subsection (6) applies, the result of the referendum is that the member’s seat becomes vacant and a by-election will be held.

(8) The petition officer must—

(a) determine the result of the recall referendum as soon as reasonably practicable after the date on which the referendum took place,

(b) immediately notify the member and the Speaker of the result of the referendum, and

(c) as soon as reasonably practicable, publish the result of the referendum.”.

Where a recall petition has been successful, this amendment sets down the requirement for a recall referendum: it provides the wording for the recall referendum ballot and if passed for the member’s seat to become vacant. This thereby triggers a by-election.

Amendment 23, in clause 16, page 10, line 40, after “amend”, insert—

“(a) Schedules 3 to 5 to apply to expenditure and donations in relation to notices of intent to recall and recall referendums and reporting requirements in connection with the financial control of notices of intent to recall and recall referendums.”.

This amendment extends the regulation making power in this Clause to enable the controls on expenses, donations and reporting requirements set out in the Schedules to be extended to notices of intent to recall and recall referendums.

Amendment 36, in Schedule 3, page 24, line 5, leave out “Speaker‘s notice is given” and insert “petition officer determines that a notice of intent to recall is effective”.

This amendment has the same intent and achieves the same effect as for the amendments to Clause 7.

Amendment 24, in clause 17, page 11, line 11, after “petition”, insert “or recall referendum.”.

This amendment extends the controls on loans to accredited campaigners to be extended to recall referendums.

Amendment 25, page 11, line 18, after “petition”, insert “or recall referendum.”.

This amendment extends the controls on loans to accredited campaigners to be extended to recall referendums.

Amendment 26, page 11, line 22, leave out “has the same meaning” and insert “and ‘recall referendum’ have the same meanings.”.

This amendment extends the controls on loans to accredited campaigners to be extended to recall referendums.

Amendment 27, in clause 18, page 11, line 27, leave out “recall petition” and insert

“notice of intent to recall, recall petition or recall referendum.”.

This amendment extends the regulation making powers to cover notices of intent to recall including the promoter’s declaration of compliance and recall referendums.

Amendment 28, page 11, line 28, leave out “recall petition” and insert “notice of intent to recall, recall petition or recall referendum.”.

This amendment extends the regulation making powers to cover notices of intent to recall including the promoter’s declaration of compliance and recall referendums.

Amendment 30, page 11, line 31, at end insert—

(0) make provision extending section 13 to apply to the early termination of a recall referendum process.”.

This amendment extends the regulation making powers to cover notices of intent to recall and recall referendums.

Amendment 29, page 11, line 38, at end insert

“(including extending section 12 to cover the signing of notices of intent to recall, any offence under [section Notice of intent to recall] and voting in recall referendums)”

This amendment extends the regulation making powers to cover notices of intent to recall including the promoter’s declaration of compliance and recall referendums.

Amendment 37, in schedule 6, page 57, line 35, leave out from “after” to end of line 36 and insert

“a petition officer has determined that a notice of intent to recall is effective”.

This amendment has the same effect as those for Clause 7.

Amendment 32, in clause 22, page 14, line 30, at end insert—

“‘notice of intent to recall’” means a notice calling, in terms determined

under section (Notice of intent to recall) for a recall petition to be issued;”.

This amendment adds in necessary definitions to reflect the other amendments to the Bill.

Amendment 33, page 14, line 43, at end insert—

“‘recall referendum’ means a referendum asking, in terms determined under section (Notice of intent to recall) whether the seat of a member should be vacated in accordance with this Act;”.

This amendment adds in necessary definitions to reflect the other amendments to the Bill.

Clause stand part.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I rise to speak to the amendments in my name and those of 80 or so colleagues across the House, and in so doing make a plea to this House. Today, hon. Members will be able to decide if we want a genuine voter-led system of recall with tight caps on spending and a high enough threshold to prevent vexatious abuse; or if we want a bogus system of recall that is possible only in the narrowest of circumstances and with prior permission of this House. Given that under the Deputy Prime Minister’s current proposals just six Members in the past quarter of a century would have qualified even for the possibility of recall—and four of them resigned in any case—we can at least agree that the Bill in its current form is a waste of time, but it is worse than that. If enacted, it will confirm the suspicion of many voters that politicians pretend to listen but then deceive. We are only having this debate because at a certain point before the last election the mainstream parties felt obliged to do something to address the increasingly strained relationship between people and power, so it would surely be a madness for us to legislate today on the assumption that our voters cannot be trusted.

We had a good debate on Tuesday of last week and I listened closely to the concerns raised around the amendments that I and colleagues are sponsoring and, for context, I want briefly to recap the effect of the amendments. The process is effectively threefold. First, if 5% of the local electorate sign a notice of intent to recall, within a one-month time frame the returning officer would announce a formal recall petition. Secondly, it would take 20% of voters—14,000 or so—to sign the recall petition in person within an eight-week period to trigger a recall referendum. The referendum would be a simple yes or no—“Do you want your MP to be recalled; yes or no?” If more than 50% say yes, there would then be a by-election.

[Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)]

The only concern colleagues with longer memories may have about my hon. Friend’s amendment, which I think is very powerful, is the risk of vexatious claims being made for party political or other purposes. Is my hon. Friend convinced that that could not arise with his amendment?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I will focus above all on the point he raises in the few minutes I will take up during this debate. The process is deliberately very difficult. There are several hurdles—I have just identified three of them—and I think my hon. Friend will agree they are very high.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

On step two and the 20% threshold, my hon. Friend said last week and will probably say again today that this needs to be done in person at the town hall or suchlike. What guarantee is there that the easy, “click-send” mentality that so many of us see now in this job will not one day be extended to this process? As a result, vexatious recalls will be much easier to pursue.

[Zac Goldsmith]

Such a move could happen only by permission of this House. We will struggle today to get any kind of meaningful reform, and the concern that this House will casually extend the remit of recall to include digital democracy is a hope too far for those who believe in direct democracy.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

My hon. Friend will remember that when this proposal—an online process rather than a physical one—was put to 40,000 people online, including online campaigners such as members of 38 Degrees, the vast majority, well over 90%, said, “No, this is a bad idea”. The process should be serious, physical and involve a proper hurdle.

[Zac Goldsmith]

That is exactly the point: the barriers are high enough to prevent vexatious abuse. However, I recognise that concerns were expressed across the House during last Tuesday’s debate, and they fall broadly into four categories. Three are largely technical and can easily be accommodated. The first relates to cost controls, the second to thresholds, and the third to the frequency with which recall petitions can happen. I will deal with those quickly before coming to the more profound concern that was raised—

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Zac Goldsmith]

If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I will deal with these points first.

On the concern about costs, the Deputy Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), said that under the amendment there would be no cost controls at all on the first part of the recall process, the notice of intent. As he wrapped up Tuesday’s debate, he said that it would effectively be a free-for-all. I know he has read the amendments, so I am surprised he said that, because there are controls that mirror exactly those for the petition stage in the Government’s own Bill. Irrespective of that, it is perfectly possible to build in further controls—strict limits on expenditure and so on—and I have indicated to the Opposition and colleagues in my own party that if they table amendments on Report to bolster those cost controls, I would be very happy to support them.

The second issue, which relates to thresholds, is also technical. The principal concern involves the notice of intent to recall, the fear being that it would be too easy to secure 3,500 signatures—or 5%—in one month and that there would therefore be too many recall petitions.

[Mr Russell Brown]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I will in just a moment. The notice of intent to recall is the least formal part of this process and exists for only one reason: to ensure that where a recall petition happens, there is a genuine demand for it, and not only among a small handful of local cranks. The threshold is about right, but I have said to the Opposition and party colleagues that if they seek to raise it on Report, I would be happy to support it in the interests of achieving meaningful reform.

The third concern relates to the fear that Members would face endless recall attempts, amounting almost to a form of harassment, an issue raised several times in last week’s debate. I see no need for a limit, as the experience of recall around the world shows that its use is extremely rare and that it is used only in extreme circumstances. In 100 years of recall in the United States, where there are virtually no financial controls or controls on broadcasters and so on, it has happened only 20 times. There have been 40 recall referendums—

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I will in a moment, when I have finished dealing with this point. However, as I have said to the Opposition and to my colleagues, for the sake of achieving meaningful reform I would not oppose sensible proposals to establish some reasonable limit.

[Mr Russell Brown]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Zac Goldsmith]

When I have finished this point. Obviously, it would make no sense to limit the number of times a notice of intent to recall can be started because technically, that would enable one lonely crank in a constituency to exhaust those options for the rest of the constituents, with just a single signature. Logically, if there is to be a limit in this process, it would have to apply to the number of recall petitions themselves. I encourage the Government, the Opposition or any Member to bring forward a proposal on Report to set a limit on what would be possible.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I also heard the figure of 40 being mentioned on the radio and in last week’s debate, but in the United States in 2011, there were 150 recall elections at various levels, with at least 30 in Michigan. Although the hon. Gentleman gives the impression that the method is not used in the United States, it is used extensively at all levels of government, and mainly by the Republican right to destabilise local Democrats.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I am afraid that I did not catch the data that the hon. Gentleman set out, so would he mind repeating those figures?

[Mr Jones]

In 2011, there were 150 recall elections in the United States—this is not just at state level, but at a local level—and there were 30 in Michigan alone. The hon. Gentleman makes a point about endless recalls but, in practice, people in the United States who are subject to recall do not contest the process, but resign.

[Zac Goldsmith]

The hon. Gentleman’s point relates to attempts at recall, not recall elections themselves.

[Mr Jones]

indicated dissent.

[Zac Goldsmith]

Yes, it does. In California, which has had more recalls than any other US state, there has been one successful recall of a governor, when Gray Davis was replaced by Governor Schwarzenegger. From 2011 to 2013, nine of the 120 elected representatives faced recall, but not one of those processes was successful.

[Mr Russell Brown]

rose—

[Zac Goldsmith]

I will move on from that point, but I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will have the opportunity to speak.

I have set out the technical points that were raised on Second Reading, and I hope that hon. Members realise that it would be relatively easy to deal with them on Report.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

When there is an unpopular policy in a constituency—HS2, for example—and the MP cannot speak out in public, for instance because they are a Front Bencher, would not my hon. Friend’s proposals make such a Member very vulnerable? Can he assure me that his proposals could not be used to blackmail Members of Parliament who might not be able to speak out as they would wish?

[Zac Goldsmith]

My right hon. Friend’s point goes to the heart of our debate because it deals with a much more profound concern than those three technical points with which I have attempted to deal. This is the line in the sand on which we will need to decide today. It relates to the fear that elected representatives could be unfairly hounded from office—kicked out because of how they voted on issues such as gay marriage, the badger cull or HS2. It is the idea that the mere existence of recall would make Members nervous about expressing themselves on controversial issues, and that rich and powerful vested interests could chase from Parliament those who dare to stand up against them.

[Mr Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

rose—

[Zac Goldsmith]

Those fears, however sincere, are misguided, and I want to explain why before I take any further interventions.

First, on a technical level, the numbers make such a thing virtually impossible. To reiterate, under my proposals, no Member could be recalled unless 50% plus one of his or her constituents voted for that recall, so there would be no question of a minority hounding an MP out of office—unlike with the Government’s plans, under which, bizarrely, 10% of constituents could throw out their MP, even if the other 90% absolutely adored them—and no Member could even face a full recall vote unless 20% of electors, or roughly 14,000 people, made the effort to go in person to a town hall, within a limited time frame, to sign a petition asking for one. We heard last week from hon. Members who had received 500 e-mails about badger culls and 400 e-mails about equal marriage, but those figures of 400 and 500 would be nowhere near enough to topple an MP, to trigger a referendum, or even to get to the point of having a recall petition. Those numbers are pitifully small compared with those required to clear the hurdles even to instigate the process that I am describing. What is more, those letters that MPs receive are often online and in template form; they can be sent at the mere click of a mouse. We are talking about a completely different scenario.

It is no coincidence that many of the Members who have unfairly faced the greatest difficulty during this Parliament, the very people whom the critics of recall might imagine to be the most vulnerable to attack, have put their names to my amendments, and they were the first to do so—my hon. Friends the Members for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) and my right hon. Friends the Members for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) and for Meriden (Mrs Spelman). They did so because they know that the existence of recall is the best possible way of challenging a noisy minority of critics either to put up or shut up. They know that when a recall petition fails to materialise, a Member will be able to turn to his or her tormentors and say, “The silent majority does not share your view.”

[Sir James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I entirely share my hon. Friend’s view that many of the letters we receive are identical, having been prompted by one source, and that they represent a tiny minority. Could not that be said of the e-mails and letters we have received in support of his amendments?

[Zac Goldsmith]

Even if my right hon. Friend had received not a single letter in support of recall, that would not change my own commitment to trying to secure this very minor but nevertheless meaningful reform.

The key point that I plead with Members to consider is that people can be trusted. They are not a mob of fools who are easily driven to the polling booths by manipulative media barons; they are our friends, our neighbours and our family. They can tell the difference between the rare examples of misbehaviour or betrayal so egregious that justice demands recall and the much more frequent instances of legitimate disagreements on policy or of trivial, minor foolishness. Although he spoke against recall very well last week, I think that the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) made that point himself, albeit inadvertently, when he said that his predecessor could easily have been recalled because of her views on abortion—she represented a largely Catholic seat—but she won seven elections, and in each one her majority grew. Voters are like us: they can respect and support someone without having to agree on every single issue. Very few people in this world are motivated purely by one concern over one issue.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman referred to what my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) said last week. Will he also consider the example of my constituency, as I was one of only two Labour MPs who voted not to ban hunting? That was an issue that could have prompted calls for a recall, but it would not have happened, because people accept that individual MPs have very strong views on individual issues.

[Zac Goldsmith]

The hon. Lady makes a brilliant point. She represents an urban seat where there are not many fox hunts, as far as I am aware, and the fact that she faced so little comeback from her constituents reflects the high esteem in which they hold her and it is testament to how rarely recall would be used in reality.

I want to answer the point made in an earlier intervention about conscience voting. There are times, I believe, when a betrayal might be so extreme as to merit a recall. I know that I was elected in Richmond Park and north Kingston largely because my constituents felt that I would be able to bat for them on the issue of Heathrow expansion and put up a serious fight. I made promises at the time that I would disown my own party and, if necessary, trigger a by-election to combat that enormous threat to my constituents. If I had U-turned straight after the election, having made those solemn vows to my constituents, and helped to facilitate a third runway, should I have been able to do so with impunity? I do not think so. Perhaps that is the line in the sand in the debate we are having today.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

I fully support my hon. Friend’s amendment. He is doing a very sound job of trying to persuade people by saying how rare and infrequent these events may be and reassure them that there will not be opportunities for vexatious recalls, but is not the true power behind the amendment the fact that it is the only one that trusts the British people to make those decisions, rather than people in this House defending their own?

[Zac Goldsmith]

My hon. Friend will not be surprised to hear that I absolutely agree with his comments. [Interruption.]

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I think my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) might choose to address herself to this debate in a different way.

I have not signed the hon. Gentleman’s amendments, although I happen to agree with him. I want to raise two issues that he still has not addressed sufficiently. First, 5% is a very small number. He suggested that he might accept a higher number on Report. Would he be prepared to accept 10% or 15%? Secondly, some of us think that the financial provisions are not tough enough in the Bill or in law. Will he support further amendments at a later stage?

17:15

[Zac Goldsmith]

The notice of intent to recall is the most informal part of the process—its only purpose is to demonstrate that it is not a waste of time. I do not mind if the level is 5%, 10% or 15%; the House has to decide on that and will have an opportunity to do so on Report, I hope, if these amendments are accepted. I will not vote for the lower thresholds because I have made a commitment to the House. On the question of whether it is 10% or 15%, I would be interested to see what the House thinks.

On financial controls, very strict limits should be applied on the notice of intent to recall. I cannot see that the process would merit more than a few hundred pounds being spent on it, and I certainly do not think it should be in the thousands. As I said, the regulations relating to financial controls in my amendments exactly mirror the controls in the Government’s Bill. I think they can be improved. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to have that argument with the Government, and I will back him up in doing so.

[Mr Brian H. Donohoe (Central Ayrshire) (Lab)]

How is the hon. Gentleman going to get the whole thing about the costs involved in doing this—£500, or whatever else—into an area that can be organised in such a way that it would be seen by all?

[Zac Goldsmith]

That is an interesting question. The structure of this place is such that those discussions could be quite difficult. The formal point at which we would be able to have them would be on Report. If my amendments are accepted, it would be for anyone in this House to table further amendments. If they want to do so with me and the Committee that I was part of, we can do that. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to get in touch with me—I am happy for him to do that—because this process should as open as possible. I will not dig my heels in on these matters, because they are not issues of principle but technical issues that can and should be addressed.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

They are not technical issues.

[Zac Goldsmith]

They absolutely are technical issues.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

My hon. Friend alluded to the example of his undertakings on Heathrow. Members of the party that joined the coalition made undertakings at the election about student finance, and then, in the interests of good government, swallowed hard, and will almost certainly take the pain at the next election for the breach of their promise to the electorate. However, they made a decision in the interests of the sound administration of the country, and they should be commended for that. They should be free to make those decisions, as we all should, when sound administration requires it. The problem with the amendment is that it works against decent government, which, overall, our constituents should expect of us.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I would give two responses. First, if we existed in a world where recall was possible, I suspect that the promises made before the last election would not have been made. In the context of a recall regime, we would have to be much more careful about the promises we made because we would know that we could be held to account after making and then breaking them.

Secondly, if circumstances require a broken promise—an abandonment of a manifesto pledge—in a system of recall, or, frankly, without it, it is incumbent on Members to go back to their constituents and explain why that promise had to be broken. In the case of the Liberal Democrats, I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr Davey) has spent a lot of time speaking to and engaging with students of all ages to explain why the U-turn was necessary. I can absolutely guarantee that whether or not he wins at the next election, he would not have been recalled on the back of what was a profoundly broken promise. My hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) must have confidence and faith in his voters. Voters can see through these things.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

A lot of us are worried about my hon. Friend’s amendment because we do not want recall procedures to be started on the basis of the votes we cast here or of what we say. Has he seen the amendment in my name and that in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice), which make it absolutely clear that no recall procedure should be initiated on the basis of how we vote or speak in this House? Would my hon. Friend be prepared to accept those amendments?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I have seen my hon. Friend’s amendment and I understand why he and my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire have tabled their amendments, both of which say more or less the same thing. However, as I said a few moments ago, this is the line in the sand for me. I think we can trust our voters. When the Division bell goes, Members will have to decide whether they believe we should trust people with this power. As Members make their decision, I hope they will properly consider whether the arguments they have heard against recall—vested interests, an over-mighty press and a fallible public—are in fact arguments against democracy itself.

[Mr Russell Brown]

On Second Reading, the hon. Gentleman said:

“I suspect that every politician, at one point or another, would find themselves the subject of the 5% recall petition stage.”—[Official Report, 21 October 2014; Vol. 586, c. 793.]

That is how the process would begin, but the hon. Gentleman needs to differentiate between misconduct and wrongdoing and policy. As the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) has said, a process based on political party policy should not be allowed to begin.

[Zac Goldsmith]

My point about the 5% in Tuesday’s debate was that every constituency, without exception, will have one or two or a handful of people who will want to initiate the process. My point was that the 5% notice of intent to recall might well bubble away in constituencies up and down the country, but in a world where recall existed that is something to which we would become accustomed. If a petition began to reach the 3,500 mark in a one-month period, I would say that that would be a fairly good indication that the recall petition was merited in that constituency, for whatever reason it had been initiated.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

In signing this amendment I have signalled my support in principle of it, but I think it would be strengthened if the petition officer had before him a definition of what should represent justification for recall. He could then judge, at the very start, whether it was a case of hounding out or something less serious.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I would argue that that is exactly what the coalition Government have attempted to do, but they have failed. It is very hard to define wrongdoing by a Member of Parliament, because our jobs mean something different from constituency to constituency. Any number of Committees, my own included, have attempted to define wrongdoing by MPs, but it is almost impossible to do so. For example, an amendment tabled by the Liberal Democrats, with support from Members of other parties, suggests that an MP who engages in “gross dereliction of duty” would qualify for their new trigger for recall, but how is it possible to define the duty of MPs when there is no job description? Would that include an MP who never turns up to Parliament to vote? I suspect not, because if it did we would have a problem with Sinn Fein and open a whole can of worms that many Members would not want to open at this stage.

Those amendments are a complete waste of time because it is impossible to define wrongdoing. The only people who are qualified to define whether an MP is behaving well or badly and living up to expectations or not are the people that MP represents. That is why the protection needs to be in the threshold, not in the definition.

[Mr Andrew Robathan (South Leicestershire) (Con)]

I compliment my hon. Friend on showing enormous sincerity in moving his amendment. Will he explain exactly how this petition of 5% would work? I am so old that I remember studying the Chartists’ petitions, and their third petition in 1848—I was not there—was somewhat discredited by the fact that “Victoria Regina” had signed it, which was thought rather unlikely. “Mickey Mouse” often comes up in petitions. Of course, it would have to be a name and address in the constituency, but that is quite difficult to check, so could my hon. Friend please explain how that would work?

[Zac Goldsmith]

My right hon. Friend is right that that is difficult. Before I answer his question directly, let me repeat that this is the least formal part of the process and it is not covered by normal election rules. Yes, policing this process would be harder, but the promoter—a person has to deliver the 5% of names to the returning officer—would be bound by the criminal law in the same way that other elections are governed in this country. If the promoter deliberately included signatures of people who were not eligible to vote, double signatures, signatures of people who were too young or who were from other constituencies, or made-up names, that would be a very serious criminal offence. Could it ever happen? Of course it could. Does election fraud happen in constituencies? Of course it does. It is not possible to have a perfect system, but the protection is in the fact that the promoter would be bound by the criminal law.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on tabling his amendments. The momentum for recall came from manifesto commitments focused on serious wrongdoing. Is it not possible to uphold the principle of letting the people decide, but to place parameters on serious wrongdoing—we will not define it ourselves, because it is not possible to be do so—to ensure that the people can decide what it is? Can we ensure that the focus of our principles and intentions is on that?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. In fact, an open recall system of the sort I propose gives local constituents the power to decide what constitutes serious wrongdoing. For my part, I believe that it would not be abused by voters. They would be able to tell the difference between a disagreement on a simple policy issue or a frivolous mistake in someone’s private life and issues that are so serious they merit recall.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I am honoured to be allowed to intervene on this brilliant speech by someone who actually trusts the voters. It seems to me that if all we are concerned about is wrongdoing, that is covered by the Standing Orders of the House, under which we are entitled to expel Members who do something of which the House disapproves. That makes the Bill as framed—without my hon. Friend’s excellent amendments—unnecessary. We should do the whole thing properly, or not at all.

