Referendums
Lord Soley Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Soley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the increased use of referendums on the functioning of representative democracy in the United Kingdom.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, before the start of the short debate, I remind noble Lords that Back-Bench speeches are limited to three minutes, so when three minutes is shown on the Clock you have gone on too long.
Lord Soley (Lab)
My Lords, I seek to put this Question before the House on the use of referendums in the British constitution because it is a very important issue. I know that we are time-limited, as we have just been reminded. I will try to keep my remarks very tight.
I have been increasingly concerned over the use of referendums in the United Kingdom. I do not like referendums. I think we do much better under Edmund Burke’s representative democracy, where MPs and Governments can be thrown out if the electorate do not like them. Perhaps it is easy for me to say that because I was never thrown out, although the Minister did try on one or two occasions in my neighbouring area to organise that, just as I tried to organise his. It was a joint project.
By and large, referendums do more harm than good. There are, of course, exceptions. If you have a position where maybe you want to reinforce a constitutional change that has been widely discussed and then largely agreed it can make sense, but it is always worth reminding people, as many have, that dictators often use referendums to reinforce their position. Fortunately, we have not been in that position and I do not think we will be.
We know that the other problem with referendums, which really lies underneath my debate, is that they can be incredibly divisive. The mess we are in on Brexit is because a referendum was called on an issue that, frankly, had not been one of the top political issues in the United Kingdom until it was called. There was no alternative policy to put if the referendum was lost, which it was. Although I thought that we would vote remain and I did myself, I was not surprised that it was lost, because the Brexiteers’ strapline of “Take back control” is very powerful. I do not take the view that people who voted leave did so because they had not thought it through, because the arguments were weak or dishonest or because of immigration. It was much more basic: that strapline went to the heart of what many British people felt about being able to make their own laws and to sack their own Governments.
One can argue the toss about that, but one thing we cannot argue about is the fact that the Brexit referendum, three years ago now, has done enormous damage to this country, both in the United Kingdom and overseas. It has damaged us politically and economically. I noticed that the retiring Foreign Office official in Singapore made that point today about the damage it has done to us. The problem is that, even if it was discussed well—people will argue the toss about that—it is a very complex issue to decide in a referendum. Although you can argue that it was a simple question, it was on a very complex argument that had many different strands to it, which made it very difficult for people to decide. My view is, as I have said already, that if MPs are able to debate widely and come to a conclusion, the public make their views known if they do not like the outcome that MPs have come to, just as they have made their views very well known about the House of Commons and its behaviour over the last three years.
The other point that is very important in the context of the Brexit debate is that the two main referendums on this issue, in 1974 under the Harold Wilson Government about membership of the European Community and the more recent one on the European Union, were called not because there was a great demand for it in the country—there was a demand, but not a great one—but because the political parties in government were divided and could not deliver an outcome themselves. What the second one did, which the first did not, was aggravate the division, so the divisions in the country now run not just between political parties, organisations and companies but within families. You get arguments in families, particularly younger people tending to argue that we should stay in and the older generation tending to argue that we should come out. There are many variations of that and I am not claiming that it is a hard and fast rule, but it is an important point.
One of the things this indicates is that there is no sure-fire answer to the question, “Will we hold another one?” I have tended to the view that we should not, but I am driven to the position that, because of the mess we are in, we might have to hold one to get us out of it. But I would add this caution: I am by no means convinced that the answer you will get if you hold another referendum in the reasonably near future will be very different. It might come to the same conclusion, or conclude that we should stay in, or go back in, perhaps by an equally small margin. If that happens, the split in the United Kingdom stays.
Moving that argument forward to one that has concerned me deeply from the beginning of this, what happens in Scotland? The Scottish referendum was really well debated and there was a great deal of information. Everybody agreed that the debate was really good and the case for an independent Scotland was lost with a big majority. Did that mean that the argument went away? No, it did not. It has come right back and the same argument will happen again. With referendums such as this, in the way they have been called, the danger is that we go on having referendums without having a solution to the problems that led to them.
Again, I argue very strongly that we should not use referendums when we can use the representative democracy system, which is better. Without going into it, I would simply say that in the case of the United Kingdom, if you think that coming out of the European Union has been a problem, think of how much more difficult it will be if Scotland chooses to come out of the United Kingdom, to which about 80% of its exports go. Imagine if that was somehow decided on a narrow majority either way. It would be a disastrous situation for Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom, so we should not think of going there. I will not go into it now, but there is a much stronger case for the United Kingdom to develop a more federal structure. In a way, we had that with the Acts of Union, but it was limited to courts, religion and one or two other issues. We could develop a modern federal system which might solve the problem rather better than referendums, which deliver an outcome which might be on a knife edge either way.
I commend the very good Library paper on this debate to Members. It pinpoints a number of the arguments raised by the Select Committees of both Houses and the independent review of referendums carried out in July last year. Those arguments are very strong. I do not wish to lay them out; they are in the excellent Library paper and I would rather draw people’s attention to that, so that people can look at it and decide what to do. The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 lays down a number of conditions in which a referendum could take place, for example, on constitutional issues. One of the points made on a number of occasions was that it ought to be a clear issue where the argument would be very clear either way. That was one of the conclusions of the independent review of referendums.
What troubles me is that there has not been a significant discussion in all of this about whether there should always, or in most cases, have to be a certain percentage of the vote cast in order to make it a legitimate referendum. Think what happens if you have a referendum on an issue such as Scottish independence or Brexit and the numbers turning out are only 20% or 30% of the electorate. Think also what happens—this troubles me greatly—if there is not a clear majority. If there had been a clear majority with the EU referendum in 2016—by that, I mean a majority of 3 million or more, with 55% or 60% of the electorate voting either way—we would have far fewer problems than we have now. I hope the Constitution Committee will want to look at this again. If they do, I hope they will look at those questions of a minimum turnout and whether there should be a maximum.
This debate is very important. I am sorry about the time limits; I have attempted to be as brief as I can. We cannot leave this matter for long. We will have to return to it, so I make a plea for the British system to be used, with representative democracy and MPs and others being thrown out if they get it wrong. That seems to be a tried-and-tested procedure.
House of Commons: Ministers
Lord Soley Excerpts(9 years ago)
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Lord Bridges of Headley
As always, my noble friend makes a very interesting point. I am sure that the other place will listen to his words with interest.
Lord Soley (Lab)
Does the Minister accept that there is a growing problem with the way that our constitution is working? Many changes have been made and they have left a number of things very unsatisfactory, and his answers today have indicated some of that dissatisfaction, not least the wider issue of the constitution of the UK. Will the Government please begin a serious look at this problem and maybe have a debate in this House where we can start to look at the more serious changes that need to be made over a period of time?
