Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours spoke compellingly on this issue at Second Reading and he has done so again today. He is right that the House of Commons made a mistake in reducing the minimum requirement for a trigger for the recall process from 20 to 10 days’ suspension from the service of the House. He has explained very powerfully why that was a mistake and suggested convincingly that the House of Commons inflicted this error on itself without having adequately considered what it was doing. It is surely essential that the Standards Committee is enabled to retain a sufficient scope and flexibility and a sufficient range of penalties and sanctions to be able to temper its judgments to the particularities of the individual case before it. If a 10-day suspension automatically triggers the recall process then the Standards Committee has become excessively constrained. As my noble friend has just described, the political consequences are very major indeed. The committee should not be boxed into a position where it very often has little alternative but to precipitate a by-election, with all the political and personal implications that follow from that.

Nor should this legislation diminish the standing of the Standards Committee. Part of the motive of those who voted in favour of the reduction from 20 days to 10 was that they had given up on the Standards Committee. They actually believe that it has ceased to be a useful instrument of parliamentary self-government. As I said in the previous debate, I, by contrast, believe profoundly that one of the ways in which the House of Commons can help to restore its reputation and public credibility is to be seen to strengthen its capacity for self-regulation and self-discipline, not the reverse.

To go back to a 20-day minimum suspension period triggering the recall process is not to eliminate the political difficulty that the existence of recall will introduce into the proceedings of the Standards Committee. It may be said that there is, in principle, no particular difference between nine days not precipitating recall and 10 days doing so and between 19 days not precipitating recall and 20 days doing so. However, it does diminish the difficulty because it will reduce the frequency of the occasions when the committee feels under inexorable pressure to pronounce or make a recommendation to the whole House that the suspension period should be 10 days or more. It therefore diminishes the force of that politicising pressure on the committee and that is very important. I am grateful to my noble friend for his exhaustive and courageous examination of these issues. He has given wise advice and this House should, in turn, give wise advice to the other place.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I may briefly intervene. It seems extraordinary that in rising to support the Government in their original position, I am rising to support an amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. They had got it right when they originally specified 20 days. In the 18th century, one was hung for stealing a cabbage, or for murdering your wife. If you committed any offence, you might as well get rid of any witnesses in order to avoid being hung for stealing the cabbage. We are rather in that position here.

If the provision is about persuading the outside world that the House of Commons takes bad behaviour seriously, I point out that most people would think that losing your pay for 10 days was not a particularly serious sanction. I therefore think that the nought to 10-day spectrum is far too narrow, and that nought to 20 days would be considerably more just and avoid the problem of the kind of political pressure that the noble Lord referred to.

The more that I, as a former Member, read and listen to the debates on the Bill, the more I believe that the House of Commons has lost confidence in itself. It is a bit like the situation at the moment: whenever there is a difficult problem there is a tendency to set up a public inquiry rather than actually address the issue. The public inquiry then goes on for ever, costs a lot of money and people feel, in the case of some inquiries, that no one has been held to account and it has all taken so long that the situation has moved on. That all adds to the sense of irritation on the part of the public.

What the noble Lord is proposing is eminently sensible and I am really looking forward to hearing the Minister’s response as to how he is going to explain how what I assume was a carefully considered Bill was presented to Parliament and amended in this way. We have almost gone into a competition to, sort of, wear the hair shirt—against the interests of Parliament. I am not being critical of the Opposition and I understand why they have done that, but it is a route that will lead to the destruction of the House of Commons in people’s eyes. If the House of Commons does not believe in itself and if it does not trust itself, how on earth can one expect the outside world to trust it if it demonstrates that it does not have the confidence to carry out its own sanctions?

It is a long time since I left it in 1997 but in the House of Commons that I remember, there is political partisanship—of course there is, which is why the point about the 10 days is important—but, on the whole, the House has a sense of its own worth and of its relationship with the public. It can be trusted to take the decisions that we are talking about and the amendment is immensely sensible. I hope that my noble friend will revert to the Government’s previous position and accept it.

[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.