Recall of MPs Bill

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg]

I will come to those issues in a moment. The straightforward answer is no, I do not think those measures are strong enough. During the Committee stage we need to strengthen them significantly.

Labour supports recall. Our manifesto commitment in 2010 stated:

“MPs who are found responsible for financial misconduct will be subject to a right of recall”.

We need a system that improves accountability and gives more power to the public to hold their representatives to account between elections. That is a matter of fairness. People go to work each day and they know that if they break the rules, if they behave inappropriately at work, they may face the sack. The job of a Member of Parliament should be no different. If we are to regain the trust of the people, we cannot place ourselves outside or above this basic principle.

However, the system of recall needs to reflect what the job of a Member of Parliament is. We are not delegates to this place. We have a representative democracy, in which Members of Parliament are sent to represent their constituencies, and sometimes that involves making difficult decisions. A balance has to be drawn between giving people the opportunity to recall MPs for misconduct, and allowing MPs to make difficult decisions. For misconduct, recall makes sense. For holding MPs to account for their voting record, general elections are the appropriate mechanism. We will support this Bill on Second Reading, but look forward to strengthening it in Committee.

We believe that the Bill is an unacceptably minimalist interpretation of the right to recall. For example, as the Minister set out, one of the triggers in the Bill is when an MP is suspended from the House of Commons for at least 21 sitting days or 28 calendar days. Had this rule been in operation over the past 25 years, there are only two occasions on which Members of Parliament would have been caught by this proposed change. As my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Mr Roy) pointed out, for the Members of Parliament who were caught up in the “cash for questions” scandal in the 1990s, because of the nature of the punishment they faced, recall would not have been triggered.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

Can the hon. Gentleman envisage a situation where the political pressure would be on the Standards Committee to increase the penalties? The political pressure means that 21 days’ suspension has to be given as a punishment to bring in the trigger mechanisms, so in some ways the trigger is a foolish mechanism, and the Standards Committee probably should not be involved at all.

[Stephen Twigg]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. I will address the role of the Standards Committee in a moment. These are precisely the sort of issues that we want to address in Committee next week.

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[Stephen Twigg]

I know that the hon. Gentleman has campaigned on this issue for a very long time and has a consistent stance that is reflected in his intervention. I am going to set out my thinking on such a proposal in a moment, so if he could be patient I will respond to his point.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman said that Terry Fields would probably have been re-elected with a massive majority. Would it not be a failure of any legislation if it brought about a situation where a Member faced a by-election and came back with a massive majority? Surely the point of recall legislation is to put the issue to the test on something that is marginal and not something where there could be a situation involving vexatious constituents who perhaps opposed the poll tax and knew full well that the MP would be returned with a massive majority.

[Stephen Twigg]

The hon. Gentleman is making an important point about the risk of a relatively small minority of—to use his phrase—vexatious constituents abusing the system. That is a risk with a pure recall system, as I will explain in a moment.

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[Zac Goldsmith]

That is interesting. I have been bombarded. I even received a letter this morning that said, “Dear Zac Goldsmith, we very much hope that you will support Zac Goldsmith’s amendments.” I take my hon. Friend’s point, but as is shown by all the surveys on this issue, of which there have been a great many over the past few months, if this proposal is put to members of the public, it is something that they support.

The amendments that my colleagues and I will table in due course are based on a Bill that was put together by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), which was crowdsourced. Some 40,000 people, many of whom were members of 38 Degrees and other organisations, went through it line by line and fed in their comments. It has engaged a large number of people. I cannot think of another Bill that has been subjected to that level of crowdsourcing.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman made me think of some of the lines in the Bill when he mentioned the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner). It states that

“the period specified is a period of at least 21 sitting days”.

It does not state that they must be 21 consecutive sitting days. It might help the Government if they go back and look at that.

[Zac Goldsmith]

That is a good point that I had not picked up on. The hon. Gentleman made the valid and reasonable point in an earlier intervention that there would be enormous pressure from the media, social media and members of the public for 21 days to become the norm, regardless of the offence.

This shabby pretence of a reform needs to be profoundly amended. With the help of a considerable number of colleagues, I hope to do so in Committee. The goal will be to put voters in charge, but with enough checks and balances to prevent any possibility of abuse. We will attempt to remove the Government’s trigger and replace it with a system that allows voters to initiate the process. In response to the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray), the protection will be in the threshold. It must be low enough to make recall possible, but high enough to ensure that it happens only when it absolutely should.

