Recall of MPs Bill

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

1: Clause 1, page 1, line 10, at end insert—
“( ) In this Act the signing of a recall petition constitutes a public act and the information of each person who signs a recall petition will be accessible in a marked electoral register, if requested.”

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 1, I shall also speak to Amendment 15. Together these amendments, tabled by me and my noble friend Lord Kennedy of Southwark, would enshrine in the Bill that a recall petition is a public act—an open declaration of one’s wish to recall an MP. We have moved to this position since Committee, in the belief that there is an urgent need for clarity on this issue.

At Second Reading and in Committee, we discussed whether signing a recall petition is to be secret or a public act. If it were the latter, we noted that people must be aware before they sign that their identity could become known in due course. We then waited for the Government to decide whether to attempt to keep this a secret act, and therefore bring in different rules from those for general elections regarding access to the marked register, or to acknowledge that secrecy cannot be maintained and therefore to make it clear that signing a petition would be, as with any other petition, a public statement.

Alas, the Government are still all over the place. In response to our Constitution Committee, they say they will set out in regulations—which we have not yet seen—how to address the issue of keeping names secret, yet they must surely realise that, at the very least, the MP and the agent are bound to have access to the marked register, as is anyone who thinks someone may have signed in their place. Little thought seems to have been given to how in this respect a recall petition differs from elections, and from referendums—that is, where signing is only a one-way act—and its implications for the rest of the process.

Nor have the Government consulted stakeholders on this issue, be they local government, the Electoral Commission, political parties, the Electoral Reform Society or the Association of Electoral Administrators. Even in the briefing yesterday, the Electoral Commission still did not told us whether it advised the Government that it should be open or secret.

Instead of consultation, the Government have simply tried to cut and paste bits from the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act and the Representation of the People Act without thinking through the implications of what they are proposing. A recall petition is neither an election nor a referendum, as in both cases the choice is indicated by the voter rather than being a one-way act. If we consider the history and character of petitions, we would see the difference from normal elections. Take the rules on public petitions in the other place. There are three requirements of signatories of petitions. They must openly declare their name, the petition must be signed by them and they must state their address. There is no doubt that, as our Constitution Committee said,

“signing a recall petition is a public act”.

Even the Government conceded that,

“whereas at an election the way in which a person has voted remains secret, this secrecy cannot be maintained absolutely through the process of signing this petition as there is only one way in which a person may sign”.

The Government’s almost unbelievable suggestion that people should apply to sign by post to maintain their confidentiality is not only flawed in practice—because of the marked register—but, importantly, it is flawed in principle. Postal votes were never designed to safeguard the secret ballot but to enable those who, for whatever reason, cannot make it to the polling station. The unavoidable truth is that, for a petition, going into a polling station, or returning a postal petition, immediately identifies your intentions. The Minister said in Committee that the Government were,

“considering what limitations there should be on access to the marked register”.—[Official Report, 19/1/15; col. 1113.]

However placing restrictions on the normal access is probably impossible, as the police and others must have access to check on allegations of double or improper signing. Therefore, the consequent openness of the marked register must be reflected in communication with potential signatories. It must be clear from the start, on the notification sent to constituents, that this is different from elections or referendums, and that the fact they have called for recall may become public.

Indeed, it is not simply a question of the marked register, but of all the staff at signing places over eight weeks, party reps standing outside such places, journalists and their cameras hanging around, scrutineers and polling clerks. Are they all to be bound to secrecy? Of course that is not possible.

It is our view is that it is crucial that a clear decision is taken by Parliament so that everyone understands the position. Furthermore, we have come to realise that the only way forward is for it to be a public petition. It is too important a part of the recall process for this decision to be left to regulation or to the next Parliament, or—even worse—to those having to administer the first ever such petition. Our amendments remove any ambiguity, and would make it clear to potential signatories, to petition officers and their staff, and to campaigners that calling for recall is a public act.

The first amendment therefore asserts that a petition will be entirely open. Amendment 15 would require a petition officer to make the marked register available as normal, if requested, at the end of the process. It would also ensure that potential signatories are made aware that this is an open process, with a notice on the petition card warning that the fact that an elector had signed could become available on the marked register.

