Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between David Heath and Richard Fuller

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

The hon. Gentleman makes valid points.

I want to turn to the mechanism I am suggesting.

[Richard Fuller]

My hon. Friend just said that the threshold of 3,500 voters or 5% was low, and used the example of gay marriage as an issue on which a petition could easily be secured. Will he explain to the Committee how that would be so wrong for democracy? What would be so wrong for me, as the hon. Member for Bedford, to have to go back to my constituents under the threat of a potential recall because of something I had said in the House? I cannot understand what the problem with that would be.

[Mr Heath]

The hon. Gentleman might take a different view, but my personal view is that the general election process is where these things are decided, not on a single issue, but on the performance of the Member and the plurality of views that are expressed. To have a form of Athenian democracy in this country, where we have constant voting and constant re-election, does not seem to—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell) is burbling from a sedentary position, but I do not think his party had anything about recall in its last manifesto, so perhaps he needs a further recall now, because if he votes for a recall provision this evening, he will be breaking his election pledge not to have one; I do not know.

Let us move on. I personally do not think that what the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) described is in the interests of the sort of representative democracy that we have always enjoyed in this country. However, I do think—I feel this very strongly and have argued it passionately, both before the election and since—that we need to find a way of capturing those examples of misconduct that are not necessarily caught by the criminal law and might not attract the attention of the Standards Committee, or, even if they do, where the public do not accept that as a mechanism.