Under our proposals, there would be three simple stages. If 5% of the local electorate signed a notice of intent to recall during a one-month period, the returning officer would announce a formal recall petition. The purpose of the 5% provision is simply to show the returning officer that there is an appetite for the formal petition process. It is the least formal part of the process and is designed to prevent the initiation of recall by a few angry cranks in the constituency, which every constituency has.

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[Douglas Carswell]

At present, the career trajectories of MPs in safe seats are determined by how obsequious they are to Ministers, and on whether or not the Whips think highly of them and give them promotion. If a Member is vulnerable to a recall election—if he is vulnerable to the views of the voters—he may start to face outward to the voters. Even if he is in a safe seat, he will know that he can lose his position if he breaks his promises and does not do what he said he was going to do. Recall would mean that instead of facing inward and chasing favour with the Whips, MPs would become outward-facing, and I think that that would revive and reinvigorate our democracy.

[Mr MacNeil]

Is not the ultimate battering ram against “safe seat syndrome”, as it has been described this afternoon, not a recall Bill but the single transferable vote system that we have seen in operation in, for instance, the Republic of Ireland?

[Douglas Carswell]

I would rather not get into the subject of electoral reform, although my views on it were not generally mainstream in my old party, and I am open to ideas and suggestions. Recall would be a key part of reviving our democracy.

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[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

Mention has been made today of the disengagement with politics in the wider context, but it might be good news for the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) that politics in Scotland is now going through a veritable purple patch—a renaissance, even—and that we have perhaps the most engaged and politically literate electorate in the whole of Europe.

[Mr Charles Walker]

Am I right in thinking that even the Conservative party is having a renaissance in Scotland?

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman might be on to something, but I think that it might have to be called a relative renaissance. Polls have shown that the Conservative party’s figures have not increased much, if at all, in Scotland, although they are above those of the Labour party. It is not really much of a renaissance at all. However, I do not want to be distracted by the political ill weather for Labour and the Conservatives north of the border, because that is not the matter before the House this afternoon.

I hope that there is much agreement on the idea of a recall Bill, but the disagreement lies in whether we should have an open recall Bill or the more prescribed recall Bill that the Government propose.

I want to say quite a bit about the Government’s attitude and approach to the Bill. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) was absolutely right to say that among the problems with the Government’s Bill are its reliance on the Standards and Privileges Committee and the justice of that Committee. The right hon. Gentleman told us that he had looked into that matter, and it did not surprise me that there was such a justice differential between those inside the gilded circle and those outwith it.

The proposal for a 10% threshold is dangerous. A safer mechanism for recall would involve a 5% threshold, followed by 20% and then a simple majority in a referendum. This process should be an extension of democracy and, if we get to that point, there should be a secret ballot—or an Australian ballot, as it was originally called. The prescribed route also carries the danger that it mentions trigger conditions, such as a jailing. Mentioning the conditions would make a recall more likely because it would light up the minds of those in journalistic circles, who would start to crank up the machinery that could lead to what history suggests might sometimes be the wrong steps being taken.

I am thinking in particular of Terry Fields, who was jailed for 60 days in 1991 and was probably released to a hero’s welcome, as indeed was Tommy Sheridan in Scotland, although he was not an elected politician when he was also jailed for non-payment of the poll tax. The hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) made an important point about the Cyprus situation in the 1950s. He suggested that Members should be given a degree of latitude and have the freedom to speak their minds, because sometimes an uncomfortable truth is a great servant to us all.

The open route would allow us more easily to ignore some of the many reasons that the establishment might see as triggers for a recall, and allow us to take a more open approach. As the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) said in an intervention on the opening speech, it should be no longer MPs who define their own behaviour, but society at large. The open method allows the recall mechanism to be a dynamic process that takes account of circumstances. Some might feel that lying to the country or to Parliament to take the nation to war might reasonably be open to recall but that would not be included in legislation by the Government.

The overarching point is that recall should be a sanction of last resort. It should not be used much, and hopefully it will not be used much—it should be little needed and little used—but it is a sanction that should be available. At the stage we are at now in our ever-evolving democratic countries—evolving due to social media, certainly—the proposals before us would provide another arm of participatory democracy.