Without our amendments, we would be left with considerable uncertainty because of the Government’s inability to make up their mind about a fundamental aspect of the Bill. Recall is different from a choice between competing parties or competing views on European membership or devolution, where one can vote yes or no. The fact of signing means that one has voted only one way. If it cannot be kept secret that someone has signed—and our belief is that such secrecy could not be maintained—that must be clear to one and all. It is Parliament that must decide on this vital issue. I beg to move.

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[Lord Hughes of Woodside (Lab)]

My Lords, I am puzzled by what the Minister just said: that signing a petition is somehow—what was the word he used?—“delicate” or “difficult”. I am astonished. My understanding is that, once the election is past, the marked register is available to be purchased by election agents and political parties. He talked about the marked register being a campaigning tool. We are obviously all totally against names being made available while the petition period is going on, but surely to goodness, if a citizen of this country is asked to determine the fate of a Member of Parliament, he or she should not sign that petition carelessly, without thought to the possible repercussions. I really think that the Minister is quite wrong on the attempted secrecy of the marked register. I hope he will reflect, because he is not doing democracy any good whatever.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I thank those who contributed to this short, but very important, debate. The Minister responded only on one bit of it, in respect of possible intimidation. There is another issue, which is the openness of this new democratic process. He has not really addressed that. He has not addressed whether journalists standing outside a council office where there is a signing will be able to write in the newspaper the names of the people who have signed, or whether they are all suddenly meant to be unable to report what they have seen.

Somebody who is known could go in to sign. The journalist could say, “I saw Hayter going in to sign”, and presumably that would be completely legal. The Minister seems unworried by that. It is not just the marked register. Either this is open or it is not—and that is something that Parliament must decide. I may not have put it down the right way—perhaps I should have had an “either/or” approach, which is not here, asking whether we want it open or closed. As the Government have left it, it will effectively be open. If that is the case, that should be in the Bill, and I wish to test the opinion of the House.

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[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, it is always fun to watch the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, having a go at his own side and at one of the Government Ministers. Apart from that, I think it has been an interesting and useful debate, particularly on Amendment 2 about widening the kind of behaviour which could trigger a by-election. As an old campaigner on drinking and driving, this warmed the cockles of my heart and I thought it would have a great impact on the leisure behaviour of MPs, but maybe that is looking at it slightly too narrowly.

I really do not think that having just any criminal conviction is what our manifestos, the coalition agreement, the Government or indeed the House of Commons intended when they brought forward the recall Bill. Nor do I think it is what the public expected—and I was a member of the public rather than in your Lordships’ House when the misdemeanours that we have talked about happened—of the promise that where MPs were found guilty of deliberately falsifying their expenses claims or were sentenced to imprisonment, they should no longer automatically return to work after their sentence. Rather, I think recall was seen as a chance for the MP to explain himself or herself, to apologise or to ask for forbearance, and for the chance for voters to decide whether, despite the sentence, the MP was fit to continue to represent them in Parliament. Lowering the bar so that it covers any conviction risks a rush of petitions, perhaps over quite minor issues, which would take MPs away from their duties in the House for months. It would involve large sums of money, and importantly it would devalue the serious nature of a recall petition.

Incidentally, given that it is JPs—magistrates—who deal with 90% of crime, it is likely to be them rather than judges who will be dealing with these sorts of offences. As my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport reminds us, the recall thus triggered could easily become a vote of confidence in the Government or a referendum on fracking rather than actually seeking the electorate’s opinion of their MP’s behaviour, which was the purpose of this Bill and the reason that we support it. There has to be a sensible balance as to what can constitute a trigger. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester suggests, being sentenced to prison, whether suspended or not, seems to be the right place to draw that line.

