Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between David Davis and Thomas Docherty

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Thomas Docherty]

That is why we have set out that there should be three routes to recall. Hon. Members will know that the occasions on which recall should be required will be very few and far between, but the hon. Gentleman is right that we are proposing three methods of recall. For the benefit of the Committee, it is worth capturing them again.

[Mr David Davis]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Thomas Docherty]

Let me finish dealing with the earlier intervention.

The first criterion is that a Member of Parliament is convicted and given a custodial sentence. The second is that they have received a suspension from the House for a specific period—amendment 47 tackles that. The third is that a Member is found to have fiddled their expenses and receives a conviction. Those are three clear examples of wrongdoing. None of them is about how a Member votes in the House, their views or other such behaviours. That is the difference between the Opposition and the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin).

[Mr Davis]

The fact that the hon. Gentleman proposes three different methods does not solve the flaw in the central method, which is that a Committee of the House will make a ruling. If the ruling is, in effect, a career capital punishment for a Member of Parliament, the decision should be judicial. I am sorry, but no lay Committee and no Committee of the House is equipped to make such a decision. It must be judicial.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am genuinely not sure I follow the logic of the right hon. Gentleman’s position.

[Mr Davis]

I am not surprised about that.

[Thomas Docherty]

To be fair, the Prime Minister could not follow the right hon. Gentleman’s logic when he was a member of the shadow Cabinet.

To reiterate the Opposition’s position, recall must be based on a measure of wrongdoing. It cannot happen just because a group of constituents, or a well funded vested interest group, seek to remove a Member of Parliament because they disagree with them.