Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Lord Hughes of Woodside and Lord Lexden

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

As ever, my noble friend Lord Maxton is complimentary to me. But, immediately recall becomes a remote possibility, the influence of the press and the media will be enormous. I really do not think that removing any sort of mitigating intermediary between the offence of an MP and a recall petition is the right way to go about it.

We speak lovingly about the need to restore the reputation of Parliament. We speak lovingly and meaningfully about how it is necessary for the highest standards to prevail. If we say constantly that the House of Commons is not fit to control itself, and that it needs people from outside looking in on it to put it right, that does nothing whatever to produce the effect we desire.

I will say just one other thing in passing. When the expenses scandal started—and it was a scandal—it was said that the administration of expenses should be taken out of the control of Parliament itself. So we got IPSA—is it called?—to do that. Has that done anything whatever to improve the issue? All that happened was the press turned on IPSA and said, “You’re worse than the MPs were”. There is no easy answer to this. To imagine that this sort of Bill, especially in its dreadful form, will do anything whatever to improve the standards of Parliament and how it is viewed by people outside is totally mistaken. The only way for that to happen is for MPs to stop the nonsense of accepting that when they get petitions they must say yes to them. They are afraid, apparently, to have any independent views. I accept that as a former Member of Parliament I was subject to the Whips and I would never have been a Member of Parliament without being a member of the Labour Party. I understand the constrictions there are in that. Nevertheless, if we remove entirely any possibility of MPs speaking out for themselves about what may be unpopular causes, that may damage democracy irrevocably.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, I was glad to add my name to the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Tyler. As my noble friend has made clear, these important amendments differ significantly from those he brought forward in Committee. My noble friend and the cross-party group that supports him have reflected and reconsidered. Our proposals have been revised, cut back and simplified. They have been discussed at some length with my noble friends Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Gardiner of Kimble. We await the Government’s response to them with interest, though not with unbounded optimism.

In their current form, the amendments are straightforward and uncomplicated. They seek above all to relate the process of recall more fully and directly to those for whom this legislation, whether we like it or not, has been devised—the electors of this country. The amendments would enable electors to exercise their judgment about the case for recall following a decision in the courts. In any worthwhile system of recall, electors should surely occupy the central position, as my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth, the Conservative Party’s leading authority on the constitution, emphasised so powerfully at Second Reading and repeated today. The famous watchwords of Tory democracy spring at once to mind—“Trust the people”—sometimes attributed to Winston Churchill but in fact coined by his extraordinarily combative and pugnacious father, Lord Randolph, in 1884.

As I have mentioned before, and as the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, recalled, my support for my noble friend Lord Tyler’s carefully researched and constructive initiative stems from the work done on the Bill by your Lordships’ Constitution Committee, of which I am a member. The committee’s report has featured quite prominently in our debates. Its central point, as far as these amendments are concerned, is that it expressed considerable scepticism about the wisdom of placing a recall trigger in the hands of the Standards Committee. I repeat the key passage of the report:

“The constitutional purpose of recall is to increase MPs’ direct accountability to their electorates: it is questionable whether that purpose is achieved when the trigger is put in the hands of MPs rather than constituents”.

I would add this question: do we not need to guard against the possibility that the existence of such a trigger might create dissatisfaction and disillusion among electors? If that should occur, the Bill—the purpose of which is to strengthen the electorate’s trust in the political system—could end up exacerbating the very problem it is designed to alleviate.

The committee’s report was published on 15 December. The Government’s response, received a few days ago, states that,

“it is important to be careful to respect the disciplinary arrangements of the House of Commons”.

That, of course, is a sound and overwhelmingly important principle of the internal arrangements of the House. It is not, however, obvious or self-evident that the principle should be applied to the procedures that will trigger recall, not least because of the acute danger that decisions relating to those procedures would be unduly politicised, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, argued so strongly at Second Reading.

Is there not a case for asking the House of Commons to reconsider these issues, which bear so directly and powerfully on the workings of democracy in our country, particularly in view of the new report, to which attention has been drawn this afternoon?