Whoever instigates a recall and whatever mechanism triggers it, it should have a reasonable chance of success. I mentioned the example of Terry Fields. He would have been re-elected anyway, and to use the recall mechanism against an MP who is clearly going to come back with a thumping majority would be an abuse. It should have a real chance of succeeding in removing the MP. As has been said, perhaps an MP removal mechanism is what it is. Therefore, and perhaps with the fear of the vexatious recall in mind as well, we might consider requiring a bond or deposit—some sum so that those engaged in this have to put some money where their mouths are, as do those who engage in elections or by-elections, in order for them genuinely to demonstrate to the wider public that this is not a whim.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I have some sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman says, but that would not stop a wealthy individual. It would not stop the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), for example, as he could obviously afford to lose his deposit, and in the United States it did not stop people such as the Koch brothers, who put £2 million into the Colorado recall of the state Senators who introduced gun control. I sympathise with what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but I am not sure this would stop big business and big interests.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman might be correct in some of that, but we do live in an imperfect world. All I would say to him is that this removes many of the imperfections and is an improvement on the current situation.

[Zac Goldsmith]

The hon. Gentleman is making a brilliant speech, and I agree with I think everything he has just said.

The points about moneyed interests are arguments against all elections, not just recalls. It would be possible for the Koch brothers to influence any election, not just recalls. That is another problem we need to address: there are arguments to be had about regulating the process so that that cannot happen. These arguments are not about recall; they are about democracy.

[Mr MacNeil]

I think there is a debate going on around me here about the influence of money in politics, and hopefully we are not quite in the same scenario as the United States of America in that respect, although it would be wrong to say that the influence of money is negligible in politics at whatever level, including general elections, by-elections or, perhaps, recall elections.

Some Members have argued that a general election is a form of recall, but I dispute that. Should a Member face recall, they will be facing recall on one point, with the eyes of the country, and particularly of their constituency, on the cause of the recall. In a general election Members come face to face with other candidates, as they would in a recall election, but the issues of the day can sweep a candidate into winning a seat. We have often seen over the last number of elections that some candidates have won to their own surprise; it is clearly not the candidate who has been elected personally, but instead it is support for their party or the issue of the day that has taken them to victory. Therefore a by-election or general election is not a recall election.

One of the most concerning aspects of the recall measures before us is the Government’s wording of clause 1(3), which mentions an MP who

“has, after becoming an MP, been convicted in the United Kingdom of an offence and sentenced or ordered to be imprisoned or detained”.

The word “detained” leaves us with quite a difficult situation. According to House of Commons notes, during this Parliament at least four sitting MPs have been detained by the police but not prosecuted. I will not name them because they do not deserve that. The detaining and imprisoning of people could, under the Government’s mechanisms, enable 10% to push for a by-election, and that would be wrong.

We must, I think, conduct a thorough experiment. Not many of us would like to imagine that we live in a country in which we have politically motivated arrests and people being detained because of mistaken identity—the measure does not even allow for the possibility of mistaken identity. Let us imagine that the detention was heavy-handed and wrong. Imagine too that the system was taken as a gold standard and used in other places. We could have a situation in which different standards in a different time and place would allow somebody to be detained, which could lead to a 10% trigger to an election, and that could be taken as a benchmark across the world. It is difficult to see how people could withstand the pressure of that.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

I hope that the Minister will intervene on this matter. My understanding is that detention is not being held without bail, but is an English law term. Perhaps the Minister could clarify that situation at some point later in the debate.

[Mr MacNeil]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that, and there should be absolutely no ambiguity here. The fact is that this is a point of debate. Therefore, whether he is right, I am right or the truth lies somewhere in between does not matter. The point is that there is some ambiguity in the words, and it should not be there. If that is the situation, it leaves a process that is open to abuse. Although we would all like to think that we live in a country that follows the rules of fair play, a country that adopts this system might not. Standards might change here over time. By-elections with a biased national media are a lot more plentiful than we would imagine. The result could be quite different and justice—the point of this is justice—would not be seen to be done.

Recall has to be real, in the hands of the people and open to the circumstances of the society in which it operates. As I have said, there will be circumstances that we cannot possibly imagine today. I have already mentioned the taking of a country to war, and there will be other such situations. If the Government do not listen to our amendments, will they, at the very least, clarify what they mean by “detain”. Surely, too, they must raise the barrier of 10%. There is better thinking in front of them. I commend the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) for his work, and I agree with just about all of his amendments bar one, which we will discuss later.

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[Richard Drax]

I concur entirely with my hon. Friend. As always, his words are wise and should be listened to by us all.

