Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden]

As the noble Lord suggested, I will leave that to my noble friend Lord Tyler, as a former Member of the House of Commons. However, the case for asking the House of Commons to reconsider the issues that these amendments highlight is strong. I incline to that view, and for that reason I support these amendments.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, am a signatory to these amendments. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lords, Lord Lexden, Lord Norton and Lord Tyler. I think that in the part of the country that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, comes from they have a saying: “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear”.

I sympathise with some points of view expressed by noble Lords on the opposition Benches. I am not an enthusiast for this legislation; I would rather it was not before us for a variety of reasons. I entirely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, said earlier about the climate that IPSA has created and the difficulties that have arisen because of a loss of confidence. However, as the right honourable Member for Blackburn, Jack Straw, said in evidence to the committee to which the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, referred, and which reported only today:

“It is important that we do not get ourselves into a gloom about this. Politicians have never been trusted. In a sense, in a democracy that is quite healthy … In the middle of the [Second World] war, Gallup surveyed public trust in politicians and it was pretty low”.

I am not indifferent to that: I think it is very important that people should have a high view of politics and politicians. However, as Jack Straw said, it has always been thus. I worry that the solutions that we have put in place will not deal with some of the endemic problems of a lack of trust, not just in politics or politicians, but in our institutions throughout this country, where there has been a considerable decline in public trust across the piece.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, I was grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Wallace and Lord Gardiner, for meeting us to discuss our reservations about the Bill. However, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, recognised, these are genuine attempts to try to make the Bill better, even if one does not agree with them. That is why I am happy to be a signatory to these amendments, not least because of the experience that I had when I served in another place and was a member of what was then the Privileges Committee—the Standards Committee’s predecessor.

I was a member of that committee when we had to deal with the so-called cash for questions scandal, when two Members of the House of Commons had received significant sums of money for tabling parliamentary questions. The end of that process brought to mind something which I think the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said at Second Reading: that the real mechanism for people to decide whether to recall an MP, which is in place, is of course a general election. I was very struck that, at the end of that process, when two Members of Parliament were found guilty of those offences, in one case the constituents in the constituency where they lived decided not to return that Member of Parliament, but in the identical other case they did return that Member of Parliament. He continues to serve in another place. We had to look at some difficult cases but we were certainly not asked routinely to provoke potential by-elections. That is the issue that most concerns me and which I want to address in speaking to this amendment.

I was always impressed by the genuine desire of members of that Committee on Privileges, from whichever part of the House they were drawn, to maintain the reputation of the House of Commons and get to the truth. I did not sense any narrow partisanship; I worry that we are risking that by putting this mechanism in place. The fact is that Standards Committee Motions are also amendable on the Floor of the House of Commons. I hope that the Minister will address both the pressure that will be placed on members of that committee of a partisan nature in the future and what can then happen on the Floor of the House. Will he say in his response whether that possibility of amendable Motions on the Floor of the House of Commons will continue in this new situation? If so, could a partisan majority not be used to trigger a recall process by increasing a suspension to 10 days, even where the Standards Committee had decided against it?

I want to say a word about the Government’s response to the Constitution Committee, which talks of the Standards Committee taking judgments. The benefit of these amendments is that we would take those subjective judgments out of the process. I particularly agreed with the description that the noble Lord, Lord Norton, gave. He talked about simplicity and objectivity being at the heart of what these amendments seek to do. In particular, Amendment 3 would make the trigger incredibly simple. If you are convicted of an offence, the electors would get to determine whether they wish to keep you. Incidentally, I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, said a few moments ago about the danger of vexatiousness creeping into the system with groups of people, for whatever motive, trying to undermine good Members of Parliament.

As the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said, it is extraordinary that we are having this debate this afternoon, after this report of more than 100 pages was published this morning. Although I have obviously not been able to read it in any great detail yet, I was struck that the report said on page 5:

“The subcommittee heard from a number of witnesses who were concerned about the extent to which the current system was fair to those members subject to it. While we believe the system is broadly fair, it is clear that MPs do not feel well supported”.

The report also reflected on the Standards Committee itself on page 6, saying:

“The Committee does an essential but sometimes unpopular task”.

That is certainly true; I know from the expressions on the faces of one or two noble Lords who served on that committee in another place that they would agree. The report went on to say that,

“if the House fails to engage with the Committee’s proposals it undermines the Committee’s position but, more importantly, the House’s own standards”.

We have to take those points seriously and I hope that between now and Third Reading, we will have the chance to do that.

By contrast the Government’s second trigger, as it stands, gives Members of Parliament the whip hand. That cannot be in the spirit of what the Government themselves say that the Bill is about. The Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House made that clear weeks ago but the Government’s response is, to say the least, wanting. In answering, it really would have had to demand that this matter be considered further, before Third Reading in any event. Now that the Standards Committee has published these proposals, that case for better and further consideration of the Bill and its impact on the committee must surely be even more compelling.

There are just six weeks left of this Parliament. We are not yet into the wash-up. We are not yet into purdah. We can, in the time remaining, amend the Bill and put in place a recall arrangement that would command public support—something simple, more objective and more easily understood, which avoids the perception that MPs will be able to make friendly interventions to prevent their own errant colleagues being subject to the process. In that six weeks, we can also look properly at the issues raised by the Standards Committee’s own report. Addressing the issue of lay members—a point that has been referred to by noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Howarth—including their number and force, would go a long way towards dealing with some of the issues that I have been raising. Either way, it is not enough for the Government to dismiss such serious and widely expressed concerns out of hand. I hope we will hear a clear commitment from the Minister to come back to this question at Third Reading.