Recall of MPs Bill

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Anne Marie Morris]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his indulgence; that was a much shorter and better comment. We discussed that point in the Committee, and my recollection is that there is provision to deal with that, so that someone cannot keep requesting recall time and again, as the hon. Gentleman suggests. I apologise for the fact that I cannot point him to the chapter and verse, but I agree that it is an issue that ought to be considered.

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

Surely the stop for the process continuing over and over again is the fact of previous failure. A previous failure will obviously stop it, because if people are getting nowhere they will not continue.

[Anne Marie Morris]

The hon. Gentleman is right and that is the way it should work. However, the mechanism that my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park and I are proposing is broader and provides some comfort to those who are concerned that the process will be subject to political game playing.

I have talked through the issues of the promoter, the reason and the opportunity for an MP to be given a right of reply, but I am sure that many amendments could be tabled to my hon. Friend’s proposals to address some of those issues. For example, we could require the statement of reasons to start with a certain sentence, which would mean that the statement had to be about something that we all feel is inappropriate behaviour from a Member of Parliament. There are things that could be done, but they depend on whether we think our starting point should be the Government’s narrow starting point, or a much broader starting point that would come from a position of trust.

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I have already mentioned Chris Mullin this evening. Just imagine a Member of Parliament getting up in the House of Commons at the time of the undoubted atrocities committed near my constituency in Birmingham in November 1974 when 21 people were murdered to say that there had been a miscarriage of justice. We now know that people were wrongly convicted, but saying that would take great courage. It so happened that the person concerned was not a Member of Parliament at the time, but I repeat that he would have done the same if he had been in the House of Commons. If an MP had campaigned against such a miscarriage of justice—the Guildford Four are another example—in the face of constant calls, encouraged by the press and others, for recurrent recall mechanisms, it would surely have made their life that much more difficult.

[Mr MacNeil]

On the fear of recurrent recalls, does the hon. Gentleman agree that an amendment should be tabled requiring that a person pay a deposit to call a recall referendum, as is the case for elections to Parliament, in order to inhibit constant recall mechanisms and time wasting? The deposit might be redeemable only on a successful recall.

[Mr Winnick]

It might or it might not.

In future reform campaigns, we will need the courage of MPs to do as I have indicated and not to feel inhibited by the greater pressure put on them by the recall mechanism. If an MP in a highly marginal constituency—my first, and only, majority in Croydon was 81—was elected with a majority of, say, 100 or 150, perhaps winning it for their party for the first time, would they, being keen to get re-elected, think that the time to take up a controversial issue? They might wonder what purpose it would serve, given their slender majority. Of course, it is easier for Members with larger majorities to pursue such campaigns, but those with tiny majorities would feel greatly inhibited from doing what they might otherwise consider necessary.

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[Mr Winnick]

I am sure my hon. Friend is right. At the end of it, I hope we will all reach a consensus of a kind—well, at least a majority.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned tit for tat, but does not game theory suggest that if someone knew that starting a recall effort would be reacted to by the other side—if, indeed, the motive was political—that would prevent the process from starting in the first place? The potential for tit for tat eliminates that possibility, which brings us back to dealing with genuine scenarios.

[Mr Winnick]

It might do, and that scenario might not arise in the first place. I am just saying that there is a possibility that if that did happen, it could damage the reputation of the House of Commons. All these are matters that I hope will be taken into consideration.

I hope that we will reach a majority—I said “consensus” earlier; “majority” is a better word—so that we can say we will have a mechanism, but one that will work. It should also be one—this is the purpose of my intervention in the debate—that does not hinder Members of Parliament in raising issues, however controversial or unpopular, that they believe to be right.

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[Mr MacNeil]

What I think the hon. Gentleman has been describing over a period of centuries has been the evolution of politics and the evolution of democracy right on to the granting of universal suffrage. I would argue that what the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) is suggesting and wants us to move towards is the next extension in that evolution of democracy that started those 300 or 400 years ago.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I know that that is what my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park argues and I know that the new hon. Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell) argues the same—that this place is somehow increasingly irrelevant, part of a Westminster political class or an elite and that we need rather to transfer power into some sort of referendum-based democracy. This, however, is a sort of Poujadist argument, and if we look at history, we find that it has often led to tyranny. Dare I say it, some insurrections that have come from the right—I shall not mention any political party that has been in the news recently—often result in stirring up a feeling in the country that things are really appalling. Then a particular group of people can be picked on—it may be Poles now, it might have been Jews in the last century and might have been Catholics in the 17th century—and popular opinion can be whipped up, followed by an attack on the so-called establishment or on particular MPs for what they are saying.

