Recall of MPs Bill

Conor Burns Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am not sure the hon. Gentleman is right about that because, interestingly, the ability to expel peers very carefully ensured it was not retrospective to the crime or to the sentence. It was right to adopt the principle that it is fundamentally unjust to punish people when they did not know that was the punishment at the time when they committed the offence, so I must oppose his amendment.

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

My hon. Friend will see that sometimes when the courts come to sentence someone who is brought before them for an offence committed many years previously, they are obliged to look at the sentencing guidelines that applied at the time of the offence. The case he is making is absolutely right: we cannot have retrospective cases such as this.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend and we have seen this in some of the recent celebrity sex offending cases: people have been sentenced under the old rules. That is a good principle of law and this House ought to maintain good principles of law. That is why we should reject that amendment, and reject the amendments of my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), because they bring the courts into our proceedings, but I think we should accept the amendments of the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife that allow more free-flowing recall, because ultimately we should trust the good sense of the British people, especially those in Somerset where most good sense is to be found.