Recall of MPs Bill
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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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.
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—
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.]
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Recall of MPs Bill
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Stephen Twigg
The Minister is including Members who resigned from the House before the Standards Committee’s proposals were considered, but I acknowledge what he says. I still think that six is a very small number, considering the scale of the challenge that we face. With reference to the particular example that my hon. Friend cited of the “cash for questions” scandal in the 1990s, there is a concern that the length of period covered by the Bill would not have affected the MPs in that case.
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is providing a strong critique of the Government’s Bill and I agree with much of what he says. At the Committee stage there will be a wide range of views about what needs to be done to improve the Bill. The indication is that the Conservative party will be offering a free vote. Will we hear that from the Labour party as well?
Stephen Twigg
I thank the hon. Gentleman. I will refer shortly to some of the proposals that he has made. I am not in a position to make announcements about the Opposition’s whipping arrangements or the Government’s, but they will be made available in due course.
Stephen Twigg
Yes indeed. It is very important that this legislation applies to all elected Members of Parliament from the point at which they are elected. I thank the hon. Lady for giving me the opportunity to confirm that from the Dispatch Box.
It is important that the public are able to hold Members of Parliament to account for serious wrongdoing and misconduct—for example, taking financial reward for everyday parliamentary activity. Any system of recall needs to pass that rudimentary test. In Committee we will look at ways to strengthen that aspect of the Bill.
The length of suspension required to trigger a recall petition is currently too high, and it fails to catch some of the clear cases of misconduct that we have witnessed. There is also the question of how we can and should improve the process of suspension that would lead to recall. As the Minister confirmed, the Bill does not mention changes to that process, or, indeed, changes to the Standards and Privileges Committee. I hope that in Committee we will look at ways in which we can ensure that the process is not party-politicised and, as a number of Members have suggested in interventions, more independent. It is sensible to rebalance the Standards and Privileges Committee so that it does not reflect a Government majority, whoever is in power, and to increase the lay membership of the Committee, as the former Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley), said.
The second trigger in the Bill allows for a petition if an MP receives a custodial sentence. As the Minister said, some of the people who would have been caught by these proposals received a custodial sentence for political protest. One of my predecessors in Liverpool, Terry Fields, who was the MP for Liverpool Broadgreen, would have faced a recall petition when he was sent to prison for refusing to pay the poll tax. We need to bear these issues in mind when we are debating this aspect of the Bill. At the same time, I think it would be widely felt that if a Member of Parliament committed a crime and was sent to prison, it would be appropriate that, whatever their motive, the public in their constituency had the opportunity to sack them if they wished to do so rather than moving to a general election.
Zac Goldsmith
The hon. Gentleman’s point about Terry Fields proves exactly why it is so hard to define what is wrongdoing. In those circumstances, it would not just have been a matter of his constituents having the choice of recalling him—it would have required just 10% of them to throw him out of his job, even if he might then have clawed his way back through a by-election. That is one of many problems with the Bill.
Stephen Twigg
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point of substance that we need to consider as the Bill progresses. I imagine that Terry Fields would have been re-elected by a massive majority for the stand that he took against the poll tax.
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
Of all the promises made in the heat of the expenses scandal, recall was the only one that resonated properly with voters. It was a promise that they could hold their MPs to account at all times, with a mechanism for removing an MP who had lost the confidence of a majority of their constituents. I know that some colleagues thought it was a foolish promise for the party leaders to make and that anger levels would eventually die down and people would eventually re-engage with the political process, but that misses the point. Voter turnout has been decreasing for years and years, and party membership has been plummeting to miserable levels over a very long period. Five years on from that scandal, the general confidence levels in MPs are at an all-time low—26% according to a recent survey. The expenses scandal did not start that trend; it cemented it and confirmed a prejudice that people, rightly or wrongly, already had.
I think that most hon. Members recognise that change is not just necessary but inevitable, just as it was at other times in our history when events required politics to adapt and move on. When the industrial revolution changed society beyond all recognition, the first Reform Act became inevitable. It was inevitable that women would eventually be given the right to vote, despite the resistance to it. Well, the world has changed again.
When the last big step was taken in 1969—the voting age was lowered to 18 for all men and women—the only information that people had about their MP, other than the odd scandal in the newspapers, was via very selectively crafted newsletters. Today, people will know how their Members have spoken in this debate and how they have voted at the end of it within seconds of their doing so. With 24-hour news, the internet and social media, we are in a world that is completely different, and that has happened very quickly. People have simply never had more or better information, but politics has not even begun to adjust.
People know so much more about what we are up to in this place, but that has merely compounded the sense that once they have voted there is nothing they can do to hold their MP to account. We have a system in which once an MP is selected they are inviolable until the next election. An MP could switch parties, refuse to attend Parliament at all, refuse to meet constituents in any context, systematically break each and every promise they had ever made to get voted in or even disappear off on holiday for five years, and their constituents could do absolutely nothing about it. Such a formula is no longer sustainable.
Zac Goldsmith
The very basis of the version of recall that I and, I am pleased to say, a great many colleagues will seek to bring forward next week—I will explain it in a few moments—is that it is down to the voters. If the conduct of Sinn Fein representatives is below what people expect, for that reason or perhaps others people should have the power to make such a decision for themselves; they should not require the permission of the House. I do not pretend that recall is the answer to the problems that I have identified, but it is an answer.
Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making very powerful arguments that he has held dear for a long time. May I suggest that the overwhelming majority of people who stand for and get elected to this place do so for good and noble reasons and want to serve their constituency and their country? We should acknowledge that in this debate, and not always talk down the nobility of being in politics.
Zac Goldsmith
I could not agree more. That is precisely why I believe that we need a proper recall system—not some shenanigans conveying the impression that they give people recall powers without actually giving them any power at all—that would give Members, such as my hon. Friend and many others, a permanent implied mandate. In a few moments, I will explain why recall will help to give dignity and to restore nobility to this place, but if he thinks that I have not addressed his concerns properly, I invite him to intervene again.
Recall would allow people in extreme circumstances—where a clear majority of them have lost confidence in their MP—to remove their MP between elections. It would give people a sense of ownership over their democracy, which would help in and of itself.
Recall is not a new or radical idea. It exists in various forms in about 30 countries on five continents, including Poland, Canada, Germany, Japan, India, South Korea, Costa Rica, Taiwan, Mexico, Argentina, Peru and Ecuador. It has existed in the US for more than 100 years, and in Switzerland for even longer. It is a good idea—it works—and it is great that the mainstream parties have finally accepted it.
Mr Kevan Jones
I am very interested in what the hon. Gentleman says about recall empowering voters. In practice, would it not do what it does in the United States, which is to empower wealthy individuals who are not happy with what their representative is doing to mobilise against them? It would empower wealthy individuals, such as the hon. Gentleman, to influence events in a way that my ordinary constituents and I cannot?
Zac Goldsmith
I will explain why such concerns are groundless during my speech, but I will make one point, partly in response to the Opposition spokesman. Concerns about expenditure during the recall process are a matter for regulations; the amendments that my colleagues and I seek to introduce would not tamper with the Government’s proposed regulations on expenses. That separate technical issue can be very easily addressed.
Zac Goldsmith
The hon. Gentleman takes a very dim view of his electorate if he thinks that that is so easy. Irrespective of that, the two-month petition stage before a referendum will be regulated, so his cost arguments simply do not apply.
Mr Jones
What happens in practice in the United States is that individuals who take against a policy or a state or national representative can use their tremendous wealth to use a campaign in the lead-up to the recall election to undermine such a representative. The idea that that is somehow empowering the voters is not the case. Recall empowers very wealthy individuals who could then—
Zac Goldsmith
To my knowledge, in the United States there are no limits on expenditure and on broadcasters; in this country, we have limits on both. Even during the 100 years of recall in that wild west environment of the United States, there have been only 20 successes out of 40 attempts. The hon. Gentleman’s arguments simply do not match the experience of recall anywhere in the world. They are complete nonsense.
Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend not agree that recall is not about licensing vexatious attempts to unseat MPs? Frankly, the public would see through that, particularly if it was frequent and clearly about political and personal grudges. There would be checks and balances in the process, and we can trust the public to see through such attempts. Surely recall is about empowering our constituents to ensure that they do not feel let down and failed by their local Member of Parliament.
Zac Goldsmith
My hon. Friend is exactly right—I hope in due course to make such points as well as she has—including about the fact that the protection lies in the threshold, and I will come on to that in a second.
Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)
When I sat on the Standards and Privileges Committee, it was interesting to see the sort of complaints that we received. Regularly, there were 28 complaints a month of which only one was relevant to what the Committee could look at, and it quite often ended up as a case of “No harm, no foul”. My difficulty with my hon. Friend’s amendments is that the work load created would sometimes be absolutely phenomenal. I want a very high threshold to avoid the problem of vexatious complaints.
Zac Goldsmith
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and I will address her points properly, but if she feels that I have not done so, I invite her to feel free to intervene at any point.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
I think that my hon. Friend’s proposals include not having a recall opportunity within six months of a general election, for the obvious reason that there would soon be an opportunity to get rid of the MP if he or she were that unpopular. If we repeal or move on from the law on five-year Parliaments and go back to a system in which the Prime Minister has discretion on when to call a general election, how would that work?
Zac Goldsmith
That would open up a whole new debate, but that is for another time. In the Bill put together by the committee, the six-month limit relates to the start of an election, not the end, so it is possible to have a recall process after an election, but not within six months of an election being called. The reason is that someone may be elected on a spurious basis; for example, on the basis of a whole tangle of lies that are then exposed.
Zac Goldsmith
I will make some progress and then take as many interventions as there is an appetite for.
It is good that our three mainstream parties and all the smaller parties have understood that recall is necessary. That is a sign of real progress. However, what is not great is the Bill that we are debating today. The Deputy Prime Minister has said that it represents a small step in the right direction. If only it did. I believe that the Bill in its current form will set democracy back, and I want to try to explain why.
For one thing, the criteria in the Bill are so narrow, as we have heard from many Members today, that the process will be virtually pointless. It will still be possible for an MP to switch parties, refuse to attend Parliament, disappear on holiday or break every promise that they made before the election without qualifying for recall. The public will discover, with the very first scandal, that they have been misled. The Bill will inflame the very resentment and anger that gave rise to it. Extraordinarily, the Deputy Prime Minister yesterday called it “the people’s recall”. I call it madness.
Another reason is that, instead of giving voters powers to hold this institution to account, the proposal is that the institution will, effectively, hold itself to account. Except for when an MP is jailed, voters will need our permission to initiate the recall process. Panicking because of the backlash that he has received, the Deputy Prime Minister said yesterday that he would create a panel of ordinary independent people to adjudicate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell) has pointed out, we already have that panel—it is called the constituency. The proposal before us will appal voters and has been rejected, without exception, by every single democracy pressure group from 38 Degrees on the left, all the way over to the TaxPayers Alliance, and everything in between.
The Bill could also destroy good MPs. Under the plans, just 10% of people can throw an MP out of office, although that MP could claw their way back into office if they got lucky in a by-election. Yes, the MP would have had to initiate the trigger, but history is full of hon. Members who have been suspended from this House or even jailed for noble protest. The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) is no longer in his place, but I believe that he has been suspended from the House 10 times. I apologise if I have got that wrong. Is it correct?
Zac Goldsmith
It is correct, so hopefully the hon. Member for Bolsover will not be appalled that I have used that figure. Is he an hon. Member who merits recall? No, he is not. Would he have qualified for recall under these plans? Probably, yes.
Mr Charles Walker
My hon. Friend mentioned pressure groups from the left and the right of politics. I have not had a single e-mail from a constituent on this issue that has not been initiated by a pressure group template, so he should not overestimate the public’s interest in the Bill.
Zac Goldsmith
That is interesting. I have been bombarded. I even received a letter this morning that said, “Dear Zac Goldsmith, we very much hope that you will support Zac Goldsmith’s amendments.” I take my hon. Friend’s point, but as is shown by all the surveys on this issue, of which there have been a great many over the past few months, if this proposal is put to members of the public, it is something that they support.
The amendments that my colleagues and I will table in due course are based on a Bill that was put together by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), which was crowdsourced. Some 40,000 people, many of whom were members of 38 Degrees and other organisations, went through it line by line and fed in their comments. It has engaged a large number of people. I cannot think of another Bill that has been subjected to that level of crowdsourcing.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman made me think of some of the lines in the Bill when he mentioned the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner). It states that
“the period specified is a period of at least 21 sitting days”.
It does not state that they must be 21 consecutive sitting days. It might help the Government if they go back and look at that.
Zac Goldsmith
That is a good point that I had not picked up on. The hon. Gentleman made the valid and reasonable point in an earlier intervention that there would be enormous pressure from the media, social media and members of the public for 21 days to become the norm, regardless of the offence.
This shabby pretence of a reform needs to be profoundly amended. With the help of a considerable number of colleagues, I hope to do so in Committee. The goal will be to put voters in charge, but with enough checks and balances to prevent any possibility of abuse. We will attempt to remove the Government’s trigger and replace it with a system that allows voters to initiate the process. In response to the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray), the protection will be in the threshold. It must be low enough to make recall possible, but high enough to ensure that it happens only when it absolutely should.
Under our proposals, there would be three simple stages. If 5% of the local electorate signed a notice of intent to recall during a one-month period, the returning officer would announce a formal recall petition. The purpose of the 5% provision is simply to show the returning officer that there is an appetite for the formal petition process. It is the least formal part of the process and is designed to prevent the initiation of recall by a few angry cranks in the constituency, which every constituency has.
Richard Drax
At the point when the 5% figure was reached, the MP’s reputation would be damaged because the local newspaper would splash with, “MP to be recalled”, telephone calls would come in and the whole thing would spiral out of control, even though it could potentially be a vexatious thing. I wait to hear what my hon. Friend has to say, but I am not convinced about how he will sieve out non-vexatious calls from the 5% figure, which could ruin a Member’s reputation. That is such a small figure, particularly with modern media.
Zac Goldsmith
The purpose of the 5% figure is to take the temperature and to demonstrate to the returning officer that a sufficient number of people would like to have a recall petition. On average, it would be about 3,500 people. That is the least formal part of the process. According to our amendments, it would require a 200-word explanation of why the petition was being initiated. Of course, there will be times when people unfairly and unreasonably initiate the 5% process. However, if they get to 3,500 people, they will have demonstrated that there is enough of an appetite for a proper recall process.
In answer to my hon. Friend’s point about sullying the reputation of the individual, recall is not part of the way in which we do politics in this country, but it is part of the way in which many other democracies work. If it became part of our culture, it would become a normal part of the argy-bargy of politics in this country and would be no source of shame. I suspect that every politician, at one point or another, would find themselves the subject of the 5% recall petition stage. The question is whether it would reach the 20% stage.
If 20% of constituents signed a petition in a two-month period, not online, but in person in a verified, formal context, we would know that there was a problem. It would mean that 14,000 people had left their home and gone to the town hall or another specified venue to sign their name. What is the biggest petition that anyone in the Chamber has faced since they became an MP? Was it anywhere near 14,000? I doubt it. If it was anywhere near 14,000, had it been verified? I doubt it. Was it online? Could anyone have signed it? Was it timeless? Very likely. Was it geographically specific? I very much doubt it. To get to 14,000 people is a massive result. This would not be an online gimmick, but would require people to go to the town hall and vote in person.
The most feedback that I have ever had as an MP—admittedly, I have only been an MP for four years—related to our NHS reforms. Nearly 1,000 people wrote to me. Many of them were template letters, but not all of them. Nearly 1,000 people wrote to me to express their disgust at the policies that I was supporting, but not one of them came to see me. Had they had the opportunity to vote for my recall online, I suspect that many of them would have done so, but how many of them would have left their home to go to the town hall and sign a petition? If 14,000 people had done so in a two-month period, I would have found it hard to put it down to the vexatious activities of the Liberal Democrats, the Labour party, the unions or anyone else.
Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
Is the last paragraph of the hon. Gentleman’s speech in favour of recall or against it?
Frank Dobson
The hon. Gentleman appears to be saying that even if we accepted his extreme version of recall, it would not work because not enough people would take part.
Zac Goldsmith
That is not at all what I am saying. I do not want to trivialise the concern of Members across the House that this tool might be abused. The threshold is therefore sufficiently high—it is possible to argue, perhaps rightly, that the threshold is too high—to make it impossible for the right to be abused by vexatious campaigns by minority groups, pressure groups and so on. It is simply inconceivable that that could happen.
Mr Charles Walker
My hon. Friend and I have had many civilised conversations about this matter over recent weeks. My concern centres on the 5% trigger. He knows full well that he and I could visit his local Sainsbury’s or Tesco on any matter and secure 3,750 signatures. My concern is over that initial threshold. Perhaps a better threshold would be 10% of those who voted at the previous election. For example, if 50,000 votes had been cast, the figure would be 5,000.