There is a lot of wisdom in this place. We are a parliamentary democracy; we discuss things among ourselves. That is not an elitist thing to say. We are having a good debate now, and we have heard wonderful speeches from the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), who argued for one point of view, and from the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), who has argued from a different point of view. We have heard different speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Mid Bedfordshire and for Richmond Park. We will hear other speeches from the Minister, who might offer us a half-way case. We are discussing the issues in a rational and popular way, but we know that nothing we say here, no vote that we cast and no speech we make can ever be held against us until that awesome day—general election day—arrives, when we are exactly the same as anybody else.

We are not talking about any particular group who can spend vast sums of money—the hon. Member for North Durham reminded us again and again of what happens in the United States—to attack us on a particular issue and try to get rid of us on that basis. We stand with 650 other people. We are equal and the people vote us in or out on the basis of a broad range of policies.

I know that the Government will say that my amendment is not necessary, because it will involve the procedures of the Privileges Committee and all the rest of it. I think, however, that my amendment probably is necessary in this sense. I am grateful to the Minister for saying that he would look on it with a kindly light. We live in a very judgmental age. We have had instances with the hon. Member for Bradford West (George Galloway), who as usual is not in his place. He comes here and rants and says the most outrageous things. We have had cases in the past involving Tam Dalyell, that wonderful man, and Ian Paisley, that equally wonderful man. They were expelled from Parliament.

The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) mentioned one of my own colleagues saying something in the Chamber that was frankly racist. If he had said it outside the House, he might have been taken to court. I do not want to use a cliché, but, although what he said may have been completely wrong, I, like Voltaire, may disagree with or hate what he said, but respect his freedom to say it in this place. If you cannot speak your mind here, knowing that you cannot be held to account, where else in our kingdom can you speak your mind?

What my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park is doing is fundamentally very dangerous indeed. It goes against centuries of our history. Is our history so very wrong? Have we not ensured that our country is the only country in Europe that has never been a police state, and has never had a police state imposed on it? Has not the House of Commons, through all those centuries, guarded by these privileges, protected fundamental freedoms? Is that not something to be proud of? For those reasons, I—along with Members in all parts of the House—will vote against my hon. Friend’s amendment. Freedom of speech—allowing Members of Parliament total freedom of expression, with a very few traditional exceptions, such as insulting the sovereign—has always been defended by Parliament.

[Mr MacNeil]

Oh, come on!

[Sir Edward Leigh]

If the hon. Gentleman wants to insult the sovereign, I personally am perfectly happy with that. I do not think that he should be recalled by a group of MPs for insulting the sovereign, or for anything else.

[Mr MacNeil]

rose—

[Sir Edward Leigh]

The hon. Gentleman has already intervened once.

[Mr MacNeil]

rose—

[Sir Edward Leigh]

All right, I will give way, just to please the hon. Gentleman.

[Mr MacNeil]

I am listening to what is quite an egalitarian speech. I am a monarchist myself, but I do not like the idea of separating one person from another in this context. The hon. Gentleman himself referred to the monarch coming into the Chamber. I think that the strand of history that we are talking about has featured the elites giving way when they have had to give way, and that is happening again now. The elites are giving way, or they should be giving way.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

The myth that is being propagated by some Members—not least by the new hon. Member for Clacton, whom I respect in many ways—is that we are an elite. We are not an elite. We have all been elected by people, and we can all be unelected by people.

We in the House of Commons must be prepared to be proud of what we have achieved. We must acknowledge all the appalling errors that we have made over Members’ expenses and a number of other issues; no doubt we have been found wanting in many respects; we are only human beings, and all the rest of it. But the argument that there is a better form of democracy—that some kind of participatory democracy based on referendums and people getting together and collecting petitions is more democratic than debate in this House—is fundamentally flawed. I realise that that may be an unfashionable opinion.

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[Crispin Blunt]

Do we have an actual problem or a perception of a problem that does not actually exist? In practice, we do not have a problem. If a Member is sentenced to imprisonment for a period of less than a year, it is highly likely that they will choose to stand down, as has happened. Equally, the same thing is likely if Members receive a sentence from the Standards and Privileges Committee, as happened with our former colleague Patrick Mercer, who decided to stand down. There is not a practical issue that we are trying to address. I accept there is a perception issue, but we have to work out the right way to address it.

The hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) made a further practical argument against the measures proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park. When I lost the executive vote on my reselection, the issue was put to a simple vote of the members of the Conservative party in Reigate, but take it from me: that occupied most of my attention for the two months it took to complete the ballot. I won by a margin of five to one, but the process was something of a modest distraction from my other work representing my constituents. The hon. Member for Swansea West made an absolutely valid point: the suggested process would be the most enormous distraction from the duties we are actually here to do.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough has said, are we not already subject to recall? Every five years we have to face the electorate in a general election.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman has raised a number of points, but his speech is dominated by the idea that there is a battle between parliamentarians and the voters. He has questioned whether there are problems, but of course there must be problems if standards bodies such as the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority have been set up. Perhaps those sticking plasters have been set up because adequate mechanisms have not been available to the electorate to get a hold of Members of Parliament and bring them to account in good time. That is all hidden under the blanket of the general election. That is why we are having this debate. This is revolutionary democracy. The cat is out of the bag. If this does not happen now, proper recall will come at some point. It always happens. The elites, the powerful and the parliamentarians of Westminster will always rail against it, but in the end they will have to yield.

[Crispin Blunt]

I say in all candour that we need to pay attention to how we are going to stand up for Parliament as an institution, because things are changing out there. There are now very strong single-issue lobbies that were not there before, and new electronic media give them a way to come together quickly and run very strong campaigns.

The problem we face is the collapse of interest in political parties. All the political parties are suffering from a diminution in membership.

[Mr MacNeil]

Not at all—we’ve just trebled our membership!

[Crispin Blunt]

I enjoyed the hon. Gentleman’s intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris). He told her that the thing that would stop endless petitions against individuals who were then targeted by particular lobbies was failure. I look forward to hearing about the dissolution of the Scottish National party after its failure in the referendum on independence. The party has failed, so is that it? Is the SNP going away and packing up its tents? I rather suspect not, and we can expect the same of single-issue campaigns, which will target Members—particularly those who are brave enough to stand up for unpopular causes—and continue to be on their tail, if we agree to the proposals of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park.

Money is also an issue, as the hon. Member for North Durham has said. My campaign to get reselected was targeted at about 500 Conservatives in Reigate. That campaign had minimal costs, but I then had to say thank you to all the people who campaigned for me and so on, and the cost of that non-campaign headed into four figures. Hon. Members should imagine having to campaign in their constituency. If they were standing up for an unpopular cause and their party did not roll in behind them—the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) gently predicted that his party might not be too keen to rally to his aid—they would be very exposed by recall. Some of us do not have the resources to fight such campaigns.

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[Mr Gyimah]

In summary, we are dealing with two different conceptions of recall. The Government believe that recall should be on the basis of serious wrongdoing and conduct and not on causes supported.

[Mr MacNeil]

Is it not the reality that, after manifesto promises, a mealy-mouthed recall Bill will be considered with disdain by the public, and will set the reputation of Westminster even lower?

[Mr Gyimah]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s point that we have to respond to the real need, especially post-expenses crisis, to allow the public to kick MPs out after wrongdoing, but we have to do that in a way that is consistent with our democratic arrangements. We have a parliamentary democracy in which the legislature is fused with the Executive. The three other countries similar to us, New Zealand, Australia and Canada, do not have recall. A lot has been made of the United States of America, which has recall but, as the hon. Member for North Durham pointed out, it is often used there for politically motivated reasons. We wish to respond to the need for the public to be able to get rid of their MPs, but the Government want to do so in a way that is consistent with our democratic arrangements while preserving some of the best aspects of our system, for example MPs being able to speak their mind and campaign for unpopular causes.

My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park argues that recall will be very rare under his scheme, while giving people real power. He has to decide whether his recall mechanism will give real power and be effective in getting rid of any MP the public want to get rid of, or that it is rare and therefore not effective. It sounds to me like his argument tries to have it both ways and that is not the way that recall should work. If we are to have a recall system, it should be one that the public can trust and understand. They should know that when they engage in it, it will end in a Member being booted out of this House if need be.

The four-stage recall mechanism proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park starts with a 5% threshold and then moves to a 20% threshold, then a 50% threshold and then a by-election. I would hazard a guess that constituents would be fed up by the end of it. Someone who signed the notice of petition at the first stage would think, “I thought I’d got rid of that MP five months ago”, but the process would still be ongoing. On the other hand, the Government’s proposal would be as speedy as possible. I therefore urge Members to reject the amendment and the following consequential amendments.