Constitutional Convention Bill [HL]
Lord Soley Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Soley (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, on launching this important debate. I support the Bill although I share many of the views expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth.
To try to cover the details involved in the time concerned is totally unrealistic. What I and many people want much more is for the Government to take a lead. The Government have failed to see this as an important issue for people across all political parties and of no political party. There is a feeling throughout the United Kingdom that the governmental system is not working for people as it should. Frankly, they are right. That is the value of a constitutional convention.
I am worried that the Government, having won the election, sound arrogant and as though they do not want to listen to others on this issue. Why is it that across the political spectrum—the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties and many others—people are shouting out for a lead from the Government other than on English votes for English laws? The reason I worry about this is that all of us who strongly support the union feel that the Government are not taking the threat seriously enough and looking at the depth of it. The fox hunting defeat for the Government should be a real warning. It should come as no surprise to anyone that Nicola Sturgeon, having said a couple of months ago that she would not oppose it because it is an English matter, has suddenly done an about-turn. It was a gift to the Scottish National Party.
I ask the Government to look at the agenda of those who wish to break up the United Kingdom. The SNP lost the referendum, and lost it badly, but that does not mean that it has given up the strategy of winning in the long run. It is using tactics which, among other things, are designed to raise English nationalism, and the Government are playing into that. The danger is that if English nationalism is not part of a constructive whole-United Kingdom role, there will be, not surprisingly, many English people saying, “If the Scots want to go, let them do it. Let’s have a different party structure”. You can see part of that happening within the United Kingdom Independence Party. If UKIP breaks up, I would guess that what will emerge from it is an English national party, and I cannot think of anything more dangerous to the United Kingdom than an SNP and an ENP. We need to address this and the Government must take a lead. I, along with many other people who strongly support the union, do not feel that they are listening. The Government are not talking to all those of us who support the union in the way they need to—and that includes people of no political party.
The right reverend Prelate spoke well on this. There is a widespread feeling that the governmental system is not working, and it is not just about English votes for English laws. One of the key issues to be addressed in this is the nature of devolution. I support devolution, but we need to be clear about what we are devolving and who to. We need to be clear about devolution in Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland, where we also have to be conscious that any change made there must be made very sensitively, bearing in mind that there are international agreements which are lodged with the United Nations. This is a complex area.
Another thing we need to address in relation to that is, in a way, the core issue, one that is often unspoken and simply assumed: what role do we see for the United Kingdom, having devolved all these powers? I can list a lot of things that I think the United Kingdom should do, but we need to discuss them in relation to the issues which are devolved to the four parts of the United Kingdom and within the four parts. That is the strength of what the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, is saying, and it is why I do not mind this Bill going forward. It at least provides one way of debating and discussing these matters. I say to the Government that they need to address them.
The issue that matters here is what sort of second Chamber we want. I am not sure whether the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, was saying this, but I agree that simply to reform the House of Lords as part of the structure of the Bill would not work very well. But it is inevitable that, if we are looking at what we devolve to the four regions and what we devolve within the four parts of the United Kingdom, it inevitably raises the question of what sort of second Chamber we want. We do not need to discuss it in terms of all its content, but we need to ask whether the second Chamber is to continue in its present role of primarily revising the work of the House of Commons, or does it in some way represent the four parts of the United Kingdom which will have achieved greater power. It is an important question and I do not have a simple answer.
I say to the Minister with all the passion I can bring to this: I want the United Kingdom to survive. It has been a fantastic achievement and the world admires it, as the noble Baroness said. We will lose it unless we start talking about these issues in depth with everyone, and, more than anything else, we start listening. In this case, it is important for politicians of every party to understand that their ears are infinitely more important than their mouths.
Lord Bridges of Headley
I am sorry to beg to differ with my noble friend, but I believe that we are providing a lead by setting set out our plan in our manifesto and now delivering on that plan. That is the lead for which we got the mandate. I am sorry that we disagree on this point, but we clearly do.
Lord Soley
I just want to follow that up, if I may. The noble Lord has done the easy bit of saying what he is against. I understand that. Can he say what he is for? He could perhaps address whether he will consider a committee of the two Houses to look at what the role of the United Kingdom bit should be, because that would help the rest to fall into place.
Lord Bridges of Headley
As I said, this is an idea that my noble friend Lord Forsyth has put forward with great passion and eloquence, and I will certainly take it away to give it further reflection and bring it to the attention of my noble friend the Leader of the House. But I am in no position to make promises from the Dispatch Box here and now. The noble Lord, Lord Soley, says that this is the easy bit, but this is in fact the essence of what we are debating today: the impracticalities and flaws behind such a convention.
Let me conclude by repeating—I am sorry that a number of your Lordships disagree with it—that now is not the time to attempt to delay the constitution’s adaptation in response to the express wishes and needs of the people and communities across the UK. This Government believe that our focus must be on delivering the fair and stable settlement that will ensure the stability and continuity of our uniquely successful constitutional arrangements. I am sure that there will be plenty of opportunities for constitutional scrutiny and debate. I look forward to benefiting from the insight and experience of all noble Lords, especially the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, who, as I said, has done so much to contribute to this debate as a whole.
Constitution: Gracious Speech
Lord Soley Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Soley (Lab)
My Lords, it was a pleasure to listen to the very constructive and thoughtful opening speech of my noble friend Lord Wills. It was a pleasure, too, to listen to many of the other speeches, including that of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, to which I would add simply one line: one person in the European continent who will be delighted if we withdraw from the convention is Vladimir Putin. If you find yourself doing something that is on the same side as Vladimir Putin on human rights, it really is time to think again.
On the wider issue, I have reread the Queen’s Speech today. There is not a lot in it on the constitution. I agree with the mayoral approach, which was introduced by the Blair Government. I supported it then and I still do. I like the idea of the northern powerhouse and, yes, we should do that elsewhere as well. After that, the speech descends into vagueness. One line that troubles me is:
“My government will also bring forward legislation to secure a strong and lasting constitutional settlement”.
That is usually the triumph of hope over experience. Listening to the noble Lord, Lord Norton, with whom I agree on many things on the constitution, I think he always seeks a logical structure, which, frankly, I do not think you will ever get, especially with the British constitution. It is the triumph of hope over experience because, basically, we make it up as we go along. That is not entirely a bad thing, because I sometimes think that overpredictability in politics is an anti-democratic approach; you should find yourselves at times in unpredictable situations because that is where you lose. Occasionally, we need to lose in politics, whether we are talking individually or as parties, because it sobers you up and makes you think through policies again.