Zac Goldsmith
My hon. Friend makes a good point. I think that 5% is about the right level, and that was the consensus of the committee of Back Benchers, which represented seven different parties—5% was the figure that people centred on. I think that 3,500 signatures is a high threshold in one month, but I accept that it is a lot easier than 20% of signatures in person in the town hall. However, I am open to attempts on Report to amend the amendments that I and colleagues will be tabling. A consensus that 5% is too low and that 10% will meet the approval of the House is for me an issue not of principle but of detail. If that is what it takes for the House to be comfortable with the proposals, I will politely go with the flow on that. The principle is what matters.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
I have great sympathy with many of my hon. Friend’s arguments about recall, but were his plans to be accepted and a recall initiated, would the names and addresses of constituents who signed the petition be public knowledge, or would that be confidential? That will obviously be of great interest to many political figures.
Zac Goldsmith
The regulations we are using for those who sign the recall petition are exactly the same as those proposed by the Government. I do not want to mislead the House, but my belief is that names and addresses would not be published, and that this would be an anonymous process. The recall would need to be verified by the returning officer, but names would not be publicly available. The name of the person who initiates the 5% stage and the notice of intent to recall would be made public, however, as would the description. I think that is right for a number of reasons, including that there would be a person to whom the authorities could go if the 5% stage was fraudulent—if there were duplicate signatures or if children or people from other constituencies were asked to sign. It is much easier to attach legal responsibility to a named individual, as opposed to something entirely anonymous.
In responding to interventions I think I have described the process—I hope so; I am slightly lost—and I was beginning to describe what genuine recall would look like: the 5% of constituents; then the 20% at the business end, the 14,000 people going to the town hall and signing. If that 20% is met, the bell would be rung and a recall referendum would be announced. That would be a simple yes or no, where a majority—not a vexatious minority—of an MP’s constituents would be required to boot them out in order to trigger the next stage, which is a by-election.
Mr Lansley
As I understand it, my hon. Friend’s alternative approach would enable a recall petition to be triggered for any reason. Will he explain at what point somebody who might be the subject not of a political complaint, but of allegations relating to their personal affairs, their conduct in this House, or conduct that might be the subject of a criminal investigation, would be subject to a petition? How would he prevent a petition from being triggered in circumstances where no allegation had been proven against that person?
Zac Goldsmith
One supporter of the amendments that will be tabled is my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans), whose circumstances match closely those just described. I hope that he speaks at some point in the debate—I do not see him here. He chose to support the amendments because he was reassured by provisions in them that once the judicial process begins, the recall process would be suspended. It would not be possible to seek to recall a Member once such a process had begun, until it had concluded. I think that is right, and there was an overwhelming consensus that that is right among the 40,000 people or so who responded to the survey. The measure would provide the protection that is required.
To reach its logical conclusion, before getting to the by-election the process would require an absolute minimum of five and a half months. This process would not happen over a weekend, and five and a half months would also allow Members to make the case to their constituents in a way that they could not in a short period of time. That is another reason why my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) —he has had similar experiences that I do not need to rehearse because everybody knows about them—is very much a supporter of the Bill. He feels that the five-month process was far longer than he would have required to engage with his constituents and make the case. The same is true of two other Members of the House who have had difficulties in their lives and who began the debate very much in opposition to recall. They now both support the amendments because they feel that they will get a fairer trial from their constituents than they ever would from social media, the mainstream media, or from a standard committee of parliamentarians, susceptible and fragile as we all are to tremendous pressures from newspapers and social media. The thresholds and protections are there.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
In support of what my right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley) said, I am worried about fairness. People sign underneath a petition of 200 words, but is it not fair for the MP to have a say at that point? How do we cover the fact that the MP is accused and does not have the right of response to those 5% of people?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Mr Goldsmith, you have been speaking for 27 minutes and have been very generous with interventions. A lot of other Members are waiting to contribute, and they will not all be able to speak for nearly half an hour, as you have. Could you perhaps resist taking any more interventions, make the points you wish to make and conclude your speech?
Zac Goldsmith
Thank you for that helpful reminder, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will wrap up my speech quickly, but I want to address briefly some of the concerns raised. I do not seek to demean or trivialise those concerns, and I recognise that there are genuine, heartfelt and principled concerns about recall, as it represents a big step. The Deputy Prime Minister has referred often in the House to kangaroo courts, but I emphasise that no Member could ever be recalled unless a majority of constituents choose for him or her to be recalled. That is the whole point of a recall referendum.
We must keep a perspective. I am repeating myself, but to reach a point of recall, 20% of constituents—some 14,000 people—would have to make the journey in person to a town hall or another dedicated place within an eight-week period, and there would have to be a very good reason for that recall. Any hon. Member who disputes that should try to think back to the biggest petition they have faced, and to the issue that triggered the biggest e-mail flurry they have received. It will not have been anywhere close to 14,000 signatures—not of constituents, at least.
Zac Goldsmith
In one moment, if my hon. Friend does not mind.
In dozens of democracies around the world that use recall, it is hardly ever used. In the US, where recall has existed for 100 years—I have already made this point—it has been used only 40 times, and only 20 times successfully. California is the most active recall state in the United States. Only one governor in 100 years has ever been recalled, and there is not a single example of a successful vexatious recall campaign.
I know that other hon. Members worry that recall might somehow turn us into delegates and no longer representatives—a point made by the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg)—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. People might disapprove of a Member’s position on one issue, but support them on a range of other issues. It is rare for one issue to be a deal breaker, and the history of recalls shows that that is very rare—I cannot think of an example of one policy issue being the cause and effect of a successful recall.
Zac Goldsmith
There are no examples of that. There are examples of attempted recall on the back of gun control, but not a successful one. It is probably true, however, that where recall is possible MPs will think twice about making undeliverable pledges, which is not a bad thing. It is also likely that where pledges have to be broken, MPs would feel obliged to engage extensively with constituents to explain why that was necessary, and that is also a good thing.
Hundreds of thousands of constituents around the country have been sent the same template letter from Liberal Democrat Members, and been told that this measure will cost too much. I saw one of those letters a couple of days ago. Constituents have been told:
“Just one real Recall petition per constituency per Parliament could cost the taxpayer £100 million.”
That figure is completely bonkers. It inflates the Government’s own impact assessment by 300%, and assumes that each Member of this place will face the full recall—not just the 5%—at least once in every Parliament. If 650 Members of this place face recall in one Parliament, the cost is the very least of our problems.
Of course there are arguments against recall, but at their core those are arguments against democracy itself and against all elections. If those arguments prevail, I believe that we will have lost a golden opportunity, not just for voters but for us as Members of this great place. Recall would empower people to hold their MPs to account, and that ubiquitous moan that we have all heard—“You’re all the same; there’s no point voting and nothing will ever change”—would no longer make any sense. The mere existence of recall would give each of us an added, implied continuous mandate, and embolden us as a Parliament. I do not say that it would fix our democracy, but it would be a very big start.
Douglas Carswell
I absolutely agree. There are many good and decent Members who would never be given as fair a hearing by a Committee of grandees—people who spend their careers chasing the Whips’ baubles—as they would if they trusted the views of the voters. After all, it is the voters who know us best. If the majority of our constituents decide in a vote that, frankly, they want us recalled, there is no shame in that. We are clearly in the wrong job; we should go and do something else. The voters would be better off if we did; we would be better off and so would democracy.
Zac Goldsmith
It is worth pointing out the Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee has already said on the record that he does not want this extra duty of this extra ballot. He recognises, as does everyone else, that if we want to exert pressure and to influence an outcome, it is much easier to do so with a fallible group of 10 people than it is with 70,000 constituents.
Douglas Carswell
Absolutely. I would ask people again to apply the Ian Gibson test. If the Standards and Privileges Committee had been left to make the key decision in those heated and fevered moments during the MPs’ expenses scandal, would it not have been under intense media pressure to make the wrong choice by that good and decent Member of Parliament? I think it would have been. It is wrong for the Standards and Privileges Committee to have this role. It is right, if we want more lay members to be involved, for us not to seek to increase the number of lay members on the Standards and Privileges Committee, but to trust the voters. It puzzles me that people still struggle with the idea that the voters should decide whether or not to trigger the process, for they are the ultimate jury.