Amendment 3 would remove any role for Parliament via its Standards Committee and a subsequent vote in the Commons to trigger a recall petition. This seems very hard to support. It does two things. First, it would absolve MPs in the Commons from a role in self-regulation and from any responsibility for policing the behaviour of their own colleagues. That is something which I do not think is right either in principle or in practice. Secondly, it would leave only criminal convictions and not gross unparliamentary behaviour such as breaches of the Code of Conduct or a failure to undertake democratic duties as the trigger for potential recall. The other place may need to make changes to its Standards Committee in order to build public trust, but that is probably not a matter for the Recall of MPs Bill. I know that my Labour colleagues in the other place support a radical overhaul of the committee, in particular to remove the government majority and to increase the role and authority of its lay members. Indeed, Labour has proposed considering whether with at least half the members being lay, there should also be a chair who is no longer an MP.

However, improving the way this trigger would act is different from removing the trigger. It was clearly the will of the Commons to include this trigger, which gives the Commons a role in the Bill, and we should respect that decision for its willingness to accept some collective responsibility for the behaviour of its Members. Furthermore, we should remember that without the second trigger, a number of non-criminal offences could occur without MPs having to face a possible recall, such as cash for questions or the failure to declare serious conflicts of interest. It would be a very radical suggestion to delete an entire trigger from the clause at this stage in the Bill when it was overwhelmingly agreed at the other end, and it would possibly go beyond our normal role of scrutinising legislation. However, that is not my reason for opposing it. I do so because it must surely be right that Members of the Commons should take some responsibility for their own behaviour and that of their colleagues and they should not wash their hands of their role in this.

Amendment 6 has been tabled by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, and we happily support it. We have encouraged the inclusion of lay members on the committee. Indeed, as I have said, we floated the idea of one of them being the chair and of lay members being the majority. While the Government may not feel that this is a matter for the Bill, we hope they will join us in supporting the principle and commit themselves to further moves in the direction I have outlined.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this debate has ranged very widely. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, for raising the Bill of Rights. I was thinking about it last week when looking at Magna Carta and how these various things pull together. The British constitution has parliamentary privilege as one of its core elements, and we recognise that in this Bill we are walking a delicate line between the maintenance of parliamentary privilege and the inclusion of a greater degree of popular sovereignty alongside parliamentary sovereignty. It is a delicate balance that we all wish to maintain.

Perhaps I may say what a pleasure it is to see the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, again. He told me in the corridor that he had been lying in his hospital bed at two o’clock in the morning watching Lords debates on his iPad. What he did not tell me was whether they kept him awake or provided him with a cure for insomnia.

As I understand the Standards Committee report, which I have not had a chance to read in full yet, it takes us rather closer towards the model which the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, would like than we have been before. It is a progression to move from a lay minority to an equal proportion of lay members and MPs, which is probably what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, would regard as moving in the right direction. It is a progression but not a reversal; it is not a radical overhaul of the entire Bill.

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[Lord Soley (Lab)]

It is entirely right that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has drawn attention to the real problem underlying all this—the lack of self-confidence within the House of Commons. It is rather tragic that we have the Bill before us. I am slightly worried at his reminding people that one could be hung for various things. A number of people would like to hang MPs, and I remind him that when I was chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party and it was heard that I might come to this place, one member of the PLP said that they had the ideal reform for the House of Lords, with one Peer for every lamp-post. I do not use that example too often.

However, I intervene briefly and seriously. My noble friends Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Howarth both made a strong case on this issue. My view is, and remains, that the Bill is a mess and should not have been brought forward but, precisely because of the nature of the mess here and the report to which my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours referred, the Government ought to say that they will take this issue away, look at it in some detail and come back with a proposal involving a return to the 20-day period. I would sign up to that. The Bill is not in a coherent state. It would be bad news for the House of Commons, and I suspect that it is unlikely to be used or be used very much. It is undesirable to have legislation in a mess such as this, especially when there is a report of the type that has been referred to that indicates why we ought to have the 20-day solution. The Government have a duty to this House and the other place to say that they will go back, consult and come back with a proposal that is more likely to work in a coherent way.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, your Lordships will not be surprised that we do not support these amendments for the reasons given by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours—well, no, actually, not for the reasons given by him. The amendments would reverse the very changes that Labour won with wholehearted—or should I say widespread?—support in the Commons.

