Recall of MPs Bill

Conor Burns Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith]

The very basis of the version of recall that I and, I am pleased to say, a great many colleagues will seek to bring forward next week—I will explain it in a few moments—is that it is down to the voters. If the conduct of Sinn Fein representatives is below what people expect, for that reason or perhaps others people should have the power to make such a decision for themselves; they should not require the permission of the House. I do not pretend that recall is the answer to the problems that I have identified, but it is an answer.

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making very powerful arguments that he has held dear for a long time. May I suggest that the overwhelming majority of people who stand for and get elected to this place do so for good and noble reasons and want to serve their constituency and their country? We should acknowledge that in this debate, and not always talk down the nobility of being in politics.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I could not agree more. That is precisely why I believe that we need a proper recall system—not some shenanigans conveying the impression that they give people recall powers without actually giving them any power at all—that would give Members, such as my hon. Friend and many others, a permanent implied mandate. In a few moments, I will explain why recall will help to give dignity and to restore nobility to this place, but if he thinks that I have not addressed his concerns properly, I invite him to intervene again.

Recall would allow people in extreme circumstances—where a clear majority of them have lost confidence in their MP—to remove their MP between elections. It would give people a sense of ownership over their democracy, which would help in and of itself.

Recall is not a new or radical idea. It exists in various forms in about 30 countries on five continents, including Poland, Canada, Germany, Japan, India, South Korea, Costa Rica, Taiwan, Mexico, Argentina, Peru and Ecuador. It has existed in the US for more than 100 years, and in Switzerland for even longer. It is a good idea—it works—and it is great that the mainstream parties have finally accepted it.

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[Chris Bryant]

If it had not been for the vote of no confidence and the nationalists joining with the Conservatives in March 1979, there would not have been that early general election.

If I am really honest, there is part of me that does not want to have anything at all to do with recall, because part of me thinks we should have confidence in the parliamentary process and just have shorter Parliaments. Five years for a fixed-term Parliament is far too long: it should be four years. However, we have got to where we are because our parliamentary system is broken. It is bust in important ways that matter to the public. We are held in utter contempt as a class, if not as individuals. I recognise what the hon. Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns) said. All of us know that the vast majority of politicians—more than the vast majority; virtually every single politician I know—have honourable intentions and ambitions only for what is best for their country and want to change the world according to their lights for good. The truth, however, is that that is not what our voters think. Our voters have come to a completely different conclusion. Maybe that is because, as the hon. Member for Richmond Park said, we have sometimes made ludicrous promises that we knew, even when we made them, we were not going to be able to deliver. The classic example is tuition fees. I could say that to the Liberal Democrats, but they could equally say that to Labour Members when we first introduced tuition fees.

It may be that familiarity in the past century has bred contempt. One hundred years ago, people did not know what their Member of Parliament looked like. Many MPs never lived in their constituency and hardly ever visited. When Edmund Burke was MP for Bristol he visited it twice—no wonder they did not vote for him. He also made some profoundly arrogant remarks on the role of a politician and a Member of Parliament. We think that this is all terribly unfair, but the end result is that voter turnout is falling, and falling in different kinds of elections. Turnout is at its worst for police and crime commissioner elections. I think it was always inevitable that they would have a particularly low turnout. Incidentally, should there not be recall for them?

After the second world war, in 1950, the turnout in the general election was 83.9%. At the last general election turnout was 65%, even when we leave out the millions who have not even bothered to register. In one seat, Manchester Central, the turnout was just 44.3%. If that is not the electorate voting on whether our system is bust, what is?

[Conor Burns]

The hon. Gentleman mentions Edmund Burke. In Burke’s famous address to his electors in Bristol he said that Members of Parliament should sacrifice their interests in favour of their constituents, but he also said that Members of Parliament owe their constituents their judgment and that if they betray their judgment to their constituents’ opinion they are betraying, not serving, them. Take the recent example of same-sex marriage. My concern is that I was lobbied vigorously by constituents to oppose it and I voted for it. What protection would there be in the recall mechanism for a Member of Parliament who takes a conscious decision to vote against public opinion?

[Chris Bryant]

I will come on to whether there should be a recall in a situation in which MPs disagree with their constituents. It is often said of my constituents—I do not know whether it is true, but it is often said by the commentariat—that they would all vote in favour of hanging. I am passionately opposed to hanging. If there were recalls solely on that matter, however, I think the voters would none the less choose to re-elect me because I was prepared to say what I believe and stand for. I think voters are actually far wiser in that respect than even Burke would suggest. He also said:

“To be a good Member of Parliament is, let me tell you, no easy task.”

I think we would all agree with that.

We have to bear in mind that not a single one of us in this House receives the votes of more than 50% of the total electorate, including those who choose not to vote—not a single one of us. There was only one British seat in the 2001 election where a Member got more than 40% of the total electorate, including those who did not vote. In that seat, both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats lost their deposit. The constituency was the Rhondda. Even in the Rhondda, the figure is only a smidgeon above 40%. We must have a degree of humility in how we approach our electorate. Sometimes I think it feels to our voters that we are not full of humility.

