Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Lord Hughes of Woodside and Lord Tyler

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

My Lords, I do not wish to detain the House for long, but would the Minister like to say exactly why eight weeks was chosen? In all our debates, I have never heard—I may have missed it—a precise definition of how that was arrived at. Why eight weeks? There must have been some reason for choosing eight weeks. Was some sort of scientific study done? Or was eight weeks simply plucked out of the air as a good idea? Of course, the shortest time would be one day, but that is clearly impracticable. We would not want it to be a sort of side-show to be done in one day.

I simply throw this into the ring. It may be that the eight weeks that is provided to give people the maximum amount of time to make up their minds and to vote actually has the opposite effect. By the end of these eight weeks, people may be so fed up with it that they will not bother going to sign the petition, which would be counterproductive. The other side of that is that when you ask people to sign the petition, they might ask, “When do we have to sign by?”. If you say, “Eight weeks from now—two months”, they will say “I’ll do it tomorrow”. Some of my noble friends will, like me, remember knocking on people’s doors asking them to go the poll and them saying, “Can we come and do it tomorrow?”. That is absolutely true. I imagine that people will say, “Well, we’ll put it off”.

Although I am one of those who is, if you like, a sort of prophet of doom in the sense of fearing that a huge frenzy will build up in the media, even the media cannot sustain things much beyond three weeks. Even the most lurid cases disappear after three weeks, because the media have moved on to something else. I am not sure that even the media would be prepared to commit the resources to get the petition signed for, in totality, beyond two or three days.

Apart from that, the timing is far too long. A decision must be arrived at, although whether three weeks is the right length of time or not, I really do not know. My noble friend has not said why it should be three weeks; he said that perhaps it could be three or four. We should be flexible on this, in the sense that neither the coalition Government nor we should say it has to be three weeks and nothing more or nothing less. The Government are wrong in thinking they have to stick by eight weeks. If the Minister cannot accept three weeks, I hope he will understand that this is not an attempt to wreck the Bill or anything like that. Whatever its faults, we have to try to make the Bill as sensible and workable as possible. Why eight weeks? Why not four weeks? Would that not be a much better way and a much better use of resources?

[Lord Tyler]

I was enormously impressed with the noble Lord’s very dramatic introduction of his amendment. Perhaps he has been over-Mantelled recently and has been watching too much “Wolf Hall”. However, in these circumstances, he has a perfectly valid point.

My questions follow on from the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Hughes. Who advised Ministers that it should be eight weeks? Most significantly, there is the very important cross-reference with the number of signing places, which my noble friend Lord Norton and I referred to in Committee. If there are only two signing places, perhaps you do need longer; but if there are 10, you should obviously review that situation. Has whoever gave advice to Ministers on the number of weeks, on the original basis of a maximum of four signing places, been asked to review that advice in the light of the Government’s now much more flexible attitude? That is something we need to be told now, otherwise it seems to me that the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, has huge merit, at least in making the Government think again about the very new circumstances that their own flexibility has now created.

Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Lord Hughes of Woodside and Lord Tyler

Monday 19th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 39. As my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth put it a few minutes ago, with admirable and characteristic brevity—in contrast to one or two other noble Lords—this is very much linked to the amendment that my noble friend the Minister has said he is prepared to take away and think about again. If we are going to have, in some constituencies, just two or three signing places and only two weeks for the signing, then the pressure on those places will be considerable. To succeed in a recall petition in an average-sized constituency, 7,500 people will have to descend upon those one or two places. So there is a direct relationship. If my noble friend the Minister is able to say that in geographically larger constituencies, where it is more difficult to obtain satisfactory locations in so few places, there will be an increase, perhaps to eight or nine places—or whatever it may be in the islands; I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes—or, for example, in my old constituency in Cornwall, to six or seven places, then reducing the number of weeks to two weeks is much easier. Otherwise there will be enormous pressure.

I hope that my noble friend will accept, having generously and sensibly said that he is prepared to go away and think about the issue of the maximum and the minimum numbers of signing venues, that this also applies to the number of weeks that they are active. The numbers otherwise could be extremely difficult to manage.

[Lord Hughes of Woodside (Lab)]

My Lords, perhaps the Minister can explain to us why eight weeks is thought to be a suitable term. It cannot be to make sure that people know that the recall petition has to be signed, because that will be no secret. Once the Bill becomes law, the very first MP who is referred to the Standards Committee for some misdemeanour will be fastened upon. From day one of the Standards Committee discussions, the press will be going on about demanding a recall. We do not know how long the Standards Committee will take; it could be five, six, seven, eight, nine or 10 weeks, or three or four months. Some discussions have gone on for six months. Everyone will know about it, and once the petitions officer is informed, there are 10 days for him to take action on it. In those 10 days, there will be fierce discussion in the media. What is going to happen in eight weeks? For what logical or logistical reason can eight weeks be satisfactory?