The coalition Government had proposed what my noble friend now wants, which is that MPs would need to be suspended for more than four sitting weeks for the threshold to trigger a recall petition. However, no matter how much we cut that period, only rarely would that trigger be reached. Importantly, it would mean that some serious offences in the House would virtually never trigger a recall petition, which may be the intention of the amendment—or not; but that would be its effect. It would emasculate the role of the Commons in regulating its Members.

We believe that the House of Commons decision to suspend a Member should be able to act as a trigger and that four weeks’ suspension is simply too long. It makes the trigger too high for what constituents would expect. When all this was happening, I was not in Parliament; I was outside. If one asked now how serious an offence should be before someone should face a recall, I should say that being suspended for two weeks is about the right amount. We would not want the threshold to be so lowered that it would allow mischievous claims to be made in the other place. We also recognise that parliamentary dissent is part of our democratic heritage, and that an MP standing up for their beliefs in the other place should not find their right peacefully to protest compromised by unnecessary recall petitions. There is a balance to be struck. However, none of those suspended for protesting would be caught by the new threshold, which was agreed overwhelmingly in the Commons by 210 to 124 votes. In the words of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, if we are to trust the House of Commons, that vote is one that we should hear.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Can the noble Baroness explain where the other half of MPs were?

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

Obviously, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, will not appreciate that on a one-line Whip an awful lot of them disappear, as he has never been in the House of Commons.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

He was there; that was a joke.

[Noble Lords]

Joke? No!

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

It was a joke. It is called irony. It does not work in Hansard; maybe it could use italics. I was explaining that I have never been there. Forget it.

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[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I really do not think it is for me to tell the House of Commons how best to call its votes. What I do say is that if we are to trust the House of Commons then hearing that it agreed this by 203 votes to 124 on a one-line Whip is a fairly ringing endorsement of its decision. However, I am concerned about the discussion of this amendment rather than the wording of it. Some of the discussion has been more about the pressure on the decision-makers involved—be that the Standards Committee as it is or as it is going to be—than whether the number of days is correct and whether the electorate should be able to petition following the wrongdoing of a Member of the House of Commons. I do not think pressure on decision-makers ought to be higher in our minds than the rights of electors. I say this as someone who has been a magistrate, has had to send people to prison and has sat as a lay adjudicator on all sorts of disputes in other professions when they have lay members in, including removing people completely from their profession. I have been in those sorts of positions. Noble Lords, particularly those on the Cross Benches who have been judges, have taken even bigger decisions than I have. People have backbones and I do not believe that the worry of the pressures on these good people should be uppermost, over and above the rights of the electors to take an opinion on their MP where they have obviously done something serious enough to be suspended by their colleagues in the other place.

The Bill as it stands strikes the right balance on this issue. It strengthens the right of constituents to consider recall without jeopardising parliamentary democracy. I think the other place got it right and we should support it.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, triggering the opening of a recall after a 10-day suspension rather than 20 or 21 days certainly means there is the potential for petitions to open in a wider range of circumstances. My calculation, which I hope I got correct, of what would have happened over the past 15 years during all the rumbling expenses scandal is that on a 10-day suspension trigger some seven Members of the House of Commons in 15 years would have come under it and on a 20-day suspension only two.

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[Lord Norton of Louth]

My Lords, I have considerable sympathy with this amendment, and the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, has come up with an ingenious way of bringing it forward. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, indicated, it raises an important issue of principle, which is the freedom of choice of the electors. This is something to which I keep referring and it is why I opposed attempts to ban dual mandate. My view is that if electors wish to put somebody into assemblies, it is entirely a matter for the electors. It might be impractical, but that is not for us to say. It is for us to allow electors to do that. So I agree with the point that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, made. It may be that the court says, “You have committed an offence”, but if the electors feel it is important that that person should be returned to represent them, then it is entirely a matter for them.