[Zac Goldsmith]

Again, my hon. Friend will not be surprised to know that I absolutely agree. My concern is that many of the arguments against recall imply that, to paraphrase Lenin’s infamous dictum, democracy is so precious that it must be rationed.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman not just for the Lenin quote, but for his extraordinary generosity in giving way. Will he just elucidate one absolutely straightforward point, not a great philosophical issue? The London borough of Ealing faces £87 million of cuts. Who would pay for this process? Will it be yet another impost on a struggling local government?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I believe that, under the Government’s Bill, the cost of the petition and the by-election would be borne centrally. My right hon. Friends on the Front Bench are welcome to intervene if I am wrong. The same would be true in the alternative that I am proposing. I have checked with Electoral Reform Services, which routinely conducts referendums, and I have been told that the cost would be £35,000 for a recall referendum. That works out at about 40p per person. If that is the price people have to pay for decent representation, I suspect that most people would regard it as a price worth paying.

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman knows that on certain matters I admire his commitment. My problem is that the Bill has been advertised, particularly those using the 38 Degrees website, as a serious amendment to get rid of bad apples. The 38 Degrees document in fact says that people can have a recall for no reason: they do not have to state a reason. Will he clarify the confusion in the public mind? He plays fast and loose with the statement that anyone who opposes this is against democracy. Will he be quite clear that he does not support the idea of having a purposeless petition, or one in which the purpose is not stated, against a Member? We now have a situation in which the will of the Scottish people is quite clearly to stay in the Union, but we are being threatened—thank goodness, we can take it up at the general election—and under recall, his rule could be used to try to overturn the will of the people and to be anti-democratic.

[Zac Goldsmith]

This is a point of difference. I do not believe that voters will attempt to recall—and they certainly would not succeed in recalling—anyone who is not a bad apple. I do not believe that voters will remove people over a policy difference. I made that point earlier. The question comes down to whether or not the hon. Gentleman trusts the voters. It is as simple as that. I cannot guarantee that frivolous attempts will not be made—of course I cannot—any more than I can guarantee what will happen in his seat or anyone else’s at the next election. Democracy is unpredictable, but ultimately I have confidence that voters will make the right decision.

[Gordon Banks (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman has talked about many technical points, so may I offer him a technical point? Would it not add to the level of democracy if the names and addresses of everybody among the 5% or 20% were made available to the public, just as a marked register is made available after an election, so that everybody could see who they were?

17:30

[Zac Goldsmith]

That is an interesting debate to have. Instinctively, I would be reluctant to go down that road, because I do not think that people should have to declare their vote. I do not believe that any amendments to that effect have been tabled to the Bill or to my amendments, but we could have that debate on Report. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point on board.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Michael Connarty]

rose—

[Zac Goldsmith]

I have allowed too many interventions and I want to come to an end to allow other people to take part.

Regardless of their views on recall, I hope that Members will at least acknowledge that something has gone wrong with our politics. The question is what we should do to fix it. Surely the Government Bill—this desperate pretence at reform—is not the answer. Its every clause betrays a lack of confidence in voters, with or without the feeble Government amendments—the last-minute tweaks of the last couple of days. If we as a Parliament are so untrusting of our fellow citizens that we refuse to allow them even the remotest opportunity to hold us to account, other than twice a decade, we will merely confirm their low opinion of us. We should think the best of our voters, demonstrate our confidence in their moderation and good sense, and enact a true recall Bill.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess.

I will speak first about the clause as it stands. I will then explain the purposes of the Opposition amendments and set out our view of the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) and others. Finally, I will briefly address the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) and others. Later in the debate, when the arguments have been set out more fully, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) will make another contribution to sum up our position.

I want to place on the record Labour’s support for the principle of recall when an elected representative’s conduct falls well below the standards that Parliament and their constituents expect. That is why our manifesto in 2010 promised to introduce recall legislation and why we supported the Bill’s Second Reading last Tuesday. We made it clear during that debate that we would table amendments to strengthen the Bill. Before I turn to the amendments that we have tabled, as promised, I will talk briefly about the Standards Committee, which recommends the suspensions from the House that could trigger a recall.

The Opposition agree with those inside and outside Parliament who believe that we must reform the Standards Committee in order to build public trust. Although amendments on the Standards Committee were not within the scope of the Bill, I want to place on the record the Labour party’s support for a radical overhaul of the Committee. That would include the removal of the Government’s majority and an increase in the role and authority of its lay members. We propose that at least half the Committee should be lay members and that the Chair of the Committee should not be a Member of Parliament. I note that the right hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley), who was the Leader of the House for two years, has backed changes to the Standards Committee. If his comments are indicative of a wider view on the coalition Benches, let us move swiftly to build cross-party support for reform of the Standards Committee.

We tabled four of the amendments that are being considered today and I will set out how each of them would strengthen the Bill. Amendment 45 seeks to amend the threshold for recall that relates to suspensions from the House of Commons. The Government propose that MPs will have to be suspended for more than four sitting weeks or 28 calendar days for the threshold to be reached for recall petitions. According to the excellent research services of the House of Commons Library, it appears that that threshold would have been met on only two occasions over the past two decades, and that no one found guilty during the cash for questions scandal received a sufficiently long suspension to meet the Government’s proposed threshold.

Labour believes that that is not acceptable and therefore proposes the halving of the threshold figures. We are clear, however, that we should not lower the threshold to such a level as would merely allow vexatious and mischievous claims. In addition, we must recognise that parliamentary dissent is part of our democratic heritage, and a Member who is standing up sincerely for their beliefs should not find their right to protest compromised by unnecessary recall petitions. None of those who were suspended for protesting in the Chamber—unless they were serial repeat offenders—would be caught by our amendment. Therefore, we believe that it strikes the right balance of strengthening the right to recall without jeopardising parliamentary democracy.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

May I be absolutely clear on this? Is my hon. Friend saying that there could be a cumulative number of days and number of suspensions—I take this as a matter of personal interest?

[Thomas Docherty]

I am most grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. We are clear—I look to the Minister to clarify this when he responds—that it is a case of suspension, not a running total, although one hopes that we will not see my hon. Friend too near to the Dispatch Box and the mace in the near future.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Earlier, my hon. Friend touched on a point that the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) never really cleared up because he did not distinguish between malpractice, bad practice and criminal activities, and political activities. That is the weakness in his amendment—it does not distinguish between the two and we could end up with a recall because of someone’s political opinion in the Chamber or outside. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Thomas Docherty]

I am grateful for that intervention, and my hon. Friend spoke very well last week when he pointed out, and Labour Members agree, that we are representatives, not delegates, in this place. That is an important principle, particularly for those of us in the Labour movement. He is entirely right—I will come to this later—that the basis for recall should be wrongdoing and someone’s conduct, not the causes that they support.

[Richard Fuller]

The hon. Gentleman said earlier that he wanted to stop the public having this choice to avoid vexatious or mischievous recall petitions. Does he believe that Members would be subject to that because the public are not smart enough to understand what is mischievous or vexatious, or that they would be too open to manipulation as the result of a recall petition?

[Thomas Docherty]

The hon. Gentleman was slightly misinformed about what I said. We believe that the people of Dunfermline and West Fife are very smart: they sent me to the House of Commons and voted no overwhelmingly a few short weeks ago.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

Further to the intervention from the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller), is the problem with the Labour party’s position that it would essentially put power of recall in the hands of a Westminster Committee, whereas other amendments would put power in the hands of the people?

[Thomas Docherty]

I appreciate that this might be a novel concept for some Members of the House, but Labour is sticking to what its manifesto said. We said in our manifesto that we would support recall for those who have committed wrongdoing. That is what we are proposing tonight, and that is what our amendments seek to strengthen.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Thomas Docherty]

I will make a little progress if I may. Amendment 47 relates to MPs who have fiddled their expenses.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

rose—

[Thomas Docherty]

I will give way one last time.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

Surely amendment 45 puts even more pressure on the Committee that decides on suspensions because it knows that the threshold has been reduced from what the Government propose—28 days, or whatever—to 10 days. I would much rather leave it to the people, but in my opinion we would be putting pressure on the Committee that would make the judgments, and any punishment would therefore fall the wrong side—or the right side for the hon. Gentleman—of those 10 days.

[Thomas Docherty]

I have a great deal of respect for the hon. Gentleman, but I struggle with his logic. Does he trust the independent Standards Committee? As I said a few moments ago, it would be genuinely independent and would have a majority of lay members. A Member of Parliament would not chair it. If he does not believe that an independent Committee can judge fairly and rationally the bad conduct of his colleagues, I am not sure what his faith in the system would be.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Thomas Docherty]

I am going to make progress—many hon. Members wish to speak.

As I have said, amendment 47 relates specifically to MPs who have fiddled their expenses. It is worth noting that since the introduction of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority not one MP has been caught trying to abuse the new system. The cases that have come to light in this Parliament have related to the last vestiges of the old, discredited system. Nevertheless, it is crucial that Parliament listens to the concerns of the public to ensure that if a Member of Parliament is found to have abused the new system a suitable course of action is available. That is why the amendment would ensure that, when the IPSA compliance officer finds that an MP has committed a serious breach of the rules, and the MP is convicted of making a false expenses claim, they will be subject to recall.

Some colleagues might question why the Opposition have singled out expenses for qualifying for recall, even when a non-custodial sentence is given. Labour Members believe that a flagrant misuse of public funds by an elected representative is unacceptable and that extraordinary measures are required. We hope that MPs in other parties agree with that principle.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

I have listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman’s points. Everything he has said points to a proper judicial process rather than an internal one. Would his supporters prefer that?

[Thomas Docherty]

That is why we have set out that there should be three routes to recall. Hon. Members will know that the occasions on which recall should be required will be very few and far between, but the hon. Gentleman is right that we are proposing three methods of recall. For the benefit of the Committee, it is worth capturing them again.

[Mr David Davis]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Thomas Docherty]

Let me finish dealing with the earlier intervention.

The first criterion is that a Member of Parliament is convicted and given a custodial sentence. The second is that they have received a suspension from the House for a specific period—amendment 47 tackles that. The third is that a Member is found to have fiddled their expenses and receives a conviction. Those are three clear examples of wrongdoing. None of them is about how a Member votes in the House, their views or other such behaviours. That is the difference between the Opposition and the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin).

[Mr Davis]

The fact that the hon. Gentleman proposes three different methods does not solve the flaw in the central method, which is that a Committee of the House will make a ruling. If the ruling is, in effect, a career capital punishment for a Member of Parliament, the decision should be judicial. I am sorry, but no lay Committee and no Committee of the House is equipped to make such a decision. It must be judicial.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am genuinely not sure I follow the logic of the right hon. Gentleman’s position.

[Mr Davis]

I am not surprised about that.

[Thomas Docherty]

To be fair, the Prime Minister could not follow the right hon. Gentleman’s logic when he was a member of the shadow Cabinet.

To reiterate the Opposition’s position, recall must be based on a measure of wrongdoing. It cannot happen just because a group of constituents, or a well funded vested interest group, seek to remove a Member of Parliament because they disagree with them.

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend is trying to grasp a complicated matter. The Bill of Rights makes it absolutely clear that no proceeding in Parliament should be questioned or impeached by any court of law or any other place. Unless we change the Bill of Rights, it seems difficult to allow a court or another body outside Parliament to judge what a Member may or may not have done in the proceeding in Parliament. Does my hon. Friend’s proposed Standards Committee, which he wants to make more independent, meet that same rule?

[Thomas Docherty]

With your indulgence, Mr Amess, perhaps I may spend 30 seconds on the issue of parliamentary privilege. In part, the Standards Committee is outside the scope of the Bill, because it would remove the exclusive cognisance of the Committee, and it would be open to judicial review, either by the complainant or the Member of Parliament if either party was unhappy. As the learned and knowledgeable Clerk sitting close to you, Mr Amess, will agree, there are already some exceptions to the issue of privilege, such as the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. The register is not covered by parliamentary privilege, so if a Member makes a declaration, the courts are able to use that as evidence in criminal proceedings, as I think happened a few years ago—my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby will probably be able to tell me which case it was. My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) is right: we have to be careful that we do not end up creating endless litigation that would result in far greater frustration for our constituents and the parliamentary process.

17:45

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman will recall that the Procedure Committee discussed the question of lay members of the Standards Committee voting and concluded that if they did have votes, they would be outside privilege. Therefore, there is a real difficulty in having voting lay members on any Committee of Parliament.

[Thomas Docherty]

The hon. Gentleman will recall that the Committee was not unanimous on that matter. That is why we are offering to work on a cross-party basis—I see that the Deputy Leader of the House is in his place—away from the Bill, on a reformed Standards Committee that will genuinely command the confidence of the public and the House and also meet our constitutional requirements.

Amendment 46 relates to the issue of whether only offences committed after this Bill comes into effect should be subject to recall. That appears to be the case as the Bill stands. As an example of the problems that would create, let us take the case again of Bill Walker, the disgraced former SNP MSP. It was only after he was elected that it came to light that he had, over a 30-year period, repeatedly assaulted four members of his family. He was subsequently tried, convicted and sentenced to a year in prison. However, as the Bill stands, had Mr Walker been an MP, he would not have been covered by the recall provisions. Of course, the recall provision should not apply if the electorate are aware of a previous conviction when electing a Member of Parliament, but it surely cannot be right that if an historic offence comes to light and a conviction is then forthcoming, voters cannot remove and replace that convicted politician. We hope that the Minister will recognise that important oversight in the Bill and work with us to tidy it up through this amendment or on Report.

Amendment 49 deals with offences committed by MPs who also hold other elected offices. Although the Bill is so narrowly drawn that we cannot extend its provisions to other elected posts, we think that it is at least sensible to extend it to cases in which MPs hold a dual mandate. Let us use as an example a hypothetical case in which an MP is also a councillor. If that MP is found guilty of a breach of the councillors’ rules, such as interfering inappropriately with a constituent, and suspended for a certain period, it would be bizarre if they could not be recalled by their constituents as an MP.

Our amendments are designed to strengthen the Bill. They seek to strike the right balance between protecting parliamentary protest and ensuring that MPs who commit wrongdoing are held to account. They would widen the scope for recall and lower the threshold to ensure that genuine wrongdoing does not go unpunished. I hope that they will command support on both sides of the House.

I want to turn briefly to the amendments in the name of other hon. Members, and to turn first to the amendments in the name of the hon. Member for Richmond Park. He has campaigned on this issue since he was first elected in 2010 and held consistently to his views. We are concerned, however, that he has not been able properly to define wrongdoing, despite being pressed to do so not just in Committee today and on Second Reading last week, but on many previous occasions. The dangers associated with not having a requirement to demonstrate any wrongdoing are clear: a well-funded campaign group or vested interest would be able to remove a Member of Parliament simply because it disagreed with his or her views.

[Zac Goldsmith]

The hon. Gentleman is right that I have not been able to define wrongdoing, but neither has anyone in the Committee. All he has been able to do is create thresholds that demonstrate certain elements of wrongdoing, and one falls into terrible difficulties when one tries to do that. For example, reducing suspension from 21 to 10 days would have meant that the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws) would not have fallen foul of the provisions, despite the fact that many people think he probably should have, whereas the hon. Member for Bradford West (George Galloway) would have fallen foul of the provisions even though his crime was not apologising for impugning the honour of certain Members of this House. We may not like it, but that is hardly a recall offence. The trouble with the mechanism that the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) is introducing is that it will have a perverse outcome, not a democratic outcome.

[Thomas Docherty]

Opposition Members disagree. We believe that there is a clear measure. If someone is convicted of a criminal offence and sent to prison for a non-expenses-related offence, that is clear wrongdoing. I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman says about struggling to define wrongdoing, but he seeks simply to blow off the doors for recall.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I am struggling to define wrongdoing, but I challenge anyone here to define wrongdoing in a way that would genuinely capture wrongdoing by MPs. It is simply not possible. My argument is that it is not necessary because we have a jury out there: they are called constituents and we can rely on them. My concern is that even with a relatively straightforward threshold such as jail, there could be perverse outcomes. For example, the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas)—I apologise for bringing her into this—could have been sent to jail for two or three days for her role in a protest against fracking. I have no doubt that she would have been welcomed as a hero by her constituents for doing so, but under the hon. Gentleman’s mechanism and under the Government’s mechanism just 10% of her constituents could have thrown her out of Parliament. Yes, she may have been able to claw back in through a by-election, but I suggest that a situation where 10% of the people can throw her out of Parliament and make her lose her job on the back of something most of her constituents would appreciate, is another example of a perverse outcome.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his second speech so early on. I do not disagree that there is a particular issue—I, too, apologise to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion—in relation to parliamentary protest. I am not saying for a second that this relates to the hon. Lady, but the Opposition have been struggling with the question of when knocking off a policeman’s helmet is an act of civil disobedience and when it is an act of assault. That is why we are not getting in the way in trying to subdivide an act. As the hon. Gentleman says, the decision is for any Member’s constituents to make.

As the impact assessment states, even under the Government’s system, which as we have already stated is relatively modest, the cost to the taxpayer of both the recall petition and the by-election would be £300,000. I am slightly perplexed about where the Electoral Reform Society got its figure of £35,000. A sum of £300,000 is to most of us real money and there is a real danger that, without any control over the grounds of recall, not only would the system be open to abuse by well-funded special interest groups that dislike how an MP has voted in the House, but the cost to the taxpayer would be astronomical.

[Michael Connarty]

I asked the hon. Member for Richmond Park about definition, but he did not come back to me. I notice that in new clause 1, which he has tabled, there is no need to define the purpose of a recall petition at all—a petition can be called for no reason. He has tried to rescue himself by seconding new clause 2, which asks for a clear definition. The confusion is that he is mixing up populist politics with good jurisdiction. It is clear he is playing to a crowd that is basically following the 38 Degrees argument, which is that a recall can be called without stating any reason. Of course, that undermines the whole purpose of jurisdiction and having a recall Act.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend. The hon. Member for Richmond Park has been struggling for four years to come up with a workable definition. The reality is that a failure to do so does not give us a pass to proceed without a definition. We are deeply concerned that these provisions would be open to vexatious challenges.

[Sir James Paice]

I am following what the hon. Gentleman is saying very carefully. He is right that nobody has managed to define wrongdoing. Does he not accept, however, that the two different amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and I have in their own way sought not to define wrongdoing but to exclude certain issues relating to freedom of expression, which we will come on to later? Rather than defining wrongdoing, we could make exceptions to what is clearly not wrongdoing.

[Thomas Docherty]

My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby will touch on that point and on points made by the right hon. Member for Somerton and Frome and others.

[Crispin Blunt]

rose—

[Thomas Docherty]

I want to make some progress. I have been on my feet for a significant period and perhaps longer than some of my colleagues would wish.

Without a clear definition or threshold to demonstrate wrongdoing, the amendments, however well intentioned, open the door to abuse. Furthermore, as the hon. Member for Richmond Park has admitted, he has provided no spending limits for his system, further raising the spectre, as we have heard, of US-style recall petitions. Those on the Labour Front Bench are clear. We support giving the public the right to recall their MP on the grounds of misconduct. We do not support recall on the grounds of how an MP votes. That would have a chilling effect on freedom of speech and limit the ability of MPs to represent their constituents effectively. We urge MPs to reject the amendments, because they do not provide robust safeguards. However, we recognise the diversity of opinion across the House and hope that our debate this afternoon might help us to find a way forward.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I would like the opportunity to put the record straight. I did not say that we had no financial controls attached to the amendments. On the contrary, we want all the controls in the petition stage to apply throughout the various stages in the Bill, so that the regulations provided by Government would be mirrored on the notice of intent to recall, on the recall petition and on the referendum itself. As I have also said, it is up to the hon. Gentleman and other Members to come forward with other ideas for further tightening the regulations to prevent abuse. I am sure that would meet the approval of the whole House.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but I say very gently that he is seeking to amend the Government’s Bill and is then asking the Government to come up with suitable amendments to his amendments. That, I am afraid, is not how it works. Perhaps in a few months’ time he will be sitting on the Opposition Front Bench—we do not know what Boris will do—but he is not on the Front Bench at the moment. It is not for other people to come up with amendments that tidy up amendments tabled from the Back Benches.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

rose—

[Thomas Docherty]

I will give way to the hon. Lady, because I have taken her name in vain on more than one occasion.

[Caroline Lucas]

The hon. Gentleman did take my name in vain and for the record I am very glad to be able to put him straight that I have never, ever knocked a helmet off anybody, much less a policeman. With respect, I think the arguments he is making are spurious. The amendments described by the hon. Member for Richmond Park are already in the Bill. Amendment 23 is also very helpful when it comes to regulating the amount of money we are talking about. Frankly, the idea that this is something cooked up by 38 Degrees is such an insulting suggestion. The hon. Member for Richmond Park and many more of us have been working on this issue for many, many years.

[Thomas Docherty]

I hope the hon. Lady will accept that I did not mean to imply that she had knocked off a policeman’s helmet. On her main point, I must say that simply working on something for a long time does not in itself solve the problem. I have been working for some time on trimming down but have not made enough progress; that does not mean I should simply stop and say it has been accomplished.

18:00

These are not robust amendments, but we recognise the diversity of views and will urge the Government to work with parties across the House to find a way forward. In that spirit, I want to turn briefly to the amendments in the names, among others, of the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), which have appeal because they enable a public trigger that is still based around wrongdoing. We want to listen carefully to the arguments tonight. In order to function properly, the proposals will need further refinement, but in principle we would be willing to consider the idea of an external body deciding whether the trigger level of misconduct had been reached, if we can make it work fairly, and we are willing to discuss the amendments in more detail with the signatories. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby will say more about that later, but we hope that the Government will reflect upon this matter carefully.

In conclusion, Labour believes that voters should have the power to recall their MP for wrongdoing, and we believe that our amendments would strengthen and improve the Bill, but we look forward to the debate and the Committee finding the best way forward.

[Mr David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Members for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) and for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith). I want to speak principally to the amendments in my name and those of other hon. Members on both sides of the House who have been kind enough to add theirs—amendments 42, 43 and 44 and new clauses 6 and 7—but first I want to welcome the Bill, which delivers on a manifesto commitment from at least three of the parties represented in the House. The other parties must forgive me as I do not know whether it was in their manifestos.

[Caroline Lucas]

indicated assent.

[Mr Heath]

The hon. Lady nods her head.

I am pleased that our commitment is finally being honoured. In government, I was frustrated at the time it took to get something before the House, and I think it is an open secret that I would have preferred it to have gone slightly further than the Bill before us, but nevertheless it is exactly in line with what those parties said they wanted and what they put to the people. I hope, therefore, that we can get away from this false dichotomy between a real recall Bill and a bogus recall Bill. This is not a bogus recall Bill, but it is one that could be strengthened, and that is exactly what we should be focusing on.

