Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Lord Lexden and Lord Campbell-Savours

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[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?

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I am sorry to intervene on the noble Lord. He may not have the answer to my question—I perfectly understand that—but he might be helped by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. I should really have intervened on the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. What does the noble Lord think would happen in the case of a non-declaration of interest, where there had been a repeated non-declaration of a major pecuniary interest, over a number of years, by a Member? Which committee would now decide on that matter, and to what extent does he think that that committee might be able to impose any penalty?

[Lord Lexden]

As the noble Lord suggested, I will leave that to my noble friend Lord Tyler, as a former Member of the House of Commons. However, the case for asking the House of Commons to reconsider the issues that these amendments highlight is strong. I incline to that view, and for that reason I support these amendments.