I shall support the Bill this evening. I shall do so because I am confident that it can be amended and made meaningful, and confident that many of the amendments that will be tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park will be successful. Unless that happens, this recall measure will remain a sham, a fix, a pretence of change so that Westminster can stay the same. Proper recall will end safe seat syndrome, which is what has really hamstrung our democracy. In four of the past five elections, fewer than one in 10 seats have changed hands. Even at the time of the 1997 great Labour landslide, only three in 10 changed hands. In other words, seven out of 10 seats are safe seats. There is almost a zero chance of those Members losing their seats unless they fall foul of the Whips. They are fiefdoms. That means that MPs answer to other MPs. The great destructive mechanism in our democracy, the Whips Office, is all-powerful.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman might be correct in some of that, but we do live in an imperfect world. All I would say to him is that this removes many of the imperfections and is an improvement on the current situation.
Zac Goldsmith
The hon. Gentleman is making a brilliant speech, and I agree with I think everything he has just said.
The points about moneyed interests are arguments against all elections, not just recalls. It would be possible for the Koch brothers to influence any election, not just recalls. That is another problem we need to address: there are arguments to be had about regulating the process so that that cannot happen. These arguments are not about recall; they are about democracy.
Mr MacNeil
I think there is a debate going on around me here about the influence of money in politics, and hopefully we are not quite in the same scenario as the United States of America in that respect, although it would be wrong to say that the influence of money is negligible in politics at whatever level, including general elections, by-elections or, perhaps, recall elections.
Some Members have argued that a general election is a form of recall, but I dispute that. Should a Member face recall, they will be facing recall on one point, with the eyes of the country, and particularly of their constituency, on the cause of the recall. In a general election Members come face to face with other candidates, as they would in a recall election, but the issues of the day can sweep a candidate into winning a seat. We have often seen over the last number of elections that some candidates have won to their own surprise; it is clearly not the candidate who has been elected personally, but instead it is support for their party or the issue of the day that has taken them to victory. Therefore a by-election or general election is not a recall election.
One of the most concerning aspects of the recall measures before us is the Government’s wording of clause 1(3), which mentions an MP who
“has, after becoming an MP, been convicted in the United Kingdom of an offence and sentenced or ordered to be imprisoned or detained”.
The word “detained” leaves us with quite a difficult situation. According to House of Commons notes, during this Parliament at least four sitting MPs have been detained by the police but not prosecuted. I will not name them because they do not deserve that. The detaining and imprisoning of people could, under the Government’s mechanisms, enable 10% to push for a by-election, and that would be wrong.
We must, I think, conduct a thorough experiment. Not many of us would like to imagine that we live in a country in which we have politically motivated arrests and people being detained because of mistaken identity—the measure does not even allow for the possibility of mistaken identity. Let us imagine that the detention was heavy-handed and wrong. Imagine too that the system was taken as a gold standard and used in other places. We could have a situation in which different standards in a different time and place would allow somebody to be detained, which could lead to a 10% trigger to an election, and that could be taken as a benchmark across the world. It is difficult to see how people could withstand the pressure of that.
Frank Dobson
It is no good people who do not agree with me shaking their heads, because I am sure that is the truth.
Zac Goldsmith
The example that the hon. Gentleman gives is an argument for recall. The Member of Parliament he describes, whose views were apparently at odds with those in her constituency, was nevertheless elected seven times in seven general elections despite holding those views. You can trust your constituents, and that is a case in point.
Frank Dobson
Yes, but she would have been put to all the bother and expense of fighting for her seat in the middle of a parliamentary—
Frank Dobson
I know that is the idea, and that is what is wrong with it. That is why it is a stupid idea.
This is intended to punish certain individuals, but it would have the effect of persuading a lot of other people who were feeling a bit edgy about things not to go ahead and stick to their principles because they might be set upon. That would not necessarily be done by an innocent group of individual electors—it could be the product of a very lengthy campaign by nasty people in the news media or, these days, some squalid, awful campaign in the social media, which built up over a long period of time and was almost impossible for an individual Member of Parliament to resist. We need to be very careful about that.
A lot of the things we enjoy today were advocated and supported by Lena Jeger and people like her, in the face of many objections. They include a lot of stuff to do with women’s rights, equal pay, family planning, outlawing racial discrimination, being in favour of abolishing capital punishment, being in favour of gay rights, and being in favour of in vitro fertilisation. More recently, people might have been subject to recall, depending on their constituency, for voting for or against the hunting ban—or, even more recently, voting for or against same-sex marriage. I can see some advantages in the idea of recall for such reasons. No doubt the Liberal Democrats would not have been very keen on innumerable recalls being launched when they went back on their promise not to increase student fees, and nearly every Tory and Lib Dem MP probably would not have fancied a recall over the NHS reforms. Even with those two attractive features, however, I do not support the proposition of recall.
When I make my position clear to my constituents, as I always try to do, they say, “How would you deal with the expenses fiddlers?” All I say is, “All the spectacular ones disappeared at the general election, so the system got ’em in the end.” As we know from the saying usually ascribed to Talleyrand, revenge is a dish best enjoyed cold. Even in an era of instant gratification, waiting for a general election should prove okay.
I absolutely accept that the Government Bill is a very shabby coalition compromise. There have been many objections to the triggers relating to a Member being jailed. Another trigger is misconduct that results in a Member being suspended for 21 days or more. Let us get this clear: this proposal is not about a Member being suspended for 21 days or more; it is about either being suspended for a short period or being sentenced to recall. It is not about the amount of time for which a Member might reasonably be suspended. I think that that could result in a lot of scandal—real or invented—being stirred up by the news media or social media. We all have to agree that there would be nothing objective or quasi-judicial about that process. It might be reasonably like going before the Standards Committee, but the decision would be taken on the Floor of the House.
“Objective” and “quasi-judicial” are not terms I would usually apply to a debate on that sort of thing. People might say that I am saying that the process would be a kangaroo court, but that is an insult to kangaroos. The decision would, generally speaking, be party politically motivated. As the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) has said, it is fairly clear that, even without the threat of recall, this place has treated some Members very differently from others even when they were guilty—if that is the right word—of the same wrongdoings.
I am aware that Edmund Burke lost the general election in Bristol after saying that he would betray the electors rather than serve them if he sacrificed his judgment to their opinions. That is fine, because that is what we are talking about: the judgment made at the general election. I find it rather odd that, even though he is usually portrayed as the philosophical father of conservatism, so many Conservative Members do not seem to agree with him.
The proposed process is not democratic in any way. Under the Government’s proposal, which is worse than that of recall enthusiasts, just 10% of the electorate would need to sign a petition. There would not be any provision for the other 90% to say, “We don’t think there should be a recall.” It would, therefore, be possible for 10% to sign up and get a recall under way, even if the vast majority of people living in a particular area were opposed to it.
The threat to the MP is not just that they might lose their job, but that they would have to go through a horrible process, which would be expensive, in both a personal and a party political sense, even if they survived the recall. That is something we ought to try to avoid.
Another problem is that the proposal would deter Members from sticking to the views they deeply hold. If they saw another Member suffer for sticking by their principles, a lot of them would start wondering whether it was still a good idea to do so themselves. Anything that discourages Members from sticking to their principles is bad. My electors have elected me eight times with varying majorities and I have always tried to tell the truth, because I am fairly secure in the feeling that, at a general election, what I have done will be looked at in the round by my electorate. However, a recall system would not look at things in the round, but at a specific and particular issue.
I have mentioned my distinguished predecessor, Lena Jeger. In 1974, I canvassed on her behalf. I called on a family I had got rehoused into a really rather nice flat, and the mother came to the door. They were definitely a Roman Catholic family. All the five daughters had the vote, as did the dad, so with the mum that made seven votes. People were not very sure about the likely outcome of the general election—I cannot remember which it was of the two general elections in 1974—and the mother said, “We want Mrs Jeger to support tightening up the abortion law.” I thought for a minute about whether to say, “Oh, she’ll do it.” Then I thought, “No. If she was here, she would tell the truth.” I therefore said, “No, I don’t think she will. She was one of the sponsors of what is now the law.” The mum said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t think we’ll be able to vote for her.” On election day, I happened to pass their polling station when all seven of them came out, and called, “Frank, Frank”. I went across the road, and they said, “It’s all right. We’ve voted for Mrs Jeger because you told us the truth.” Telling the truth, and being judged at general elections in the round for what we do, is what should continue.
I believe that the proposals will massively strengthen the hands of rich individuals and pressure groups, as well as vindictive media campaigns and unprincipled and manipulative social media targeting, and that they will ultimately be reactionary. People have benefited from changes pushed for by individual MPs who made themselves unpopular at the time they did so, and they will realise that we need to encourage such MPs, not do them down.