I think we might need to look at the constitution of the Standards Committee. As a former member of the old Standards and Privileges Committee, I think there is scope for changing the membership of the Standards Committee, although I would make one caveat about the voting rights of members. That point was covered in a Green Paper on privilege that I produced as Minister but which I do not think anybody read, apart from—possibly—the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife. Either way, it was obviously minority reading, given that so many people since have commented from a position of sublime ignorance on the subject of privilege. Nevertheless, there are issues to consider and in principle I agree that we should reform the Committee.

We should not kid ourselves, however, that any Committee of the House will have the confidence of many members of the public. That is why I want a mechanism that provides the public with direct access to this process and which is not mediated by a custodial sentence or the decision of a Committee of the House. I am sorry but there is no way such a Committee could be seen as anything other than an old boys’ club. I winced slightly when I heard my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), who is not in his place, refer to the capacity of the House to expel Members. This is not a gentlemen’s club. Can we please get away from the Victorian idea that we make the rules and deal with things? Our electorate has a right to be engaged in this process.

[Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Standards Committee, whose lay members are denied a vote by the House, does nothing more than report to the Floor of the House? It is not a Committee that sits upstairs and comes to these decisions. The decision about whether somebody is guilty of misconduct—I have spent three years trying to find out exactly what that means—would be taken on an amendable report on the Floor of the House.

[Mr Heath]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, but that does not alter the fact that the public will not believe that any mechanism mediated by MPs, either in Committee or on the Floor of the House, is not going to protect MPs. I do not think it a fair criticism, but that prejudice is now impossible to remove, so let us accept it.

I want to find a new way to give the public access to the recall process. As was clear from the exchanges between the hon. Member for Richmond Park and the Labour spokesman, we are talking about behaviour that our constituents cannot accept, rather than views with which they disagree. As I think he knows, I have a lot of sympathy with much of what the hon. Member for Richmond Park is trying to do, and I accept his point about 20% being a difficult level to achieve—somebody would really have to incense their constituents—but I do not accept that 5% would be difficult to achieve for a well-funded campaign or even a political opponent who has lost an election and wants an immediate rerun. He blithely says, “Of course, all Members would probably have a petition process against them”, but that is not a satisfactory position for Members to be in. If someone wants to do radical things in the House and represents a socially conservative constituency, they will face problems of this kind. It does not take much to get 3,500 people to say they do not support gay marriage or some other policy on which we have legislated. I want to concentrate, therefore, on genuine misconduct.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

It could be the other way round—a social conservative could be attacked by more liberal constituents—but I agree with everything the hon. Gentleman has said. I presume he is in favour of the amendments from me and my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) providing that no process could be started based on votes cast or speeches made here. Is he in favour of what we are trying to do?

[Mr Heath]

I am in favour of the principle, but I have my own amendments that would have the same effect.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the threat of recall would have an effect on MPs? In the United States, a lot of people who face a recall just resign. The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) contended that the support of 50% plus one of voters would be required for a successful recall, but that is not the case; it would only require 50% plus one of those taking part in the referendum.

[Mr Heath]

The hon. Gentleman makes valid points.

I want to turn to the mechanism I am suggesting.

[Richard Fuller]

My hon. Friend just said that the threshold of 3,500 voters or 5% was low, and used the example of gay marriage as an issue on which a petition could easily be secured. Will he explain to the Committee how that would be so wrong for democracy? What would be so wrong for me, as the hon. Member for Bedford, to have to go back to my constituents under the threat of a potential recall because of something I had said in the House? I cannot understand what the problem with that would be.

[Mr Heath]

The hon. Gentleman might take a different view, but my personal view is that the general election process is where these things are decided, not on a single issue, but on the performance of the Member and the plurality of views that are expressed. To have a form of Athenian democracy in this country, where we have constant voting and constant re-election, does not seem to—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell) is burbling from a sedentary position, but I do not think his party had anything about recall in its last manifesto, so perhaps he needs a further recall now, because if he votes for a recall provision this evening, he will be breaking his election pledge not to have one; I do not know.

Let us move on. I personally do not think that what the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) described is in the interests of the sort of representative democracy that we have always enjoyed in this country. However, I do think—I feel this very strongly and have argued it passionately, both before the election and since—that we need to find a way of capturing those examples of misconduct that are not necessarily caught by the criminal law and might not attract the attention of the Standards Committee, or, even if they do, where the public do not accept that as a mechanism.

[Geraint Davies]

rose—

[Mr Heath]

I will give way once more, then I will get to what I want to propose.

[Geraint Davies]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the constant threat of recall, particularly for those in marginal seats, might be intimidating and lead parliamentarians to champion popularity over principle, which would corrupt the democracy in which we live?

[Mr Heath]

I do think that is a recipe for “populism”—in the worst sense of the word—and that it is open to abuse. It is a naive view that it would not be abused by those with deep pockets and strongly held views. It would be, and I do not believe that is necessarily in the interests of parliamentary democracy as we understand it.

To return to misconduct, several Members have rightly said that it is difficult to define the misconduct that we are talking about, so I looked around for an objective test of whether somebody had behaved improperly. I found that in England there is such a test, which many Members will be familiar with. English and Welsh law has the common-law offence of misconduct in public office, which is often used against public officials—most commonly against police officers nowadays, but also against council officials or others in the public service, including occasionally civil servants. The offence is understood by the courts and has been in existence for a long time—since 1783: Rex v. Bembridge, if anyone wants to look up the start of the offence.

If it helps the Committee, I will give a simple definition. Actually, nothing is simple in this area, because it is open to interpretation, but the legal definition—the working definition for the moment—of the offence is where somebody

“wilfully misconducts himself to such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder without reasonable excuse or justification”.

To an extent, therefore, it is a catch-all offence to deal with people who behave improperly. I felt that it might serve as an appropriate trigger for the public to have recourse to the system without having to go through the other mechanisms.

[Zac Goldsmith]

The right hon. Gentleman describes the offence as a catch-all, but the advice that I have had—I have sought advice on this—is that it is a catch-virtually-nothing-at-all. The Crown Prosecution Service has issued guidance saying that it should apply

“only where…the facts are so serious that the court’s sentencing powers would otherwise be inadequate”.

The House of Commons Library says:

“There are few prosecutions, suggesting that action is taken only when misconduct is particularly gross”.

And the courts have said:

“The threshold is a high one requiring conduct so far below acceptable standards as to amount to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder. A mistake, even a serious one, will not suffice”.

Is the right hon. Gentleman really adding anything at all to the Bill?

[Mr Heath]

Yes, I think I am, for two reasons. First, I do not accept what the hon. Gentleman has just said, because the offence is actually quite frequently used nowadays in the courts of England—we are talking about more than a dozen and towards 20 cases a year. In fact, there was one only last week, when a senior police officer was indicted for the offence. Secondly, the reason the offence is not used against Members of Parliament at the moment is, of course, the potential difficulties with the Bill of Rights—I need to move on to that, because that is one of the difficulties.

18:09

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene. He will of course know that the Bill as drafted extends to Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland, but his amendment extends only to England and Wales.

[Mr Heath]

indicated dissent.

[Lady Hermon]

Oh, so it extends throughout the whole of the United Kingdom? It would be helpful if the hon. Gentleman could confirm that and give some examples.

[Mr Heath]

I will, but if I may, I will come back to that, because it is one of the major difficulties in the drafting.

[Mr David Davis]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Heath]

This will be the last time. I am trying to get to the content of my amendments and I have not yet succeeded.

[Mr Davis]

This is meant to be helpful. In the several cases of misconduct in public office that I have had to deal with, the charge has been used because, really, there was nothing else that would catch the offence that had been created by the public official. I am sympathetic to the hon. Gentleman’s argument; the problem is that there is very little in the way of proper precedent that tells us what the offence really means. It seems to me that that is a very bad basis for any law at all.

[Mr Heath]

It is difficult, and as the right hon. Gentleman probably knows, the common law offence of misconduct in public office has been subject to scrutiny over recent years. Indeed, the Law Commission is studying it right at this moment to see whether it could be put on to a statutory basis, which might provide a better definition. Curiously enough, however, one of the attractions of the offence for this purpose is its lack of definition, because all I am trying to do is define the things that fall short of fraud, assault and battery or whatever, but that nevertheless clearly constitute improper behaviour in the conduct of a Member of Parliament.

What I am seeking to do is put the matter in the hands of the public, not MPs, so that there is a third trigger in the process. I am trying to ensure an objective test, which is applied in two ways. First, misconduct in public office is a recognisable offence. Notwithstanding what the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Kevin Barron) said, it is one that the English courts understand—I will come back to the problem with the other jurisdictions in a moment. Then, using a court that is understood—the election court, which is established under the Representation of the People Act 1983, which provides for two High Court judges in England and Wales, two judges of the High Court of Northern Ireland or two judges of the Court of Session in Scotland—the matter would be assessed.

That would put Members of Parliament in the same position as other public servants, which is an important signal in itself. Notwithstanding the need for protection under the Bill of Rights, I do not see why we as Members of Parliament should not be in a different position from other public servants in other respects. I have also drafted my amendments so as to automatically provide a filter for claims that are trivial, vexatious or clearly simply party political in nature, rather than genuine claims of misconduct.

What are the difficulties with my proposal? There are two really big drafting difficulties that I encountered in trying to put it together. I think I am reasonably adept at drafting parliamentary amendments, but I have to say that these were significant problems. One problem is exactly the point that the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) made. We are talking about English common law and there is not a directly comparable offence of any kind in Scotland. I looked in vain for a common law offence in Scotland, and the nearest I could find was breach of duty, which is not the same as the common law offence in England. That is why there has to be a slightly, I would say, circumlocutory approach—perhaps that is not the right expression, but it is certainly complex—in that the courts would be asked to adjudicate on the offence as though it were committed in England, irrespective of where it was committed by the Member. I accept that that is a difficulty, and I would like better constitutional lawyers than I am to have a look and find a more elegant way of achieving the same objective.

[Chris Bryant]

It seems to me that there is another problem. The Crown Prosecution Service says clearly in its guidance on misconduct in public office:

“The suspect must not only be a ‘public officer’”—

not as straightforward to define as it seems—but that

“the misconduct must also occur when acting in that capacity.”

When does an MP act in the capacity of an MP except when proceeding in Parliament, which is the one thing that the hon. Gentleman wants to preclude?

[Mr Heath]

That is another precise difficulty in the drafting that I foresaw. If the hon. Gentleman looked at my new clause—there are so many tabled in the name of the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) that I cannot find it at the moment. [Interruption.] Yes, new clause 7, which states:

“The court may consider such conduct whether or not it is committed in England and Wales, and whether or not it is committed directly in carrying out the office of member of parliament.”

In other words, it deals with the Member of Parliament irrespective of that hazy definition of what the terms of contract of MPs are. I accept that this is a difficulty, however, and I do not want to pretend anything other than that these are difficult issues. I hope the Committee will accept that this is a genuine attempt to find a solution to a very difficult problem.

[John McDonnell]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for the struggle he has entered into. Let me provide him with this practical example that occurred in my constituency in the 1980s. Statements were made in this House that we considered to be of a racist nature, and we thought that they would have been prosecutable if they had been made outside this place. The individual, however, was covered by parliamentary privilege, so was not brought to book. He could only have been brought to book if there had been a right for the electorate to trigger a recall.

[Mr Heath]

That is the other major drafting difficulty. I do not believe it would be right for me to put something before the Committee that accidentally repealed the Bill of Rights. I think the Bill of Rights provides important protection to Members. My proposals skate on the very edge of what counts as parliamentary privilege and what does not. If the words had been uttered here, they would not be covered by the recall procedure, but I do not think they should be covered by that procedure rather than by having a general election. That is my answer.

What mechanism am I proposing? It is for 100 electors from the constituency—[Interruption.]

[The Temporary Chair (Mr David Amess)]

Order.

[Mr Heath]

Thank you, Mr Amess.

I am proposing that 100 constituents—I deliberately kept the number low—can petition and make a claim of misconduct to an electoral court. That election court will then receive submissions relating to that claim or petition and will receive any rebuttal from the Member of Parliament concerned. The court will be asked not to find guilt—that would provide the difficulty over the clash with the Bill of Rights—but rather to certify that a prima facie case of misconduct has been made. The recall process would be triggered and it would then be for the electorate to decide. The jury would be, as was said earlier, the electorate, and they would decide whether they felt that the case was sufficiently proven and that they would no longer be prepared to accept the individual as their Member of Parliament. The recall process would then proceed.

Is my new clause a perfectly formed amending provision? I do not believe it is because of the very serious drafting issues I have mentioned. If, however, the Committee’s view is that misconduct should be captured, but thought and speech should not be captured, my new clause provides a potential mechanism for doing so. I hope to hear from the two Front-Bench teams—to be fair to the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife, I have partially heard it already—that they are prepared to take the provisions away, talk to people much more learned in the law than I could be as a layman, try to provide a workable mechanism and then lay the proposals before the House on Report. It is essential to crack this nut of public access to the system. That is what I want to achieve. I will support the Bill irrespective of whether it contains a further trigger, but I would very much like to see a mechanism that gives the general public access to something that is currently exclusively the preserve of this House if not through custodial sentencing.

[Mr David Davis]

Before he concludes, I would like the hon. Gentleman to address two issues that can be seen in the central turmoil of the debate. The first is the trigger of 100 people. That is not a large number to get together, raising the risk of continuous vexatious references. How would he overcome that problem? Secondly, when the outcome is a finding against the Member by the electoral court, is that a 10% test, as in the Government’s proposals, or a full referendum test as suggested in the proposals of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith)?

[Mr Heath]

The first point is explicitly covered in new clause 7(6), which states:

“If the court considers, on the basis of such evidence, that the allegation of misconduct is—(a) not supported by the evidence; or (b) trivial or vexatious in nature; or (c) brought for party political purposes; then the court must dismiss the petition.”

That is the filter that prevents people from bringing vexatious charges time and time again. In extremis, of course, the courts have the power to award costs if they feel that the same allegations are being brought forward again and again inappropriately.

On the second point about the threshold, my proposal is that this should act as a further trigger to the Government’s proposed mechanism. I am perfectly open, however, to discussion over whether a better and more appropriate threshold could be applied—both in terms of the original complaint and of the petition process. I do not have strong opinions on this; I would like to talk to others and see if a consensus could be reached.

[Kevin Barron]

Would the decision of the election court be challengeable? In other words, if someone were found to have been involved in misconduct, could they appeal against it, bringing an element of fairness into the procedure?

[Mr Heath]

My new clause is constructed in such a way that there would not be an appeal process because the court would not find on matters of guilt. It would find only on the prima facie case in the same way as a magistrates court when it sends an offence for trial at a higher forum. The electorate of the constituency are the court of appeal as well as the court of indictment, which seems to me appropriate.

[Zac Goldsmith]

One of my points was half-addressed earlier when the hon. Gentleman suggested that one of his arguments against the notice of intent to recall, which we are proposing, is that it would be awkward and inconvenient for MPs to have this bubbling away. However, the same arguments apply even more so to the fact that only 100 people could get headlines in the local papers such as “Misconduct Charges brought upon MP”—even if the attempt was vexatious. There is more room for that sort of mischief in the hon. Gentleman’s proposals than there are in my amendments. However, I have a question for him about the “gross dereliction of duty” in his new clause 7. How is it possible to find an MP guilty of gross dereliction of duty when there is no job description? Would this apply to an MP who refused to come here to engage, debate and vote, as is the case with some parties?

18:30

[Mr Heath]

If a Member of Parliament is elected and fails to carry out even the basic duties of a Member of Parliament, that Member of Parliament will, in my subjective view, be guilty of a dereliction of duty. If the hon. Gentleman is referring to the number of Irish constituencies represented by Members who have not taken their seats, I think, judging by the electoral history, that a recall procedure would be unlikely to succeed in the long run, simply because people would elect those Members again in the full knowledge that they would not take their seats.

There was a famous Member of Parliament who decided to go and run a pub in Northern Ireland, and did not attend the House of Commons for a very long time. I think that he was eventually persuaded to do so by inducements offered by the then Government, who were rather short of voting power at the time. It may be that his constituents were perfectly content with that position, but I think that it should at least have been argued that he was failing in his duties to the electorate and to the House.

[Thomas Docherty]

I intervene merely to seek more information. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us what the scale of the costs of the election court is likely to be, and who he expects to meet them?

[Mr Heath]

So many Members have now referred to me as a member of the Privy Council that I think I must have received that status by acclamation. Will someone please tell the Deputy Prime Minister that I obviously behave as though I were a member of that august club, although I am not?

I assure the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife that the arrangements would be identical to those that currently govern election courts and election petitions. However, if someone were clearly initiating vexatious proceedings, as is the case with the present election courts, the court could, if it wished, award costs against the petitioner, and might well do so if it felt that the process was being abused.

I hope that I have answered all the questions that have been asked. I am sorry to have spoken at such great length, Mr Amess, but I have done so mainly in response to interventions, which seems to be par for the course this evening. Let me end by saying that I think that my new clause is objective, and that it fulfils some of what Members on both sides of the Committee want to achieve. I do not claim that the drafting is perfect and cannot be improved, but I hope that the new clause will begin a process of discussion which may reach a conclusion allowing for many of the things that the hon. Member for Richmond Park and some of his supporters want to see achieved without opening the door to what some people equally adamantly do not want to see achieved, which is Members of Parliament being in constant fear of recall on the basis that they have voted to the displeasure of someone very rich in their constituency.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess.

I support recall, as outlined in the Bill, for serious misdemeanours. Those of us who were in the House at the time of the expenses scandal knew that things had to change, and, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty), the proposal on which we are being called to vote today was in our manifesto.

I shall oppose the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), and, although I know it is a dangerous thing to do, I shall support those tabled by the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). This must be the first and only time I have agreed with him about anything. I also want to say something about the attempt by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) to find a middle way.

The Bill has been publicised as though it constituted a method of giving the electorate more of a say. It has been suggested that anyone who speaks against it does not trust the voters, and is somehow less of a politician because he or she is afraid to stand for election. It is a bit like being accused of being a witch. Well, each and every one of us has the guts to stand in every election, and to put our record before our voters. I have always said that the one thing that distinguishes all those who stand for election to Parliament or a local council, or for any other elected office, is that they have the courage of their convictions, the courage to stand before their peers and ask for their trust. We should recognise that, because it is an important principle.

I think that we may have given too much away to the unelected quango state and the like. We seem to have believed that if we fill organisations with independent people who have no political influence at all—I do not know whether they are born or develop—there will be better decisions. I am a great big believer in the importance of elected office. I think that it is something of which we should be proud, and for which we should argue forcefully as parliamentarians and other elected office holders.

The Bill is strange in that it has united UKIP with the far left in the belief that it somehow represents a radical way forward. I do not think that it does. I think that it is very dangerous. It does not empower voters, and it will undermine the democracy that we in this country take for granted.

The effects of the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Richmond Park would be very simple. The amendments remove the notion that someone must be recalled on grounds of imprisonment or suspension, and allows the recall of Members for any reason. I think that this the first time I have ever heard a Member present the argument that his proposals will never actually be used. The hon. Gentleman said that it would be very difficult, and that the barriers were very high. Why put such a proposal on the statute book? Is it conning the electorate to give them something that is so difficult to achieve? Is the hon. Gentleman being dishonest with the people who he suggests will be empowered ?

[Zac Goldsmith]

Let me put the record straight. That is not what I said at all. I have never described the hurdle as impossible. I have said that it is a difficult hurdle—a deliberately difficult hurdle—which is high enough to prevent vexatious abuse, but low enough to be surmounted. Amendment 1 is deliberately designed in that way. It is nonsense to pretend that we are creating an impossible hurdle: I never said anything of the sort.

[Mr Jones]

Let me tell the hon. Gentleman what he said a moment ago. I did take notes. He said that it would be very difficult, and that the barriers would be very high. During our debate on Tuesday, he said:

“I know…Members worry that recall might somehow turn us into delegates and no longer representatives…but that is not realistic. Voters care about a wide range of issues”.—[Official Report, 21 October 2014; Vol. 586, c. 796.]

The hon. Gentleman was suggesting that the process would be difficult for some reason, but it will not be difficult. He and those who are backing him are implying that people will not be “picked off” because of the way in which they vote, which is complete nonsense.

In a speech that he made the other day, my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) gave the very good example of his predecessor Lena Jeger, who had argued strongly for abortion reform although her constituency was largely Catholic. Given the thresholds in the Bill, I think that it would have been easy for her to be recalled. Let me give another example. I do not think that the hon. Member for Richmond Park was here when she was in the House, but there was a very courageous Labour Member of Parliament called Ann Cryer, who represented Keighley. In the face of a great many personal threats and a great deal of local hostility, she argued against forced marriages and highlighted the issue of birth defects in the Asian community. She was also one of the first people to talk about issues that have now gained popularity—trafficking and the abuse of white girls in Keighley. She was very unpopular in the constituency.

Is the hon. Gentleman trying to tell me that somehow the Asian community in that constituency, or at least part of it, could not have put Ann Cryer under pressure by means of recall? I do not think that that would have been the case. She would have come under huge pressure. She received death threats on occasion as a result of some of the things that she said, and many of the things that she said were proved to be correct. Courageous people such as Ann Cryer should be free to speak out although large sections of their constituencies consider what they are saying to be wrong, or disagree with them. I think, knowing Ann, that had this measure existed, she would have acted in the same way, but she would have come under a great deal of pressure to temper her views.

[Mr David Davis]

I do not remember Lena Jeger, but I think I am right in saying that in each of her successive elections her majority increased despite her stance on abortion. I believe that the same was true of Ann Cryer, whom I remember well—and the hon. Gentleman is right to say that she was courageous.

[Mr Jones]

I will come on to that in a minute, because we have to look at the process of what is before us. There is this idea that somehow a Member of Parliament is not going to be affected by recall, despite the pressure they are going to come under, and that they will keep speaking out. I do not think that is the case. We only have to look to the examples in the United States to realise that.

[Geraint Davies]

My hon. Friend will know that I was formerly the MP for the marginal seat of Croydon Central and that I lost it. At one point I stood up to defend the rights of my constituent Feroz Abbasi in Guantanamo Bay, saying he should face a proper trial and have proper treatment. There might have been further pressures on me other than the marginality of my seat in that regard, as I might have been facing the possibility of recall by a vociferous minority of UKIPians or others who might have asked why I was talking about what they might assume to be terrorists—as opposed to innocent constituents. If I had come under such pressure, I hope I would still have acted according to principle rather than popularity, but it is intrinsic in what is said in respect of the proposals of the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) that this corrupts those who want to stand for principle over popularity.