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[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

I put in to speak in this debate with righteous indignation because I thought I was going to be entertained to a ghastly speech from the Deputy Prime Minister, who tries to make himself look big by making this place look small and who persists in talking about broken politics. Unfortunately, that task fell to the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), who talked about our broken Parliament. We must not conflate our political parties with Parliament. Our political parties may come and go, but hopefully Parliament will remain a constant.

I see this as an opportunity to talk about what I still respect, admire and revere about this place. We need champions of Parliament, and I must say that the thing that still excites me most about this place and what it offers our constituents is accountability. Is it not extraordinary? We take it for granted that a member of the public can write to me, their Member of Parliament, because they are concerned about a policy—an education policy, or a transport policy, for example—and I will take that concern up and write to the Minister. And here it is: we get a response from the Secretary of State for Transport, the Secretary of State for Education or, on occasion, the Prime Minister. We diminish that in this place, but it is truly remarkable. It is not replicated in many parts of Europe and it is scarce around the world.

Let us be careful before we use the Bill as an opportunity to attack this Parliament. Parliament is not broken. I have seen many colleagues in this place achieve remarkable things, not just for their constituents but for the nation at large, and I have the utmost respect for them and the power this place provides them with to do those wonderful things.

[Conor Burns]

I share my hon. Friend’s reverence and respect for the institution of Parliament, and I very much agree with the points he is making. However, does he agree that one reason why this place has fallen into some disrepute is that we have given so many powers away? In exercising our constituency responsibilities, we are finding that powers have been given to the European Union and unelected quangos. This place needs to take more power back.

[Mr Walker]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. Institutions are only as powerful as the trust that people have in them, and I am concerned when our sovereign Parliament is overruled by supranational bodies, as that undermines faith in the institution. It is the same with our courts. My hon. Friend makes a very pertinent point.

Let me also touch on a couple of other things that have been said today. We are often told that we are out of touch by our constituents, but in reality that is code for, “You disagree with my point of view.” I understand that, but I am not out of touch with my constituents. They might not like me and they might not like what I stand for, but every morning I travel in from my constituency and every evening I go back. I am pleased to meet my constituents on the platform and, in the main, they pretend to be pleased to meet me. I spend numerous weekends out and about in my community, not just having surgeries but going to the shops—I am an ordinary Member of Parliament. Let us take all of this with a pinch of salt and let us not self-flagellate constantly about our standing and the standing of Parliament.

I shall not detain the House much longer, but let me just make a point that I touched on in an intervention. In 2010, the Bill that became the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 was introduced in this place. I did not support it and, in reality, it made it much more difficult for us as Members of Parliament to recall the Government. I found that extraordinary, and I find it even more extraordinary now that a recall Bill is being promoted by those on the Front Bench that will, in essence, further entrench the power of the Executive as opposed to the interests of Back Benchers.

I have some concerns. I accept that the Minister is here with good intentions, but there are genuine concerns about the Government’s proposals, as there are about the proposals made by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith). I hope that we can reach a solution that carries the confidence of this House and of our constituents. Let us not forget that we all serve in a wonderful Parliament and one that many would like to replicate around the world.

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[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be participating in the latter stages of this important debate and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson). We are distinguished members of a small group of resigned Parliamentary Private Secretaries to the former Northern Ireland Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson). My hon. Friend might find that some of his views are echoed in my speech.

It was a pleasure to listen to the speech made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young), the former Chief Whip and Patronage Secretary. His knowledgeable contribution showed how much he will be missed from the House after the general election.

Today is Parliament talking about Parliament. As I look up towards those who look down on us—literally and metaphorically—I am conscious that I do not see many of them. My hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), who has just left the Chamber, referred to our being in a goldfish bowl, but not many people are looking into this particular goldfish bowl. When we vote on bombing Syria or gassing badgers, this place is surrounded by members of the public wishing to tell us their views. We find that our inboxes are full of e-mails and our correspondence rates go up, but that has not happened in the build-up to today’s debate.

I am pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell) back in his place below the Gangway on the Opposition Benches. He reminded us of the case of Winchester in 1997, which is probably one of the only times we have seen what a recall looks like. I declare an interest in that case—you may well remember it, Mr Speaker—because the Conservative candidate in that Winchester by-election, who had been the Member for Winchester until the 1997 general election, was one Gerry Malone, who once held the very high office of deputy chairman of the Conservative party responsible for youth. It was Mr Malone who showed his commitment to democracy by overturning the results of the Conservative student elections in which I was elected as national chairman and by appointing my successor. It was ironic that he called that a consultation exercise, as he went on to find out what being on the wrong end of a consultation exercise felt like some years later in Winchester.

I am sorry that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) is not in the Chamber. He made an eloquent but characteristically depressing speech. A young man from the sixth form of my old school, St Columba’s in St Albans, is doing some work experience in my office this week. He told me with great pride that he had spotted an error in the hon. Gentleman’s speech, because there had been a reference to the Great Reform Act of 1830, when it was, of course, of 1832. I am pleased that the standards of my old history teacher, Mr Byrne, are alive and well in St Columba’s today.