Mr Lansley
It is not that Members have something to fear from participation in our democracy—far from it. I believe completely in the wisdom of the masses, but we have to recognise when and how that is properly to be tested in the formal sense. We are a representative democracy, and we increasingly change the character of our democracy anyway. The referendum is a participatory democratic vehicle. We have used it more, and it is likely to be with us for the future, but only in specific circumstances. That illustrates the nature of the constitutional question at the heart of the potential amendment to the Bill.
Shifting to a recall process is not about addressing the individual behaviour of Members—it is much more likely to be used to try to influence the policies of political parties, of Members of Parliament, or of the Government. It would relate to particular individual issues, unlike a general election. As other hon. Members have said very forcefully, a general election is a vital moment in a representative democracy, because people take the whole presentation of party and candidate and consider it in the round. The recall mechanism is designed to enable the public to intervene in and, notwithstanding what the decision in a general election might have been, to impact directly on an individual decision on an individual policy issue.
Zac Goldsmith
My right hon. Friend is describing Parliament as if it were made up of hundreds of free spirits whose decisions might be corrupted by the pressure brought about by recall, but surely he realises—in fact, I know that he knows this—that the pressure applied by party hierarchies through the Whips is on a dramatically different scale from the tiny pressure that might be felt as a consequence of this remote and unlikely threat of a three-line whip that constituents might find themselves holding from time to time. There is no comparison—surely my right hon. Friend understands that. Most Members do exactly what they are told by the Whips for 99.9%—sometimes 100%—of the time.
Mr Lansley
I am quite old fashioned: Members would have to look quite far back to find a point at which I did not vote in accordance with the Whip. I think that the last time I defied the Whip was on the question of same-sex adoption rules.
I see part of my role as having been elected as a Conservative. A number of Members have said, perfectly reasonably, that we are primarily and overwhelmingly elected—the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) has accepted this—on a party rather than an individual basis. I do not see that as meaning that individual Members of Parliament should not have a conscience or be able to exercise their judgment, because they owe that to their constituents. They will have to come to a judgment on great matters of conscience that are relevant to their constituency. That was true on Iraq: I did not vote for the invasion, even though it was my party’s policy to do so. To suggest, however, that we should behave as individuals outside party discipline is nonsense, because the whole system will begin to break down if we go in that direction.
The point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park was slightly the other way around. He said that we all behave in the way the Whips tell us, but this has been a more rebellious Parliament—for good or ill—than ever before. I am not sure whether that is a good basis for the argument in favour of recall, because Members clearly feel that they can respond to their conscience and their constituents without the need for a recall mechanism.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) has suggested that if we took the Whips out of the process of deciding whether a Member should be suspended from this House—actually, I do not think that the Whips are part of that process— that would somehow relieve us of the impact of the Whips controlling our behaviour. The recall mechanism proposed as an alternative to this Bill, however, is a greater risk to Members. If a Member were subject to an allegation—a serious allegation, but not a criminal one—that threatened their reputation and position in the constituency, it is clear that they would then be subject to a notice of intent and at risk of a recall petition. The situation would develop rapidly and the question for their party would then be whether it supported them or not.
The hon. Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell) mentioned Ian Gibson, who accused his party of abandoning him. The most dangerous thing for a Member is to be abandoned when they are at risk of having to stand in a by-election in their constituency. If the party takes the Whip away from a Member, they would, in effect, have no chance in a by-election—unless they were in a very strong position—and they would be undermined. The power of the Whips as to whether a Member has the Whip—and, therefore, their power over that Member’s position in an election—would be unchanged by this or any other recall Bill. The power of the Whips is often exaggerated, but in so far as it exists, it would be unchanged by the recall mechanisms, whatever they might be.
Mr Jackson
Again, I have enormous respect for my hon. Friend, but my big concern about the amendments is mission creep. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley) made the point that it seems peculiar to establish in legislation, by the incorporation of those amendments, a system that we expressly do not want to be enacted. It is like saying, “We are just putting it in place just in case circumstances arise where we have to use”—
Zac Goldsmith
I think that everyone here who believes in the recall of MPs would like to see a system that is not used a great deal. None of us wants to see MPs slung out of this place on a daily basis. The idea is that the threshold is low enough that it is possible to achieve in extreme circumstances but high enough that it cannot be abused in the way that many Members in this House fear it might be.
Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)
It is a pleasure to be participating in the latter stages of this important debate and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson). We are distinguished members of a small group of resigned Parliamentary Private Secretaries to the former Northern Ireland Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson). My hon. Friend might find that some of his views are echoed in my speech.
It was a pleasure to listen to the speech made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young), the former Chief Whip and Patronage Secretary. His knowledgeable contribution showed how much he will be missed from the House after the general election.
Today is Parliament talking about Parliament. As I look up towards those who look down on us—literally and metaphorically—I am conscious that I do not see many of them. My hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), who has just left the Chamber, referred to our being in a goldfish bowl, but not many people are looking into this particular goldfish bowl. When we vote on bombing Syria or gassing badgers, this place is surrounded by members of the public wishing to tell us their views. We find that our inboxes are full of e-mails and our correspondence rates go up, but that has not happened in the build-up to today’s debate.
I am pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell) back in his place below the Gangway on the Opposition Benches. He reminded us of the case of Winchester in 1997, which is probably one of the only times we have seen what a recall looks like. I declare an interest in that case—you may well remember it, Mr Speaker—because the Conservative candidate in that Winchester by-election, who had been the Member for Winchester until the 1997 general election, was one Gerry Malone, who once held the very high office of deputy chairman of the Conservative party responsible for youth. It was Mr Malone who showed his commitment to democracy by overturning the results of the Conservative student elections in which I was elected as national chairman and by appointing my successor. It was ironic that he called that a consultation exercise, as he went on to find out what being on the wrong end of a consultation exercise felt like some years later in Winchester.
I am sorry that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) is not in the Chamber. He made an eloquent but characteristically depressing speech. A young man from the sixth form of my old school, St Columba’s in St Albans, is doing some work experience in my office this week. He told me with great pride that he had spotted an error in the hon. Gentleman’s speech, because there had been a reference to the Great Reform Act of 1830, when it was, of course, of 1832. I am pleased that the standards of my old history teacher, Mr Byrne, are alive and well in St Columba’s today.
Several hon. Members have talked about trust, which goes to the heart of this matter, and the expenses scandal. I viewed that scandal as a member of the public. Like many Members who were first elected at the 2010 general election, I looked on in despair at what happened during the expenses scandal. I understand that many in the House who lived through that experience are so scarred by it that they do not feel able to stand up and say that it was a small minority of people who did wrong and that those people were rightly punished. When a new regime is in place, it is wrong that this House continues to sit back and take the flak for something from the past. Members on both sides of the House who were first elected in 2010 believe that we have a mandate to restore the bond of trust between this place and the electorate, and we have tried to achieve that through everything that we have done and said in our constituencies.
We hear that we are all the same and that the political class is useless, but all hon. Members must be visited in their surgeries almost every week by people in abject despair, and because of the two letters after our names, we are able to escalate their problems into the hands of people who can sort them out. If we lose faith in this place, we will deserve to fall into public contempt. I assert that it is time for this Chamber to stand up again and bravely say to the British people, “This is the cockpit of parliamentary democracy in Britain. This is where we resolve issues by debate and argument. This is a place that is populated by people who are motivated by generous, good and decent instincts to do their best for their country and their constituency.”
However, I assert that one of the reasons people have disengaged from politics is that, as the late Tony Benn once said, this place has swapped power for status. Members of Parliament are asked to go on television, but they are afraid to exercise the powers vested in them by their constituents in the Lobby and to stand up powerfully to the Executive. We have shuffled power off to the European Union and to unelected quangos, to people we do not elect and cannot remove. It is vital that in the years ahead this House confidently starts to bring some of those powers back to this place and to exercise them in the name of our constituents who sent us here.