I find the vagueness about how we handle this reform of the constitution deeply worrying. Like a number of other speakers today, including on the Tory side, I was deeply worried about the call for English votes for English laws immediately after the Scottish referendum. If you wave the English flag in front of the Scottish flag, you will provoke conflict and disagreement. It is only 300 years since we fought around that border and it is an issue in people’s hearts and minds. It could also easily give a boost to UKIP. If it finds itself speaking for English nationalism—previously, it tended to present itself as speaking for United Kingdom nationalism—it would create a greater danger within England. Although I have always found Scottish nationalism deeply disturbing, I consider English nationalism no less disturbing, and we could break up this precious union that we have had for so many years. So I do not think that English votes for English laws—or Welsh votes for Welsh laws—is the way forward.
That is not to say that there is no need to reflect the problem that England does not have a parliamentary structure of its own. We have to work out how we handle the relationship between the four parts of the United Kingdom. The big, obvious problem is that England is bigger than the other three parts put together, but there are problems within that. As I indicated when I last spoke on the constitution here, some 22 million people live in the south-east corner of England, which makes it bigger than the other three parts of the United Kingdom and bigger virtually than much of the rest of England. There is a distortion there. You also have the problem whereby, if you try to change the relationship between the various parts of the United Kingdom, you always have to remember that one part, Northern Ireland, would require, if you made too many changes, either the unstitching of some of the agreements already made or the altering of some international agreements that were lodged at the United Nations as part of the settlement with southern Ireland. So there is a complication there, which is why I think so many of us in the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrat party and, to some extent, the Conservative Party have been saying that the way forward is to have a constitutional conference of some type and to involve the people in it—not to have simply a top-down approach. Many people throughout the United Kingdom have lost confidence in the political system, so we need to involve people in change. I am not saying what those changes should be. The noble Lord, Lord Steel, made a good point when he talked about the difference between devolution and home rule. His point about home rule was powerful and we should give thought to it.
I have also been encouraged by the group that has been set up by, I think, the noble Lords, Lord Purvis and Lord Foulkes. It crosses all parties and involves Members of both Houses as well as members of local authorities. The discussions within that group have been incredibly co-operative and quite indicative of ways forward. A key question that we must all answer at the end of the day, touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, is what the United Kingdom is for. The more we devolve power, or give home rule—as the noble Lord, Lord Steel, phrased it—the more we raise the question: what is the United Kingdom Government to do and what is their purpose? In fighting the referendum, we put great effort into spelling out the dangers of a break-up of the United Kingdom. We were right to do so. The noble Lord, Lord Steel, mentioned the oil price, but it was not just that: if the Royal Bank of Scotland had gone belly up in an independent Scotland, the impact would have been disastrous for Scotland. The case for the union was very strong. But in drawing attention to the dangers of a break-up, we understated the advantages of staying together. I cannot spell them out now in this short contribution, but they are to do with issues such as macroeconomic policy, defence and foreign affairs, pensions and so on. If we are to start talking in a constitutional convention about what the role of the United Kingdom is, we can make it meaningful again for the people of the United Kingdom. We can show people in Scotland—or England if we see a rise in English nationalism—the advantages of being part of the UK.
We are in a strange situation at the moment. In a way, the SNP’s view of the United Kingdom is a bit like the Tories’ view of Europe: “We don’t really want to be part of this but maybe we have to be”. That is a very negative approach. We need to think of the advantages and about how we do this. If the Government are not going to go down the road of a constitutional convention, will they please say what their strategy is to deliver what they said they would do in the Queen’s Speech, which is to create a strong and lasting settlement for the United Kingdom?
Soft Power and the UK’s Influence (Select Committee Report)
Lord Soley Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Soley (Lab)
My Lords, I start, perhaps unusually, with the confirmation that because I am no longer a director and the chairman of the Good Governance Foundation, I do not need to declare it as an interest any more. That is for a variety of reasons, which I will not go into, but one is the difficulty of asserting soft power around the world and carrying that out. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Howell, whose views on this I have known for some time, on an exceptionally good report. There is so much in it that you could speak on it for a long time, which I will not do. I certainly do not want to repeat all the praise that has been given to the various institutions—the British Council, the BBC, and the members of the European Union and the Commonwealth—and the power of the English language. All those and 101 other things give us enormous influence around the world, but that influence would not apply if we did not also have an attractive culture and society.
The noble Viscount, Lord Colville, and one or two other noble Lords mentioned RT and the amount of money being poured into it. I watch it and, frankly, it has deteriorated quite a bit in the last few years. It has always been a propaganda channel aimed at trying to undermine western countries and values but also at propping up Russian nationalism. The interesting thing about RT of course is that, if you look at it in terms of changing people’s attitudes outside of Russia, it is not very effective. The reality is that there are not thousands of people queuing up to get into Russia; rather, there are more people coming out of Russia into Britain than the other way round. The reason for that at the end of the day is not just because of the BBC World Service, good as it is, but because of all the other institutions and things that make us the free, prosperous and stable society that we are. It is that stability and prosperity, and the rule of law, that I want to focus on for a moment.
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, that we pay too little attention to the rule of law. One of the things I tried to do through the Good Governance Foundation was to spread the recognition of Britain’s role in the rule of law. I pay great tribute to another institution we do not give enough support to, the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, which does an awful lot on the rule of law both through the European Union and directly. A couple of years ago, I tried to get the late Lord Bingham’s book The Rule of Law— which is only a short book of a couple of hundred pages, if that—published in Arabic and was told there was not a big enough market for it. I doubt that. I think there would be, but it is a matter of how it is promoted.
One thing that I have seen in a variety of countries around the world is that people are not necessarily shouting for democracy, although that is a long-term goal, but they are shouting for the rule of law. If you can get fairness and stability from the rule of law, you can build the democratic foundations. Trying to do it the other way round, as we have discovered to our cost, does not really work. As we saw in Egypt recently, and indeed in Iraq, going for democratic structures when you do not have the rule of law can all too easily lead to the winning party taking a winner-takes-all approach to democracy. Immediately, the minority groups of one type or another, or the losers, feel excluded and you get the collapse of that democratic process. It is a very important issue. We have so much expertise on the rule of law in this country, and among many Members of this House, and if we could involve that more in our programmes around the world it would be very useful. The reputation of Britain as a country of law is very great.
One of the bullet points in the report summary refers to resources for embassies. The fascinating thing about the report is that it has identified this dramatically changing relationship in the world between hard power, soft power and what the noble Lord, Lord Howell, then defined as smart power, when you combine them. The problem I find, and I do not think I can be alone in this, is that it is hard to see where this started and where the process will end. It is fast-moving and very confusing in a way. I am sure that our embassies around the world have a key role to play in it. Recently, I led a delegation to Bahrain with Members of this House and of the House of Commons, which produced a report on its reform process. I have to say that it is doing well. It ought to be emphasised that this country is trying, in a region where it is incredibly difficult to make progress, and our report indicated that its efforts need to be supported.
