Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, I rise once more in support of my noble friend Lord Tyler, having also done so on the earlier occasions when he brought forward amendments designed to improve this highly imperfect Bill. As my noble friend has made clear, the objective has been the same throughout: to try to find a way of removing or at least lessening the involvement of MPs themselves in the processes by which a recall petition can be triggered. That central issue was underlined in the report on the Bill that was provided by your Lordships’ Constitution Committee, and that report has been much in our minds during these proceedings. No one could expect to be seen to be acting utterly impartially in determining a period of suspension when a heavier penalty will trigger recall and a lesser one will not.

As my noble friend has made clear, he and those of us who supported the amendment have now taken into account a major development that occurred during the passage of the Bill through this House. As my noble friend reminded us, news of a very significant report on the composition of the House of Commons Committee on Standards reached us on the very day that we consider the Bill on Report. It has now become clear that the committee members believe that its composition should be changed to give equal representation to MPs and lay members. Now that the committee has gone that far, it would surely be sensible to wait until the committee has assumed its new form and acquired the greater independent representation that is now proposed before it is given its recall responsibilities. That is what this amendment seeks to do, and I am very glad to support it.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, I argued in the previous debate that surely the way for the House of Commons to re-establish its good reputation is for it to take responsibility for its own self-government and its own self-discipline. I am therefore opposed to the propositions put forward in these amendments, and indeed by the House of Commons Committee on Standards, not only that there should be lay members of the committee but that there should be equal numbers of lay members and Members of Parliament and that the lay members should have votes. It seems to me that those arrangements would not be consistent with the House of Commons taking the responsibilities that I believe that it should.

I also suggest that what we are being invited to approve is inconsistent, first with Magna Carta, which established the principle of trial by peers, and secondly with the Bill of Rights, which asserts parliamentary privilege and insists that the proceedings of Parliament should not be questioned or impeached by those who are not Members of Parliament. It may indeed be the case that Parliament has power to set aside Magna Carta—even in its 800th anniversary year—and that it has power to discard elements of the Bill of Rights. I would suggest only that parliamentarians should draw a very deep breath and think very carefully indeed before they do so.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, is always Jacobinical—he has a splendid fury in his reforming drive—but the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, has a profound knowledge of parliamentary history. The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, who is not able to be in his place today, is deeply knowledgeable about parliamentary privilege. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, another of the sponsors of Amendment 5, is a very experienced former Member of the House of Commons. I am startled that some of those noble Lords should associate themselves with this kind of drastic change, which, in the present circumstances, when all of us are intensely concerned to see how the good reputation of Parliament can be better upheld, would surely be in effect an abdication of the central responsibility that Parliament has for itself and for its own good conduct. I am deeply opposed to these amendments.