I thought that the comment that the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) made about Enoch Powell having a good majority in his South Down seat because he tipped his hat to the local electorate was a novel one. I am not sure that rushing out, buying trilbies and tipping them to our local electorates is the full solution to the problem we find ourselves in. The hon. Gentleman also referred to Edmund Burke, and I am delighted that the statue of that great conservative philosopher has now been liberated from behind the bookshop in St Stephen’s Hall, so that it can be seen as an inspiration to us all. It was Burke who said, in his famous speech to his electors in Bristol, that we as Members of Parliament owe our constituents our judgment above all else, and that we betray them and do not serve them if we sacrifice our judgment to their opinion. It is absolutely right that during the course of a Parliament we in this place will vote for unpopular measures. I remember a few years ago—I have told this story before—telling Lady Thatcher that the Conservative party was 9% behind in the polls. She asked when the next election was, and I said that it was three and a half years away. She said, “That’s not far enough behind at this stage.”
It is up to us as politicians to take decisions, confident in our judgments and confident that over time they will be shown to be right. I will use the recent example of same-sex marriage. I agonised over how to vote on that, as a practising Catholic and as an openly gay man. If I had listened to those in my constituency whose voice was loudest, whose e-mail send button was pushed the most often, I would have gone into the Lobby to vote against that legislation, but I decided that I owed them my judgment. Although I might not have earned their support on that, I am certain from their reaction afterwards and from the line I took with them that I have earned their respect. That, to me, is a much more important aspiration than to be liked.
Zac Goldsmith
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way; he is making a powerful speech. On his point about gay marriage, would he have made a different decision, or felt obliged to vote differently, had there been in place a recall regime of the sort that I and colleagues are proposing?
Conor Burns
That is a very good question. Some hon. Ladies and Gentlemen in this Chamber have known me for more than 20 years, yourself included, Mr Speaker, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton, and they know that I have consistently put my principles ahead of promotion. I would not have sacrificed the national chairmanship of the Conservative students to oppose Maastricht in 1993, and I certainly would not go through the Lobby in this place for something I fundamentally did not believe in—it is a liberating experience when one decides that.
Zac Goldsmith
I would be interested to know why my hon. Friend thinks that others might do that as a consequence of recall. What is it about this House that makes him feel that the existence of recall would enfeeble Parliament, as opposed to strengthening it in the way he has just demonstrated?
Conor Burns
My hon. Friend has given me an excellent introduction to how I want to end my speech. I will support the Government’s Bill, which was ably introduced today by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark)—not Angry of Tunbridge Wells, but moderate and very sensible of Tunbridge Wells. I look forward to the amendments from my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) in Committee, because I think that they need to be probed.
When I resigned from my role as PPS in order to vote against a Bill which I fundamentally opposed and believed would damage Parliament, I did so in the knowledge that that would lead to a sacrifice. As a friend of mine said at the time, “You’re a genius: you’ve established yourself as a person of principle over an issue that nobody really cares about.” I suppose that there was an element of truth in that. What I want to know—my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire made this point absolutely brilliantly—is how the amendments proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park would enable the separation of sanction on personal probity issues from people taking policy positions. In this House a Member must be able to take a policy decision, a difference of philosophical understanding on an issue, and be confident that they will be judged on that over time at the next general election. Issues of personal conduct are completely separate. If my hon. Friend can convince me and others that we can separate policy and probity, we will be open-minded in how we vote.
Mr Stuart
My hon. Friend made a powerful speech. At the heart of the issue is whether the public, with no prior wrongdoing having been proved, can be trusted to use this power without it being abused in order to challenge Members on matters of conscience. I do not often speak up for the Liberal Democrats, but in this Parliament our coalition partners took an unpopular decision on tuition fees as part of a coalition agreement that they thought was in the national interest. Members representing university towns may have taken that decision even though they stood on that manifesto pledge. Following this debate, I am going to have to wrestle with the idea of whether I am confident that the proposed process would not have been used to turf out those MPs for doing what they thought was right. It would be terrible if the fear of recall were to influence not how Members treat their constituents or work on their behalf, but how they vote. That goes to the heart of the debate.
Zac Goldsmith
None of the Lib Dem Members with whom I have spoken believe they would have been recalled on the back of the tuition fee debacle. If recall had been possible, it is more likely that they would have thought twice about pledging such unrealistic and undeliverable things before an election. Under such a regime, Members would have to think much more carefully about the promises they make.
Mr Stuart
My hon. Friend, as ever, makes a subtle and important point, which takes me back to the observation of my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) about US Congressmen always looking over their shoulders because they are elected to serve only two-year terms. It is not entirely a bad thing, however, that MPs are always looking over our shoulders to ensure that we communicate to our constituents why we are doing what we are doing and why we have made certain promises and voted in certain ways.
I do not know whether this has already been mentioned, but I accept that we are taking a risk. If we give the public the right of recall without any prior wrongdoing having been proved, we do not know how it will be used or what the pressures—political or otherwise—that may occur in coming years will do. I suggest, therefore, that this process is a perfect candidate for a sunset clause, whereby it would be trialled for a five-year Parliament. It might be said that after giving the public the right of recall, there is no way this House would ever have the courage to take it back from them. I suggest, however, that if that right ends up being used not for wrongdoing, but to challenge Members on how they vote, this House should then have the courage to do something about it.
It is not just proven wrongdoing that is of a criminal character or that is so severe that a Member is suspended for 21 days that upsets the public. If Members look at the data that WriteToThem, which is part of the TheyWorkForYou stable of internet tools, used to produce its league table, they will see that an awful lot of colleagues from all parties appeared not to respond to constituents: they did not write back to or take care of them. It is up to the electorate to decide whether they are being properly served by a Member of Parliament. That is at the heart of the issue for those of us who wish to give the public that right, and we hope, albeit in the spirit of optimism, that it will be used in the right way.
Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is right. Part of the reason why ISIL has got hold of so much funding is because it has the oil and also simply took money out of banks in some of the towns it took in northern Iraq. A long-term squeeze must be applied in this case.
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
I thank the Prime Minister for giving way. Does he agree that if we are serious about tackling jihadi terrorism in the middle east, we must take a much tougher line with some key allies, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, which have been fuelling and funding terrorism for decades and, if reports are accurate, continue to do so?
The Prime Minister
What I would say to my hon. Friend is that we need to have this very direct conversation with everyone in the middle east about the dangers of sectarianism and of supporting groups because they are Sunni or Shi’a. That is part of the background that has led us to this problem. We need everyone to recognise that, whatever branch of Islam they are from, terrorism breeds further extremism and terrorism and, in the end, comes back and damages their own countries and societies.
It is inevitable that the shadow of the United Kingdom’s last military involvement in Iraq hangs heavy over this Chamber today, but the situation that we face today is very different. We are acting in response to a direct appeal from the sovereign Government of Iraq to help them deal with a mortal terrorist threat. It is a threat to Iraq and a threat to Britain. We are not acting alone, but as part of an international coalition of 60 countries, many of them from the region and all of them committed to rolling back ISIL, however long and difficult the task may be. This is not 2003, but we must not use past mistakes as an excuse for indifference or inaction. We will play our part in destroying these evil extremists. We will support our Muslim friends around the world as they reclaim their religion, and once again our inspirational armed forces will put themselves in harm’s way to keep our people and our country safe. I pay tribute to them for their extraordinary bravery and service, and I commend this motion to the House.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
Both the Prime Minister and I have made it clear that we want to proceed with proposals on recall, and when we do they will be properly scrutinised; the early drafts have already been scrutinised by the relevant Select Committee. We are trying to strike the right balance between ensuring that the public feel that they have a right of recall in circumstances in which serious wrongdoing has occurred and avoiding this becoming a sort of kangaroo court arrangement, with people simply seeking to take actions against each other. That is the balance we are trying to strike. We will of course bring forward proposals in due course.
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
On the same issue, given recent events, does the Deputy Prime Minister still believe that voters will be satisfied with a recall system that is triggered by the Standards Committee, rather than constituents? Does he still believe that, despite recent controversies?
The Deputy Prime Minister
As the hon. Gentleman knows, we were quite open in the coalition agreement, right at the beginning of the Government—I know that he does not like this—about feeling that there needed to be some triggers to prove that serious wrongdoing had occurred before recall takes place. I actually have quite a lot of sympathy with his much more radical approach, but I doubt that it would curry much favour across the Floor of the House. I want to get something done, rather than aiming for the stars and ending up with nothing.
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
It is good news that we are discussing the TTIP which, as far as I am aware, is the most ambitious free trade agreement ever attempted. On these complex agreements, national legislators, in their worthy pursuit of job creation, growth and trade, do not always pay attention to the finer details.