[Mr Jones]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point.

[Chris Bryant]

I just wonder whether we might bear in mind Sidney Silverman and David Steel, who both courageously advanced causes that were considered to be very unpopular at the time. They both represented marginal seats, and I would argue that they kept their seats because they were prepared to say uncomfortable things.

[Mr Jones]

I have no doubt that what my hon. Friend says is correct, but I will explain in a minute why they would not have kept their seats if there had been recall, because a small and vociferous minority could have removed them.

[Caroline Lucas]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Mr Jones]

No, as I want to make some progress first. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Richmond Park says “Absurd” from a sedentary position. He has had enough of a say, talking, I have to say, in some cases complete rubbish. He now has to sit there and listen to me.

In the debate on 21 October the hon. Gentleman, in trying to demonstrate that somehow his Bill would never be used, said:

“I know that other hon. Members worry that recall might somehow turn us into delegates and no longer representatives…but that is not realistic. Voters care about a wide range of issues, and it is rare for recall to be motivated only by one issue.”

I said from a sedentary position, “Gun control.” He then said,

“There are no examples of that.”—[Official Report, 21 October 2014; Vol. 586, c. 796.]

Well, I will turn to an example in a minute.

[Caroline Lucas]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, but the frustration many of us in the Chamber are feeling is that he says on the one hand that a vociferous minority can remove an MP via recall, whereas it is a four stage process that precisely requires a majority in order to remove someone, so that is clearly not the case.

[Mr Jones]

I am not going to answer that point now, but I will answer it in a minute, and the hon. Lady is wrong in saying that the majority of the electorate in a constituency have to vote for this.

[Caroline Lucas]

Of the people who vote.

[Mr Jones]

Exactly; it is the people who vote, but I will come on to that in a moment.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) said earlier that the threshold would be so high it would be very difficult for vexatious claims to be made. Why does he not separate that in the Bill? Why does he not drop that—completely separate it—if he does not intend that?

[Mr Jones]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Like a lot of other things the hon. Gentleman says, he has not actually thought about that in practice. The problem I have with the word “vexatious” is that somebody such as Ann Cryer might come under such a recall Bill, given what she was arguing for, and it could be argued that the people arguing against her were not being vexatious but were arguing against a clear, important role that she was performing.

18:45

It is said that somehow the use of this recall would be almost unique. The hon. Gentleman used examples from the United States, saying there had only been 40 such occasions. He is completely wrong. If we look at state level in the United States, in 2011 there were at least 150 recalls. Of these, 75 officials were recalled and nine officials resigned under recall. In the state of Michigan alone there were 30 recalls. So we have two things. First, there is the pressure of recall on individuals who then resign before they get to that process, which would happen under this proposal—I am not suggesting some people would not be tenacious, but some might fall by the wayside before that. The hon. Member for Richmond Park also says the electorate look at issues rather than just one issue. In the United States, we only need look at the example in Colorado in 2013 where two state Senators—John Morse and Angela Giron—both voted for tighter gun control. It was certainly not tight gun control as we would understand it in this country. They asked for two things: more ID checks on the purchase of firearms, and legislation to limit people to buying 15 rounds of ammunition. They were both recalled. The right-wing National Rifle Association along with the Koch brothers and their Tea party fanatics piled in something over half a million pounds for that recall election. The Senators lost it and they were then replaced by two very right-wing Republican state Senators.

I say to the idea that somehow this will be free from the influence of big money that it will not be. The hon. Gentleman has not even thought about limits in terms of what could be spent on the elections. If we look at what happens in the United States, we see that in some states as soon as someone loses an election, money goes in to destabilise certain state legislators. Before recall, big money is spent, so being able to control that would be very difficult.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

The question of what these limits are is important. What does recall mean to a person of limited means when they are up against big money?

[Mr Jones]

Exactly, and I made that point last week. If I had the £250 million or £300 million the hon. Member for Richmond Park has, I would not have to worry. [Interruption.] Well, I am sorry, but it is a matter of fact. [Interruption.] Of family history, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) says. If someone has that amount of money, it influences the way in which they can conduct recall elections. If I had that amount of cash, I do not think I would be bothered even if I lost it.

[Caroline Lucas]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Jones]

I am going to answer the hon. Lady’s point if she is patient.

On the hon. Lady’s point about the electorate, the hon. Member for Richmond Park said it is necessary to have 51% of the electorate. No, it is not. In Colorado the recall election had a turnout of 36%, and under what is being proposed by the hon. Gentleman and his supporters it is only necessary to have 51% of the turnout. A small number of people might turn out, and a huge swathe of people in a constituency who might have strong views on other issues but not the issue in question might not be mobilised and might not vote. So to the idea that somehow this would be democratic, I say there could be a situation where there was a 60%, 65% or 70% turnout at a general election, and then a much lower turnout for a recall election—as low as 10% if police and crime commissioner elections are anything to go by—could determine the future of that Member of Parliament. It would take a very strong individual then to stand up before the electorate after the damage done in that process, because we all know what would happen with that individual.

The idea that somehow large numbers of people would give power to the mass of people is therefore complete nonsense. In the United States this gives power to large numbers of small groups of well-organised individuals. People should google the Koch brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council—which is actually the libertarian wing of the Tea party and is where this proposal is coming from. I think this is very dangerous for progressive politics both in the United States and this country.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is my hon. Friend aware that I received an e-mail a few days ago from the British equivalent of the Tea party: the front organisation of the right wing of the Conservative party, the TaxPayers Alliance, which is supporting these proposals?

[Mr Jones]

That does not surprise me.

The hon. Member for Richmond Park has not even thought about finance and spending limits for recall, or about the work that would be done to undermine someone in the lead-up to it.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

My hon. Friend began by saying that he supports recall as set out in the Government’s Bill. However, surely it provides that, on the basis of either of the triggers, a petition of simply 10% of the electorate can take a Member out completely, regardless of what the other 90% say. How can we give any weight to his argument about democracy, given that he supports 10% being able to oust a Member straight away?

[Mr Jones]

I must say that I do have problems with that system, but I also know that under it, at least we are talking about someone who has been found guilty of some wrongdoing. If the amendment were accepted, as in the United States, a small number of well financed people would be able to go after certain individuals.

The hon. Member for Richmond Park referred to a figure of £35,000 for a recall election. The recent recall election in Wisconsin cost $35 million. The idea that several recall election referendums around the country could be done on the cheap is fanciful, to say the least.

[Thomas Docherty]

Has my hon. Friend read the Government’s impact assessment, which says that, even under their proposals, the likely cost of recall and by-election is £300,000-plus? Does he agree that it is slightly ironic that, under the amendment of the hon. Member for Richmond Park, the TaxPayers Alliance is proposing a free-for-all that could quickly rack up millions of pounds of spending?

[Mr Jones]

That is the flaw in the argument, and it is clear that the proposer of the amendment has not even thought about that cost element.

There is a cost involved in democracy, and I support paying that cost. However, we have general elections, at which people can indicate whom they want to represent them. I have no truck with the argument that the hon. Member for Richmond Park and his supporters are advancing that somehow the system is broken. Time and again, the phrase “Westminster establishment” is used. He may well be a member of an establishment; I am not, and nor are most Members of this House.

[Mr David Davis]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Jones]

In a minute. Most Members of Parliament do their best for their constituencies. The situation now is very different from the days when Members never lived in their constituencies or went anywhere near them. In the light of developments such as electronic media, MPs are more accountable to their constituents than ever. I want to knock on the head the idea that we come to Parliament, sit on these green Benches and never give a thought to the opinions of our constituents, and do not talk to them daily.

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend said that in his view, there is no such thing as a Westminster establishment. Does he agree with me that there is also no such thing as a Westminster class? Those of us who live in the real world know what class politics is really all about.

[Mr Jones]

I agree. I would not consider myself to be in the same class as the hon. Member for Richmond Park, for example. The fact is—[Interruption.] I am not antagonising my constituents, as the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) says from a sedentary position. Most Members of Parliament get elected to try to do the best for their constituencies, and it is insulting to say they do not. I may disagree politically with other Members of this House—of all shades—but the majority are in politics not only to do what they can to help their constituents, but to make the world a better place as they see it. The same was true of my time in local government; I think I met only one or two rogues—who were perhaps in politics for different reasons—when I was a councillor. It is a bit patronising for people to dismiss that point.

We must get back to recognising that standing for elected office is a noble thing that people should strive for, not just in this place but in councils and elsewhere. I respect anyone who has the guts to stand for election. Many commentators criticise what MPs do, but if they were asked if they would stand for election and be subject to such scrutiny not only at election time but throughout the life of a Parliament, not many would say yes. We must recognise the value of standing for elected office.

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, and the whole House will appreciate the compliment he has just paid to Members. However, if he is afraid that this extension of democracy will result in the supplanting of socialist Members with libertarian ones, why does he not just propose spending limits?

[Mr Jones]

The hon. Gentleman is talking complete nonsense. The idea that the Bill is an extension of democracy to the average elector is complete rubbish. It will limit what we in this House can do, and put control of the agenda in the hands of well financed individuals. Yes, I trust my electors: that is why I keep on standing for election and do monthly constituency surgeries to listen to what they have to say. That is why I attend public meetings and speak to my electors when I go to get the Sunday newspaper, for example. We need to dispel the nonsensical idea that Members of Parliament do not speak to their electorate; these days, very few would even get elected if they took that approach.

[Geraint Davies]

My hon. Friend may be interested to know that in my patch, Swansea, there was a bid by a big financial organisation to have motorbike riding on the beach. It was heralded in the press as a very popular idea, but I spoke out against it, saying that it would do enormous environmental damage, encourage hooliganism and so on. Let us say that the financial forces behind that proposition coalesced behind the popular view—those who wanted a motorbike riding free-for-all—and I was threatened with recall. That would be another example of how this proposal would intimidate democracy and those of us who stand up for principle over popularity.

[Mr Jones]

rose—

[Zac Goldsmith]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Jones]

Not yet. There is a convention in this House that we have to answer an intervention before allowing another one.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

If the hon. Gentleman turned up a bit more, he would know that.

[Mr Jones]

My hon. Friend makes a good point from a sedentary position.

There are occasions—I gave the example earlier of Ann Cryer—when Members take positions that are at odds with certain sections of their constituents, but that is the beauty of Parliament. It is about being able to argue not just on our constituents’ behalf, but for the progressive changes and legislation that, if we had recall, I doubt would have been delivered. That is why I find it very odd that people who are supposedly on the left support this type of recall—

[Kevin Brennan]

A rich man’s charter.

[Mr Jones]

As my hon. Friend says, it is a rich man’s charter to pick off anyone who has views at odds with their own.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He said earlier that the Colorado state legislators were recalled over gun issues, arguing that the Koch brothers had put millions of dollars into that campaign. In fact, the spending by those calling for the recall was exceeded fourteenfold by those arguing against it. Yes, big money is involved, but I think the hon. Gentleman has got the maths wrong. That aside, our proposals would have very strong limits on funding and, as I and colleagues have said, we would welcome even further controls, so his arguments are just nonsense.

[Mr Jones]

The hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways. He cannot argue for his proposal and then say, following my raising the issue the other day, that if someone else wants to bring in spending limits, they can. He should have thought this through. He knows exactly what he is doing: this proposal will give powerful individuals with deep pockets a big influence over how our democracy is conducted. I am sorry, but I do not agree with that. It is wrong. The supporters of this proposal are saying, “Are you afraid of your electors? Are you going to give ordinary electors a say?” That is not what the proposal will do. It will give well organised, well financed individuals a lot of say over who sits on these green Benches.

[Kevin Brennan]

And how they behave.

[Mr Jones]

I do not think that money should determine that or, as my hon. Friend says, how Members behave. People should be elected on a broad range of issues, and it is for the electorate to determine subsequently whether they are re-elected.

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) says that he is proposing strong financial controls, but his amendment 23 would provide only that Ministers should have the power to apply controls on spending to the notice of intent and recall referendum processes. He does not say what the controls or the financial limits might be. Indeed, the limit during the recall petition period for which the Bill provides is £10,000 per accredited campaigner, but there is no limit on the number of accredited campaigners.

19:00

[Mr Jones]

I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman raises that point because in the United States, to get round any spending limits, a plethora of organisations will be set up to force a recall, meaning that they can carry out vigorous and targeted campaigning. We should remember that such recall would not be like the general election, with 650 contests being fought, because resources could be concentrated on one single constituency, meaning that big money would influence the outcome.

[Thomas Docherty]

My hon. Friend is being most generous by giving way again as I know that he wants to get towards the end of his speech. On spending limits, is he aware that the Scottish National party ran a series of front organisations during the referendum in Scotland so that they could each spend to the £1.5 million limit? Does he agree that one of the great concerns about the proposal of the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) is that it could give rise to co-ordinated attack after attack from organisation after organisation?

[Mr Jones]

We all know that organisations get around election limits—we need only to look at the last election in Richmond Park and the activities of its MP—so it would be difficult to control the amount being spent. In the United States, seats are targeted well in advance so that once an election is lost, money goes in to undermine an individual.

Implementing the power to recall for any reason whatsoever would be not an advancement of democracy in this country; it would be a retrograde step. It is suggested that the power would be rarely used, but people would work out clear ways to use it and how to finance the process. I therefore ask the Committee to oppose the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Richmond Park.

The hon. Gentleman’s proposals would not give the ordinary elector any more power, but would benefit those who want to drive through a political agenda. There are those on the left of my party who think that the process would somehow empower individuals and represent a radical statement, but that is not the case. Under the proposals, progressive legislation would be killed in the House, as views that people passionately believed in and courageously set out—such views may later become the norm in the nation—would be killed not following proper debates and votes in the House, but because someone could finance a recall election that would either put such an individual under pressure to be quiet, or actually force them out.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Greg Clark)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess. The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) has given you some timekeeping assistance through his suggestions, and I shall try not to fall foul of that.

As the group includes many amendments and new clauses, I shall say something about the overall choice facing the Committee that is embodied by the measures, before giving the Government’s assessment of each, which I hope will help the Committee. If there is time, the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah), will make a speech at the end of the debate, so colleagues who speak after me will have an opportunity to hear a reaction to their remarks.

As I explained on Second Reading, the Bill has had a difficult history. Some people are against it—and indeed against anything that introduces a system for recalling MPs. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee concluded of the draft Bill:

“We do not believe that there is a gap in the House’s disciplinary procedures which needs to be filled by the introduction of recall.”

My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) made a similar point. Others, including my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), believe that we should adopt an entirely different model of recall: one that is not triggered by proven misconduct, but can instead be initiated by a petition of the electorate for any reason at any time.

That disagreement could lead one to suppose that the Government’s Bill is just another contribution to a debate without consensus, and that it has no greater or lesser significance than any other approach, but that would not be right. The Bill is fundamentally different from the approach of no recall, or that of recall for any reason at any time, although I hesitate to tease my hon. Friend by referring to that as the Martini recall—any time, any place, anywhere. The Bill as drafted implements completely and faithfully the promises that the main parties made in their manifestos at the general election. The Conservative manifesto promised that

“a Conservative government will introduce a power of ‘recall’ to allow electors to kick out MPs, a power that will be triggered by proven serious wrongdoing.”

The Labour manifesto said:

“MPs who are found responsible for financial misconduct will be subject to a right of recall if Parliament itself has failed to act against them.”

The Lib Dem manifesto said:

“We would introduce a recall system so that constituents could force a by-election for any MP found responsible for serious wrongdoing.”

The coalition agreement reflected those positions.

As drafted, the Bill would cause a recall petition to be triggered if an MP was sentenced to a term of imprisonment of up to a year or a suspended sentence of any length—hon. Members will know that disqualification is already automatic following immediate imprisonment of more than a year—or, in other words, if serious wrongdoing was proved; or if an MP was suspended by the House for at least 21 sitting days, or 28 continuous days, which again would indicate proven serious wrongdoing. Members will of course consider carefully all the amendments that have been tabled, but it is only reasonable to observe that both other views, whatever their merits, do not implement the particular commitments that all parties made to the electorate at the previous election.

[Chris Bryant]

I am grateful to the Minister for how he is presenting his argument as, ironically enough, debates in the House are often most fractious when there is the smallest difference between people. However, I suggest that the flaw in his argument is his reliance on the words “misconduct” and “wrongdoing” which, under the Bill, will be determined only by MPs. That is the problem for many members of the public, as they would like to be able to decide what constitutes wrongdoing and misconduct.

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Gentleman expresses his reasonable and important point well. As I said on Second Reading, I do not take the view that the Bill cannot be strengthened. One thing we can conclude from the Second Reading debate is that we will want to reflect, in Committee and during the Bill’s later stages, on the public’s involvement. The Bill can be improved and clarified, and I repeat my personal assurance that the Government will be open to reflecting improvements in the Bill during its passage.

Amendment 42, a cross-party amendment that was ably spoken to by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath)—although he is my hon. Friend, he has the demeanour of a right hon. Member—proposes a constituent-led trigger for recall, albeit one based on misconduct. That important suggestion has much to commend it, so I will reflect carefully on the amendment. Similarly, the Opposition have suggested making the trigger more sensitive and sending the clear message that the criminal abuse of the parliamentary expenses system should trigger recall, and I appreciated the spirit in which the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife spoke to those proposals. While my colleagues and I will vote to maintain the balance that the Bill as drafted strikes, and for a faithful adherence to the manifesto on which we stood, it might well be possible for us to support changes on Report. That demeanour is an appropriate response to today’s proceedings and last week’s Second Reading debate, given that no overwhelming case has been made at this stage for sending the Bill back to the drawing board and starting again.

[Wayne David]

Would the Minister like to go a little further and indicate whether he is prepared to have genuine cross-party talks to see whether it is possible to establish a consensus?

[Greg Clark]

Well, I think that we are having them now in Committee; the parties are approaching a serious subject and seeking to strengthen the Bill. Of course, those talks can also take place between now and further occasions when the Bill is debated. The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point.

[Mr David Davis]

My right hon. Friend is handling this in his characteristically rational way, but he made one comment that I really cannot leave unchallenged. He said that the Bill is progressing without any serious assault on its central tenet. Its central tenet is that for a wide range of offences, which under the current criteria would include the expulsion of the hon. Member for Bradford West (George Galloway) for impugning another Member of this House—not a financial or criminal offence—Members could be cast to a jury in which effectively one member, or 10%, could vote and find them guilty. In other words, 90% of a Member’s constituents could think that they should stay and 10% could think that they should go, and on that basis, under the Government’s proposals, the Member would be thrown out.

[Greg Clark]

I learnt to take a rational approach during my many happy years working with my right hon. Friend, so he will forgive me if I apply it here. I will move on to talk about the point he makes later. Suffice it to say that if the figure of 10% was reached, that would trigger a by-election in which the Member could of course stand. I know that he has personal experience of doing that. Indeed, I campaigned for his successful re-election.

Let me reflect on some of the concerns raised on Second Reading that are germane—you will be relieved to hear, Mr Amess—to the amendments before us. Members were concerned that a process that allowed recall for any reason could be put to vexatious use in a number of different respects. First, it could be used to hound someone out of office because of honestly held and sincerely expressed views. Secondly, it could be used to wage a war of attrition, with recall petition after recall petition being opened by just 5% of the electorate who have conceived a grievance against a sitting MP. Thirdly, it could be used for limitless expenditure on propaganda intended to destabilise an MP, by vested interests that the MP might be brave in confronting, well before any spending limits for an actual recall petition kicked in.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

We have heard the word “vexatious” used a lot in this debate, but people with strongly held views on abortion, for example, are not vexatious. I am not suggesting that the Minister is saying that, but I think that we need to differentiate between vexatious silliness and people having strongly held personal beliefs that might be at odds with certain groups within their constituencies.

[Greg Clark]

The right hon. Gentleman—everyone who has contributed today seems to be right hon. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Of course Parliament, and election to it, should be the subject of significant debate on issues of contention; that is the purpose of Parliament, and of standing for election. Therefore, it is not right to assume that any challenge to an MP would be, in and of itself, vexatious—quite the opposite—but at times it might be possible for people with less high-minded motives to take that approach.

Let me briefly address the principal amendments and new clauses in this group. Amendment 1 and new clause 1, tabled and spoken to by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park, would delete the two conduct-related triggers for the recall of an MP and replace them with a system of petition-based recall for any reason, to be initiated by 5% of the electorate signing a notice of intent to recall. That would trigger an official recall petition that, if signed by 20% of the electorate within eight weeks, would lead to a recall referendum. If the majority of those voting in that referendum voted for recall, the seat would be vacated and a by-election called. There is nothing to stop repeated, or even parallel, notice of recall petitions being lodged, all with attendant publicity and each requiring only 5% of the electorate to sign, meaning that an MP could suffer a prolonged bombardment of negative publicity in that way.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

The Minister said on Second Reading that he thought that the Bill needed to be improved and that there could be amendments. If not these, does he have in mind some Government amendments to deal with some of the issues about democracy?

19:15

[Greg Clark]

I do, and if my right hon. Friend—I know him to be right hon.—is patient, I will make those suggestions later.

New clause 2 is operable only if amendment 1 and new clause 1 are passed. It provides for a 200-word statement by the promoter of the recall petition, and a reply by the defending MP, to be included in the petition. Let me say something about some of the flaws in that understandable provision. The notice of intent to recall could contain accusations that are unfounded or unproven. Although the MP would of course have the right to reply, the inclusion of an unfair and unfounded statement on an official communication to every elector would almost certainly damage their reputation, particularly as the petition officer has a duty to send the statement to everyone on the electoral roll. Indeed, the statement could be positively libellous, and although the MP could seek damages though the courts, the injury to their reputation would be difficult, if not impossible, to repair.

[Mr Lansley]

Whereas my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) included in clause 9 of his Recall of Elected Representatives Bill a provision whereby any process would be stayed where there was an indictment on a chargeable offence, that has not been included in the amendments before us today. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is another flaw in the amendments? Clearly a notice of intent could include statements that would be prejudicial to a police investigation, as well as potentially very libellous and unfounded. My right hon. Friend has not yet noted this—I am sure that he has read it—but in those circumstances the Member would be given two working days in which to frame a reply to the statement of reasons.

[Greg Clark]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. He points to some other flaws in the amendment, which in itself is designed to be sensible and constructive, as having a statement and a rebuttal is clearly sensible.

