Recall of MPs Bill

Douglas Carswell Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

It is worth taking stock of where we are. The Government’s Bill still has no friends in its current form. It still proposes a system of recall that is possible only in the narrowest of circumstances and, in most cases, still only by permission of MPs. It will do nothing to empower voters. For that reason it has been savagely criticised by every pressure group campaigning for improved democracy—everyone from 38 Degrees and Unlock Democracy all the way to the TaxPayers Alliance. It has been trashed by everyone from the Morning Star to The Daily Telegraph, which described it a few weeks ago as an “insult to voters”.

As a consequence, the Prime Minister felt obliged to describe the Bill as “the minimum acceptable”. Labour’s shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), said that

“the Bill needs to be strengthened considerably from its current state in order for it to have meaning.”

[Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (UKIP)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the fundamental flaw in the Recall of MPs Bill is that it does not contain a recall mechanism?

[Zac Goldsmith]

Exactly right. This is not recall as it is understood anywhere in the world.

The shadow Minister went on to say that the Bill

“is simply not good enough. The public will, rightly, expect more.”—[Official Report, 21 October 2014; Vol. 586, c. 787.]

Even the Deputy Prime Minister, who wrote the Bill, has had to express difficulties with it.

But after all that huffing and puffing, here we are today with more or less exactly the same Bill—a Bill that no one likes. Yes, a few amendments have been proposed, but they are red herrings. They add nothing useful to the Bill. Labour’s main proposal, amendment 14, merely lowers the threshold so that hon. Members who are suspended from the House for 10 days or more automatically qualify for recall. The original proposal was 21 days. The only effect that will have is in the judgments made by a committee of parliamentarians. They will simply rejig the way they sentence MPs accordingly. The 10-day rule would have spelled the end for any number of hon. Members who have been sanctioned for engaging in protest.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Greg Clark)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing me to speak at this stage of the debate to set out the Government’s views on the amendments and new clauses. It will not have escaped anyone’s notice, as hon. Members have said, that the Government have tabled no amendments on Report. That reflects our continuing view that the Bill, as drafted, meets fully and faithfully the commitment that our parties made in their 2010 election manifestos.

My party’s manifesto committed to

“introduce a power of ‘recall’ to allow electors to kick out MPs, a power that will be triggered by proven serious wrongdoing.”

The Liberal Democrats’ commitment was to

“introduce a recall system so that constituents could force a by-election for any MP found responsible for serious wrongdoing.”

The Labour party made a similar pledge.

[Douglas Carswell]

Does my right hon. Friend think it is somewhat regrettable that the recall proposal does not actually have a recall mechanism in it? There is nothing in it that actually allows voters to have that binary referendum in their constituencies to decide whether or not to recall their MP.

[Greg Clark]

The recall measure contained in the Bill is precisely that envisaged by the parties’ manifestos.

Throughout the passage of the Bill, the Government have made it clear that—beyond implementing our manifesto pledges—it is open to the House to make further amendments, and that, on the Government side of the House, they would be subject to a free vote, including by Ministers. Given that, all I want to do now is make some observations on the part of the Government about some of the advantages and disadvantages of the amendments in question. I repeat that it will be for the House to decide whether to adopt them.

I will first turn to the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty). As he has said, amendments 16 and 17 would alter clause 2 to ensure that historical offences would be liable to trigger recall, which reflects a similar amendment tabled in Committee. As I said when I last stood at the Dispatch Box, there is a case that if an MP were elected and his or her constituents were unaware of the fact that he or she had committed a crime because it had not come to court, that MP might be said to have been elected on a false prospectus. Against that, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) has pointed out, it remains novel for legislation in this House to have what could be argued is a retrospective effect, and for a criminal act to have consequences—in this case, triggering recall as an MP—that were not the case when the act was committed.

Amendment 14, tabled by the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife, would alter clause 1 to reduce the number of sitting days from 21 to 10, and the number of days if not expressed in sitting days from 28 to 14. It would also introduce a requirement that for a suspension to trigger recall it must follow on from a recommendation by the Standards Committee. Nevertheless, the length of time for which the MP would be suspended by the House may be different or the same as that recommended by the Standards Committee. That would ensure, as the hon. Gentleman has said, that an MP named by the Speaker for a second offence and suspended for 20 days would not be subject to a recall petition.

The argument in favour of the amendment is that more MPs would be caught by the provision who previously would have withstood the effect of recall. If the recall petition process had been in force with the threshold set at 10 sitting days, then of the 11 MPs suspended since 2000 seven would have met the condition for opening the process. Under a threshold of 21 sitting days, two MPs would have been caught. A further two MPs resigned before the suspension came into effect.

The argument against the proposed change is that the House may wish to impose its own suspensions—sometimes quite long ones—without the consequence of a recall process necessarily being triggered. In other words, the proposal would reduce the scope that the Standards Committee might have to issue sanctions without triggering the recall process.

Amendment 15, tabled in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), would mean that a Member of Parliament convicted of the common law offence of misconduct in public office would be subject to a recall petition process regardless of the sentence imposed. Misconduct in public office is a common law offence in England and Wales, punishable by a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. There is, however, no clear, exhaustive definition of what misconduct in public office covers. Action that amounts to misconduct is likely also to be contrary to other laws. The boundaries of the offence are not clearly defined, so they are uncertain. Despite there being relatively few prosecutions each year, a disproportionately high number of those cases are appealed against.

The common law offence of misconduct in public office does not exist in Scotland, so there is a risk that an MP from Scotland could commit the offence of misconduct in public office while working in Westminster given that the offence applies in England, but not if the offence took place while working in their constituency.