Some years ago when I interviewed Ralph Nader, the consumer activist and occasional presidential candidate, about the North American Free Trade Agreement, he told me that even though Congress was set overwhelmingly to back the treaty, he was convinced from his discussions with members that few of them, if any, had bothered even to read the text. He eventually offered a substantial prize to any member who was willing publicly to answer 12 simple questions about NAFTA. Following a long pause, a strongly NAFTA-supporting Republican, Senator Hank Brown of Colorado, accepted the challenge and reserved the Senate Foreign Relations Committee room for the ordeal. The cameras and journalists were there and, to everyone’s amazement, he answered each of the 12 questions correctly, but when he had finished, he turned away from Ralph Nader to the cameras and said that having read the treaty, which he had not previously done, he realised just how awful it was, so he chose to do a U-turn and to vote against it.
At this stage, we do not have a huge amount to go on regarding the TTIP but, whatever one thinks about it, it clearly has serious implications and it merits close scrutiny. On the whole, free trade agreements are about lowering barriers to trade—that is their purpose—but, compared with the situation in other countries, there are relatively few barriers to trade between the EU and the US, so the main focus must be standards and regulations, with the goal of trying to harmonise them. However, it is hard to imagine that the process will involve any key standards going up; on the contrary, I suspect that we will see a spiral downwards. We only have to read several of the publications put forward by some of the most substantial big business lobby groups to see that they are openly talking about removing under the TTIP whole rafts of standards and regulations that businesses believe hinder their activities. One does not have to believe in a conspiracy theory; one just needs to read the communications of some of the companies that are playing an active role in the process.
We are already seeing an emphasis on lobbying with regard to food, about which several hon. Members have spoken, and it is difficult to imagine the harmonisation of food standards working in our interest. Europe believes that providing clear labelling for genetically modified food is a consumer right, but such practice is absolutely opposed by the vast majority of states in the US.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
On the subject of food, two companies in my constituency wanted to export to the United States, but the border controls and financial conditions to which they were subjected ensured that they could not be competitive there. They therefore had to franchise out in the United States, which meant that the company back home could not grow or create jobs here, which shows the unfairness of the system.
Zac Goldsmith
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention.
There are so many differences between the US and the EU, and not only in the quality of standards, but in the approach to developing them. I cannot imagine a situation in which harmonising standards and regulations would work in the interests of the consumer. I have given the example of GM food labelling, but there are many others. A number of countries around the world, and indeed the EU as a whole, have chosen not to allow the import from the US of beef from cows fed a diet that includes the hormone ractopamine, because of the fairly grave health concerns. I suspect that most British consumers would support that position. Would that be challenged? Well, there is already plenty of talk among agribusiness in the United States that it should be.
Most worryingly, US agribusiness is strongly opposed to EU attempts to limit endocrine disruptors. The links between the use of such chemicals and the alarming increase in precocious puberty among young girls are not disputed. Will those standards that we have set across Europe be adhered to and maintained? That remains to be seen, but we know that plenty of lobby groups in the United States have their sights set on reducing those standards.
It is easy to imagine that regulatory convergence will mean chasing the lowest common denominator. It is worth noting that, according to a whole raft of freedom of information requests conducted by the Corporate Europe Observatory in the context of the TTIP, the Commission has met civil society groups just eight times over the course of those discussions, whereas it has met corporate lobby groups—I do not know how they are defined and am only repeating what has been reported—119 times.
I suspect that most Members across the House would agree that removing or simplifying unnecessary regulations, removing barriers to entry, particularly for small firms, and encouraging free trade are all laudable aims, but they need not happen at the expense of democracy. My concern is that the proposed ISDS mechanisms, which we have already heard a great deal about, will undermine democracy. Under those mechanisms, companies wishing to challenge a national regulation could effectively bypass the usual process and go straight to an investment tribunal. Often hugely important outcomes therefore rest on the shoulders of just three arbitrators—one is chosen by the company, another by the state and the third is a compromise of the two. It is hard to understand how this country would want or need such a system.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Minister was asked recently—
Zac Goldsmith
He is about to intervene, but I am going to quote him anyway, because he might be about to repeat this. When asked why that would be useful for this country, and indeed for Europe, he stated:
“Investor protection is designed to support businesses investing in countries where the rule of law is unpredictable, to say the least.”
There have been so many requests to this Government and to the European Commission for examples of countries in the EU that are beyond the pale along the lines of the description he offered, but not one country has so far been listed, so why do we need this process? Why do we need these tribunals for countries where the rule of law is adhered to more or less across the board?
Mr Clarke
As I understand it, an investor who has access to this process would not be able to start arguing in favour of reducing standards in any regulation that has been passed by the legislature. Regulating will remain the responsibility of the authorities that already regulate. The only claim that can be made through the ISDS is that the state has gone back on its treaty obligation. Therefore, unless in the course of negotiations some agreement has been entered into to change regulatory standards on either side of the Atlantic, there is no way our existing rules on food standards or anything else could be challenged by some American company that suddenly decides that now that we have signed a TTIP it has the right to try to change the rules. What we are trying to get rid of is unnecessary regulation and the duplication by regulators on either side of the Atlantic of processes designed to reach the same public objective. That is the kind of thing that can be eliminated, to the huge advantage of companies on both sides of the Atlantic.
Zac Goldsmith
I very much appreciate my right hon. and learned Friend’s intervention. At this stage it is very hard to know how things will pan out. Much will depend on the terms of reference, but there are plenty of examples from around the world—as he pointed out, this is not a new concept—of companies using similar provisions in other trade agreements in order to undermine domestic legislation.
The North American Free Trade Agreement is a good example. According to a succession of polls in the past year, just 15% of US citizens want to remain in NAFTA. It has become one of the most unpopular free trade agreements of all; it makes the Euroscepticism that my right hon. and learned Friend talked about earlier look like a joke. A striking example in relation to NAFTA concerns Canada being sued via one of these dispute mechanisms by Ethyl Corporation—he is probably familiar with the case—for banning the chemical MMT, which Canada considers to be a highly dangerous toxin. Canada had to settle; it paid millions of dollars in compensation and eventually had to reverse its ban. Incidentally, the ban still stands in the United States, which makes the decision even more perverse. There are many more examples, and I was going to rattle off hundreds, but time is short and Members will be pleased to know that I will not.
As this treaty unfolds, it is essential that we remain mindful of who it is designed to serve. A guard needs to be erected against the voracious lobbying by big businesses that have a direct interest in undermining a number of the standards that I cited and have been cited by other Members. I personally do not trust the Commission to balance those competing interests, for all kinds of reasons, some of which I have hinted at in my short speech. I strongly believe that it falls to legislators like us to apply scrutiny throughout this process, and I very much hope that we do.
International Wildlife Crime
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
I congratulate right hon. and hon. Members on initiating this very important debate and on their excellent speeches. The appalling reality is that even if this House were full today, each of the 650 or so Members of Parliament could deliver a bespoke speech on wildlife crime without once repeating anyone else’s words. The natural world is under siege. Countless iconic species—we have heard endless examples today—are teetering on the edge of extinction.
The tragedy is that the worse the problem becomes, the harder it is to address, because the closer an endangered animal moves towards extinction, the greater its market value. People used to buy rhino horns mainly for medicine, and many still do, but increasingly people now buy them as an investment. During the second half of 2011, rhino horn auction lots surged by 67% on mainland China. In effect, people are betting their money on the extinction of species and hoping for such an extinction in order to boost their investments. I cannot imagine anything more revolting, but it happens.
I will focus on one aspect of this horror story which has already been covered in some detail—the illegal trade in ivory. Africa has lost an astonishing 90% of its elephants in the past half century. In the 1970s, Chad alone had 400,000 elephants; today, that is the entire population of elephants in the wild in all 38 range states in Africa. Chad’s elephant population is now in the low hundreds. We will remember that in March, 88 elephants were butchered in the space of one week—33 of them, we are told, pregnant females. We have heard the figures: 40,000 elephants killed a year, or one every 15 minutes. Members can do the rest of the maths for themselves. The situation is just as dire in Asia. According to the Elephant Family charity, there are only 1,200 breeding males left in India. It is an unspeakable catastrophe.
Elephants are among the most thoughtful, intelligent and fascinating creatures. If anyone doubts that, I recommend that they look up a story I became aware of only a few days ago about two crippled old circus elephants, Jenny and Shirley. It is worth looking it up on the internet; it has been written about all over the place. The elephants met 30 years ago in a circus. Jenny was a little baby, and the older elephant became something of a surrogate mother for her. Jenny was eventually sent off to a different circus, but 20 years later they were reunited—old and damaged from the activities in which they had engaged in the circus—in a lovely sanctuary in Tennessee. There are simply no words to describe the obvious intensity of the love they had for each other for their remaining 10 years. I am not even going to try to describe it, but I encourage anyone watching this debate please to look it up. Watch it yourself, Madam Deputy Speaker, and weep.
