Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Angus Brendan MacNeil and Stephen Twigg

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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

Great Lakes (Africa)

Debate between Angus Brendan MacNeil and Stephen Twigg

Tuesday 5th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk (Eric Joyce) on securing this important debate and the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Paul Uppal) on his contribution. The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood), Lord David Chidgey for the Liberal Democrats and I were part of an all-party parliamentary group that had the privilege to visit the DRC in May. The two speeches covered some of the issues that we addressed and I want to say a bit more about each of them.

As the Department for International Development is responding to this debate, may I begin by praising the excellent work that it is doing in the DRC and the great lakes region more broadly? It was encouraging to see that the work that was started under the previous Labour Government is continuing under this Administration.

I echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk said about the elections. Will the Minister tell us what progress has been made towards free and fair elections? My hon. Friend also mentioned the importance of monitors in the previous election. Clearly, monitoring will be even more vital if the election is to be run by the Congolese themselves rather than by the international community, as has happened previously.

I echo what the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West said about the role of women in the Congo. Although we met some amazing women politicians in the region, women are sorely under-represented in Congolese politics. When we were in Goma, we met women who had survived rape and other forms of gender-based violence. An incredibly courageous five-year-old girl who had been the victim of a rape calmly told this group of strangers from the United Kingdom the story of her ordeal, which she had already had to describe in court.

I ask the Minister to say something about progress towards the millennium development goals. There is real concern about the continuing high levels of infant mortality in the Congo and low levels of primary school enrolment.

A major focus of our visit was the minerals question, which my hon. Friend rightly focused on today. Perhaps the Minister will update the Chamber on progress at a European level to some kind of European version of the Dodd-Frank legislation that has been adopted in the United States.

At the end of the visit, I had the opportunity briefly to go to Kigali in Rwanda, which has made remarkable progress since the genocide in 1994. The United Kingdom has played an important role in supporting that progress. Clearly, there are concerns about relations between Rwanda and the DRC, especially in relation to the impact of the Rwandan Government’s wish to invoke the cessation clause in December 2011, which might exacerbate tensions in the Kivus. I would be grateful to the Minister if he were to say something about that today.

Clearly, there is concern about lack of freedom of the media in Rwanda. I had an excellent meeting with the UK high commissioner in Kigali, and I recognised that the British Government are supportive of efforts to see an opening up of the Rwandan media. I want to put it on record that I appreciate the efforts that are being made by the UK high commission in Kigali.

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

The hon. Gentleman has raised his justifiable concerns about Rwanda. Having been to Rwanda myself with RESULTS UK earlier this year, one of the things that came home to me are the great strides that have been made there. Kagame might have his critics, but if he was being toted around Africa as part of a transfer system for political leaders, he would probably be No. 1 in the African transfer want league.

[Stephen Twigg]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. In the five years when I was out of the House, I worked with the Aegis Trust, which established the Kigali memorial centre to the genocide. As friends of Rwanda, we should put it on record that incredible progress has been made under President Kagame, but we must also be candid when we have concerns. I want to put my concerns on the record without in any way detracting from the truly remarkable achievements of that country since 1994.