I am concerned by some of the comments that colleagues have made. Disparaging remarks have been made about MPs, the system, this place and our democracy itself. Members have said that we have somehow undermined democracy.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman has used the word “democracy” a few times. As I am sure he and everybody else knows, democracy comes from the Greek for the rule of the people. If we believe in democracy, what can be wrong with the recall Bill?

[Richard Drax]

If the hon. Gentleman will hold on for a few moments, I will hopefully answer his question.

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[Richard Drax]

I agree entirely. What will restore faith in this place is us—the parties and individuals that make up this great place. It is our duty to do that, and I do not think we need a recall Bill to prove that point.

As I have said, the Bill, sadly, is a knee-jerk reaction. The hon. Member for Clacton asked why it has taken four and a half years to come to this place, and I wonder—no doubt I shall be shot down by the three party leaders and many of my colleagues—whether because it was a knee-jerk reaction, in time people have thought, “Is this actually a sensible Bill?” I think they have come to the conclusion that in the main it is not, although at the time it may have seemed attractive, and to a certain extent it may have appeased the electorate. Will it solve the problem? I do not believe it will.

There is some logic to the Government Bill. Apparently, there are no rules and regulations if we get a custodial sentence under 12 months. If we do receive a custodial sentence—there have been various examples of that—it means there are big questions to be asked, and in a sense the Bill covers that. The right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras said he was concerned about the figure of 10%, and asked about the other 90%. Again, I entirely concur with that point.

I also agree with every word the right hon. Gentleman said about the amendments proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park. I have a lot of respect for my hon. Friend, but I do not agree with any of his amendments for all the reasons I have set out. I shall not repeat them, but I would like to point out what the letter we all received from Cabinet Office Ministers, dated 20 October 2014, says in explaining the intention of the Bill:

“In formulating their proposals the Government has examined international models which allow elected representatives to be recalled on any grounds. The recall model proposed in the Government’s Bill fits with and goes further than Parliamentary democracies similar to ours—Australia, New Zealand and Canada do not have recall in their main legislatures.”

I do not like comparisons with other countries. They are always dangerous. One of the many reasons why the eurozone is such a complete flop is that all the countries are so different and cannot be put in the same straitjacket. The same principle applies here.

I shall move on briefly to another point that counters the Bill. We are all elected by our local associations. Each party has its own system. Were I to commit an offence that constituted serious misconduct, I have no doubt—I am sure colleagues on both sides of the House would have no doubt—that I would be summoned to the local association office to explain myself. That is the local face of our party. The local associations select us and they have the power to deselect us. In that conversation, if my chairman was to say to me, “Richard, up with you we shall not put any longer”, I hope that, if my action had been so heinous, I would have already resigned. However, if I had not resigned I would be pushed. If the chairman did not do the job then, along with the party hierarchy, the party should be prepared to say to the sitting MP, “Up with this we will not put.”

That leads to a question. Let us say the polls are against the party and the sitting MP and suddenly there is a potential by-election. Every instinct in the parliamentary party would say, “For heaven’s sake, a by-election is the last thing we need in that seat.” But this is where honour, responsibility and all the things we must show to the public that we have come in; and I believe that we do have those things. The party hierarchy should say, “Tough. We may lose this seat, but the sitting MP has committed such a heinous crime that we have to get rid of him or her and have a by-election.” Those are the sort of people who should be making these decisions. They should not be made by legislation.

[Mr MacNeil]

If we think back to the expenses scandal, is the hon. Gentleman saying that nothing dishonourable happened among any Member still in this House?

[Richard Drax]

I am not quite sure I got that, because I am so staggered by the question. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could rephrase it, because it did not make sense.

[Mr MacNeil]

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that during the expenses scandal nothing dishonourable happened—he has said so much about honour—among any Member who was subsequently re-elected?

[Richard Drax]

I am not sure I have ever said that. In fact, I have said the opposite. If people have behaved—let us take the expenses scandal—in a dishonourable way, they should go, yes.

[Mr MacNeil]

Have they all gone?

[Richard Drax]

Ah. That is another question. I am not going to look back with hindsight. I was not even here. We are where we are, and I do not believe that a recall Bill would have made any difference in this instance. The expenses scandal has unfortunately caused all of us in this place to look backwards. The point has been made to me on many occasions, in spite of the fact that I was not here. Even now, the shadow of that appalling time hangs over this place. We have to shake it off and put it behind us. People have paid and some have gone to jail. We should move on in a way that allows us, as the responsible adults and grown-up politicians we are all meant to be, to please the electorate in the way they want to be pleased: by behaving in an honourable fashion.