We keep bringing forward rules that restrict the freedom of electors. We should be looking at it the other way, trying to open up our process as much as possible and leaving it up to electors. If they want somebody to represent them, that is a matter for them. Leave it to the electors. Do not impose restrictions on them. For that reason, I have considerable sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is trying to achieve. Certainly, I am all in favour of reviewing that provision and perhaps even widening it, for the reasons I have given, to look more broadly at how we can protect electors in making the choice that they wish to make, having whom they wish to elect and not being restricted in that.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, as my noble friends have spelt out, the Bill raises the interesting question not just of the interplay between this process and that of the election court but also of what I think is the Government's slap-dash drafting of the Bill, with their cut-and-paste from other legislation, without actually thinking through the best way of dealing with allegations of wrongdoing. As I have said, and as the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, has echoed, we do not want ever to see this Bill used. We hope that MPs will never find themselves in the position of triggering a recall petition. However, if it happens, we need to be sure that the most appropriate mechanisms and penalties are available to suit the particular misconduct. We may have it in this Bill, but we may not; it may not be right. Indeed, on the reverse side, it might be much better for other misconduct to trigger a recall petition rather than straight expulsion, as my noble friend Lord Dubs suggested. The proposal of a report to consider this in the round and come forward with proposals on that basis seems eminently sensible. I hope that the Government will support this amendment.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, behind this issue are some large questions about the role of election courts and the seriousness of electoral offences such as electoral fraud. The role of election courts is to assess whether electoral fraud has taken place and to determine whether it has had a material impact on the outcome of an election. I know that what happened to Phil Woolas preoccupies a number of noble Lords on the Labour Benches. I went back and looked at that sad history and I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, suggested in Committee that he be acquitted on appeal. He was indeed acquitted of one of the three offences but the other two were affirmed.

Electoral fraud is a serious business. I can think of other potential occasions where we could find ourselves with contested results of elections. We had a contested issue in east London in local elections where the severity of what is pled or what might perhaps have happened is not—as I think is being suggested here—something less serious than other potential misconduct. I understand the noble Lord’s intentions in tabling his amendment but I am not persuaded that, after two years, a particular fact will have come to light which would necessarily cause the Government of the day to reappraise the role of election courts, which is what this is really about.

I am also concerned that granting election courts the discretion to initiate a recall petition risks sending a confused message about the seriousness of electoral fraud as such. At present, there is a public expectation that those who commit offences that breach electoral law should face the appropriate penalty and that the appropriate penalty is set. Those offences are particularly relevant to the MP’s democratic mandate, and they are intended to affect the MP’s democratic mandate because, thankfully in this country, we have a very low level of electoral misconduct during campaigns and of electoral fraud; but we are conscious that the potential is always there. In the event that fraud has been committed by a sitting MP, his or her constituents might be confused if they were asked to sign a recall petition, knowing that an election court had already identified proven wrongdoing on the MP’s part.

The Government do not consider that this Bill should be a vehicle for the election court’s functions to be adapted, or for the consequences of established electoral offences to be altered; that is a different and other serious set of issues. There is also a risk that an MP, having been subjected to a recall petition by the election court, could then be prosecuted and sentenced in the criminal courts for an offence of which the election court had found him or her guilty. If the MP had held on to his or her seat following the first recall petition and were then sentenced to a period of imprisonment of 12 months or less, this could trigger another recall petition under the first recall condition.

There are some complicated issues here, but I end where I started. Election fraud or an election offence during a campaign that materially affects the outcome of that election are serious offences. That is the role of election courts. However, the Government are not persuaded that we should now downgrade the severity of that offence.

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[Lord Norton of Louth]

My Lords, I, too, very much welcome this amendment. It is a step in the right direction. I have just one question for my noble friend. Why was the consultation to which he referred not undertaken before the Bill was introduced?