The reason that I mention that is that the ambassador, who I gather has now moved on from that post, a man called Iain Lindsay, was immensely helpful in enabling us to meet all the people who we needed to meet there, making the contacts that we needed to make. Similarly, when I was working for the Good Governance Foundation, I helped Abu Dhabi to set up a postgraduate course in the rule of law with outreach to Palestine, so that 28 Palestinian students could attend the course. The Foreign Office, through both the Palestinian and Abu Dhabi link, was immensely helpful.
In doing all that, I stumbled across an organisation called the Training Gateway, which is based at York University. Several Members have spoken about the importance of education. They are absolutely right, of course. What was fascinating was that the Training Gateway—which is self-funding; it charges its customers —was able to link universities, colleges and private sector groups in training programmes around the world. In that sense, it is not dissimilar to what the British Council and one or two other organisations are doing. The difference is that it will relay any request by a particular country or an organisation within that country. I was very impressed by the lady who runs it, Amanda Selvaratnam. She has developed quite a skill in linking what countries need to a British institution, be it a state or national one, such as a university, or a private company. That has been excellent. The thing that I and she find most difficult in all this is the linkage between the various companies, organisations, government departments and so on.
I give an example of my experience on that from Burma—Myanmar, as it is now known. I have been in touch with the ambassador here and, through him, to the Attorney-General in Burma. I talked to them about the possibility of links with the Training Gateway to build capacity on the rule of law there. I received several letters from the Attorney-General, Dr Tun Shin. One stated,
“if I may say so, I feel that at this primary stage it will be beneficial to give preference to high level officials to attend”,
courses in the UK, to
“gain knowledge which they can disseminate”,
to the people who work for them. In a later letter, he stated that they were very interested in having training from the Training Gateway in courses delivered overseas or there in Myanmar.
At the end of the day, it did not happen. One reason is that however much help we were getting—I am in no way critical of DfID or the Foreign Office—there was not enough in Burma itself to build that structure. We need to think about how we can place a person in countries such as Burma to ensure that they can deliver on the ground what their leaders say that they need. That interlinkage is so difficult.
My final point is on the references in the report to hyperconnectivity, which is very important. It touches a bit on what the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, said about the health service overseas. I was struck recently when looking at some pictures of Alexandria in Egypt, sent to me by my daughter, who is there at the moment, of the sewage in the road and things of that nature. I went away to look up the top infectious diseases in Alexandria. Sure enough, they are all water-borne or food-borne, because of the lack of hygiene. I do not doubt that the real answer is for the Egyptian Government, with or without aid, to provide a better sewerage system, but I also know that with hyperconnectivity you can do what the report touches on: give good local organisations advice and help on basic hygiene, which you can do even though you have problems in the street every time that there is heavy rainfall.
That is what is so exciting in the report: it opens up new parameters to think about. I urge the Government to think about the use of our interconnection through the internet. We are a very connected society, and if we link into that, it is a matter not just of aid but of helping to build institutions, even at a very local level, to deal with the problems that I have just described.
Defence: Strategic Defence and Security Review
Lord Soley Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I of course acknowledge the importance of the noble Lord’s point, but I merely stress that I am answering for the Cabinet Office and the Government as a whole. We are talking about a security and defence review that involves the majority of departments in Whitehall feeding into an overall view of threats to our domestic and international security.
Lord Soley (Lab)
The world is a much more dangerous place than it was in 2009, when that report was well received. Now there is a danger of conflict between European Union states and Russia, and there is a profoundly dangerous conflict in the Middle East as well. Surely there is a case for a debate, as my noble friend on the Front Bench suggested. We really cannot carry on as if there were not a problem emerging in the world that makes the world a much more dangerous place than it was five or six years ago.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the 2010 SDSR was undertaken at speed, in the context of a very wide gap between defence spending commitments and the Treasury’s ability to fund them. We may hope that after the next election we shall have a little more time—perhaps a matter of six to nine months—before the conclusion of the SDSR. I remind noble Lords that in 1997-98 Labour’s defence review took well over a year. That will allow more time for the sort of debate about our role in the world, the threats we face and how much we devote to meeting these different threats than we had in 2010.
Recall of MPs Bill
Lord Soley Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, perhaps I may briefly intervene. It seems extraordinary that in rising to support the Government in their original position, I am rising to support an amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. They had got it right when they originally specified 20 days. In the 18th century, one was hung for stealing a cabbage, or for murdering your wife. If you committed any offence, you might as well get rid of any witnesses in order to avoid being hung for stealing the cabbage. We are rather in that position here.
If the provision is about persuading the outside world that the House of Commons takes bad behaviour seriously, I point out that most people would think that losing your pay for 10 days was not a particularly serious sanction. I therefore think that the nought to 10-day spectrum is far too narrow, and that nought to 20 days would be considerably more just and avoid the problem of the kind of political pressure that the noble Lord referred to.
The more that I, as a former Member, read and listen to the debates on the Bill, the more I believe that the House of Commons has lost confidence in itself. It is a bit like the situation at the moment: whenever there is a difficult problem there is a tendency to set up a public inquiry rather than actually address the issue. The public inquiry then goes on for ever, costs a lot of money and people feel, in the case of some inquiries, that no one has been held to account and it has all taken so long that the situation has moved on. That all adds to the sense of irritation on the part of the public.
What the noble Lord is proposing is eminently sensible and I am really looking forward to hearing the Minister’s response as to how he is going to explain how what I assume was a carefully considered Bill was presented to Parliament and amended in this way. We have almost gone into a competition to, sort of, wear the hair shirt—against the interests of Parliament. I am not being critical of the Opposition and I understand why they have done that, but it is a route that will lead to the destruction of the House of Commons in people’s eyes. If the House of Commons does not believe in itself and if it does not trust itself, how on earth can one expect the outside world to trust it if it demonstrates that it does not have the confidence to carry out its own sanctions?
It is a long time since I left it in 1997 but in the House of Commons that I remember, there is political partisanship—of course there is, which is why the point about the 10 days is important—but, on the whole, the House has a sense of its own worth and of its relationship with the public. It can be trusted to take the decisions that we are talking about and the amendment is immensely sensible. I hope that my noble friend will revert to the Government’s previous position and accept it.