Let me turn to the amendments tabled by a group of colleagues on both sides of the House, including the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome, my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), the hon. Members for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) and my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith). I have a great deal of sympathy with the thinking behind the amendments, which the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome set out comprehensively. They would give the public a role, which some have felt has been missing, in initiating recall, and provide an answer to the charge that one flaw of the Bill is that it is about MPs marking their own homework. Those are two themes that emerged on Second Reading. In line with our manifesto commitments, and with the views of many Members who spoke on Second Reading, and indeed today, the important point about the amendments is that they would keep the recall process focused on misconduct, which I think is the advantage of the approach he has set out.

The amendments propose that where misconduct in public office is alleged, electors in a constituency would be able to start a petition to initiate a recall process. They would require 100 electors to support the petition before it could be presented to an election court. I do not need to labour the point—my hon. Friend mentioned it—that this is a suggested way forward that clearly raises important legal drafting requirements, so I do not think that it will be possible at this stage to commit to endorsing them. But I think that he has proposed an important avenue and the possibility of a third trigger that is linked to an initiative of the public, which is valuable.

With regard to some of the difficulties, there is a widening of the definition of misconduct to include “gross dereliction of duty”. As others have said, that would require some understanding of what that might embrace.

[Lady Hermon]

In relation to the possibility of the Government looking at a third trigger relating to misconduct in public office and the question whether that applies equally to Northern Ireland and Scotland and to England and Wales, may I say ever so gently to the Minister that issues such as parading, stopping parading, flying flags and not flying flags can be criminal offences in Northern Ireland, and public representatives may become involved in them, so drafting this provision carefully in relation to Northern Ireland will take some time?

[Greg Clark]

We will attend to the points that the hon. Lady makes. They apply perhaps with even more force to the possibility of a recall in Northern Ireland being triggered initially by 5% of the electorate, for any reason. In relation to the arrangements in Northern Ireland, we have taken care not to cause repeated debate and contention when that would be against the interests of democracy in the Province. Nevertheless, I will reflect on her words.

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

May I take the Minister to task about his comments on new clause 2, which stands in my name? He suggested that there is almost a greater likelihood of libellous statements being put on the statement of reasons than on anything else. In an election process, many pieces of paper are put into the public domain, and they are properly scrutinised. I do not believe that anybody who puts out something that is potentially libellous will not feel the full force of the law. The duty of care remains, come what may, and this document is no more susceptible to a problem than any election leaflet.

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend takes me to task in a very gentle way. It may be true that election leaflets may contain statements that are contentious to the point of being alleged to be untruthful, but a statement that is supplied by the returning officer to every elector may be viewed as having official authority, whereas the leaflets that we produce at election time, whatever our intentions, may be discounted to a greater extent, if I may put it that way.

[Anne Marie Morris]

But the Post Office delivers our election addresses to every single household, and that gives them some standing: they are not just pieces of marketing.

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend makes a reasonable point. She will remember that I applauded the intention of her new clause, which was to allow a reason to be given for a recall. However, even the arrangements that we have at present were not sufficient to deal with a case where a very offensive statement was circulated linking the candidacy of Members of the European Parliament to a protest against the murder of Lee Rigby in a wholly distasteful way. These things are not proof against abuses of the kind that I mentioned.

[Kevin Brennan]

Will the Minister give way?

[Greg Clark]

Once more, and then I will make some progress.

[Kevin Brennan]

Is the Minister’s understanding of the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) that they could cause an hon. Member to be subject to a recall petition for voting against those amendments?

[Greg Clark]

I do not know whether departure from an election manifesto would constitute a reason for recall under my hon. Friend’s proposals, but the hon. Gentleman stood on the same manifesto as we did in favour of our brand of recall. He is tempting me on to a path that it is probably not profitable to go down.

Let me say to my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome and the colleagues who signed his amendment that I understand where they are coming from. I am willing to contemplate ways to improve this Bill, and between now and Report I undertake to reflect seriously on how that can be done.

I have much sympathy with the amendment to new clause 2 tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice).

[Wayne David]

Will the Minister give way?

[Greg Clark]

No. I want to make a bit of progress, if I may.

The amendment would ensure that the statement of reasons could not contain reasons relating to a Member’s freedom of expression in Parliament, including what an MP said or how he or she voted. In other words, recall by petition would be focused on conduct, not causes. However, it would not stop people campaigning for recall based on what the MP did in Parliament; it would simply prevent the statement of reasons from being disclosed in relation to the statutory requirement to avoid such matters. Other publicity could state with impunity other reasons, perhaps the real reasons, behind the move to recall an MP. It therefore would not work as a safeguard, which many Members will wish for, to prevent Members’ freedom of expression from being used to recall them. I hope that my right hon. Friend will reflect on that, and we will look to see whether the spirit of the amendment might be carried forward separately.

I turn to the amendments tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Mr Robathan), who is not in his place. They would give the Bill retrospective effect in that a currently serving MP who had been suspended by the House for at least 21 sitting days would be liable to a recall petition. Only one such person is currently sitting in Parliament—the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who was suspended for a month in 2002. The House tends not to favour retrospectivity. In general, the courts impose punishments for offences that were current at the time of the offence.

[Jim Dowd (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

For the sake of clarity, if the amendment were to be passed, would, for example, the 10-day suspension of the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws) be in the bank so that he could afford only another 11, were that to arise?

[Greg Clark]

No, because suspensions are not cumulative, and that would be below the trigger level.

It is in a similar spirit that I approach the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife and his colleagues. I welcomed the tone of his remarks and his commitment to finding ways to strengthen this Bill, where they are available, so that it can command the support of the House and, indeed, the country. Amendment 45 makes the second trigger more easily sprung, if I may put it like that. It would reduce the suspension that triggered recall from 21 to 10 sitting days—this is partly an answer to the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Jim Dowd)—or from 28 to 14 continuous days were it to be expressed in that way. Since 2000, four MPs have been recommended for a suspension that would trigger the second condition for recall. Under the amendment, nine rather than four MPs would have been subject to recall.

I accept the constructive spirit in which the amendment was offered, but let me explain my difficulty with it. There are two ways in which an MP can be suspended from the House: first, through a recommendation by the Standards and Privileges Committee; or secondly, and this relates to your chairmanship of this Committee, Mr Amess, through disorderly conduct in the Chamber and then being named by the Speaker. If an MP is suspended after being named by the Speaker, the suspension is for five sitting days for a first offence and 20 sitting days for a second offence. Setting the figure at 21 sitting days, as the Bill does, excludes the possibility that a suspension from the House following being named by the Speaker for a second offence would trigger recall. I do not think that was the intention of the disciplinary measures that are in place.

Members in all parts of the House have incurred the sanction of the Chair. Being suspended is not a trivial matter. It seems to me, however, that breaking the rules of order in the Chamber is not the same as a suspension for misconduct based on a recommendation by the Standards and Privileges Committee. Tam Dalyell, for example, was suspended for 20 days in 1989 for having been named twice. Because of this technical overlap, I hope that the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife will reflect on the drafting of the amendment and not press it to a vote.

[Mr David Davis]

This goes straight to the point that I raised with my right hon. Friend about the hon. Member for Bradford West (George Galloway), who, if I remember correctly, was suspended for 21 days for refusing to apologise after impugning the merits—shall we say?—of other Members of this House. Many things would lead to this. Ian Paisley the elder was, I think, named a couple of times and suspended. These things should not come anywhere near to causing a recall. That is part of the problem with the Government’s mechanism, which is being held up as precise and effective but is in fact a blunt weapon of considerable size and unexpected outcomes.

[Greg Clark]

My right hon. Friend makes the same point as I am making to the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife. The reduction of the trigger would bring into scope the suspensions that are occasioned for disorderly conduct in the House.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Will the Minister give the Government’s view on my amendment? If the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park fails, my amendment would still stand, because it applies to the whole Bill. It states that no action would be initiated on the basis of votes cast or of what a Member says in the Chamber or does in motions. Are the Government prepared to look kindly on my amendment and consider it?

19:30

[Greg Clark]

I always look kindly on any proposals by my hon. Friend. I intend to finish with his amendment, so I will come to it. I completely respect and approve of the sentiment behind it, and I hope my hon. Friend will accept what I say in response to it.

Let me make some progress, because I have spoken as much as other Members have. Labour’s amendment 46 would ensure that a Member of Parliament who was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for an offence committed before this Bill is enforced would be subject to a recall petition process. It would cover historic offences that, though not committed at the time of the MP’s election, were not known to the electorate at the time.

I have great sympathy for that point. As I said earlier, retrospectivity is extremely rare in this House, but this is an important point about the electorate’s ability to judge a Member’s misconduct. If a Member had committed an offence and the information was not in the public domain, and if they were elected with the electorate being in ignorance of that offence and it subsequently came to light and was the subject of a conviction, I think that that is a circumstance in which it would be reasonable for that Member to be recalled. I will return to the issue and hope the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife will engage in some discussions with me, which might satisfy the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David), who is sitting behind him, to see whether we can more perfectly capture that point in the Bill.

Amendment 47 would mean that a Member of Parliament convicted for any offence under section 10 of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009—that is, an offence related to MPs’ allowances—would be subject to recall regardless of the sentence imposed. I think the whole House will want to send a clear signal that criminal abuse of the expenses system will lead to judgment before constituents as well as court. The amendment is technically deficient, because the way in which it would be placed in the Bill would rule out the possibility of an appeal, unlike the other criminal triggers. I again offer to work with the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife to see whether we can agree on a considered reflection of that purpose for Members to consider on Report.

Finally, as far as amendments tabled by Opposition Front Benchers are concerned, amendments 48 and 49 would mean that, if an MP was suspended from their role in another elected capacity, including from their parish council, district council, county council, devolved legislature, city council or the European Parliament—the hon. Gentleman mentioned a hypothetical example that might have caused him to reflect on this matter—they should be able to be subject to recall from this House.

There is certainly a debate to be had about recall for elected offices, as I made clear on Second Reading. This is a limited Bill, but that is not to say that there is not a good case to be made for provisions to be extended elsewhere in due course. Until that debate is concluded, however, it would seem odd that a councillor could be recalled from this place because of a suspension from the council when they could not be recalled from the council itself. It also raises the question of whether a parish council’s standards for suspension, for instance, are an accurate reflection of the practice in this place. Without being churlish to the hon. Gentleman—I had some experience in opposition of drafting amendments—I should like to point out that it is pointless to include a reference to the European Parliament, since one cannot be an MP and an MEP at the same time.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Unfortunately, my new clause 4 was outside the scope of this Bill, but it would have empowered the devolved institutions with the ability to introduce their own recall mechanisms, if they wished to do so. On Second Reading, the Minister said there had been no such request from the devolved Parliaments. If that request was forthcoming, when would the Government be able to legislate?

[Greg Clark]

I cannot answer that question. The scope of the Bill is set. We had not at that time had such a request and I cannot say whether one has been made since.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The Minister has mentioned the European Parliament. Does he not think it ironic that MEPs can be convicted of fraud of their expenses and still remain Members of the European Parliament? From 2009 to 2014, I think that three UKIP Members fiddled their expenses but were not thrown out of the European Parliament.

[Greg Clark]

I repeat what I said on Second Reading: I think there is a strong case to extend these provisions to other elected bodies, but the Bill proposed by our manifestos and the coalition agreement related to this place.

Amendment 41, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), would not allow speeches, questions or voting to be reasons for recall. I completely sympathise with my hon. Friend’s intention. Having served under his chairmanship of the Public Accounts Committee, I saw the ferocity of his interrogation of some witnesses, and were they misfortunate enough to be his constituents, that might well lead them to trigger a recall petition, which would be completely inappropriate.

I am afraid, however, that the amendment would have unforeseen consequences. Specifically, the suspension of a Member for tabling parliamentary questions in return for payment might be precisely the sort of misconduct for which this Bill is designed to trigger recall. Therefore, to exclude questions, speeches and so on would not serve the purpose that my hon. Friend and I would wish to see, but I understand and agree with the spirit behind his amendment. When we come to Report and as the Bill progresses, I will reflect seriously on the issue. If he will join me in a conversation about that, I will see what we can do at the next stage.

I hope I have given a reasonable assessment of the Government’s take on the amendments and that the Committee can continue its debate on that basis.

[Geraint Davies]

I have in my hand “Profiles in Courage”, a book written by John F. Kennedy 50 years ago when he was in hospital with a back injury inflicted during the war. It is about eight Senators in American history whose common characteristic was that they stood up for principle against the popular view and often against their own party. They often suffered the electoral consequence of that, which eventually resulted in the termination of their political careers.

I want to focus on the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), because it strikes me that the essence of what they propose is in fact in direct contradiction with the aim of encouraging noble behaviour such as that of past politicians—not only in America, but here—who stood up for what they believed was right, not what was popular.

During this simple debate, many of us—possibly all of us—will have been inundated with e-mails from 360 Degrees. [Hon. Members: “38 Degrees.”] 38 Degrees—that’s the one. I remember it well. 360 Degrees is the evolutionary future—the mutation—of 38 Degrees. If the hon. Gentleman’s amendments are agreed to, we could look forward to powerful groups with vested interests—be they people who are on the political margins or those with financial interests—focusing their fire through mass mailings in order to conjure up an apparent demand for the recall of a particular Member over something that had nothing to do with their misconduct, but everything to do with a political position that might not be popular.

Like other Members, I fear that politics today—and this is the view of the public—is too much driven by focus groups or politicians seeking to please particular people, rather than giving some leadership and seeing the fruits of their fortune mature over time. As I mentioned earlier, I stood against a particular planning decision on beach motorbiking, which seemed popular at the time. After debate and consideration, the council came round to the view that there would be environmental damage to the beaches and an impact on Swansea’s image as a quality tourist destination, and residents came round to the view that it would spark weekend motorbike joyriding and so on. Over time, the view of the public in fact changed, but had there been a recall system at that time, had there been financial support from those who wanted to make money out of that venture—there could be thousands of such examples—it not only might have ended the career of the MP, but more likely have been background noise that caused intimidation.

If companies with financial interests in planning, or a group of such financial organisations, persevere on a particular issue over several years and choose to target different people at different times, they can corrupt or distort the way in which certain Members behave through intimidation behind the scenes or directly. That is a very dangerous direction in which to be going.

Alongside that is the issue of particular political groups or parties. To return to the example of Guantanamo Bay, some people in my then constituency took the view that my standing up for a constituent there—for their rights to a fair trial, a fair hearing and fair treatment—was completely irrelevant, because my constituent was obviously guilty before having been tried and I should not be talking about him. If somebody had wanted to make a big issue about that, I might have been in a more difficult position. As I mentioned earlier, I like to think that I would have continued to stand up for principles rather than popularity, but we are all in Parliament in a democratic situation. The point I am trying to make is that, in the round, if we allow the amendments of the hon. Member for Richmond Park to go through, it would be an intrinsic corruption of our democracy.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

Before Chris Mullin became a Member of Parliament, he campaigned with great courage for the release of the Birmingham Six, for which he was denounced by so many newspapers and all the rest of it. Knowing him, he would have done exactly the same if he had been a Member of Parliament, but can my hon. Friend imagine what would have happened to him with a recall and how difficult it would have been for him to campaign so courageously, even though he had a pretty safe seat when he did become a Member?

[Geraint Davies]

The point about Chris Mullin is well made. Different people with different temperaments in different situations, with different constituencies with different profiles and majorities, will face different stresses and strains—not just actual and in your face, but behind the scenes. As I have said, that might have a very corrosive influence on democracy itself, and we should stand fully against it.

All of us like to think that despite pressure behind the scenes or otherwise, one would put principle before popularity. With fixed-term Parliaments, we know that we will have five years of making difficult decisions, but have the time to explain such things. However, we might be faced with instant demands or pressures, which—let us face it—might be orchestrated by political parties against those in particularly marginal seats. There would be issue after issue, and requests to do this and to do that. People from 38 Degrees, or whatever it is called, are just the tip of the iceberg. Lots of other groups would insist on the immediate satisfaction of their demands. It is easy to get groups of people to send in letters without their thinking through the issues. It would all become a sort of crowd mentality, and before we knew it, people who should be MPs would be intimidated and not stand, and it would also interfere with the quality of people who came forward.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Surely the defence against the scenario that the hon. Gentleman presents is the fact that the threshold, as suggested in the amendments of the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), would be 20% of the electorate, and that people would physically have to visit the town hall and put their name to a recall petition. [Interruption.] Well, it would be 20% to initiate the final recall mechanism for a recall by-election. In my constituency, that would be more than 11,000 people. If 11,000 people went to the town hall in Ammanford and wanted my recall, I would resign myself.

[Geraint Davies]

Yes, but my understanding is that 5% would be needed to start the process.

My issue is with recall being within the armoury of those who want to intimidate people for any reason. On the face of it, it might be for a policy reason, but I thought that we were supposed to be discussing behavioural issues in relation to conduct and doing the right thing. Obviously, if we break a law, we should not be above the law, but I might be an MP and support the wrong football team. People may laugh at this, but people might say, “We don’t want someone for Liverpool who supports West Ham”, and there might be enough of them to mount a challenge, which would be a massive distraction.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Tempting as it is to get 11,000 people to turn up tomorrow in the constituency of the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards), the important point is that—as in the case of Ann Cryer, which I raised earlier, or the very good example given by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick)—in a well-organised campaign with finance or perhaps a newspaper behind it, it would not actually be that difficult to get such numbers of people to turn up.

[Geraint Davies]

That is completely right. Even if it was not possible in many cases to muster such forces, it would obviously be possible in some. The question is whether that is right, and whether it would necessarily be a good reason for recall. Cases have been mentioned of having to confront in particular communities very difficult human rights issues that are difficult to talk about in the first place, but the threat of recall would hang over someone in a marginal seat that had certain movements or certain communities. One needs to be able to talk freely about such matters without intimidation.

[Thomas Docherty]

My hon. Friend mentioned representing somebody who had not been found guilty of anything. I do not know whether he is aware of this, but under the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), if a Member of Parliament faces trial, that due process might be completely bypassed and the MP would go straight to a recall petition. An hon. Member who was subsequently completely exonerated of all charges might have lost their seat in the heat of such a moment.

[Geraint Davies]

Precisely. If one’s defence is, “I’m not a murderer,” all that people hear is the word “murderer”. Clearly, enough charges might be brought against a person who is targeted for whatever reason, perhaps by a political party or financial interest that knows someone else can be put in if they are got out of the way. The example has been given of the American gun lobby displacing someone who wanted to improve people’s protection against guns and replacing them with someone who was clearly in the gun lobby’s pocket. Once a few heads had rolled in various constituencies over time, other MPs would think, “I don’t want to end up like Harry or Harriet”, or whoever it happens to be, and we would get into all sorts of difficulties.

We should guard against the rush to populism in the amendments of the hon. Member for Richmond Park. We should uphold judgment and principle, rather than quick popularity. I find the amendments very worrying, which is why I wanted to speak on this issue.

[Lady Hermon]

The hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long) is not present, but I am sure that she will not mind if I speak for her on this one occasion. She is a member of the Alliance party. She does not sit on Belfast city council, but her party colleagues on the council decided to fly the Union flag on the 17 flag-flying days, rather than 365 days a year. As a consequence, she received death threats. What concerns me about the proposal of the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) is how vulnerable the hon. Lady would become to those who want to make vexatious claims about something over which she had no control.

[Geraint Davies]

I am grateful for that example. It is difficult to imagine how much harassment there would be if the amendment was agreed to. Harassment can happen through a range of mechanisms and can be sophisticated. People would protest using electronic and social media, as well as conventional media, to threaten people with recall. Ultimately, we are all human and we have families. Members will say, “I haven’t done anything wrong, but this is affecting my children in school.”

We need the space to discuss things with clarity and, hopefully, rationality. Obviously we express differences, and we all understand that that can provoke passion. However, to have a mechanism by which we could all be targeted or intimidated, that could distort people’s judgments, and that could affect whether people were here or not would be fundamentally in conflict with the ideals to which we aspire in this House.

[Anne Marie Morris]

Passing a recall Bill is one of the most important things that we can do to restore trust between Members of Parliament and their constituents. I wish that I had heard the word “trust” more in this debate. There is too much concern about the machinations of political parties trying to use the process in an abusive way. Although I understand that concern, surely the most important principle for an MP is that the relationship they have with their constituents must be based on trust.

That is why I supported the introduction of the Bill. It is also why I strongly support the amendments of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith). I have worked with him on a number of the amendments. Accepting them is one of the only ways in which we can support the true meaning of democracy and ensure that our constituents have a genuine say. Although the Government Bill is well-meaning, to have a mechanism that can be triggered in such limited ways does not underscore the trust that must exist between MPs and their constituents. That trust is critical.

I hear the concerns about abuse. It is partly because of those concerns that I tabled new clause 2. I am pleased that there are 67 supporters of that proposition. The new clause intends to take on the challenge of how we should deal with the reason an MP should be subjected to recall. We have talked about the challenge of describing and defining wrongdoing. As has been said many times, it is virtually impossible to do so. The new clause would enable the public to put forward very clearly why a particular Member of Parliament should be subjected to recall.

There are three parts to new clause 2. First, there must be accountability in any system. That is why the reason for recall has to be put forward by a named individual. The name of the individual must be on the record and must be clear at every polling station at which the petition and, ultimately, the referendum are determined. The individual must be willing to put his name forward.

On Second Reading, it was suggested that an individual who was not the prime mover behind the recall petition might be used. I believe that the electorate are sensible enough to work out when something is a sham and when the person is just a place saver. I am therefore not convinced that that is a real risk.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I am sorry, but having read the hon. Lady’s new clause, I do not think it would do anything of the sort. It would leave it wide open for the reason to be a matter of conscience on which the Member has spoken in the House or a matter of conduct in their family life that is nothing to do with this place. The reason could be anything. Only one elector would have to be identified. What about all the other electors? Would she insist that they have their names and addresses published as well?

[Anne Marie Morris]

The hon. Gentleman has not heard my comments on the second part of the new clause. I was talking about the named promoter and will get on to the reason and the right of reply for the Member of Parliament.

The hon. Gentleman’s question about the promoter has already been answered by a number of Members who support the amendments of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park. The general view is that we do not publish how people vote in this country. That is not a matter of public record. Although I understand the concern and think that the idea is worth considering—

[Mr Kevan Jones]

rose—

[Anne Marie Morris]

No, I will not give way. Although I understand the concern, I do not think that that will be an issue.

The second part of the new clause, on which the hon. Gentleman also commented, is the reason. He is right that any reason may be given, but he is wrong if he thinks that the electorate are sufficiently unintelligent and disengaged that they will not read the 200 words carefully to understand what it is about, particularly given the percentages that would be required. This is the opportunity for members of the public to clarify what the individual has done wrong.

