Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Douglas Carswell and Charles Walker

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Douglas Carswell]

Absolutely. I would ask people again to apply the Ian Gibson test. If the Standards and Privileges Committee had been left to make the key decision in those heated and fevered moments during the MPs’ expenses scandal, would it not have been under intense media pressure to make the wrong choice by that good and decent Member of Parliament? I think it would have been. It is wrong for the Standards and Privileges Committee to have this role. It is right, if we want more lay members to be involved, for us not to seek to increase the number of lay members on the Standards and Privileges Committee, but to trust the voters. It puzzles me that people still struggle with the idea that the voters should decide whether or not to trigger the process, for they are the ultimate jury.

I shall support the Bill this evening. I shall do so because I am confident that it can be amended and made meaningful, and confident that many of the amendments that will be tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park will be successful. Unless that happens, this recall measure will remain a sham, a fix, a pretence of change so that Westminster can stay the same. Proper recall will end safe seat syndrome, which is what has really hamstrung our democracy. In four of the past five elections, fewer than one in 10 seats have changed hands. Even at the time of the 1997 great Labour landslide, only three in 10 changed hands. In other words, seven out of 10 seats are safe seats. There is almost a zero chance of those Members losing their seats unless they fall foul of the Whips. They are fiefdoms. That means that MPs answer to other MPs. The great destructive mechanism in our democracy, the Whips Office, is all-powerful.

[Mr Charles Walker]

The hon. Gentleman said that recall would end safe seat syndrome. How will it do that?

[Douglas Carswell]

At present, the career trajectories of MPs in safe seats are determined by how obsequious they are to Ministers, and on whether or not the Whips think highly of them and give them promotion. If a Member is vulnerable to a recall election—if he is vulnerable to the views of the voters—he may start to face outward to the voters. Even if he is in a safe seat, he will know that he can lose his position if he breaks his promises and does not do what he said he was going to do. Recall would mean that instead of facing inward and chasing favour with the Whips, MPs would become outward-facing, and I think that that would revive and reinvigorate our democracy.

National Referendum on the European Union

Debate between Douglas Carswell and Charles Walker

Monday 24th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (Con)]

For 40 years, we have left Europe policy to Ministers and to mandarins—to a tiny Whitehall elite. Look at the collective mess that they have made of it. We have a fisheries policy with no fish; red tape strangling small businesses; financial regulation that suffocates the City; and now we are being asked to spend billions of pounds bailing out a currency that we never even joined. We have lurched from one bad deal with Brussels to the next, and from one disastrous round of negotiations to another. That is the price we pay for leaving it to Ministers and mandarins to decide our Europe policy. It is time to trust the people. Today, every Member of this House faces a straightforward choice. They can either vote to give people a referendum on the EU or they can vote not to trust the people.

[Mr Charles Walker]

Would my hon. Friend like to expand on that point?

[Mr Carswell]

I shall try to do so over the next three minutes, and I am grateful for that thoughtful and erudite intervention.

This is a matter of principle: is it right, in principle, to put the question of EU membership to a popular vote? Too many people in Westminster—in SW1—try to second-guess how the voters may vote in a referendum and then work backwards to decide whether or not they favour a referendum. Instead we should start from the principle: is it right for the people to decide? Yes it is, and I believe that this issue qualifies for a referendum. The issue is of massive constitutional significance, it divides all three parties and it cannot be adequately settled in a general election.

Referendums can no longer be dismissed, as they have been for many years, as somehow alien to the British tradition. We have had dozens of referendums since 1997, including a national referendum on the alternative vote.