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[Mark Durkan]

I take the spirit of the hon. Gentleman’s point, but I do not accept it literally. If we are to talk about having a recall power—whether it be in the terms of this Bill or any other—I believe there needs to be a yardstick. If the House of Commons is to adjudicate itself or to ask a select number of us to adjudicate the rest in respect of standards and privileges, there must be some clear standards.

Many of the misgivings people have expressed about the decisions of the Standards and Privileges Committee over recent years have been because there has not been an apparent consistent standard in some of the judgments made and the decisions subsequently transacted. If we as hon. Members have misgivings about how those decisions are made and if we do not always understand them, why should we not expect the public to suspect the same thing? Should we be able to say, “Unlike many other people about whom we legislate, and unlike in many other walks of life where we provide all sorts of detailed schedules, guidelines and regulations, we are to be entirely free agents. We are the purest of democratic angels, moved by whatever spirit or inspiration takes us, and we are to be trusted as such”? We cannot present ourselves in that way.

Let me return to core points about the Bill’s deficiencies. As hon. Members have said, it is essentially an expulsion Bill rather than a recall Bill. Recall is meant to put things in the hands of the voters. Calling this measure the Recall of MPs Bill is a bit like the old joke about the two-hour dry cleaners: “‘Come back next Monday and you’ll get your suit.’ “But it says ‘two-hour dry cleaners’ outside”. ‘No, that’s just the name of the shop.’” Recall of MPs seems to be just the name of the Bill; that capacity is not given to voters. Insofar as a role is given to voters in respect of the recall process, it is simply that if someone triggers either of the two mechanisms, 10% will trigger a by-election. I think that the idea of a by-election being triggered by 10% is wrong, particularly if there has been a lot of speculation and felon setting by the media, which hon. Members fear. Those who fear that sort of scenario should certainly oppose the Bill as it stands.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very good point about the 10%, but will it not be dealt with by one of the safeguards proposed by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith)? We would have the 5% step, the 20% step and then a referendum involving a binary choice before a by-election took place. Rather than a minority activity, there would then be a majority activity of choosing to have a recall by-election.

[Mark Durkan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point. Those of us who were members of the pick-up band that was organised by the hon. Member for Richmond Park wanted to ensure that there could be a trigger other than a parliamentary trigger, or a trigger from the courts, and the idea of putting what could be termed a 5% premise petition in the hands of constituents struck us as reasonable. Having been received, the petition would then have to be tested by a more qualified assessment—the 20% petition—and if that was successful, it would be followed by a referendum which would have to secure a 50% vote before a by-election could take place.

Some Members have expressed the fear that voters will be whipped up into a state of prejudice, and that there will be misrepresentation of people and a disproportionate focus on certain issues. I ask them to consider both the stages and the time scale that are proposed in the amendments that some of us support. It is even possible that the time scale is too long. The amendments would allow more protection and more measured consideration. The right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) told us earlier that his constituents, who had a very clear view on a very specific issue, were eventually prepared to vote for an MP who held completely the opposite view, because they had reached a more rounded judgment on the nature of the MP’s job, and because they set great store by truth and people being honest about their opinions.

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[Mr Lansley]

I do not suppose that I am overestimating the Bill’s importance, although it was important that we delivered on our manifesto promises and the coalition agreement. Achieving that was at the forefront of our minds as we set out our legislative programme, for which I had responsibility.

I was slightly amused that the speech made by the hon. Member for Clacton was largely about the importance of delivering on promises made at the previous election. The Bill exactly delivers on the promise in the Conservative party’s general election manifesto, and I think that that was why the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), started his speech by reminding us what that manifesto said. For me, as a Conservative, the Bill is directly in line with that promise, and shifting to a process that is substantially different from that under the Bill would involve making a presumption about what the legislation should be without our having a mandate from the electorate. The hon. Members for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and for Clacton showed in their speeches that they would like a different constitutional settlement, of which the power of recall that they want is only one small aspect.

[Mr MacNeil]

rose—

[Mr Graham Stuart]

rose—

[Mr Lansley]

I will give way first to the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), who is being very persistent, as ever, and then to my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart).