Lord Soley (Lab)
It is entirely right that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has drawn attention to the real problem underlying all this—the lack of self-confidence within the House of Commons. It is rather tragic that we have the Bill before us. I am slightly worried at his reminding people that one could be hung for various things. A number of people would like to hang MPs, and I remind him that when I was chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party and it was heard that I might come to this place, one member of the PLP said that they had the ideal reform for the House of Lords, with one Peer for every lamp-post. I do not use that example too often.
However, I intervene briefly and seriously. My noble friends Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Howarth both made a strong case on this issue. My view is, and remains, that the Bill is a mess and should not have been brought forward but, precisely because of the nature of the mess here and the report to which my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours referred, the Government ought to say that they will take this issue away, look at it in some detail and come back with a proposal involving a return to the 20-day period. I would sign up to that. The Bill is not in a coherent state. It would be bad news for the House of Commons, and I suspect that it is unlikely to be used or be used very much. It is undesirable to have legislation in a mess such as this, especially when there is a report of the type that has been referred to that indicates why we ought to have the 20-day solution. The Government have a duty to this House and the other place to say that they will go back, consult and come back with a proposal that is more likely to work in a coherent way.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, your Lordships will not be surprised that we do not support these amendments for the reasons given by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours—well, no, actually, not for the reasons given by him. The amendments would reverse the very changes that Labour won with wholehearted—or should I say widespread?—support in the Commons.
The coalition Government had proposed what my noble friend now wants, which is that MPs would need to be suspended for more than four sitting weeks for the threshold to trigger a recall petition. However, no matter how much we cut that period, only rarely would that trigger be reached. Importantly, it would mean that some serious offences in the House would virtually never trigger a recall petition, which may be the intention of the amendment—or not; but that would be its effect. It would emasculate the role of the Commons in regulating its Members.
We believe that the House of Commons decision to suspend a Member should be able to act as a trigger and that four weeks’ suspension is simply too long. It makes the trigger too high for what constituents would expect. When all this was happening, I was not in Parliament; I was outside. If one asked now how serious an offence should be before someone should face a recall, I should say that being suspended for two weeks is about the right amount. We would not want the threshold to be so lowered that it would allow mischievous claims to be made in the other place. We also recognise that parliamentary dissent is part of our democratic heritage, and that an MP standing up for their beliefs in the other place should not find their right peacefully to protest compromised by unnecessary recall petitions. There is a balance to be struck. However, none of those suspended for protesting would be caught by the new threshold, which was agreed overwhelmingly in the Commons by 210 to 124 votes. In the words of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, if we are to trust the House of Commons, that vote is one that we should hear.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I have had a rather difficult few weeks. I have had all sorts of discussions with colleagues about what we should do and whether we should divide the House. Until about 10 minutes ago I was going to divide the House. Having heard the intervention from my noble friend Lord Soley appealing, even now there are those who want me to divide the House. Surely something can be done before Third Reading. Can there not be consultations with people in the Commons about what is happening? Can the noble Lord not say something to suggest a basis on which the Government could return at Third Reading? My noble friend Lady Hayter from the Front Bench is shaking her head because she is wedded to this principle, while on the Back Benches, both in the House of Commons and here, there are people who desperately want to get rid of this 10-day trigger.
Lord Soley
I again ask the Minister to think this through. The House of Commons has produced a report that has only just come to light and which affects the Bill now. The Government did not know about it until yesterday—
Lord Soley
It is not a desirable principle to proceed on legislation in conflict with that. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, is right to say “Think carefully before you throw something back to the House of Commons”, but we have a duty to advise and warn when information has come to light from the other House. I am sorry for a long intervention. I hope it helps.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I welcome interventions on my wind-up, although I do not want to delay the House. I appeal to Ministers to go away and ask around. This is wrong. It is a mistake. Everybody I talk to in the Commons knows it is a mistake. No one knew what they were doing at the time. The House was fairly empty; you can tell by the vote. It was all done on a free vote, so a lot of people had gone home. It is only here where I understand there are some Whips in operation to make sure that this nonsense amendment is not interfered with. Regretfully—I know I am upsetting some of my noble friends—I beg leave to withdraw my amendment but I do so with a very heavy heart.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, Amendment 12 would reduce the signing period from eight weeks to three weeks. It is intended to minimise the period of the petition—to shorten as far as possible the period in which there can be campaigns on both sides and, in particular, campaigns to secure names for the petition to unseat a Member of Parliament. Three weeks would be amply sufficient for this process. Three weeks allows plenty of time for constituents to make their way to one of up to 10 signing places, thanks to the amendment moved just now by the Minister, which was welcomed by the House. It is also plenty of time in which to organise postal votes to arrange for people to be able to sign the petition by post.
Imagine the situation that will prevail. The Member of Parliament has already been found guilty of serious wrongdoing by a court or by the Standards Committee. Already, he or she has been publicly disgraced. They have been shamed at length before their colleagues, their constituents and the nation. There will have been quantities of media coverage, much of it vindictive and gloating, in the period leading up to the judgment and at the moment when that judgment was made. Local media and social media will all have ensured that the Member of Parliament’s constituents are fully aware of the issue. What virtue is there in dragging out the period of the petition? Why do we wish to create this modern form of trial by ordeal? Why in this year of grace, 2015, are we legislating to provide that a political corpse shall twist in the wind and decompose for up to eight weeks? If by any chance there is still any life in that corpse—that politician—a by-election may follow, during which there will be more weeks of media sport, with the media pack baying for blood, and of accusation and counteraccusation; all of it highly unedifying and tending to give politics a bad name.
Some noble Lords may have read an article in last Saturday’s Guardian by the Reverend Giles Fraser, who described how, in the days when we burnt heretics and witches in this country, sellers of cherries would offer their wares to the spectators who had come to witness the public execution. This euphemistically termed “recall Bill” is in fact a process of public torment of a disgraced MP. I do not want to be excessively melodramatic, but I suggest that it is tantamount to political sadism. The market gardeners will be there, out and about in the constituency, selling their cherries. The local Mesdames Defarges will be knitting outside the signing places.
I do not in any way condone or mitigate the seriousness of serious wrongdoing, but it seems that this legislation, and this petition process in particular, is a gesture of self-abasement and of gratification of an angry public on the part of a traumatised and scared political class. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, spoke of the lack of self-confidence in the House of Commons, and I agree very much with what he said. It is right that the House of Commons should have made its apologies. It is right that there should have been contrition on the part of the political class. It is right to take steps to reform the culture of Parliament and to improve its disciplinary processes. But it is not right to do so by tossing miscreants to the crowd for ritual humiliation.