One concern that the Minister raised was that the statement might be libellous. I explained that that would be no more of a risk in this document than in any other document that is put out in the same way.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The hon. Lady has not answered my point at all. Like the other supporters of the amendments of the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), she says that any reason may be given for the recall of any Member of Parliament. Some well intentioned individuals might use the provisions, but some people would finance a campaign. In the example that was given by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick), I am sure that a newspaper would have backed a campaign to recall the former Member for Sunderland South. The same might have been true of the example that I gave of Ann Cryer in Keighley.

[Anne Marie Morris]

At the end of the day, it depends upon trust and the view that we take of the electorate. I trust the electorate to make sense of what is written and to make a sensible judgment. The public have to deal with all sorts of comments and accusations in the media every single day. They do not believe everything that is written. I dispute what the hon. Gentleman says because he completely underestimates the trust and intelligence of the British electorate.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

More than 50% of the electorate voted against most Members of the House, including myself and the hon. Lady, when we were elected to this place. Does she not see the trap that political opponents will cause petitions to be raised to try to overturn the results of elections?

[Anne Marie Morris]

Anything is possible. We live in the real world of good and bad, but if we make decisions about introducing such legislation on the assumption that the worst will happen, rather than looking at the best that will happen, and we do not focus on trust, we will be giving the wrong message to the electorate. It should not be a message about us being concerned about some political group ganging up against us—that is the wrong message to give to the electorate. The message should be, “We trust you to make sensible decisions.” That for me is imperative.

20:00

[Lady Hermon]

I am most grateful to the hon. Lady for allowing me to intervene. May I draw her attention to a particular and important scenario in Northern Ireland? Although Northern Ireland was safe enough to host the G8 summit at Lough Erne and the World Police and Fire Games, it is not safe enough for us to know what amount is donated to political parties, and we still have anonymity of political donations to political parties. I would therefore have no idea who had sponsored a recall motion to get rid of me in North Down, and similarly, none of my colleagues from other parties in Northern Ireland would know that because of the anonymity. Big money can buy a recall in Northern Ireland. Will the hon. Lady address that issue?

[Anne Marie Morris]

Clearly, I have no knowledge of Northern Ireland and exactly how it operates, but the hon. Lady makes a fair point and there are issues about funding. However, that applies in every political situation, and I do not think that her points invalidate the suggestion in new clause 2.

It seems to me that along with my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park we have put forward a form of accountability, and with the provision of a reason we have provided some transparency. Under the Government’s arrangements there is no explanation or reason.

[Thomas Docherty]

The hon. Lady is generous in giving way and I have two quick points. At the moment, a voter may choose not to take part in the full register and be only on the so-called edited register. How would new clause 2 apply to such a person? Secondly, is she saying that a Member of Parliament could be recalled not because of something that they did, but because one of their fellow party members did something—such as in the example given by the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon)—or because their party supports a policy? Will the hon. Lady clarify those points?

[Anne Marie Morris]

On the first point, the rules will be exactly the same as in a general election, so I do not see that there is a problem. On a Member being recalled because of something that one of their colleagues said, again I go back to my fundamental point of trust. We either trust the electorate or we do not. They can either see that something is frankly true, or they can see it as rubbish. That would be my view.

New clause 2(3) would enable an MP to have a right of reply. There is currently no provision in the Government’s Bill to give the MP any right of reply, and such a provision would provide fairness.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

The hon. Lady keeps saying that the Government’s proposals—which I think could be improved—do not require somebody to say what the problem is or allow a response, but does she accept that such a process would take place when somebody has been convicted of a criminal offence or been suspended for 21 days, so the problem ought to be fairly obvious?

[Anne Marie Morris]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, but I suppose that I simply do not think the grounds are wide enough. From everything that the Minister has said, it seems that although there are firm red lines that will not be crossed, even he is looking at the Bill to see how it can be improved. Let us talk about the art of the possible rather than the current constrained position in the Bill.

[Jim Dowd]

I am not entirely unsympathetic to the thrust of the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), but for one reason above all others—I think this is the Government’s reason—I am not yet convinced that I will vote for them. We must understand what the threshold is for the process. The Government’s position, even though I do not support it in total, is that a single set of circumstances can deal with this issue. New clause 2 has no threshold, so therefore if one process was concluded unsuccessfully, it would not stop somebody from starting the whole process again. Can the hon. Lady give me any guarantee that that would not happen, once people had been subjected to this measure, and given the damage that even the question of facing recall could do to an individual—

[The Temporary Chair (Mr Jim Hood)]

Order. Interventions must be a lot shorter than that, and not replaced by speeches.

[Anne Marie Morris]

Gosh, that was quite a long intervention and I am not sure I remember it exactly. May I indulge the hon. Gentleman, Mr Hood? Could he remind me in one sentence of what he actually said because the intervention was so long?

[Jim Dowd]

Under the hon. Lady’s proposals, there could be an unsuccessful application for recall, but the whole thing could be started over and over again.

[Anne Marie Morris]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his indulgence; that was a much shorter and better comment. We discussed that point in the Committee, and my recollection is that there is provision to deal with that, so that someone cannot keep requesting recall time and again, as the hon. Gentleman suggests. I apologise for the fact that I cannot point him to the chapter and verse, but I agree that it is an issue that ought to be considered.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

Surely the stop for the process continuing over and over again is the fact of previous failure. A previous failure will obviously stop it, because if people are getting nowhere they will not continue.

[Anne Marie Morris]

The hon. Gentleman is right and that is the way it should work. However, the mechanism that my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park and I are proposing is broader and provides some comfort to those who are concerned that the process will be subject to political game playing.

I have talked through the issues of the promoter, the reason and the opportunity for an MP to be given a right of reply, but I am sure that many amendments could be tabled to my hon. Friend’s proposals to address some of those issues. For example, we could require the statement of reasons to start with a certain sentence, which would mean that the statement had to be about something that we all feel is inappropriate behaviour from a Member of Parliament. There are things that could be done, but they depend on whether we think our starting point should be the Government’s narrow starting point, or a much broader starting point that would come from a position of trust.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Anne Marie Morris]

Not again. Because I think that—

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Anne Marie Morris]

No, I will not: read my lips.

You have been incredibly indulgent, Mr Hood, and I know that many other Members wish to speak in this debate. New clause 2 goes to a matter of trust and is sufficiently important for me to ask for it to have a separate vote when we decide on the amendments. On that note, I will conclude my comments.

[John McDonnell]

I am grateful to the Minister for his response on the calculation of days. To be absolutely clear—again, this is not out of personal interest at all—I take it that this totting-up process is within one parliamentary Session. I would be happy if the Minister confirmed that.

[Greg Clark]

indicated assent.

[John McDonnell]

If there is to be an additional number of days, those cannot be carried over from one Session or some of us may well be in trouble or face the 20 days. I take the straightforward view that this is an evolving piece of legislation, and I am grateful—the Committee will not often hear this—for how Front Benchers have tried to get a dialogue going to hone the legislation to make it effective. I do not know—who am I to speak for the general public?—but from what I understand, I do not think those who have been campaigning for the right of recall for some time will be satisfied either with what the Government are proposing or with the Opposition amendments. I think the public want something much more direct on the ability to recall an MP not just for misconduct or wrongdoing, but because they have said or done something that is so outwith the opinion of their constituents, or so obnoxious, that people are willing to campaign for their recall.

I do not find that a problem. Democracy is a rough old trade at times. We live and die by the sword and the votes. On a number of occasions since I have been in the House, elements within my electorate would have sought a right of recall because of my views on Ireland—I chaired the Guildford Four campaign for a number of years—or, at one point in time, because of my views on the life expectancy of Mrs Thatcher. They should have that right. They should be able to bring together fellow constituents to suggest that something is so appalling that a Member of Parliament should be brought before the court of the electorate once again.

The fundamental issue is the one that my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) raised. How do we get that equivalence of influence or power? I understand his argument that one newspaper with vast amounts of resources could campaign against an MP. The Sun had a pop at me at one point in time but, when that occurred, my popularity went up and my majority increased—that has happened to others. He makes a valid point that that might be different if there is a by-election threat or recall outside a general election.

We need further thought on the right of reply, which the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) mentioned. How can that be strengthened in terms of both the statements that are made and the media? That throws up the issue of media ownership, which is a wider debate. We will be forced to come back to that and other issues at a later stage, but my view is that the electorate are not just demanding the right of reply, and there will be a reaction if we do not give them a right of recall beyond the proposed one.

Some people are not happy with the right of recall campaign by 38 Degrees. It was effective not because it was backed by big finance or a national newspaper, but because it was a grass-roots campaign. E-mails coming in their hundreds can be annoying to some MPs, but they demonstrate the vibrancy of our democracy and people’s interest.

Politics has changed in this country. People’s views are no longer shaped solely by the newspaper they read or by the influence of the magnates who own large sections of the media. We are witnessing a lot more people power. People are able to influence individual campaigns and therefore, rightly, to influence MPs’ views. My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) was anxious about individual campaigns—he mentioned a planning proposal for the beach. I welcome those campaigns. I welcome people’s ability to mobilise and express their views, no matter how forcefully. I find that, when I explain to campaigners that I cannot support them, I win their respect. I am sure the situation is the same in his constituency on most occasions.

[Geraint Davies]

I welcome campaigns in my constituency and a vibrant and active democracy. The question is whether we allow a situation whereby an MP is subject to a series of recall demands or intimidation, which would take us to a different place from the one that my hon. Friend describes, which is simply a healthy democracy.

[John McDonnell]

I do not believe that people petitioning or lobbying, or even media campaigns, are intimidation.

[Geraint Davies]

I am talking about recall.

[John McDonnell]

Well, the right to recall time and again is the exercise of the democratic will of the local people. I do not find that intimidating. It is a democratic expression of views and I welcome it.

In Scotland, there was a huge turnout in the referendum. All of us welcomed it. People might not have welcomed the result at the end of the day, but we all welcomed that turnout. It is alleged that there were elements of intimidation in the campaign. Nevertheless, people had the sense to make up their own minds, whatever intimidation went on.

20:15

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I thank my Friend for giving way on that point. I support the amendment we will vote on later. Clearly, what he says about expanding democracy and participation is true—it is welcome and good. Does he agree that there is a very large elephant parked outside the Chamber, namely the House of Lords, which is not subject to any kind of electoral accountability, and yet has a huge influence on legislation and can decide the future of Bills and laws in this country? Surely we need the right to recall or remove Members of the House of Lords.

[John McDonnell]

We will draft amendments for the next stage of the Bill. I had not even thought of amending it to that extent, but my hon. Friend makes an important point. We could make it a constitutional reform Bill.

[Geraint Davies]

I completely agree that the referendum in Scotland was a great expression of the democratic process, but does my hon. Friend agree with a series of referendums on Scotland? An MP could be recalled every couple of months if there was a focused attack on them. I presume he would not want another vote in Scotland, but perhaps he would.

[John McDonnell]

There may well be another referendum in due course. We might have to listen to the electorate on that and respect their views. If there is a continuous flow of recalls in an individual constituency, that might reflect that there is something seriously wrong within it. I believe the electorate are wiser than that. If a small group campaigned against an individual MP, the electorate would see through it. The electorate who vote in a recall are the same as those who will vote in a general election. I do not see that there would be a significant difference, apart from, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham has said, the focus of big money or a powerful magnate on a short campaign, which we need to address in the debate.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I hear what my hon. Friend says, but he should look at what has happened in the United States. Big money gets behind the campaign. There is a recall when the big money does not like the result—the gun control lobby in Colorado is a good example. The turnout in the recall election can be quite small—I believe it was 36%. The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) said that we would need 51%, but it will be 51% of a small amount of the electorate.

[John McDonnell]

I say again that my hon. Friend makes an extremely valid point on the influence of big money in recall elections, but I remind the House that, even after a recall, the individual has the right to stand at the general election, when the same electorate will vote. Therefore, if an individual is unfairly treated in a recall ballot in that way and unfortunately loses, they can stand at the general election, in which they will have the same standing as every other candidate who puts their name forward. There are protections, but he has a valid point that Front Benchers need to consider. How can an individual have the right to voice their views during a recall campaign in a balanced way, with an equivalence of resources and access to the media? That goes beyond new clause 2, tabled by the hon. Member for Newton Abbot, which I support. When the recall campaigns take off, they will be driven in some instances into the local media, and in some instances the national media.

It is a simple principle: trust the electorate and the people. The proposed system still has the hurdle of the House taking a decision on whether a recall process is set in motion. The proposal still involves the House narrowing the definition of the basis for recall. Our constituents might have a much wider view of misconduct and wrongdoing, and we must listen to them.

This is not just about restoring confidence in Parliament. We went downhill in the expenses scandal—that disaster affected all MPs, no matter how honest they were, and those who drove us into the mire damaged us all. We are slowly building confidence. I agree with other hon. Members: people come into the House to do good. This was an honourable profession, and I believe it still is. For most of us, the proudest moment of our lives was when we were elected to represent our constituents. The recall discussions will give the message that we have listened and are willing to tackle the problem, no matter how hard it is.

[Naomi Long (Belfast East) (Alliance)]

I accept much of what the hon. Gentleman says. However, does he agree that MPs from the larger parties have a degree of protection in that they can afford to continue to fight against recall petitions and elections, and that if MPs from minor parties, who have limited resources, are constantly put under the pressure of recall, they would be eliminated not for any wrongdoing, but simply because they can no longer afford to fight to hold their seat?

[John McDonnell]

That is a valid point about equivalence of arms, and the Front Benches should examine further the controls on expenditure during such periods, as well as the right of access to the media. I should point out, however, that some of us in the larger parties might not get complete protection in some instances—I shall put it no more strongly than that.

I support the amendments, and I welcome the willingness of those on the Front Benches to work together to get a workable piece of legislation that we can all support. I also look forward to the amendment to abolish the House of Lords to be tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn).

[Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I speak to the amendments as someone who is accustomed to being in the eye of a political storm. I am possibly the only MP in the Chamber who has had an attempt at recall mounted against them. When my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) first tabled the amendments, he asked me to speak about my own experience. At the time I decided not to do so, because I did not think it was particularly appropriate. But having heard some of the hot air in the Chamber tonight, I feel compelled to use my own example, and its consequences, to lay some of those bogus arguments to rest.

Two years ago today, I took part in a reality TV programme called “I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here” and I disappeared to Australia. The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) asked what would happen if a local or national newspaper ran a campaign against an MP, but I had every national newspaper against me and not just for a day but for a month—in my study they stand waist high. Of course, none of those newspapers said that Parliament was in recess. None of them said that I did not miss any Government legislation. None of them said that I had spent every day of the summer in my constituency office and the trip was my holiday. There were even Members who joined in the outcry against me, giving comments to the newspapers from their sun loungers from Barbados to Benidorm. Nobody said, “Oh, by the way, we are in recess”, and a massive media storm ensued. Even my local radio station, BBC Three Counties, went to my constituency and vox-popped constituents. It did not take comments from constituents who were backing me—it refused to do so. The national media created a perfect storm and rode on the crest of it for an entire month, giving them thousands of column inches.

In the middle of all of that, someone decided that I should be recalled and that they would get together a national petition. Out of the entire UK population of 65 million, one month to the day after the furore started, a national online, click and send petition—the type to which someone can contribute when they have had a bottle of red wine, or been down the pub, or read the local newspaper and got really angry with what they have read—had just 766 signatures. Facebook was a different story. The petition got just 16 likes.

So it is nonsense to say that the media can attack Members or whip up their constituents to get them recalled. There was no national newspaper, political programme or radio station that did not have it in for me during that month when I was in Australia—

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Nadine Dorries]

I am not going to give way at all.

Anyone would think that every one of my constituents loathed me, but they did not. In fact, hardly any of my constituents signed that petition.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Nadine Dorries]

No. The hon. Gentleman has taken up enough time with interventions tonight.

My constituents did not sign that petition because they know the kind of MP that I am. I am not a party-political MP. When I am in my constituency I am not a Conservative MP—I represent everybody, regardless of what political party they vote for, and my constituents know that. They also know that I will go the extra mile. I do not do surgeries once a month—most times I do them every week. My constituents know that I will go the extra mile for them. They know that I do not get involved in grubby political games in Parliament. They know that I represent them. I put my constituency before my party, and I put my constituents before Westminster. I have always done that—

[Mr Jones]

Stand as an independent then.

[The Temporary Chair (Mr Jim Hood)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman has had a lot to say tonight in interventions, and he should stay in order when the hon. Lady is on her feet.

[Nadine Dorries]

My constituents know exactly what type of MP I am. There has been an elephant sat inside—not outside—the Chamber tonight, and it is the reason why the Government have introduced the Bill. They have not introduced it because the public have infinite trust in us, or because they think MPs are wonderful people that work hard for their constituents. The Bill has been introduced because the people do not trust politicians any more. They have no faith in us. They need to know that they can have more democratic control over what we do here because they do not like a lot of what they see going on.

I know that most MPs come here to work hard and look after their constituents, but the Whips Office holds the keys to power and ministerial ambition so there is a difference between the consideration that some MPs give to their constituents and what they give to their own political ambition and their climb up the greasy pole. The difference is as vast as that between sound and silence. Many MPs are one person in their constituencies and a different person entirely at Westminster. People are sick of the Whip system, the parliamentary system and the party-political system. They do not want to see that any more because they want people to represent them. They want their opinions represented here. They do not want grimy deals done such as, “Don’t defect to UKIP and I’ll make you a Minister” or “Don’t vote for this Bill because the Liberal Democrats don’t want you to.” They know about those deals and they are disgusted. That is why we have the Bill.

The amendments could have been a little grittier, but it is vital that we vote for them. It has been argued tonight that Members could be removed for their position on a particular policy, but if they are good MPs that is nonsense. It has been argued that an MP could be removed because of a political row, but I am sure that all the 766 people who signed that petition were supporters of the Opposition. During the 2009 expenses crisis, one thing we knew was that everybody nationally hated MPs, but on a constituency basis many people said, “No, we don’t like MPs, but our MP is okay.” That is because they know what we do for them and the type of person we are. When MPs do fall down, it is because they ignore their constituents, do the grubby deals and put their own personal ambition above the interests of their constituency. A former Minister complained about the Bill today. I asked whether he would vote for it if he was still a Minister, and he said, “Of course I would.” That is the root of the problem—collective responsibility and putting party first.

We need this Bill. I do not believe that we will have the benefit of the British public’s trust unless the Bill goes further and we vote through the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park. Any MP arguing that thousands of people, just because they are political opponents, would walk down to the town hall and put their names on a register to get them out because the local newspaper has a campaign against them, is talking absolute nonsense. Nobody has anything to fear. If you are a good MP, if you put your constituency first, if you are part of the people in your constituency, and if you take no notice of your Whips Office but do what you should do in principle and do what is right for the people who elected you, then you have nothing to fear from either the amendments or the Bill.

[Mr Winnick]

I shall be brief. Let me make it quite clear that I certainly have respect for the electorate. Having been elected nine times, and crossing my fingers that there will be a 10th time, I have every reason to respect the electorate, but my respect would be the same if the electorate’s decision had been different.

20:29

I think there is a general consensus that there should be a recall mechanism. The real debate is how we are going to have a recall mechanism that does not damage MPs or their ability to campaign on various matters if they so wish. Let me say again, I do not want any kind of cover-up. In the previous Parliament, I was in a minority of about four or five MPs—I was standing on the Government Benches and there were one or two Liberal Democrats on the Opposition Benches—arguing on a Friday that the Freedom of Information Act 2000 should be applied to Parliament. There was a good deal of opposition to that. That opposition was not expressed when we debated the matter on successive Fridays, but in other ways and we know what happened in the end. I do not want any cover-ups. I believe that what we do and what we spend should be known to the public as it is now. Moreover, I used to campaign in the 1990s and before then for the outside financial interests of MPs to be revealed. There was a great deal of opposition, but that has all changed. So whatever criticism can be made against me—I am rather critical of the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith)—it cannot be said that my point of view comes from a desire to cover things up from the electorate.

Why am I hesitant, to say the least, to support the hon. Gentleman’s amendment? I feel it could act as a kind of inhibition on MPs wishing to campaign. We are constantly told outside, “What we want are not MPs who go through the Division Lobby because the Whips tell them to do so; they should be more independent and be able to make up their own minds.” I hope that to some extent we all try to do that in our own particular way if we are not in the Government or in the official Opposition team. However, I come back to the point I made in interventions. There have been campaigns that have made Britain a better and more civilised place: the campaign to abolish capital punishment; the campaign to legalise homosexuality; and campaigns to bring about other changes, for example in the 1960s to outlaw racial discrimination. Without wishing to be too party political, that was opposed by the official Tory Opposition at the time. Those campaigns were unpopular. Some might say that a recall mechanism would not have made any difference because the MPs involved in those campaigns would have continued regardless. It is true that they would have done so, but it would have made life that much more difficult. In addition to the normal opposition that one inevitably faces in their constituencies and in the media and so on, they would have been constantly faced with a recall mechanism being applied. If that were not successful, there would have been another and so on and so forth. I could be wrong, but there would have been more difficulties for the sort of campaigns I have mentioned.

I have already mentioned Chris Mullin this evening. Just imagine a Member of Parliament getting up in the House of Commons at the time of the undoubted atrocities committed near my constituency in Birmingham in November 1974 when 21 people were murdered to say that there had been a miscarriage of justice. We now know that people were wrongly convicted, but saying that would take great courage. It so happened that the person concerned was not a Member of Parliament at the time, but I repeat that he would have done the same if he had been in the House of Commons. If an MP had campaigned against such a miscarriage of justice—the Guildford Four are another example—in the face of constant calls, encouraged by the press and others, for recurrent recall mechanisms, it would surely have made their life that much more difficult.

[Mr MacNeil]

On the fear of recurrent recalls, does the hon. Gentleman agree that an amendment should be tabled requiring that a person pay a deposit to call a recall referendum, as is the case for elections to Parliament, in order to inhibit constant recall mechanisms and time wasting? The deposit might be redeemable only on a successful recall.

[Mr Winnick]

It might or it might not.

In future reform campaigns, we will need the courage of MPs to do as I have indicated and not to feel inhibited by the greater pressure put on them by the recall mechanism. If an MP in a highly marginal constituency—my first, and only, majority in Croydon was 81—was elected with a majority of, say, 100 or 150, perhaps winning it for their party for the first time, would they, being keen to get re-elected, think that the time to take up a controversial issue? They might wonder what purpose it would serve, given their slender majority. Of course, it is easier for Members with larger majorities to pursue such campaigns, but those with tiny majorities would feel greatly inhibited from doing what they might otherwise consider necessary.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I accept the point about tiny majorities, of course, but the question is whether we adopt the proposal from my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), the proposal for a 50% threshold to get rid of an MP or the Government’s proposal for 15% or 20%—or is it 5%? Whichever way, it is a relatively small number. That is the problem.

