Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Douglas Carswell and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

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.

Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Douglas Carswell and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Douglas Carswell]

I absolutely agree. There are many good and decent Members who would never be given as fair a hearing by a Committee of grandees—people who spend their careers chasing the Whips’ baubles—as they would if they trusted the views of the voters. After all, it is the voters who know us best. If the majority of our constituents decide in a vote that, frankly, they want us recalled, there is no shame in that. We are clearly in the wrong job; we should go and do something else. The voters would be better off if we did; we would be better off and so would democracy.

[Zac Goldsmith]

It is worth pointing out the Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee has already said on the record that he does not want this extra duty of this extra ballot. He recognises, as does everyone else, that if we want to exert pressure and to influence an outcome, it is much easier to do so with a fallible group of 10 people than it is with 70,000 constituents.

[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.