[Mr MacNeil]

I am trying to understand exactly what the right hon. Gentleman is saying. Is he saying, for example, that were a future Prime Minister to lie in order to take the country to war, duping Parliament and, by extension, its Committees, the public should have no sanction other than years later at a general election, when many other issues could be at stake?

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting question, and not a hypothetical one—let us face it: he is referring to a decision of the kind taken in 2003. We have asked today how many people would sign petitions, write to their Member of Parliament or go to one of four designated places in a constituency in order to do something. Well, in my recollection, 2003 was the point when it was most likely that large numbers of the public would have taken some specific action in relation to a Government policy that they had not sanctioned, that certainly was not part of any previous manifesto promise and that they felt was wrong. That raises the following question: what would have happened in 2003 had recall been available?

I say this in a disinterested way, because I did not vote for the invasion of Iraq and so this would not have affected me, but I think there are those who would argue that that is what it is all about—that in those circumstances members of the public would have had an opportunity to say, “Not in our name” by setting up petitions and giving notice of the intention to recall. Throughout the period of the conflict in Iraq there would have been a rebellion among the electorate.

Is that right or wrong? I happen to think that necessarily it is wrong. To return to the constitutional point, we are a representative democracy in which we owe our constituents our collective judgment. We come here not as an independent legislature separate from the decisions of the Government, but to form a Government and sustain them through the legislature. That Government have to make decisions and secure the majority of this House, and we have to stick by that. This proposal would have completely undermined that.

If we are looking for a way to undermine the proposal, let us imagine that it had been possible for the organisers of protests in 2003 to focus on the Prime Minister’s constituency and get 20% of the voters there to sign a petition. They would have done so, even though they recognised that there was no way they could get 50% on the subsequent vote, but it would have had such a destabilising impact on the Prime Minister of the day, in circumstances in which he was doing something that was deeply unpopular but that he felt was right—whether or not he was right is not the matter. I cannot see how a responsible Parliament in a representative democracy could go down that path.

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[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend will recall that I am not enamoured of 38 Degrees, but it is interesting to make that distinction.

My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park and his colleagues have constructed the proposition that one must physically go to one of four places in a constituency in order to disempower 38 Degrees and those who would try to create petitions on an online basis. If we start down this path, that is where the pressure will come. People will say, “In this modern age we should not be dependent on physically having to go somewhere”, in the same way that they blithely talk about electronic voting and so on. It will rapidly get to the point where it is not about visiting particular physical locations but about generating large numbers of electronic signatures on online petitions. Then we will see a substantial change in the relationship between Members of this House and their constituents.

I have no problem with the idea that I should engage fully with my constituents and listen to them. In practice, we have moved subtly in that direction. Anybody who cares to remember, as I can, the debate in 2003 before the invasion of Iraq and the debate that took place last year on the intervention in Syria will recognise that last year more Members were responding in short order to substantial online representations, in larger numbers, from their constituents. In 2003, I got a very large number of letters, but they were actual letters, and overwhelmingly individual, not template, letters. A lot of Members felt burdened by the weight of opinion that was coming to them on the Syria vote.

[Mr MacNeil]

The right hon. Gentleman has used the phrase “representative democracy” on a number of occasions. If this is indeed a representative democracy, surely he has nothing to fear from a recall Bill. In fact, having this Bill in the voters’ locker as a big stick used lightly might ensure that it was a representative democracy as regards the two examples he has given—tuition fees, given the promises made by one of the coalition parties, and the Iraq war.

[Mr Lansley]

It is not that Members have something to fear from participation in our democracy—far from it. I believe completely in the wisdom of the masses, but we have to recognise when and how that is properly to be tested in the formal sense. We are a representative democracy, and we increasingly change the character of our democracy anyway. The referendum is a participatory democratic vehicle. We have used it more, and it is likely to be with us for the future, but only in specific circumstances. That illustrates the nature of the constitutional question at the heart of the potential amendment to the Bill.

Shifting to a recall process is not about addressing the individual behaviour of Members—it is much more likely to be used to try to influence the policies of political parties, of Members of Parliament, or of the Government. It would relate to particular individual issues, unlike a general election. As other hon. Members have said very forcefully, a general election is a vital moment in a representative democracy, because people take the whole presentation of party and candidate and consider it in the round. The recall mechanism is designed to enable the public to intervene in and, notwithstanding what the decision in a general election might have been, to impact directly on an individual decision on an individual policy issue.