We manage to do a general election by voting on one single day. I am not necessarily suggesting that that would be the right thing—I support the term being reduced to two weeks—but if we vote in those numbers on one day, why has this been stretched out to eight weeks? Again, we are not told why that is the case. I suspect that this is one of those things where somebody had a good idea and said, “We will all look good if we have a recall Bill on the statute book”. This is a limited recall Bill, as I shall hope to discuss in greater detail on a later amendment, but they were saying, “Let us get it on to the statute book”.

The Minister said in a previous debate that we will not have the regulations in time for the general election and they will be sorted out afterwards. Why not leave the whole thing until after the general election and do it properly? It would make much more sense if the Bill were withdrawn and started again. That could be done and would not take up any more time. It might go through much quicker. This is the kind of provision that does not bring any real sense to democracy. What is going to happen during the eight weeks of the signing period? On a later amendment, I will argue what might happen during those eight weeks, but I ask the Minister to have some sense. For goodness’ sake, accept this amendment.

Queen's Speech

Debate between Lord Hughes of Woodside and Lord Tyler

Thursday 27th May 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, in expressing delight that my noble friend Lord McNally is sitting where he is, I should also express my thanks and appreciation that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Lord, Lord Bach, with their invariable courtesy and constructive dialogue, occupied that Bench with distinction.

In retrospect, Mr Tony Blair and his Government in May 1997 were unlucky and unfortunate in terms of the way in which this country has been governed. They had too big a majority. Had there been a small, or indeed no, majority, we would have seen completion of the necessary reforms that were set out in the agreement between Mr Robin Cook and the then Mr Robert Maclennan. Instead, of course, we had very timid Lords reform. We had no outcome from the Jenkins commission on electoral reform, to which Mr Blair had committed himself. Instead, he was in thrall to old Labour—Messrs Prescott, Straw and Blunkett—and there was no partnership for a radically reforming Government in the 21st century. We had 13 years of retreat on civil liberties; constitutional renewal was under constant attack; there was subservience to the right-wing tabloid press; and even the 2008 Lords reform White Paper sat gathering dust for two more years. There was weak-kneed collapse of the discussions on cleaning up party funding and then only a deathbed repentance on electoral reform. Those on the opposite side of your Lordships’ House who now bemoan what happened on 6 May have only their side to blame, because they failed to address the collapse in public confidence in politics and Parliament.

I never thought that I would say this but, in contrast, David Cameron deserves full credit for recognising, in the first hours after the electorate gave their verdict, that a much more imaginative and radical response was required to make possible any renewal of trust in politics and Parliament. It would have been only too easy to have adopted the Wilson lesson of the summer of 1974. I remember it well. What Mr Wilson did was to delay any serious discussion of the economic problems, to delay any of the painful decisions that were necessary and to postpone all the difficulties until he thought that he would get a majority. On our side, it would have been very easy for the Liberal Democrats to continue in the comfort zone of perpetual opposition.

I give full credit to David Cameron and Nick Clegg. That was true leadership. Breaking the mouldy mould of confrontational politics was not only the right thing but the popular thing to do. By 2:1, a large majority, the public are showing their favour for the new agreement. That is far greater support than any other Government since the war has enjoyed. People recognise—

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

How could the electorate give a confidence vote to an agreement that was never envisaged at the time of the election?

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I have heard so often from those Benches the expression that the public are in support of something because the polls show that and because a large majority of people voted for those parties. That is what people do at general elections. They do not vote for every jot and tittle of the manifestos; they vote to support the judgment that they believe to be nearest to their own view. That is what happened. I say this honestly and sincerely to friends on the opposite side of your Lordships’ House: it is important that they, too, recognise what the electorate said on 6 May, as we have, because people recognised, in the light the economic legacy, that a different response was required. The Labour Party has not yet woken up to that reality.

I yield to no one in my respect for the former Leader of the House, the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon. I have the greatest respect for her, but, honestly, her speech on Tuesday did not do her justice. Sarcasm does not suit her. It was a very ungracious speech. It is amazing how quickly former Ministers, bereft of their advisers, fall into the trap of silly oppositionitis. Take the example that has regularly been mentioned today that the new Government have a complete and guaranteed automatic majority in your Lordships’ House. That is to suggest that Members on the Cross Benches have no influence and no say in what happens in this House. That is simply not true.