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I am going to be a little more generous than the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and thank the Minister for listening to the debate on the amendment that we moved in Committee. He will not be surprised that we are delighted with this. Not only is it the right answer in itself, but I also think that it will reduce the demand for postal votes. That will save the resources of the petition officer—their time, their staff and their money—because there will be less need for people to apply for postal votes. So we are very happy to support this government amendment.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I am most grateful for the generous comments that have been made. As I said, this has come forward because it makes practical sense. If there is an unfortunate instance of recall, it is important that constituents, wherever they are from—the islands or the large constituencies—have the ability to sign if they so wish. So far as my noble friend Lord Norton is concerned, as I said at the beginning, our basis for the maximum of four signing places was because that was what the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee had recommended. If I have further particulars on that, I will of course write to him, but that was the basis for four. However, what has happened in the other place and in your Lordships’ House has ensured that sense has prevailed, so I commend the amendment to your Lordships.

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[Lord Norton of Louth]

My Lords, I, too, support this amendment for the reasons we discussed in Committee. I argued then that the number of signing places should be expanded and the period of time in which you can sign reduced. The Government have got half way there, so I hope that they will now go the rest of the way as well, for the reasons that have been well advanced.

Like other noble Lords, I cannot understand the rationale for eight weeks. As the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said, it is much longer than an election campaign. In the case of one election, the Prime Minister announced it and it took place four weeks to the day after that. However, here we are saying that twice as long should be available for people to reflect on whether they should sign a petition—eight weeks. Why on earth should anyone take eight weeks to think about whether they should sign a petition or not? The news about the Member being eligible will be out quickly. It will be in the news and, as has been touched on, it will then cease to be newsworthy after a matter of days, if that. Why are we going to linger for weeks with people sat at polling stations twiddling their thumbs waiting for people to turn up and sign? I can see no argument for that length of time. It is not even as if we are still in the period where it took days for news to reach people and they then had to rely on some slow means of transport to get somewhere to actually sign something. Even if we were in that period, they could do it in less than eight weeks. Why nowadays, with instant communication and the ability to get to one of potentially 10 places to sign fairly quickly, do we need as long as eight weeks? It may be an arbitrary figure, but why eight rather than, say, six?

The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said that he is flexible and that it could be four or five weeks. I thought he was, if anything, generous in saying three weeks. Why on earth would you need three weeks to reflect? Are you going to call the family together to hold great deliberations about whether you should sign it or not? Once you know about it, you think about it and then you decide whether you are going to make the effort to go and sign the petition—you go and sign and that is it. That could be quite easily achieved within a period of three weeks and, to be honest, one could achieve it with a much shorter period.

As I said, the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, is being quite generous in putting down that figure. Had he not put down his amendment, I would have put one down to reduce the period and would probably have chosen an even shorter period. The argument for his amendment is eminently rational. It does not raise any serious issue of principle in terms of recall per se, so I see no reason why the Government, having moved on the number of places where signing can take place, could not be moved just as easily on this. It makes perfect sense. There is also the practical point that was touched on about people having to staff the places at which signing can take place. There is a cost to the public purse, and we should not lose sight of that.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport has made a good case for considering whether and why eight weeks is somehow the perfect period for the petition to run. We remain unclear on the question that my noble friend Lord Hughes raised as to why the Government chose this period—a question to which they never gave a clear answer in Committee. As I said before, two weeks, as it was then, did seem too short a period if it was to include the run-up to the signing period—in other words, the time to get the signing issues out and for everyone to get to know about them as well as the signing period itself.

The Electoral Commission thinks eight weeks is, in its words, a relatively “long signing period”. Certainly, in democratic terms, two months is a long period for an MP to be effectively out of the Commons and fighting to retain his or her seat. However, the period does have to be sufficient for people to know about it, to hear the debate and to come to a view, and three weeks probably is too short if it is to cover the whole of the public awareness period—I do not like the word campaign—as well as the actual signing period. Amendment 12, as it stands, might not be the right one, but it will be very interesting to hear whether the Government can give us any reason why they chose eight weeks and, even more interestingly, whether they are willing to consider some movement on this.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for tabling this amendment; we have had a very interesting debate. I appreciate that an eight-week period may seem lengthy, but the main reason why it was considered appropriate is that we thought it was important that constituents are given sufficient time to consider any available information from the Member of Parliament or from those concerned with the petition. I very much hope, as I said before, that we do not have these recall petitions. I hope and expect that the behaviour of Members of Parliament will be of the highest standard, and that this will not happen.