The political leaders, however, and Members of the House of Commons, in their wisdom—it seems to me a somewhat primitive wisdom—have approved the process that is provided for in the Bill. Should we not, however, be aiming to minimise the nastiness in politics, starting, perhaps, with the weekly cage fight at Prime Minister’s Questions in the other place?
I have been struck that noble Lords on all sides of this House who are former Members of the House of Commons have made the case that we do not need this recall procedure at all. The House of Commons has the power to expel a Member of Parliament who disgraces himself or herself and the House. If the Member of Parliament does not resign voluntarily—I will give way.
Lord Soley
My noble friend has been talking about MPs who have disgraced themselves. Clearly, that is the origin of the Bill but, as I pointed out, and others have pointed out, in a number of cases the danger is that this Bill will be used where there is a political aspect to the case. We need only think of the Irish Members who in the past have been in conflict or, in the example I gave, if we look forward, of perhaps a Muslim MP going to fight in Syria—not for ISIL, but for one of the other groups—and yet being arrested and perhaps sent to prison. I think we should not fall into the trap of assuming that this will be used only against MPs who have clearly done wrong, because it has more dangerous implications.
Lord Howarth of Newport
I agree with my noble friend. The process provided for in the Bill would allow for the intrusion of all kinds of extraneous factors, such as the ones he describes. If we return to the question of whether a Member of Parliament has committed serious wrongdoing in the terms that the Bill envisages, of course, if that MP chooses not to resign voluntarily, the parties have their means of persuading the Member of Parliament to resign. The parties can remove their endorsement. The matter can thereby be dealt with cleanly and quickly.
Lethal injection is one thing. But hanging, drawing and quartering over eight weeks is quite another. If we must have this petition process, let us make it as short as possible. I propose that three weeks would be amply sufficient, but some noble Lords may consider that, for practical reasons, we might need four weeks, conceivably even five weeks. I would not be dogmatic on that. The principle that I wish to put forward in this amendment is that we should keep the petition process to the minimum of time in which it can be performed as satisfactorily as possible. Eight weeks, it seems to me, is altogether excessive. There is also a consideration that if we are to have 10 signing places staffed for eight weeks on end, it will be very expensive. However, that is not my argument. My argument is about mitigating or minimising the gratuitous unpleasantness that is inherent in this process.
I hope that noble Lords will agree with my point of view. I hope that Ministers may feel that there is scope for them to respond flexibly and perhaps adjust the period of eight weeks to three, possibly four. I beg to move.
Lord Grocott
My Lords, my observation is simply on the practicalities of this. I do not know what would happen in these signing places, the number of which we have just agreed should be extended to a maximum of 10. What would actually happen to them in weeks two, three, four, five, six, seven and eight? Surely, the overwhelming evidence shows that, with the kind of build-up that is being described by my noble friend Lord Howarth, anyone who wanted to sign this petition would, I imagine, have built up to a sufficient level of frenzy that they would be virtually queuing at the station where the petition could be signed. Certainly, they would have dealt with it by week two or week three. There is an idea, somehow, that we need to keep these stations open for 10 weeks. For heaven’s sake, consider a general election campaign, until this dreaded Fixed-term Parliaments Act came along, about which I have expressed opinions in the past. Normally, there were five or six weeks of intense campaigning, which constituted a general election campaign. That was more than enough for most of us, I think. As far as I was concerned, I found it exhausting.
We know, from the evidence, about postal voting. Experts such as my noble friend Lord Kennedy on the Front Bench will no doubt know more about this than I do. Is not the evidence overwhelming that people either cast their postal vote within a day or two of receiving the ballot or they do not do it at all? I think exactly the same principle would apply to this. I think it most unlikely that this Act, as it will become, will come into operation very often, if at all, which makes the whole operation seem rather a waste of time. Assuming, however, that it comes into operation, I would safely predict that the poll clerks in these up to 10 signing places would be sitting there reading newspapers for weeks 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. I can see no conceivable practical reason, let alone in the arguments that my noble friend has advanced, why we need such a long period for signing.
Lord Soley
I want to emphasise what I said in my intervention. Bear in mind that when Bobby Sands starved himself to death, there were constant displays outside all sorts of places relating to government in Northern Ireland and southern Ireland. If we have this, there will be something similar. It will not, I hope, ever be as dreadful as that period again, but do bear in mind a very important point: people get sentenced for offences as a result of a political situation.
I shall give another example, which has been given here in the past and concerns the First World War and conscientious objectors. There is a whole range of issues on which, in the past, Members of Parliament have committed offences which are illegal and get them into trouble with the law. Under this legislation, it would result in their losing their seats. If you want to look at a situation, of course it is easy to identify ones where MPs fiddled their expenses. That is the easy option. However, when they are linked into a political-style offence, it is a very different ball game and there are all sorts of dangers. To my mind, that is a much bigger danger in the whole of this Bill, not just this individual question of three or eight weeks.
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?
Recall of MPs Bill
Lord Soley Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Soley (Lab)
My Lords, I am sympathetic to this: as the noble Lord said, it follows on from my sunset clause proposal. I would prefer the sunset clause—having given it some thought since that original debate—mainly because I am hopeful that this Bill will not be used at all; and therefore, with a sunset clause, it would just have fallen, nobody would have noticed and the House of Commons could have got on with being what it ought to be: a very respected place in the eyes of the country. This is another attempt at that sort of approach, and I understand it. My only anxiety is that it actually raises the issue again, because it would have to be debated. That is my only issue with it, but otherwise it is probably better to have this than nothing. I would have preferred a sunset clause.
Recall of MPs Bill
Lord Soley Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, we have given notice or our intention to oppose the Question that Clause 8 stand part of the Bill. It is an opportunity to raise a fundamental issue about the whole Bill.
The Minister will recall that we discussed at Second Reading whether signing a recall petition was to be a secret or public act. As we noted then, if it was to be public, people must be aware that their identity will become known in due course before they decide to sign it. We gave given notice of our intention to oppose the Question that Clause 8 stand part of the Bill to ascertain from the Government what their present thinking is as to whether a recall will be by a secret vote or by a public petition. At the moment, the Government seem to have come to no conclusion. We would like to suggest a way forward. The Government have had nearly five years to decide on this issue, which is fairly key to the working of the Bill, but have failed to come up with a conclusion. They are therefore in need of some help, which I hope the Chamber will provide.
The Constitution Committee noted that,
“signing a recall petition is a public act”.
Indeed, the Government conceded that,
“whereas at an election the way in which the person has voted remains secret, this secrecy cannot be maintained absolutely through the process of signing a petition as there is only one way in which a person may sign”.