Then we should remember that these animals are being butchered for trinkets such as toothpicks and chopsticks—nothing more noble, special or important than that. We should remember, too, that between the wilds of Africa and the mantelpiece, where these things often end up, there is a vortex of violent organised crime, with much of the proceeds funding terrorism. The truth is that when a consumer buys a piece of ivory, they might as well be putting money in a collection tin for al-Qaeda, or buying guns for Joseph Kony’s slave children or for Sudan’s vicious Janjaweed. We have already heard about al-Shabaab, which was responsible for the atrocities in Nairobi—a massacre funded by blood ivory. If anyone is tempted to imagine that this is not an issue for us, let them at least make those links and recognise that the ivory trade makes our world a lot less safe.
Next week we can take a giant step towards resolving this issue, or at least beginning to resolve it. We know that it is possible. As we have heard, the world nearly put an end to the international ivory trade when it was banned in 1989. Poaching did not end, but it dropped off dramatically and the black market ivory prices slumped. Then, of course, we had the one-off sales and the black market roared back into action. It was stimulated by the existence of the legitimate market and was able to flourish under the disguise of the legal trade. According to the formidable Will Travers, who has already been cited three times today and is sitting up in the Gallery with his daughter, more elephant tusks were seized in 2011 than in any year since the ban.
As world leaders convene in London next week, we know what needs to be done: an international ban on all forms of ivory trade, and that cannot be achieved without China. The good news is that things are beginning to happen. The country’s largest online marketplace, Taobao—the equivalent of eBay—has banned a very wide range of wildlife products, including ivory. That suggests a change in the culture of Chinese consumers, with a bit of help from the magnificent International Fund for Animal Welfare, which has been campaigning there. The Chinese Government also destroyed 33 tonnes of ivory, but the state itself still owns 30 ivory carving factories. The simple fact remains that unless they turn their attention to the legal trade, the extinction of elephants will be assured. That has to be a prime focus at the summit.
My final point relates to the African elephant action plan, which has already been discussed at some length, so I will be brief. It is supported by all 38 African elephant range states, which I think is a first. I am pleased to see that the Minister for Government Policy will be responding to the debate, and I ask him to note that 126 Members have signed an early-day motion calling on the Government to use Department for International Development funds to ramp up support for the plan. It requires £200 million over 10 years— £20 million per year—and, in the context of our aid budget and that of other countries, that is a reasonable price to pay, given the benefits it would bring to people and, as we have heard, to nature. I am not suggesting that we go it alone, but we can take the lead, as we are already doing. The condition would be unanimous support for at least a 10-year moratorium.
The Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Foreign Secretary have shown extraordinary leadership in recent months and I am really grateful for that, as I am sure is everyone else present, but next week’s summit is only the beginning and we must follow it through to the end.
Zac Goldsmith
The hon. Gentleman has just mentioned illegal fishing in Africa. Does he acknowledge that, just as there are undeniable links between the ivory trade and terrorism, there are clear links between overfishing by illegal vessels in African coastal waters and the rise of piracy and terrorism? The rise of piracy in Somalia is linked almost exactly with the collapse of the country’s fish stocks, and the same now seems to be happening in Senegal, where 50,000 fishermen have warned their Government that if foreign vessels continue to deplete their oceans, they will adapt as the Somali fishermen have adapted, and become pirates. It is a security issue as well.
Barry Gardiner
I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I enjoyed his collection of all that information, and his presentation of it to the House. He is absolutely right: when we look at Somalian piracy, we see that the conflicts in the horn of Africa have been driven constantly by environmental degradation. If only a fraction of the money spent by our Navy, and the navies of the world, on policing vessels that pass through the straits there—the costs of increased insurance for ships, for instance—were invested in resolving the environmental problems, we should be in a much better position.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts(11 years ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
Some of these matters are for the House authorities and the other place rather than for Government legislation, but we are working flat out to cross the t’s and dot the i’s on this package of legislation, dealing, as I say, with the influence of non-political parties with regard to lobbying and support for campaigns at a constituency level. We will publish those proposals shortly.
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
Under the Deputy Prime Minister’s version of recall, an MP could refuse to come to Parliament, could refuse to hold any kind of surgery or see constituents, could switch parties at a moment’s notice, and could even go on a two-year holiday without notice, and would still fail to qualify under his proposals. How will that empower voters?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman and I have spoken, and I know that he and the hon. Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell) feel strongly that we should move towards an unqualified Californian approach —a model that is not without its problems given some of the political practices in California. We are trying to strike a balance, and that will be reflected in our final proposals, to give voters and the public a back-stop reassurance that if someone commits serious wrongdoing and they are not held to account, they can be held to account by the public. Equally, we should not introduce a proposal that in effect would become a kangaroo court and a free-for all for everyone simply to take political pot shots at each other.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
As the hon. Lady will know, we have set out some ideas on child poverty. In addition to the existing poverty targets, which we are duty-bound to seek to meet, we have tried to ensure that the factors that hold back children from fulfilling their potential—whether it is poor housing or poor education—are addressed through measures such as the pupil premium; there is £2.5 billion of extra money to help the most deprived children in school. In addition, as of this September, the Government are making 15 hours of free pre-school support available to two-year-olds from the most deprived families, something that her Government never delivered.
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
The Deputy Prime Minister said that he wants to see cross-party consensus on solutions to the airport capacity issue, so can he explain why he and his party have welcomed the re-inclusion of Heathrow into the Davies commission, given that his party had already ruled it out for ever? Surely that means he risks wasting an awful lot of money and everyone’s time.
The Deputy Prime Minister
My hon. Friend rightly says that I and my party are not persuaded at all of the case for Heathrow expansion, but equally we should not seek, and no party on either side of the House should seek, to tie the hands of the independent commission looking at this issue in the round. We will await with interest, as I guess everybody will, the results of the interim report of Howard Davies’s commission and its final report after the next general election.
Justice and Security Bill [Lords]
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. and learned Friend’s comments. Will he tell the House whether there is a clear and understood definition of the term “national security”?
Mr Clarke
There is no definition, because all attempts to define it have got one into worse difficulties.
It is possible to exclude evidence from a case altogether under the existing public interest immunity procedure; the Bill does not touch that. The present PII law will be completely unaffected by the Bill, so people could still go for a PII. One is obviously being actively sought at the moment in the Litvinenko inquest, although I know that only from what I read in the press. That kind of exclusion could be claimed on the ground of damage to international relations, if the Government of some third-party state would be upset if certain evidence were to be published. That goes beyond questions of national security and into total secrecy, allowing the Minister to withdraw the whole blasted thing from the proceedings and not letting even the judge use it. That measure goes much wider. Such exclusions on wider grounds happened under the previous Government.
We are sticking to national security, however, and judges, using the completely unfettered discretion that we are now giving them, will no doubt have regard to what I say. What we have in mind are things that would cause damage to national security, by which we mean the safety of our citizens, our attempts to counter terrorism, and threats to international order among the wider public. I can assure the House that I am not in favour of excluding ministerial pigs’ ears. I am sure that the previous Government made more of them than we did, but I do not believe that that sort of thing should be put away in closed proceedings under any Government.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Miss Smith
As I think the hon. Gentleman knows—if not and if confusion persists, I am happy to take it up with him outside the Chamber—the coalition put forward a set of proposals that included a double set of conditions: first, that the Member should have been found to have engaged in serious wrongdoing; and secondly, that at least 10% of constituents should have signed a petition calling for the recall. In our proposals, the first of those conditions contained two triggers. It is now for the House and the Government to work together to make sure that that works. We must be sure not to trespass on the House’s exclusive cognisance—I think the hon. Gentleman knows that and of course you do, Mr Speaker —and I look forward to ensuring that the process is transparent, robust and fair.
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
Given that this is the one meaningful political reform the coalition is likely to be able to deliver, please will the Minister explain the delay? It is a simple matter and I have done the work for her by producing a Bill, which is sitting there in the books. Can she guarantee that the reform will go through before the next election?
Miss Smith
Like you, Mr Speaker, I am a great respecter of Parliament, so I suspect that I should not guarantee anything, but my intention is to bring forward proposals on which I look forward to working with my hon. Friend and all others who take an interest. As I said, the process ought to be transparent, robust and fair, and I look forward to making sure that it meets that quality mark.