[Mr Winnick]

Yes, it might be. As I said at the start, there is bound to be a recall mechanism that the House will approve by a majority—that is inevitable—but I stress what the Labour spokesman and others have said about the importance of distinguishing between conduct and policy. I was in the last Parliament and I have no doubt that we did ourselves a great deal of damage. It is said that the House of Commons has never been popular. It was said last week that in October 1834, when the building went up in flames, people actually cheered, and I have even heard it said—although I find it difficult to believe, because I am not aware of any great scandal or any allegations of MPs taking unfair rations—that the House of Commons was not particularly popular during the war. We should not have any illusions. Nevertheless, damaging and justified accusations were made against many Members and, even though a large majority of MPs were found not guilty of fiddling their expenses, collectively the accusations did us a great deal of damage, and had that damage not been done, it is unlikely we would be discussing this matter now. I have no illusions about that.

I do not question for one moment the sincerity of the hon. Member for Richmond Park. I know that he has a genuine view, which he has expressed—indeed, I think he expressed it before he came to the House of Commons—but I have to say, for the reasons I have stated, that I have some disagreement, to say the least with what he is proposing. I would rather have a different mechanism.

The only other point I would make is about the danger of tit for tat. I will not mention a certain Member, but I can imagine that in this Parliament there would have been a great deal of pressure from one side to start the recall mechanism. If that had happened, the other side would inevitably have acted in the same way. It is always the same in the House of Commons: if one side starts a process that is damaging to the other side, the other side responds accordingly. We could have this tit-for-tat business—it might not happen, but it is a possibility—where MPs put great pressure on their leaders by saying, “Why don’t we start the recall process? The other side did it over X; why don’t we do it over Y?” I wonder whether that would do much good for the reputation of the House of Commons.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

It seems to me that one of the big issues with trust in politicians concerns money. Does my hon. Friend agree that we really should look at Members’ second jobs, which has a lot to do with the erosion of trust?

[Mr Winnick]

I am sure my hon. Friend is right. At the end of it, I hope we will all reach a consensus of a kind—well, at least a majority.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned tit for tat, but does not game theory suggest that if someone knew that starting a recall effort would be reacted to by the other side—if, indeed, the motive was political—that would prevent the process from starting in the first place? The potential for tit for tat eliminates that possibility, which brings us back to dealing with genuine scenarios.

[Mr Winnick]

It might do, and that scenario might not arise in the first place. I am just saying that there is a possibility that if that did happen, it could damage the reputation of the House of Commons. All these are matters that I hope will be taken into consideration.

I hope that we will reach a majority—I said “consensus” earlier; “majority” is a better word—so that we can say we will have a mechanism, but one that will work. It should also be one—this is the purpose of my intervention in the debate—that does not hinder Members of Parliament in raising issues, however controversial or unpopular, that they believe to be right.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I rise to speak to amendment 41, standing in my name, which would add the words:

“No action shall be initiated against an MP in relation to a recall petition process on the basis, or as a result of votes cast, speeches made or any text submitted for tabling by such an MP, within, or as a part of, a parliamentary proceeding.”

It is quite obvious what I am trying to get at, and I am afraid I disagree with my hon. Friends the Members for Mid Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries) and for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith). I believe that parliamentary privilege and our freedom to say anything in this House, knowing that we will be held to account only in a general election, is a very powerful defence of liberty against tyranny. It is a matter of the utmost importance, and I think that the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park is extraordinarily dangerous.

I know that the very phrase “parliamentary privilege” sounds a bit old fashioned and pompous, but it is terribly important in our history. As the Library put it,

“The ancient origins of parliamentary privilege, and the archaic language that is sometimes used in describing it, should not disguise its continuing relevance and value. As we have noted…the work of Parliament is central to our democracy, and its proceedings must be immune from interference by the executive, the courts or anyone else who may wish to impede or influence those proceedings in pursuit of their own ends.”

For centuries, we have maintained from the Bill of Rights the absolute freedom of extraordinarily difficult, unpopular, unfashionable people to say difficult, unfashionable, unpopular things in this House, knowing that nobody outside in any court—this is where I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), who wants to set up some electoral process or court, or whatever it is called—can hold them to account. Every Member has known for centuries that they have the freedom to express very unpopular opinions, knowing that they can be held to account only at a subsequent general election.

20:45

Indeed, why do we slam the door in the face of Black Rod at the opening of Parliament? History is important. There was a time when the King marched up that aisle and tried to arrest some of us. It was not because we were guilty of some corrupt act; it was because we were saying things that the Executive did not like. Ever since then, and culminating in the events of the 1680s—when, I am sorry to say, there was a king on the throne who was trying to set up an absolute monarchy—we have maintained this privilege through the Bill of Rights. It is not some old-fashioned, archaic term that is irrational and that should be swept away on a tide of populism. If we were to go down the Richmond Park route, we would not be making this place more democratic and accountable. Actually, we would be silencing the freedom of this place to express unpopular opinion.

[Mr MacNeil]

What I think the hon. Gentleman has been describing over a period of centuries has been the evolution of politics and the evolution of democracy right on to the granting of universal suffrage. I would argue that what the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) is suggesting and wants us to move towards is the next extension in that evolution of democracy that started those 300 or 400 years ago.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I know that that is what my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park argues and I know that the new hon. Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell) argues the same—that this place is somehow increasingly irrelevant, part of a Westminster political class or an elite and that we need rather to transfer power into some sort of referendum-based democracy. This, however, is a sort of Poujadist argument, and if we look at history, we find that it has often led to tyranny. Dare I say it, some insurrections that have come from the right—I shall not mention any political party that has been in the news recently—often result in stirring up a feeling in the country that things are really appalling. Then a particular group of people can be picked on—it may be Poles now, it might have been Jews in the last century and might have been Catholics in the 17th century—and popular opinion can be whipped up, followed by an attack on the so-called establishment or on particular MPs for what they are saying.

There is a lot of wisdom in this place. We are a parliamentary democracy; we discuss things among ourselves. That is not an elitist thing to say. We are having a good debate now, and we have heard wonderful speeches from the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), who argued for one point of view, and from the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), who has argued from a different point of view. We have heard different speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Mid Bedfordshire and for Richmond Park. We will hear other speeches from the Minister, who might offer us a half-way case. We are discussing the issues in a rational and popular way, but we know that nothing we say here, no vote that we cast and no speech we make can ever be held against us until that awesome day—general election day—arrives, when we are exactly the same as anybody else.

We are not talking about any particular group who can spend vast sums of money—the hon. Member for North Durham reminded us again and again of what happens in the United States—to attack us on a particular issue and try to get rid of us on that basis. We stand with 650 other people. We are equal and the people vote us in or out on the basis of a broad range of policies.

I know that the Government will say that my amendment is not necessary, because it will involve the procedures of the Privileges Committee and all the rest of it. I think, however, that my amendment probably is necessary in this sense. I am grateful to the Minister for saying that he would look on it with a kindly light. We live in a very judgmental age. We have had instances with the hon. Member for Bradford West (George Galloway), who as usual is not in his place. He comes here and rants and says the most outrageous things. We have had cases in the past involving Tam Dalyell, that wonderful man, and Ian Paisley, that equally wonderful man. They were expelled from Parliament.

The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) mentioned one of my own colleagues saying something in the Chamber that was frankly racist. If he had said it outside the House, he might have been taken to court. I do not want to use a cliché, but, although what he said may have been completely wrong, I, like Voltaire, may disagree with or hate what he said, but respect his freedom to say it in this place. If you cannot speak your mind here, knowing that you cannot be held to account, where else in our kingdom can you speak your mind?

What my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park is doing is fundamentally very dangerous indeed. It goes against centuries of our history. Is our history so very wrong? Have we not ensured that our country is the only country in Europe that has never been a police state, and has never had a police state imposed on it? Has not the House of Commons, through all those centuries, guarded by these privileges, protected fundamental freedoms? Is that not something to be proud of? For those reasons, I—along with Members in all parts of the House—will vote against my hon. Friend’s amendment. Freedom of speech—allowing Members of Parliament total freedom of expression, with a very few traditional exceptions, such as insulting the sovereign—has always been defended by Parliament.

[Mr MacNeil]

Oh, come on!

[Sir Edward Leigh]

If the hon. Gentleman wants to insult the sovereign, I personally am perfectly happy with that. I do not think that he should be recalled by a group of MPs for insulting the sovereign, or for anything else.

[Mr MacNeil]

rose—

[Sir Edward Leigh]

The hon. Gentleman has already intervened once.

[Mr MacNeil]

rose—

[Sir Edward Leigh]

All right, I will give way, just to please the hon. Gentleman.

[Mr MacNeil]

I am listening to what is quite an egalitarian speech. I am a monarchist myself, but I do not like the idea of separating one person from another in this context. The hon. Gentleman himself referred to the monarch coming into the Chamber. I think that the strand of history that we are talking about has featured the elites giving way when they have had to give way, and that is happening again now. The elites are giving way, or they should be giving way.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

The myth that is being propagated by some Members—not least by the new hon. Member for Clacton, whom I respect in many ways—is that we are an elite. We are not an elite. We have all been elected by people, and we can all be unelected by people.

We in the House of Commons must be prepared to be proud of what we have achieved. We must acknowledge all the appalling errors that we have made over Members’ expenses and a number of other issues; no doubt we have been found wanting in many respects; we are only human beings, and all the rest of it. But the argument that there is a better form of democracy—that some kind of participatory democracy based on referendums and people getting together and collecting petitions is more democratic than debate in this House—is fundamentally flawed. I realise that that may be an unfashionable opinion.

[Zac Goldsmith]

rose—

[Sir Edward Leigh]

As I have taken the hon. Gentleman to task so strongly, I think it only fair that he should have a chance to gainsay me.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I shall not seek to persuade my hon. Friend on the fundamental issue of principle that he is discussing. I think that he has correctly identified the line in the sand. People will have to take a view based on what he has said, or on what I and others have said, in relation to that fundamental principle. However, I have a question for him. He fears that my amendments open up the possibility of Members being held to account for things that they say in the Chamber, but surely that is even truer of the Bill. Plenty of Members have been sanctioned, thrown out of the House and suspended for considerable periods as a result of things that they have said and done in the Chamber. The Government’s programme would, at that stage, require a petition to be signed by only 10% of their constituents for them to be thrown out altogether. They would cease to be Members of Parliament. Yes, they might be able to fight back in a by-election, but they would be thrown out of their jobs. That is surely a greater threat to the principles that the hon. Gentleman is guarding.

[The Temporary Chair (Mr Jim Hood)]

Order. That intervention was too long.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I apologise, Mr Hood.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

To be honest, I do not really understand that intervention. I have mentioned the hon. Member for Bradford West, Tam Dalyell and Ian Paisley, and I have done some research on which Members have been thrown out for expressing their opinions. Since the Bill of Rights, the only one to be thrown out has been John Wilkes, Before the Bill of Rights—this is quite important; people have always felt this to be a crucial part of the liberties of this country—it was quite common to throw Members out. For instance, one Member was thrown out for inventing orders from the Duke of York to down sail, which prevented England from capitalising on its naval victory off Lowestoft in 1665. Another Member, Edward Sackville, was thrown out because he denounced Titus Oates as a “lying rogue” and he disbelieved in the Popish plot. Another one was thrown out for associating with the Duke of York in alleged complicity in the meal tub plot, and so it goes on. So it was actually very common to throw people out for expressing opinions that the Executive did not like.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The early examples of people being thrown out were not necessarily because they offended the Executive, but often because they offended the House. The Popish plot was not popular with the Executive—they were reluctant to believe it—but the House of Commons was obsessed by it.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Yes, that is a very fair point. In those days some Members were thrown out because they held opinions that were wildly unpopular with the general public.

John Wilkes absconded to France after being charged with libel over issue No. 45 of the North Briton. He was convicted of libel and blasphemy and seditious libel. He was then returned to the House by his own electors, despite having been expelled, and he finally managed to establish his right to stay in the House. I think that was the last case of a Member who was expelled from the House for his views. So, in defence of the Government and of the present system, I think we can pretty fairly establish that nobody in the last 200 years has been expelled from the House, or had any sort of recall-type of procedure initiated, on the basis of just the speeches they made or the votes they cast.

I do think my amendment is important, however, and I am grateful that the Minister is prepared to look at it in a positive light, because, assuming the amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park fails, and assuming the Government’s Bill goes through much as it is now, I think we will want it on the face of the Act, for the absolute avoidance of doubt, that no recall procedure can be initiated on the basis of what we say in this place or how we vote in this place. Somebody could say something that is so outrageous—it might be racist or it might be the sort of comments the hon. Member for Bradford West makes from the far left—and that goes so much against popular opinion that, strangely enough, the Privileges Committee might start initiating this procedure. I know we think that is unlikely. I am talking about a belt-and-braces procedure, but I just want to be absolutely certain that we defend our ancient privileges.

We must remember that these are not privileges for us. These are not our privileges; they are the privileges of the people who demand that we have free speech here.

[Stephen Pound]

I appreciate the historical information we have got in this debate, which will certainly mean we are better educated at the end of the evening, but on the subject of Parliament exercising its own rights in terms of outrage, may I remind the hon. Gentleman—not that he needs reminding—of Charles Bradlaugh, who was a perfidious atheist representing the then borough of Northampton, and who was returned here four times, and the House dealt with it? It refused to allow him to take his seat on four occasions, and then decided, “Why not?” and let him in. It was dealt with in-house.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

It was dealt with in-house. He was a great man. He argued his case. He came here four times and finally, sensibly, we bowed to modern reality and we let him in.

Before I sit down, I shall give another historical example that shows how generous we have been. Arthur Alfred Lynch was an Irish nationalist MP for Galway city. He was tried and convicted for high treason. He fought on the Boer side during the South African war; he fought against us. He was sentenced to death, but it was commuted to life, and he was pardoned in 1907. As an astounding testament of our legacy of clemency and tolerance in this country, he was readmitted to the House in 1909 when West Clare returned him to Parliament. Indeed, the King even commissioned him a colonel in the Royal Munster Fusiliers during the great war.

I am sorry to give these historical examples, but they just show how extraordinarily generous we have been to people who honestly disagreed with us, and even fought against us in a war, but then were returned by their constituents. We said, “Yes, all right, you have made your point, but you are an honourable man so we’ll let you in.”

[Dr Huppert]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

One last time and then I must sit down to let others in.

[Dr Huppert]

It is a pleasure to hear the hon. Gentleman praise Charles Bradlaugh, a notable atheist, but he has not quite addressed the point that was made earlier. What would happen with cash for questions, for example, where an essential factor is the question in this House? How would his amendment deal with that?

21:00

[Sir Edward Leigh]

The Minister dealt precisely with that point, and I am quite prepared to engage in discussions with the Government. I do not want to defend somebody who puts down questions for cash. That was not the purpose of my amendment. In fact, the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome came up to me at one point and said, “If you inserted the word ‘properly’ in the middle of the amendment to make sure you were acting in a proper fashion, and you were just expressing a point of view that this procedure should not be started, we could resolve the issue.” So I am sure we can deal with this point.

My right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) has a very similar amendment that would kick in if that of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park is passed, so we are working in tandem on this. If the latter amendment is passed—I do not want to speak for my right hon. Friend, who can speak for himself—I urge Members on both sides of the House to think carefully about my right hon. Friend’s amendment. It would make it clear that, although we had accepted the point of view of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park that the process should be taken out of our hands entirely, this whole recall procedure could not be started just on the basis of how one speaks and votes. If, as I suspect from the speeches we have heard, we reject my hon. Friend’s amendment, I hope the Government will look kindly on my amendment so we can include it in the Bill and clearly preserve the freedom and liberties of this House, which we value so highly.

[Sir James Paice]

When my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) said that I can speak for myself, I was beginning to doubt whether I was going to get the opportunity, particularly as it is probably a couple of hours since the Minister replied to the speech that I had not then given.

I should start by pointing out that I am speaking with complete independence, because whatever happens to the Bill, it will not apply to me as I am not seeking re-election. I am therefore looking at it, I hope, as objectively as possible. As my hon. Friend has just said, my amendment (a) is to new clause 2, so if new clauses 1 and 2 fail, my amendment obviously falls. I have some sympathy with those amendments, although nothing like enough to make me support them as they stand.

My hon. Friend—he is a friend—the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) deserves credit for trying to find a way forward beyond the way the Bill goes, but nothing like as far as my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) has gone. I am slightly in conflict with my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) because, despite his brilliant historical exposition of the freedoms we have in this House, I think the time has come when we have to recognise that the public do not trust us to manage our own affairs. We have accepted that in respect of allowances, although I will not go down that road. We are not all particularly thrilled with what we have, but never mind: we have accepted it. I think we probably have to accept it in this context, as well, but in nothing like as wide open a way as the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park and others suggest. As I say, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome, and I was really pleased that the Government intimated that they will look at his proposals.

I want briefly to explain why I wanted to table this amendment. If the Committee is minded to support my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park, it is crucial that we narrow down the field to which recall could be applied. I know that he and others take a different view—that the field should be wide open and we should entirely trust our constituents in that regard—but as many Members have said this evening, I seriously wonder whether we are creating a problem unnecessarily, and an opportunity for large pressure groups, probably backed with big money, to make a big impression on this House and to counter and influence the way in which Members vote.

The hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), who is no longer in the Chamber, cited his experiences, and the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) referred to when he was a Croydon Member—there seems to be a history of Labour Members representing Croydon marginals for short periods—with a majority of 81. Fortunately, I have not been in that position, but I fully understand why people with such a majority may feel pressurised about how they vote. This is not a party issue, and I am delighted that Conservative Members have a free vote, as is only right and proper.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend talks about Members who, like me, represent marginal seats. We must be careful that we do not give the public the completely wrong impression that we are not going for this idea because we are running scared of being destabilised in such seats.

[Sir James Paice]

I note what my hon. Friend says, but I would not be prepared to say that, if I had a majority in the order of 100, I would not be very concerned about what people thought about me. I am concerned anyway, but at least, for the reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough set out, I am able to stand here and say whatever I like in the knowledge that I am protected by privilege. I would not wish to abuse that privilege—I do not think that I have ever sought to do so—but if what a Member said could be held against them, as might be the case if the amendments are agreed to, we could jeopardise their opportunity to speak with the freedoms that we rightly pride in this place.

Like other Members, I have looked up a couple of statistics. Only 207 hon. Members—less than a third—received over 50% of the vote. Indeed, 100 Members received the votes of less than 25% of their electorate, which demonstrates just how tight things really are. We can imagine the opportunity for well organised and probably well funded pressure groups to exert influence on Members with a small proportion of the vote—just enough to have scraped home—through the threat of recall. It is easy for Members to say, as some have, “I am far too strong-minded and I will not be bought,” but I challenge that. It would be a brave individual who faced such pressure yet did not feel that they might have to bend to it.

I will not add to what we have heard about vexatious cases, but those of us who have been here for a number of years know that all Governments, of all complexions, become very unpopular at sometime during their mid-term—some are unpopular for the whole term—yet despite that, they quite often get re-elected. However, during that mid-term period of unpopularity, it would be possible to have a series of recalls in tight marginal seats simply to change incumbency, and that could end up changing the Government. I do not have a problem with a change of Government between general elections—that is democracy—but it would be wrong if that were to arise because of a concerted effort targeted at specific MPs on the basis of things that they had said or votes they had cast. That was why I tabled amendment (a) to new clause 2, which would protect Members by not allowing reasons relating to their freedom of expression from being cited in a statement of reason.

In response to the speech I had not then given, the Minister said that my suggestion would work only to a certain extent, because it would not stop such issues being raised as part of a general campaign. However, if those issues could not be cited as reasons for seeking a recall petition, that might be enough to stop a campaign from starting, as other reasons would need to be cited in the statement. It is perfectly true that there could be other mechanisms for publishing the real reason, which is how the Member had spoken or voted, but I think that preventing that being promulgated as the official reason that goes out with the petition would offer considerable protection.

If there is a better way of doing that, obviously I, like other Members who have proposed amendments, would be happy to listen to it. However, if the Committee is minded to support new clause 2—as I have said, I could not possibly support it unless my amendment (a) is accepted by its proposers—I would have to oppose the whole raft of amendments standing in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park and other hon. Members.

If we stopped people on the street and asked them about recall, most would say—if it registered at all—that it relates to misconduct and bad behaviour. Very few would relate it to votes, speeches or views. Nevertheless, I think that there is that risk, and I want to protect hon. Members from it. My amendment would prevent anybody giving as a reason for recall anything that fell under freedom of expression. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough has tabled a similar amendment, but I will not repeat what he has said.

Having been a Member for more years than I care to remember, I fear that the idealistic way in which the amendments have been cast means that they are just too broad. As I said at the outset of my comments, I fully accept the need to go further than the Government are going, and I think that there is a need for popular involvement, but it has to concentrate on the real issues that cause the public concern: unacceptable behaviour by their Member of Parliament that devalues their role. We all agree that that is necessary. The issue is whether we extend that to matters relating to freedom of speech, which I think would be a step too far.

[Crispin Blunt]

I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak at the end of the debate, presumably before my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) responds. It has been a really excellent debate. However, we need to remember where the Bill, and the amendments that have been tabled, come from. They arrived in all the parties’ manifestos in 2010 as a response to the expenses disaster. All of us who lived through that know how debilitating it was and understand the enormous damage it did to the reputation of this place.

We have here a collapse of institutional self-confidence. With regard to how we can regulate ourselves and prostrate ourselves in front of our electorate, almost nothing is good enough in addressing that lack of confidence and trying to regain some of our reputation with the electorate. I suggest that the proposition coming from the Government, in the form of the Bill, and the amendments proposed to it are a continuation of that. As an institution, we are like a whipped dog that is simply cowering ever lower.

Counter-intuitively, I think that it is about time we started making the case for this institution and for how it works, as political parties that are here to support an Administration that is able to put through a credible programme of government for four or five years—now five years, by statute—and to govern effectively in the interests of the country.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries) put the populist case absolutely wonderfully in her brilliant polemic, but I am afraid that a rather difficult practical case must be put in opposition to it. If we all took her principled view about our duties in this place, we would not have an Administration for four or five years who were capable of putting together a coherent programme of government and addressing the issues of the country over the lifetime of a Parliament. I know that she does not like the Whips Office—I served in the Opposition Whips Office for about five years, so in that sense I am guilty as charged—but, as Enoch Powell said, Whips are the sewers of the system; they are absolutely essential to the general health of the entire system. She criticises her colleagues for doing “grubby deals” on this and that, but that is what we have to do in order to build a coalition either within a political party or between political parties to deliver coherent government.

