Recall of MPs Bill

Baroness Taylor of Bolton Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to say a word, perhaps surprisingly, about the amendment, and about the third trigger. I was here at Second Reading, but I did not intervene because I could not stay all day. Anybody who has read that Second Reading debate in Hansard will realise how serious the consequences of this Bill could be. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and my noble friends that this is a dangerous Bill: dangerous to representative democracy—that is the basis of the democracy in this country. That point was overlooked throughout the debate in another place.

We have a responsibility to raise some of these issues, though I share the pessimism of my noble friend over our actually making any real difference here. It may be too late in the day. Why will it be too late? People at the other end will not want to revisit the issue. Why will they not want to? Yet again, it will be used as an opportunity to whip MPs—not in our whipping sense—to criticise them and to imply that they are all badly motivated, on the make and have something to hide.

Quite honestly, that is why we have the third trigger. The first trigger was not enough, nor was the second. We must find another way of attacking the implication that MPs are doing something wrong that needs rooting out. This is extremely dangerous for democracy as a whole, and it has not been taken on board as far this is concerned. The third trigger, as with the other two, is also dangerous, in the sense that it gives the public the impression that all that they have to do is get a little petition and that they will make those decisions. I think that this is an illusion that will not lead to greater confidence in our parliamentary system, but quite the reverse.

Finally, I agree that this is a slippery slope. People are saying that this will not be about issues; the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has just suggested that. It might not be about issues today, but it will be about issues tomorrow.

[Lord Finkelstein (Con)]

I rise, noble Lords, as a friend of the Bill. I am sorry that I was not able to speak in the Second Reading, but I had a family matter to attend to.

Not for the first time, I do not find myself in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes. It was obviously diverting to hear a list of Members of Parliament whom he admired. I felt, uncharacteristically, that he was ill informed about Zac Goldsmith. Even if I do not agree with him on all matters and even if the noble Lord is correct in observing irrelevantly that he is a multi-millionaire, he is actually an assiduous constituency Member of Parliament.

Might we have a self-denying ordinance in which we stop debating something that is not in the Bill? When we have presented to this House the bottom-of-the-slope Bill or the thick-end-of-the-wedge Act, we can have a discussion about the matters that concern those who have spoken in this debate and that would affect my noble friend’s concerns, but they are not in the Bill. There are a number of individual items, where we have to make a judgment as to whether it is sensible to give the public a chance to remove Members of Parliament if they feel that what has happened is significantly serious and that they should be allowed to do this.

The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, said at the beginning that he was concerned that people would add triggers to the Bill. He went on to suggest a number of triggers that he would like to add to it. This seemed to me to be completely incoherent, although by the end I was reaching for a trigger myself.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a Bill which in my view we cannot change. The House of Commons must be sovereign in determining its own rules. However, the fact that we cannot change it is not a reason why we should not, and indeed I think that we are under an obligation to express any reservations we have. That is what we are here for. We should express sincerely and frankly what we feel about the legislation that comes before us.

I agree entirely with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and with some but obviously not all of the comments of my noble friend Lord Foulkes. What I am most concerned about in the Bill is something which may strike noble Lords as a rather theoretical danger; that is, that people might be sent to prison for reasons of conscience and principle—for acting in a way which, from their point of view, is part of their politics and, as a result, part of their responsibility towards their constituents. Although that may seem rather theoretical, it has actually happened several times over the past 150 years.

I am thinking of Charles Stewart Parnell and John Redmond. There were never finer parliamentarians in either House than those two men. They were both sent to prison under the Irish Coercion Acts that we had for governing Ireland at the time for matters of purely political action on their part. Pacifists in the First World War were sent to prison under provisions in the Defence of the Realm Acts which made it a criminal offence to make comments that were inimical to the interests of recruitment. I think that I am quoting the law accurately. Arthur Jenkins and others whose names I am afraid I cannot remember—I remember Arthur Jenkins because of course he was the father of a very distinguished statesman who many of us knew personally —were sent to jail in the 1920s for organising an illegal strike. I cannot think of any recent examples, but someone may well be about to challenge me by asking when it last happened. It is certainly the case that it has not happened recently.

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton]

I think that my noble friend will find that a Labour MP from Liverpool was actually sentenced for non-payment of the poll tax as a political protest.

[Lord Rogan (UUP)]

The noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, served time in prison in Belfast for a political rather than a criminal act.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tyler]

It certainly is not, because it is covered by quite different regulation and control: the code of ministerial conduct. It is the responsibility of the Member concerned, whether a Minister or not, if he or she misleads the House of Commons, it is still exactly the same position; it is not affected by the Bill. If it was necessary for avoidance of doubt to make that clear, we could obviously do so.

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton]

I understand what the noble Lord is saying about the Code of Conduct, but that would not trigger recall.

[Lord Tyler]

That is exactly what I am saying.

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton]

Therefore, Ministers are being treated in a different way from Back-Benchers.