Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes and Lord Grocott

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I have put my name to the amendment, which is milder than the one we considered in Committee. It is a reasonable, moderate and sensible amendment, and therefore I tend to fear that the Government may not look at it very favourably.

The principle seems crystal clear. One of the few good things in the Bill, which otherwise I dislike intensely, is that it gives the final word to the electorate, which is where it should be. That is what I think is at fault with so much of the rest of the Bill: it has all sorts of complicated procedures that intervene between an MP and his or her constituents. Quite properly, a judgment is made every five years at a general election and, in my view, that is the way it should have rested. There are numerous other mechanisms within parties’ own disciplinary procedures which could enable most of the evils that it is alleged are identified by the Bill to be addressed.

However, as I said, the one good thing in the Bill is that it allows a Member of Parliament, even after a recall petition has been carried, to at least stand in his or her own defence in a by-election. That option does not exist following decisions of the election court. The MP—all too easily, it seems to me—is not only thrown out of Parliament but prevented from asking the electorate to give their judgment on the merits or otherwise of their having been thrown out of Parliament. It may well be that the electorate will endorse the decision of the court—in this case, the election court—and say, “Yes, you are right. It is wrong for this person to continue as the Member of Parliament”, but at least they should be given the option. When you introduce, as the Bill effectively does, a new sanction on Members of Parliament who misbehave, or are deemed to have misbehaved—that is, the recall system and the recall petition—then it seems to be a matter of common sense, if not common fairness, that we should consider whether this new mechanism is applicable to existing disciplinary offences or other existing offences. That is the point.

Therefore, this very moderate amendment simply says that, in future, within a period of two years a Secretary of State should be able to consider and report to Parliament whether this new recall petition procedure should be available to the election court as part of its machinery of penalties. If not, all sorts of anomalies might arise. If you bring in a new penalty for a similar category of offence, clearly consideration should be given to whether it should be introduced for older offences and older penalty mechanisms.

[Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes (Con)]

Does the noble Lord agree that the power of the electorate has already been pre-empted in the first place? What he said is perfectly right, in my view, but it has happened too late to bring constituents back in again with a vote or with an opinion, because their power has been pre-empted.

[Lord Grocott]

What the noble Baroness said is right to the extent that the whole mechanism of this Bill is doing as she said. But I suppose I am looking for some mechanism whereby it could be made a little fairer and across the board. I am not even doing that; I am saying that the Secretary of State should report to Parliament so that it can judge whether these offences, as determined by the electoral court, should have available to them the penalty of a recall system, which Parliament appears determined to impose. That is all that is being asked by this amendment, and my noble friend put it very well. I rest my case.