Recall of MPs Bill

Baroness Quin Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 37. I am very well aware of this issue from my own experience in north Cornwall, where we have very large, scattered communities with inadequate public transport, and of course in the holiday season there is the additional problem of getting to any centres of population. That is replicated, as it happens, in a number of the Highlands and Islands constituencies, of which I am very well aware because they are represented by honourable colleagues, as well as of course in rural mid-Wales, as the noble Baroness said.

The number of signing venues is a serious issue. By this comparatively small change to the Bill, which would give more responsibility to those who are on the ground and can take the appropriate decision, we could make a huge improvement. A minimum of four places would give that flexibility. It may be that only a couple of dozen constituencies in the whole country would wish to go beyond four, or substantially beyond four, but they happen to be ones that have, as I say, the additional problems of inadequate public transport, difficult road links and, very often, the complexity of additional traffic during the holiday period. I very warmly support Amendment 37.

[Baroness Quin (Lab)]

My Lords, I did not speak at Second Reading, although I attended much of the debate and followed closely last week’s first day in Committee. I share many of the concerns that have been expressed so far about this legislation.

At Second Reading, my noble friend on the Front Bench flagged up in her excellent and detailed speech a number of practical difficulties with the Bill, and she seeks to address some of them with these amendments. I support what she said in moving the amendment. In its report on this legislation the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee expressed concern about the many unanswered questions and gaps in the Bill and said that the Government do not explain,

“why they have not ensured that the provisions about petitions in the Bill itself are complete”.

Those comments are relevant to a number of amendments that we will consider in the course of this debate.

In my few remarks this afternoon I wish to address in particular the provisions in the Bill about the number of signing places. Like the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, who just spoke, I am influenced both by the area where I live now and by the constituency where I lived and which I represented in another place for a number of years. The constituency in which I now live, Berwick-upon-Tweed, is England’s most northerly constituency and the second largest in area. It is a sparsely populated area, and certainly to limit the number of signing places to four places in such an area seems unrealistic, particularly if you are talking about people who do not have access to a car—to their own private transport. I note that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said that he felt that probably a small number of constituencies would be concerned with the amendment, most of which are in rural areas. The urban area that I used to represent, although compact, would also have faced challenges under the four-place limit in this Bill and I shall explain why.

The constituency that I used to represent had the title of Gateshead East and Washington West. If you think about it, that already sounds as though it covered two local authority areas, which it did. It also represented an area that had no obvious town centre. In fact, the most convenient signing places for the people of that constituency were either the Sunderland civic centre, which was not in the constituency, or the Gateshead civic centre, which was not in the constituency either. Although the constituency was small and compact, it did not have a public transport system that would have given access to one signing place in the centre: there was no central point in either of the two parts of the constituency.

For that reason, if I was trying to work out where it would be convenient for people to sign a petition, I would probably think of about three places in the Gateshead area and four in the Washington area in order to have reasonable coverage and allow people to use public transport and get to the signing place in a reasonable time and in a reasonable way.

I do think, therefore, that the Government should very much think again about the proposed provision. A standard solution simply does not work in this situation, as is so often the case, so I endorse very strongly my noble friend’s suggestion that this should be left up to the responsible officers in the different areas to work out what suits people in their area.

However, the Government should say more about the types of premises that would be suitable. Presumably the Government are thinking of council offices, but what would be the alternative in constituencies, like the one I was talking about, where there are no council offices? It could be public libraries, if there were enough that had not already been closed, or schools, but it would be unthinkable to have schools snarled up for eight weeks for a signing process of this kind. It simply would not be feasible and would not work. It could be community centres. What exactly do the Government have in mind for signing centres under this legislation?

I certainly accept that this small change, which says that the minimum number of signing places should be four, is a much more sensible way forward. I hope that the Government will look at that sympathetically, give the system some flexibility, and avoid the situation where we have a postcode lottery and some constituencies are far better served with signing places than others.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise to the Committee: I have to go to the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy later this afternoon. No doubt, the Minister will be disappointed that I am not here to support him. I very much support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. During the last session in Committee the Minister appeared to be telling us that we should really mind our own business and that this was a matter for the House of Commons.

The thing that I find remarkable about this Bill is that if it has been designed and put forward by the House of Commons, it shows an extraordinary ignorance of what it is like being a Member of Parliament and how the process is carried out. Extraordinarily in my old constituency of Stirling, for example—I cannot do square metres, but know that it was 800 square miles—it took me from 6.30 in the morning to 8 at night just to drive to every polling station to thank the people standing there. Even then, people had difficult journeys and it was quite an expensive operation to do this. Quite what the cost, which is not accounted for, would be if one had to provide that kind of coverage over a longer period, I know not.

The noble Baroness is absolutely right: if this is an exercise in democracy and is to be carried out fairly, you have to make it possible for people to cast their votes in secrecy at a reasonably convenient opportunity and near where they live, whether they work or whether they do not. I guess I am with the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, in thinking that this needs to be at the discretion of the local authority. The local authority will have to find the money and the people to do all this, and to train them—and, of course, none of this is costed, so if the Minister is not prepared to accept the amendment on cost grounds, I have an elegant solution, which is that he abandons the Bill altogether.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Finkelstein]

That is an excellent question. Somebody who breaks the law and does not sit in the House of Commons can be removed from their job by their employer. I am arguing that that power should be extended to the hairdressers and taxi drivers who constitute the employers of Members of Parliament. When I made the argument that they employed Members of Parliament, I was told that that was a novel constitutional doctrine. I stick to it none the less. This is a simple power that will be used only in certain, very limited circumstances. Those limited circumstances are set out in the Bill. If others have proposals for recall, the Bill is simply amendable with those conditions, since it is a very simple Bill and very simply structured. I can only translate the fact that no alternative proposals for recall have been put forward except for the one from the noble Lord, Lord Tyler—which, again, opponents of many of the Bill’s central proposals have found even more complicated and therefore did not like. I know of no other proposals that have seriously suggested that this principle of recall should be advanced.

[Baroness Quin]

The noble Lord is talking about hostility to the Bill, but the amendment that we were discussing a few minutes ago was simply to make a modest improvement regarding the number of signing places. Did he support that amendment or not?

[Lord Finkelstein]

Yes, I was glad to hear the Minister suggest that he will pay attention to the debate, and I look forward to seeing his proposals. Many very practical arguments were made in its favour. The argument that no practical arrangements can be made to make recall work at fairly limited expense is ludicrous. I am sure that it is not beyond the Government’s ingenuity to come up with those proposals. However, the amendment that we are discussing now is designed to make it almost impossible for anybody to file for recall within a reasonable period. Although the principle of recall has been given apparent support, we have been given no practical alternatives to those of the Government, except for those of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. I would certainly welcome the chance to hear some. I believe that the reason we have not is that people do not wish the electorate to be given this limited power, and I think that that is wrong.