Several hon. Members have talked about trust, which goes to the heart of this matter, and the expenses scandal. I viewed that scandal as a member of the public. Like many Members who were first elected at the 2010 general election, I looked on in despair at what happened during the expenses scandal. I understand that many in the House who lived through that experience are so scarred by it that they do not feel able to stand up and say that it was a small minority of people who did wrong and that those people were rightly punished. When a new regime is in place, it is wrong that this House continues to sit back and take the flak for something from the past. Members on both sides of the House who were first elected in 2010 believe that we have a mandate to restore the bond of trust between this place and the electorate, and we have tried to achieve that through everything that we have done and said in our constituencies.

We hear that we are all the same and that the political class is useless, but all hon. Members must be visited in their surgeries almost every week by people in abject despair, and because of the two letters after our names, we are able to escalate their problems into the hands of people who can sort them out. If we lose faith in this place, we will deserve to fall into public contempt. I assert that it is time for this Chamber to stand up again and bravely say to the British people, “This is the cockpit of parliamentary democracy in Britain. This is where we resolve issues by debate and argument. This is a place that is populated by people who are motivated by generous, good and decent instincts to do their best for their country and their constituency.”

However, I assert that one of the reasons people have disengaged from politics is that, as the late Tony Benn once said, this place has swapped power for status. Members of Parliament are asked to go on television, but they are afraid to exercise the powers vested in them by their constituents in the Lobby and to stand up powerfully to the Executive. We have shuffled power off to the European Union and to unelected quangos, to people we do not elect and cannot remove. It is vital that in the years ahead this House confidently starts to bring some of those powers back to this place and to exercise them in the name of our constituents who sent us here.

I thought that the comment that the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) made about Enoch Powell having a good majority in his South Down seat because he tipped his hat to the local electorate was a novel one. I am not sure that rushing out, buying trilbies and tipping them to our local electorates is the full solution to the problem we find ourselves in. The hon. Gentleman also referred to Edmund Burke, and I am delighted that the statue of that great conservative philosopher has now been liberated from behind the bookshop in St Stephen’s Hall, so that it can be seen as an inspiration to us all. It was Burke who said, in his famous speech to his electors in Bristol, that we as Members of Parliament owe our constituents our judgment above all else, and that we betray them and do not serve them if we sacrifice our judgment to their opinion. It is absolutely right that during the course of a Parliament we in this place will vote for unpopular measures. I remember a few years ago—I have told this story before—telling Lady Thatcher that the Conservative party was 9% behind in the polls. She asked when the next election was, and I said that it was three and a half years away. She said, “That’s not far enough behind at this stage.”

It is up to us as politicians to take decisions, confident in our judgments and confident that over time they will be shown to be right. I will use the recent example of same-sex marriage. I agonised over how to vote on that, as a practising Catholic and as an openly gay man. If I had listened to those in my constituency whose voice was loudest, whose e-mail send button was pushed the most often, I would have gone into the Lobby to vote against that legislation, but I decided that I owed them my judgment. Although I might not have earned their support on that, I am certain from their reaction afterwards and from the line I took with them that I have earned their respect. That, to me, is a much more important aspiration than to be liked.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way; he is making a powerful speech. On his point about gay marriage, would he have made a different decision, or felt obliged to vote differently, had there been in place a recall regime of the sort that I and colleagues are proposing?

[Conor Burns]

That is a very good question. Some hon. Ladies and Gentlemen in this Chamber have known me for more than 20 years, yourself included, Mr Speaker, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton, and they know that I have consistently put my principles ahead of promotion. I would not have sacrificed the national chairmanship of the Conservative students to oppose Maastricht in 1993, and I certainly would not go through the Lobby in this place for something I fundamentally did not believe in—it is a liberating experience when one decides that.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I would be interested to know why my hon. Friend thinks that others might do that as a consequence of recall. What is it about this House that makes him feel that the existence of recall would enfeeble Parliament, as opposed to strengthening it in the way he has just demonstrated?

[Conor Burns]

My hon. Friend has given me an excellent introduction to how I want to end my speech. I will support the Government’s Bill, which was ably introduced today by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark)—not Angry of Tunbridge Wells, but moderate and very sensible of Tunbridge Wells. I look forward to the amendments from my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) in Committee, because I think that they need to be probed.

When I resigned from my role as PPS in order to vote against a Bill which I fundamentally opposed and believed would damage Parliament, I did so in the knowledge that that would lead to a sacrifice. As a friend of mine said at the time, “You’re a genius: you’ve established yourself as a person of principle over an issue that nobody really cares about.” I suppose that there was an element of truth in that. What I want to know—my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire made this point absolutely brilliantly—is how the amendments proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park would enable the separation of sanction on personal probity issues from people taking policy positions. In this House a Member must be able to take a policy decision, a difference of philosophical understanding on an issue, and be confident that they will be judged on that over time at the next general election. Issues of personal conduct are completely separate. If my hon. Friend can convince me and others that we can separate policy and probity, we will be open-minded in how we vote.