21:15

I have given the example of the necessity that Liberal Democrat Members faced to jettison one of their undertakings to the electorate at the election in order to put together a coherent programme of government for the coalition. They did that honourably, and it has done them immense damage. They will hope that during this five-year period that decision will be vindicated by the fact that they can share some of the credit for the economic recovery that the country has undergone. Under my hon. Friend’s system, or under the proposals by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park, they would not be in that position—they would be open to recall.

[Nadine Dorries]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, because not giving way is the maxim by which I live my life. I totally understand his point about the coalition. However, it has been reported tonight that the Prime Minister and the Chief Whip will not be voting for these amendments because the Liberal Democrats have asked them not to. How does that benefit government? How is that principled?

[Crispin Blunt]

I have absolutely no idea. The Prime Minister is trying to run a coalition. He has to keep within this coalition our colleagues who are helping us to govern and delivering a majority in voting for taxes that make for some form of fiscally sensible arrangement. Of course there are going to be grubby deals—they have to be done. My hon. Friend has possibly given an example, although I have no idea of whether what she says is accurate.

The proposals by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park open us up to the possibility of being subject to recall all the time. That would make it immensely more difficult to support a Government in maintaining a coherent programme. There is a reason why Governments do the difficult things in the first few years of the Parliament: it is because they know they are going to be unpopular.

Part of my hon. Friend’s argument was to say, “The key thing here is about public confidence.” I accept that there is a lack of public confidence in this institution; that is why the Government have finally got round to proposing this measure. However, we must ask ourselves whether that will be addressed by our cowering yet lower in the face of it, or whether we should get off our knees, have some institutional self-confidence, and make the case that we are, in fact, regulated to an enormous extent as Members of Parliament. We have the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, the criminal law—which, if we are convicted, will result in our being thrown out—the Standards and Privileges Committee, the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and all the rest. An enormous number of bodies now oversee this place and our behaviour.

The question is whether this Bill is trying to address a real, practical problem about our behaviour, individually or collectively. The answer, I suggest, is no. Is there a reputational issue? Of course there is, and we have to work out the right solution to that. The Government’s proposals, which try to find a limited way of doing something to create the principle of recall, are not right and do not address the issue practically, while the proposals by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park are frankly dangerous. I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) and my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) about the dangers that they open up. Those arguments were also made by the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones).

[Mr Lansley]

I put it to my hon. Friend that there is a gap in the regulation, which the Bill is intended to fill. When the public see instances of gross misconduct that result in either a court sentence or a substantial period of suspension from this House, they say that in any other normal profession people would lose their jobs under such circumstances. This Bill puts Members in that position when it might not have happened otherwise.

[Crispin Blunt]

Do we have an actual problem or a perception of a problem that does not actually exist? In practice, we do not have a problem. If a Member is sentenced to imprisonment for a period of less than a year, it is highly likely that they will choose to stand down, as has happened. Equally, the same thing is likely if Members receive a sentence from the Standards and Privileges Committee, as happened with our former colleague Patrick Mercer, who decided to stand down. There is not a practical issue that we are trying to address. I accept there is a perception issue, but we have to work out the right way to address it.

The hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) made a further practical argument against the measures proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park. When I lost the executive vote on my reselection, the issue was put to a simple vote of the members of the Conservative party in Reigate, but take it from me: that occupied most of my attention for the two months it took to complete the ballot. I won by a margin of five to one, but the process was something of a modest distraction from my other work representing my constituents. The hon. Member for Swansea West made an absolutely valid point: the suggested process would be the most enormous distraction from the duties we are actually here to do.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough has said, are we not already subject to recall? Every five years we have to face the electorate in a general election.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman has raised a number of points, but his speech is dominated by the idea that there is a battle between parliamentarians and the voters. He has questioned whether there are problems, but of course there must be problems if standards bodies such as the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority have been set up. Perhaps those sticking plasters have been set up because adequate mechanisms have not been available to the electorate to get a hold of Members of Parliament and bring them to account in good time. That is all hidden under the blanket of the general election. That is why we are having this debate. This is revolutionary democracy. The cat is out of the bag. If this does not happen now, proper recall will come at some point. It always happens. The elites, the powerful and the parliamentarians of Westminster will always rail against it, but in the end they will have to yield.

[Crispin Blunt]

I say in all candour that we need to pay attention to how we are going to stand up for Parliament as an institution, because things are changing out there. There are now very strong single-issue lobbies that were not there before, and new electronic media give them a way to come together quickly and run very strong campaigns.

The problem we face is the collapse of interest in political parties. All the political parties are suffering from a diminution in membership.

[Mr MacNeil]

Not at all—we’ve just trebled our membership!

[Crispin Blunt]

I enjoyed the hon. Gentleman’s intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris). He told her that the thing that would stop endless petitions against individuals who were then targeted by particular lobbies was failure. I look forward to hearing about the dissolution of the Scottish National party after its failure in the referendum on independence. The party has failed, so is that it? Is the SNP going away and packing up its tents? I rather suspect not, and we can expect the same of single-issue campaigns, which will target Members—particularly those who are brave enough to stand up for unpopular causes—and continue to be on their tail, if we agree to the proposals of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park.

Money is also an issue, as the hon. Member for North Durham has said. My campaign to get reselected was targeted at about 500 Conservatives in Reigate. That campaign had minimal costs, but I then had to say thank you to all the people who campaigned for me and so on, and the cost of that non-campaign headed into four figures. Hon. Members should imagine having to campaign in their constituency. If they were standing up for an unpopular cause and their party did not roll in behind them—the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) gently predicted that his party might not be too keen to rally to his aid—they would be very exposed by recall. Some of us do not have the resources to fight such campaigns.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I feel that my hon. Friend is creating an Aunt Sally that does not exist. As I understand it, the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) require 20,000 people to go to a town hall to vote for a recall. That is very unlikely, even with outside organisations trying to stir things up.

[Crispin Blunt]

That was the superficial attraction of the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park. I thought that I might even vote for them because they at least to some extent made the public relations purpose of the Bill more effective by meeting the challenge of involving the public in this exercise. The superficial attraction of his argument was the one expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), which is that recall will not happen away, because no one will be able to clear this hurdle. It has hardly ever happened in the United States, and we have made it so difficult to achieve that recall will not do anything in practice. We therefore need not worry because this is simply about public relations, and the public relations tricks are dealt with better by the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park than by the Government’s Bill.

Institutionally, we now need to make the case for this institution. It is wrong to address an issue of perception through legislation. We should make a case—the kind of case brilliantly made by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough—about what a representative democracy is about in principle. That is changing in this environment of much greater popular engagement. The problem we face is that we must, at the same time, produce coherent administration. We have to support a Government who have a programme and will vote the taxes and do the unpopular things required to administer this country effectively. If we give in to the kind of populist pressure coming from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire or my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park, who spoke in a very principled way, we will create for ourselves a practical problem about what we are here to do, which is to ensure the sound administration of the United Kingdom.

[Zac Goldsmith]

Does my hon. Friend not agree that more or less every 30 or so years since the first Reform Act of 1832, the franchise has been expanded and democracy has been updated to adjust to social changes. That happened right up to 1969, but since then the world has changed beyond recognition for the reasons he has eloquently described, not least the internet, social media and so on. Does he not accept that there is a need for democracy to be updated again, or have we reached ground zero in the political history of democracy in this country?

[Crispin Blunt]

We have a practical problem about how we adapt as an institution—both the Government, and Parliament in holding the Government to account—and about how we as elected representatives manage it. Of course the temptation is to begin to go down the road of constant referendums or opinion polls by e-mail, but that does not put together a coherent programme for Government. That is the issue we must address, and I do not think that the Bill or my hon. Friend’s amendments will do the job.

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) spoke to set out our case for our amendments and to respond to those tabled by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) and others. In my speech, I will focus on the cross-party amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) and others.

I want to restate the fact that Labour supports the principle of recall. It was in our manifesto, which the Minister quoted:

“MPs who are found responsible for financial misconduct will be subject to a right of recall if Parliament itself has failed to act against them.”

Against that test, our view is that the Bill is not strong enough. That is why we tabled the amendments that my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife set out on lowering the suspension limits that might trigger recall and adding additional conditions, including on conviction for financial misconduct.

21:30

Clearly, we need to strike a careful balance between allowing our constituents to recall their Member of Parliament if they are guilty of serious wrongdoing and designing a system that might, however inadvertently, allow powerful vested interests to take action against MPs simply because they disagree with our views or dislike our politics. That would risk hampering our democracy.

It is for that reason that we are drawn to the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome, which would provide a public trigger for recall. He made a powerful and persuasive case for such an approach and admitted openly and candidly that further work needs to be done on the detail. Amendments 42 and 43 and new clauses 6 and 7 provide for a form recall that is independent of any parliamentary Committee. It would allow direct access to a petition for the public, but would allow recall only in cases of misconduct. Importantly, it seeks to avoid MPs adjudicating on the behaviour of other MPs or, as the Minister put it, MPs marking our own homework.

The amendments of the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome would allow a recall process to be triggered if 100 electors petitioned an election court and the court was satisfied that there was prima facie evidence that the MP had a case to answer in respect of the criminal offence of misconduct in public office. Our view is that the proposal for an election court as a trigger of recall is a serious proposal that merits further consideration. Work needs to be done to refine the amendments between now and Report stage. I will give a couple of examples of how.

In new clause 6, the third recall condition would allow just 100 people to bring a petition to an election court. That is significantly lower than any of the thresholds proposed in the Bill or in the amendments of the hon. Member for Richmond Park. We need to consider whether the bar of 100 petitioners is too low. Is there not a risk that the courts would be clogged up with unlikely recall petitions? A possible change would be to add an earlier stage during which a court, on the basis of the papers, could filter out petitions that would be highly unlikely to succeed before deciding whether to hear the cases.

We believe that we need to consider the definition of “misconduct”. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome spoke about that himself. In new clause 7, the court is asked to consider the common law offence of misconduct in public office. In addition, it states that

“gross dereliction of duty as an MP may be considered misconduct in public office.”

The offence in common law is defined as a public office holder wilfully neglecting to perform their duty or committing misconduct to such a degree as to abuse the public’s trust in that office holder. I suggest that we should consider on Report whether that is clear and correct. Does the court need further clarification? Alternatively, could we use the code of conduct for Members of Parliament as the basis for the work of the election court?

The hon. Gentleman’s amendments allow for a recall petition without a conviction. As they stand, the MP need not be guilty of any offence. It is only that a prima facie case must be answered. Do we not want an opportunity for the Member of Parliament to have his or her case heard, or is it enough for a judge to find that there is a case to be heard and for the public then to be consulted? Alternative bars could be set, such as whether the election court is sure beyond reasonable doubt that the Member of Parliament is guilty of misconduct.

A significant refinement of the amendments is needed. In principle, giving the power to the people to bring a case against their MP before the election court is a good idea. It treads the fine line between undermining an MP’s constitutional role and giving power to the people to hold their Member of Parliament to account for his or her conduct. Labour Members will work with the cross-party group of MPs who have proposed these amendments to attempt to ensure that we can make them workable, and we look forward to returning to the matter on Report. As a result, we will not be pressing any of our amendments to a vote, and I urge other Members not to press their amendments to a vote today.

[Mr Gyimah]

This has been a good, if long, debate, and after four and a half hours of Committee we are still very much on clause 1. As the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) said, the Bill faithfully implements the commitment given at the last election to introducing recall for MPs for misconduct. Some colleagues believe that is unnecessary and that the House—and courts—already have sufficient sanctions. Others believe that what was promised should not have been promised, and that constituents should be able to trigger a recall of their MP for any reason at any time. Faced with those two alternatives, I think the Bill deserves support. It does what we said we would do, while safeguarding the right of MPs to speak freely without imperilling their position in this House before the verdict of their constituents at a general election.

As I summarise the points raised, I would like to get away from the distinction that some Members have tried to draw between bogus and real recall. As my right hon. Friend the Minister made clear, the Government have committed to considering how a number of the amendments can be reflected in the drafting of the Bill, including a means for constituents to trigger a route for recall from proven misconduct, and the link with convictions under the parliamentary expenses system. Those are all constructive ways of dealing with the shared desire across the House to make this a Recall Bill that is robust and commands the confidence of the electorate.

Let me turn to some of the speeches made today. My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) spoke passionately—as he is known to do on these matters—and touched on the threshold, cost controls and the fear of endless harassment.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Will the Minister clarify whether a threshold could be dovetailed on to another election—for example the Scottish referendum or a European election—as a way of distorting the achievements of that threshold, or whether it would need to be secured on a separate date?

[Mr Gyimah]

I think the answer is that a threshold could be on any date.

My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park said that the threshold, cost controls and endless harassment were technical issues that we could deal with quite easily. As we learned in Committee, however, such issues are germane to his recall proposal, and therefore to his argument.

Several Members made the point that not only was the threshold of 5% for the initial stage of recall too low, but it could be requested again and again, meaning that a Member could face several notices of recall during a Parliament. While those notices of recall may not be successful in themselves, as the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) pointed out, the sheer fact that a Member could face recall on any issue at any time again and again could serve to stop them performing their duties—apart from the fact that dealing with a recall could be a complete nuisance.

The hon. Gentleman also touched on cost controls, and something my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park did not explore in great detail is the point that before the notice of petition is given under his scheme of recall, a lot of money could be spent that is not recorded anywhere at all, in order to destabilise an MP and make it difficult for them to fight the recall when it happens. The hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long) noted that compared with the main parties, minor parties do not have the funds to fight even one recall petition, and the same applies to Independent MPs. Cost control is not a simple, technical issue, but is central to the argument for full recall and something that I do not believe has been addressed today.

My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park spoke of MPs in the context of their role as legislators. MPs are not just legislators; some are members of the Executive. How will the Minister for planning, the Minister for fracking, the Minister for benefit reform or the Minister for austerity deal with a situation in which recall can be initiated against them on a 5% threshold? In other words, it would be almost impossible for certain MPs—[Interruption.]

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The Minister will be heard.

[Mr Gyimah]

It would be very difficult for certain Members, especially those with relatively small majorities, either to serve in the Executive or to take the unpopular decisions that Governments must take. As my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) said, to govern is to choose.

The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) came up with an interesting mechanism to deal with wrongdoing and giving the public a say. As my right hon. Friend the Minister said, we will consider that interesting idea on Report.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) demonstrated why is he is such a valued Member of the House. He expounded on why our history is important, but why we cannot dismiss what the House stands for, and the privilege of an MP to speak and take unpopular positions. At the same time, we must deal with the needs of our electorates and respond to their concern about wrongdoing.

My right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley) made an empathetic speech about Members who have very small majorities. He was very honest in saying that, with the size of his majority, he could afford to take some unpopular positions without worrying about going back to his constituency one weekend to find a notice of a petition against him on a 5% threshold, and that his constituents had begun proceedings to get rid of him.

My hon. Friend the Member for Reigate made the passionate case that the House of Commons suffers from a collapse of institutional self-confidence—it was the kind of case that Sir Humphrey might describe as “very brave”. He said that MPs must make the case for the status quo without responding to the public’s desire for a mechanism to bring MPs to account when there is serious wrongdoing, which the Government and all the main parties recognise.

[Crispin Blunt]

I can see from my Twitter feed that my courage is already a matter of comment, but my question to the Minister is this: are MPs not already held to account? He implies that we are not, but we are massively held to account by any number of different bodies.

[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that oversight is exercised over MPs and that MPs are held to account in a number of ways, but there is a gap within the existing framework, namely the opportunity for constituents to get rid of an MP in a case of serious wrongdoing. Currently, the Representation of the People Act 1981 allows an MP to be automatically disqualified if they are convicted and sentenced to a period of more than a year. However, if the period is less than a year, the MP can decide to stay in post. The Bill gives the public a route at that point to get rid of the MP. The Act does not allow an MP who is given a suspended custodial sentence for any period to be disqualified from the House. The Bill fills that gap. The Mental Health Act 1983 provides for disqualification if an MP is imprisoned or sentenced under the mental health provisions for more than a year, but if the term is under a year the MP remains in post.

21:45

The Bill seeks to address those significant gaps in the framework while maintaining the balance between dealing with wrongdoing and an MP’s ability to speak their mind.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

As I understand the Bill, it proposes that in the event of a custodial sentence of less than 12 months the recall mechanism can be triggered. Many offences are punished not by custodial sentences but by serious community penalties. Why have the Government taken the view that offences punished by such sentences should not trigger the ability to recall the Member?

[Mr Gyimah]

I must correct my hon. and learned Friend on a point of detail. Recall would—not can—be triggered if a Member received a custodial sentence of less than 12 months. What drives the Government’s recall process is the level of seriousness. So, for example, a fine for non-payment of the television licence is not in the same category as serious assault or theft. However, a community sentence that brought the House into disrepute or for conduct in breach of the Members code of conduct could trigger the second recall petition under which the Member may be suspended for 21 days at the recommendation of the Standards Committee. That could result in recall and a by-election if the 10% threshold was reached.

[Stephen Phillips]

The Minister is right: that could trigger the Standards Committee to act, but it might not. Is not the difficulty that it looks again as though the House is seeking to regulate itself rather than hand power to our constituents?

[Mr Gyimah]

We are looking at the operation of the Standards Committee and how it can be strengthened, as the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, my right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells said earlier. I assure my hon. and learned Friend that, even under the current terms of the Bill, if a Member is reported to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, it would have to investigate. If the Member has breached the code of conduct, the Standards Committee can make a recommendation to the House of a suspension for 21 days, and that could trigger a recall petition. So a Member receiving a non-custodial sentence could still face recall.

Amendment 1 deals with the point that recall could be triggered over and over again. New clause 2 concerns the 200-word statement by the promoter of the recall petition. That makes sense if someone brings a recall petition against a Member under the scheme proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park—they should be able to put their accusations on paper and the Member should have the right of reply—but it risks accusations that are unfounded getting into the public domain and being given credence because they have been distributed by the local authority. Damage to the Member’s reputation could be done just by allowing people to promote their reasons for recall.

[Steve Baker]

The point was made earlier in the debate that leaflets seek to undermine our reputations in every general election. What is the difference?

[Mr Gyimah]

The leaflets that are put out at the general election are not paid for from the public purse, nor are they distributed by the local authority. In this context, the leaflet would be drafted by a member of the public, paid for by the taxpayer and distributed by the local authority, which could be seen to endorse those views. That could damage someone’s reputation.

Amendments 42, 43, 44, new clause 6 and new clause 7 deal with the cross-party amendment and focus recall on misconduct. As I said, we will consider that in detail. Amendment (a) to new clause 2, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Mr Paice), focuses recall on causes not conduct. As tabled, it would not stop people campaigning for recall and would not act as a safeguard to Members’ free expression. We therefore urge him to withdraw his amendment.

Amendments 34, 6, 7, 10, 35, 12 to 18, 20, 21, 36, 37, 8 and 9 are consequential amendments on the recall process and so are not worth touching on in detail now. Amendments 39 and 40 deal with retrospectivity. The House tends not to favour retrospectivity. In general, the courts impose punishment for offences that are current, so I urge the withdrawal of those two amendments.

Amendment 46 covers historic offences which, although committed at the time of the MP’s election, are not known to the electorate at the time. This makes an important point on the electorate’s ability to judge a Member’s misconduct and we will return to the amendment on Report. Amendment 47 deals with criminal abuse of the expenses system, which would lead to judgment before constituents as well as the court. There is a technical deficiency in the way the amendment is currently drafted, but we will reflect on this matter and return to it on Report. [Interruption.]

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The Committee should be listening to the Minister. If Members wish to chat they can go elsewhere.

[Mr Gyimah]

In summary, we are dealing with two different conceptions of recall. The Government believe that recall should be on the basis of serious wrongdoing and conduct and not on causes supported.

[Mr MacNeil]

Is it not the reality that, after manifesto promises, a mealy-mouthed recall Bill will be considered with disdain by the public, and will set the reputation of Westminster even lower?

[Mr Gyimah]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s point that we have to respond to the real need, especially post-expenses crisis, to allow the public to kick MPs out after wrongdoing, but we have to do that in a way that is consistent with our democratic arrangements. We have a parliamentary democracy in which the legislature is fused with the Executive. The three other countries similar to us, New Zealand, Australia and Canada, do not have recall. A lot has been made of the United States of America, which has recall but, as the hon. Member for North Durham pointed out, it is often used there for politically motivated reasons. We wish to respond to the need for the public to be able to get rid of their MPs, but the Government want to do so in a way that is consistent with our democratic arrangements while preserving some of the best aspects of our system, for example MPs being able to speak their mind and campaign for unpopular causes.

My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park argues that recall will be very rare under his scheme, while giving people real power. He has to decide whether his recall mechanism will give real power and be effective in getting rid of any MP the public want to get rid of, or that it is rare and therefore not effective. It sounds to me like his argument tries to have it both ways and that is not the way that recall should work. If we are to have a recall system, it should be one that the public can trust and understand. They should know that when they engage in it, it will end in a Member being booted out of this House if need be.

The four-stage recall mechanism proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park starts with a 5% threshold and then moves to a 20% threshold, then a 50% threshold and then a by-election. I would hazard a guess that constituents would be fed up by the end of it. Someone who signed the notice of petition at the first stage would think, “I thought I’d got rid of that MP five months ago”, but the process would still be ongoing. On the other hand, the Government’s proposal would be as speedy as possible. I therefore urge Members to reject the amendment and the following consequential amendments.

[Zac Goldsmith]

The technical concerns—thresholds, costs, frequency—can and will be dealt with on Report and should not be an excuse to reject the amendments as a whole. At stake is a matter of principle. Do we trust our voters to hold us to account? The public today are better informed, better educated and less deferential than at any time in our history, and recall is not radical, but merely a nod to those changes that would be used rarely and only in extremes. It might even be described as a gesture, but that does not make it a trivial matter; sometimes a gesture is the most important thing—a signal from one party to another that starts the process of healing and reconciliation. I fear that if we play games, constructing a bogus alternative to recall, voters will see through it and, sooner or later, begin seeking more drastic solutions. I therefore press the amendment to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

21:56

Division 63

Ayes: 166

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Conservative: 110
Labour: 43
Scottish National Party: 6
Plaid Cymru: 3
Liberal Democrat: 3
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 2
Independent: 1
Green Party: 1

Noes: 340

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Labour: 162
Conservative: 135
Liberal Democrat: 37
Democratic Unionist Party: 3
Independent: 1
Alliance: 1

22:10

Proceedings interrupted (Programme Order, 21 October).

The Chair put forthwith the Question necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded at that time (Standing Order No. 83D).

Clauses 1 to 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

The occupant of the Chair left the Chair to report progress and ask leave to sit again (Standing Order No. 9(3)).

The Deputy Speaker resumed the Chair.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again tomorrow.