Unlike elections or referendums, on which a large amount of the Bill has been drafted, there will not be an “against” box on the petition signing sheet. Furthermore, if the Government intend for a marked register to be available, the list of “for a recall” will become public, moving away from the notion of secrecy. There is nothing to stop organisations filming who goes into the signing venues or, as I mentioned earlier, stop those of us who lobby for one side or another and mark who goes in and who comes out. Indeed, we would ask for polling cards, as voters will be given polling cards in the same way as normal. I do not need to explain to the House how quickly videos or images can be circulated on a variety of different platforms, digital or otherwise.
It is crucial that a clear decision is taken as to whether this will be, in effect, a public petition or a secret act, which could be done not dissimilarly from the way suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, who is not currently in his place, in Amendment 51, by having separate “for” and “against” forms. Whatever the final decision, it must be clear in the Bill and voters must be informed of it well in advance.
This is a complex issue, about which I, for one, have yet to decide. There are strong arguments on both sides. However, my concern is that this has not been fully discussed and the Government have not, to the best of our knowledge, engaged stakeholders, such as the political parties, the Electoral Commission, the Electoral Reform Society, the Association of Electoral Administrators, or anyone else. Indeed, when we met the Electoral Commission, it seemed unaware of this as an issue and had not really paid any attention to it.
We really must have a greater sense of this—of the arguments on both sides and of the views of others—before Report. We simply cannot afford to leave it to the next Parliament—or, even worse, to the triggering of the first ever recall—to take a decision on this. Everyone needs to be clear about the process before the first such petition happens. Therefore, as a Parliament, we need to decide now, but informed by research and consultation, which sadly has yet to take place. After that, we can see the regulations, the information to be given to electors and agree the exact procedures in the light of whether this is an open or closed petition. My suggestion to the Government is that they undertake that consultation before this comes back to the House. They should come back with a clear view based on the evidence of that consultation. That should be in the Bill and the relevant regulations could be so drafted afterwards.
Lord Soley (Lab)
My Lords, I share the concerns expressed. The Government need to think long and hard about the privacy issue. If this Bill had been put before the House in the 1970s or 1980s, there would have had to be a clause making it clear that it did not apply to Northern Ireland. Fortunately, I think we are over the worst of that but, as the Minister knows, it is still a sensitive area and I am not sure whether this will apply to Northern Ireland. I must admit that I meant to check that point but I did not. I also think that there could be real problems as regards the privacy issue in areas where there are ethnic or religious tensions. I am not sure what thinking the Government have had about that.
In view of all the battles, literally, over the centuries to get the secret vote, you can see why people might be worried about signing a petition in public or, worse still, signing without realising that it would be made public after the event. At that stage, people may want to take their name off the petition, to change their mind or whatever. I do not have any confident feeling that the Government have thought this part through. I look forward to the Minister explaining how he will deal with this, particularly in those areas where there are tensions and as regards expecting people to sign a petition but not to change their mind later and desperately try to get their name off.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I recognise that this is a very important point. The Government take on board that they have not entirely spelled out the degree of secrecy and publicity that comes with this. Unavoidably, signing a petition is, to some extent, a public act. We all know that someone going into a polling station often can be observed and checked, although those who make postal votes preserve a great deal more anonymity. The mere fact of going to the signing place to sign the petition clearly indicates in which direction you are moving, which makes this unavoidably a less secret activity than the secret ballot.
We recognise that the balance between the public nature of signing a petition and the need to preserve a degree of privacy for those who wish to sign it is one on which we have to give particular care and attention to strike the right balance. On attending the signing place, the elector will have their entry checked on the electoral register to check that they are eligible to sign the petition. They can then be handed a signing sheet and will be able to read the information et cetera. In Northern Ireland, electors will have to produce ID according to the existing arrangements for elections in that country, as the noble Lord, Lord Soley, will recall.
Postal signing raises questions about access to the marked register, which will tell you who has and who has not signed the petition. The Government are considering what limitations there should be on access to the marked register. While some of this will have to be left to regulations, I will do my best to come back on Report with a clearer statement on the marked register issue in particular.
We are all of course concerned about intimidation. As the noble Lord, Lord Soley, remarked, it is not purely limited to Northern Ireland. We are all aware of some other areas in the United Kingdom where that has happened or might easily happen. Therefore, when there is only one way in which you are likely to express your opinion in signing a petition, the question of intimidation, as well as privacy, should be fully addressed. Some of that will have to be left to the details of the regulations but I will do my utmost to come back on Report stage with as clear a statement as possible of the Government’s view, taken in consultation with the appropriate authorities.
Lord Soley
Will the Minister also tell us whether he has taken or will take advice from the law officers? What would the situation be if someone who suffered harassment or worse as a result of their name being made public when they did not expect it to be took a legal action, whether in the UK or in the European court, under their right to privacy?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I will certainly take action on that. The question of how far the right to privacy extends in this thing is something on which I am not myself an expert. However, I will take advice.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, clearly the Government have still not made up their mind about this. What I most regret is the suggestion that this could be left to regulations. What we probably need is an amendment to the Bill at the Report stage because the question of whether this is going to be a public or a private act has to be clear before the Bill leaves Parliament. That is for us to decide if the Government really are not going to make it clear beforehand.
I think I heard the Minister say that consultations would take place with others outside before they come to a view on this.
Lord Soley
Perhaps I may draw attention to the fact that Clause 23 does actually extend to Northern Ireland. I ask the noble Lord to check that the Northern Ireland Secretary of State is aware of this, and whether she has any views on it.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I understand that this is a serious matter which we need to get right. On that basis, I hope that the noble Baroness will be able to withdraw her opposition to the question that the clause stand part.
Recall of MPs Bill
Lord Soley Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Soley
“Expiry
The provisions of this Act expire at the end of the period of 5 years beginning with the day on which this Act is passed.”
Lord Soley (Lab)
My Lords, this amendment would create a sunset clause; that is, it would bring the Bill to an end five years after the date when it became law. I came to the conclusion quite a few years ago that sunset clauses were useful in a couple of situations. That was originally drawn to my attention in the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1984, in which we had a sunset clause because the Government accepted that the powers in it were very serious and we needed to consider the idea of letting the Bill lapse if it did not need to be renewed. In fact those powers had to be renewed, and we did that. The other case in which it is useful, which is much more relevant to this one, is where the outcome in the Bill as regards becoming a law and its effect is very uncertain, and it contains constitutional implications. That is the case for reviewing it at the end of a certain period. The Minister may want to say that the Government do not like the idea of a sunset clause—I know some of the arguments against sunset clauses—but if they would like to consider just reviewing it at that stage, that might be another option.
I have two fears about the Bill. I will start with the simple one that does not keep me awake at night much: that it would be largely ineffective and might not even reach the statute book intact. There are so many uncertainties in the Bill, many of which we have heard about this evening, that it is quite hard to see how it would be in good enough shape to become a complete law before the general election. It will not surprise me if it does not quite achieve that. You could say, “Well, that could be the end of the matter”. The second and much more worrying fear, which causes me concern and which has come up a number of times on both days of Committee, is that there are possibly quite serious implications here. Indeed, the Constitution Committee picked out one of them, which we have referred to on a number of occasions. If the offence that a Member of Parliament commits is a political one, the committee indicates that the outcome of that is a very serious matter.
The noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, who has gone now, used the example of Zac Goldsmith and Heathrow Airport, of which I have some knowledge. I have no doubt that in due course the Conservative Party will change its position on the third runway and conclude that it was its idea to expand the airport all along and that I had nothing to do with it despite the last 20 years of campaigning. However, the important point about Zac Goldsmith is that, to his credit, he has indicated that he will resign from the Tory party if it changes its position. Let us assume that the party changes its position—which I think it will, whether it is in government or not—and Zac Goldsmith resigns from it. That would not trigger an election. However, he feels very strongly about this issue, and if he feels so strongly that he does some form of demonstration in the Chamber of the House of Commons and gets himself excluded from the House for more than 10 days, we will enter into this process. You have to ask, “Do you really want to create that sort of condition?”. The last few debates have been about how important it is to debate the issue of the MP’s wrongdoing. In this case, I suggest that if Zac Goldsmith behaved so badly—I am not saying that he would—that would be the effect, but the election would be all about the third runway at Heathrow, and all the campaigners on both sides would pour in on it. There are many examples of that; my noble friend Lord Hughes gave some, and I gave others. There is a danger of politicising elections.
The other thing that troubles me about this, and the other reason why some form of review or sunset clause is necessary, is because there are umpteen opportunities in the Bill for pulling in the judiciary. The last few amendments we have discussed are all replete with opportunities for legal challenges, which would go either to an electoral court or—which would be less likely, but is conceivable—to a conventional court. All that seems to be opening up an area where we pull the judiciary more and more into the political process, which I am very strongly against. The case of Phil Woolas that I quoted at Second Reading is a dramatic example of why we should not get the judiciary muddled up with political process, and of how right the 18th-century political philosopher was—his name escapes me—who said that the electorate are sovereign in the British political system. The electorate must decide. That is very real and we should stick to it, so keeping the judiciary out of politics is a good idea.
All that suggests to me that the case for having some review system at the end of the Bill would be useful. We need to remember that the sunset clause is an advantage. If the Bill is not used at all, which is quite possible, it will just die. It will come off the statute book and we will not have to bother about it again. On the other hand, if it requires reform, we can reform it at that stage. That was done with the prevention of terrorism Acts. The alternative is that it works fine and we can renew it. That is not a bad safety valve to have in a Bill of this nature, which has constitutional implications and, as I have indicated, certain serious provisions.
I looked through the Constitution Committee’s report and it contains a number of important issues. I will not repeat them all now because we dealt with some of them earlier. It is not just a matter of politicisation. As has come up recently, if the Electoral Commission is not to be heavily involved in this—and clearly it is not, from what has been said in Committee this evening—then there are all sorts of opportunities for challenges for the proper running of a recall election. What will happen then? Are we going to have to have another recall election, just as we would if an MP or someone else challenged the validity of a conventional election for that MP? There is an opportunity here for all sorts of applications to court, particularly on the expenses issue. Incidentally, Edmund Burke was the philosopher that I was trying to remember at this late hour.
We really need some way of ensuring that we can review this Bill. My best guess is that it might not be used much if at all, in which case it could die after five years. If it is used, frankly there could be very real dangers in it. It is very important, as the Constitution Committee pointed out, that there are ways of removing MPs. The expenses scandal was a classic example of that: several MPs were removed. Indeed, one of the saddest things about the Bill is that every MP in the House of Commons now has been re-elected by the electorate, who are sovereign in our system. None of them has done anything wrong. However, this Bill is about flagellation. As I think I said before, flagellation is a bad idea at the best of times but do-it-yourself flagellation when you are not even guilty of anything is ridiculous. No MP need be sitting at the moment thinking, “I have done something wrong”.
As the Constitution Committee points out, if the Bill is designed just to reassure the electorate, it is unlikely to have any effect. The most we can hope for is some sort of publicity of this sort of event and the hope that people notice it. The chances of people taking much notice of what is happening on this right now are very limited. If an MP did something, they would almost certainly be disciplined by the procedures that operated effectively even in the last Parliament. As I say, at best this Bill is unlikely to be used and therefore should die after a five-year period; at worst, we could have situations where very heavily political cases had to be fought on that basis. That is bad news for democracy and I ask the Government to look at a way of reviewing the effectiveness of this Bill after a five-year period and then to let it lie, to amend it and bring it back, to get rid of it or, if I am wrong and it works, to just accept that it works.
Lord Norton of Louth (Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Soley, made a persuasive case. However, I am particularly drawn to the alternative that he identified, which is to provide for a review of the Act after, say, five years. The precedent already exists in the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. We have already written into that Act that it will be subject to review.
The Minister may say that this Act will in any case be subject to post-legislative review by the relevant department three to five years after enactment, but I think there may be a case with such a significant constitutional measure for the review to be post-legislative scrutiny and for it to be included in the measure. I commend that review proposal as an alternative to what the noble Lord is putting forward. It is something to which we may wish to return on Report.
Lord Soley
I am grateful to the Minister. I said in my opening remarks that the alternative was a review system and I think that the Government ought to think about that. It was interesting that in his summing-up the Minister used the phrase “defined tests”. He was obviously referring to the three tests that are used to trigger this process. It is not the tests that worry me so much, with the exception of the third one, which could become highly political. What worries me are the processes, which are so ill thought out and ill spelled out in the Bill. Ministers have again and again today been standing up and saying, “We are not sure how this will work. We are going to look at election law and bring it in”. There are so many uncertainties there. I can tell noble Lords that it is going to be a gift to lawyers if we do not get that bit right. We have not done it in the House. The process of this House as a reviewing Chamber has led, time and again, to the Government Front Bench saying, “Well, we will look at this further down the line”, or, “We hope to get regulations about it” or, “We will think about it”. Such uncertainty with regard to a constitutional Bill is almost an invitation for the courts to get involved, sooner or later, in some way. Either that or the Bill will not work as it is meant to. Indeed, the fallacy in the Bill is the lack of a clearly-defined process at a number of stages, and that is why I think that the Government should think about a review or a sunset clause. However, in view of what the Minister said—perhaps he will go away and think about it—I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.