Recall of MPs Bill

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

I struggle to find any part of the remarks of the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) with which I can associate myself, but he has clearly stated his opposition to the Bill and the amendments that we know are to come from the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) and others. As one of those in the pick-up band of MPs the hon. Member for Richmond Park put together to sit as a cross-party committee to consider an alternative Bill, obviously I support the general thrust of the amendments, but I also take the point, aired as a trailer for subsequent debates, that some of them need to be tested just as much as some of the clauses in the Bill before us do.

Warning against legislation, the hon. Member for South Dorset said that the Bill addressed an issue that should not be dealt with by legislation, but which should be left to honour and responsibility. He indicated that hon. Members know when we have done something wrong and will take the appropriate course of action, and that we do not need any rules. If we took that argument to its extreme, we would not even have the Standards Committee, because we would simply know automatically that we had done wrong and would make amends; there would be no need for anybody else to come to a judgment—we could be entirely reliant on our own sense of honour and conscience—but clearly that is not the case and would not wash with the public.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

I agree with the thrust of the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. Does he not think that what lies behind the amendments of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) is a belief that trust in the people is the main thing, and that it is not honour, honour, honour from MPs that we need, but trust, trust, trust in the electorate to do the right thing?

[Mark Durkan]

Absolutely. I fully take the point. I believe that the bottom line, as regards the democratic principle, should be to trust the judgment of the electorate and to show belief and trust in their decisions by equipping them to deal with such issues. The idea that we must be protected from other judgments goes back to some of the issues that gave rise to some of the problems with the expenses scandal. I do not believe that this Bill is before us at this stage in this Parliament in the same way as the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009 was introduced at this stage in the last Parliament; I do not buy the argument that it is comparable panic or anything else.

Long before we had the expenses scandal, there were many warnings that the expenses system was open to a lot of confusion and potential abuse, and that it was ripe to scandalise the public if there was more transparency. Those warnings were not heeded and the Good Ship Lollipop ran aground on what was leaked to The Daily Telegraph.

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[Mr Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this interesting debate, and I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan). In a sense, he and others who support the alternative approach, as set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), are looking for a Bill that would achieve a substantially different end from that of the Government’s Bill. I was surprised, however, that he and my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park appear to argue that we should adopt that alternative approach precisely because they have constructed it in such a manner that it would be unlikely to have any effect. I know that accusations have been made, perhaps with some justification, that the Government’s Bill would result in relatively few instances in which a recall would be triggered, because Members would very likely resign instead, as other Members have in the recent past. However, I do not think we should be looking for a system that is so difficult to manipulate and in which recalls are so unlikely to happen that Members would, in practice, be proof against it.

My starting point is that Members would have little to fear from being the subject of a referendum vote of the kind postulated in the Recall of Elected Representatives Bill, as opposed to the Bill we are considering today. I believe in the genius of the masses. The experience of my 17-plus years representing South Cambridgeshire has taught me that, although I might on many occasions have done something that a minority of my constituents disagreed with, I doubt that they would ever have actually turned me out between elections on those grounds. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) made a similar point.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

My right hon. Friend makes the point that those in favour of these amendments believe, as I think we all do across this argument, that most Members of this House behave honourably and that there will be very few instances in which the public, when they reflect seriously on the issues, seek to throw us out, but that is not a reason for not putting in place a recall—put that power with people and put trust in people to exercise it properly. The fact that it will be rarely used does not mean it is not important.

[Mr Lansley]

I agree. I have been listening carefully to the debate, and it is interesting to consider under what circumstances the kind of mechanism—the kind of trigger for recall—that is not in the current recall Bill but that is proposed to be put into it in its place would impact on Members. I do not think it would be the prospect that they would be the subject of a referendum vote with 50% voting to have a by-election and the seat vacated. I think that is extremely unlikely. Much more likely, and in my view much more pernicious, is the possibility of large numbers of Members, over the course of a Parliament, being subject to a notice of intent to recall—with all the attendant impact that can have on an MP, not least when deployed by, and in the hands of, the media—for taking steps that may be in line with their manifesto and with the policy of their party or for taking an independent and potentially unpopular line, which, frankly, is even more laudable.

If the hon. Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell) and some others were here, they would say, “That’s simply putting yourself in a position where you have to listen to your constituents and respond to them.” That is fair enough. We could accept that if this was done simply on that basis, but I think it would be more dangerous if it was deployed in other circumstances.

I made a point to my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park about a Member who had not been the subject of due process. Under his Bill, somebody being charged with an indictable offence would stay the process, but we know perfectly well that substantial periods can pass during which people are the subject of very damaging allegations but are not charged with an offence.

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[Mr MacNeil]

rose—

[Mr Graham Stuart]

rose—

[Mr Lansley]

I will give way first to the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), who is being very persistent, as ever, and then to my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart).

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting question, and not a hypothetical one—let us face it: he is referring to a decision of the kind taken in 2003. We have asked today how many people would sign petitions, write to their Member of Parliament or go to one of four designated places in a constituency in order to do something. Well, in my recollection, 2003 was the point when it was most likely that large numbers of the public would have taken some specific action in relation to a Government policy that they had not sanctioned, that certainly was not part of any previous manifesto promise and that they felt was wrong. That raises the following question: what would have happened in 2003 had recall been available?

I say this in a disinterested way, because I did not vote for the invasion of Iraq and so this would not have affected me, but I think there are those who would argue that that is what it is all about—that in those circumstances members of the public would have had an opportunity to say, “Not in our name” by setting up petitions and giving notice of the intention to recall. Throughout the period of the conflict in Iraq there would have been a rebellion among the electorate.

Is that right or wrong? I happen to think that necessarily it is wrong. To return to the constitutional point, we are a representative democracy in which we owe our constituents our collective judgment. We come here not as an independent legislature separate from the decisions of the Government, but to form a Government and sustain them through the legislature. That Government have to make decisions and secure the majority of this House, and we have to stick by that. This proposal would have completely undermined that.

If we are looking for a way to undermine the proposal, let us imagine that it had been possible for the organisers of protests in 2003 to focus on the Prime Minister’s constituency and get 20% of the voters there to sign a petition. They would have done so, even though they recognised that there was no way they could get 50% on the subsequent vote, but it would have had such a destabilising impact on the Prime Minister of the day, in circumstances in which he was doing something that was deeply unpopular but that he felt was right—whether or not he was right is not the matter. I cannot see how a responsible Parliament in a representative democracy could go down that path.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for honouring his pledge to give way to me. I think that he has now come to the heart of the matter, certainly as far as the amendments from our hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) are concerned: whether the electorate would seek to use the power of recall to challenge Members on matters of conscience, on how they vote and, fundamentally, on how they do their job in this place. Hon. Friends who represent university towns might have found themselves subject to such proposals when it came to voting on tuition fees. On balance, I do not believe that the electorate would abuse that power, but I recognise that there is a risk. Does my right hon. Friend have any evidence that it would be misused, as we would see it, in that way?

[Mr Lansley]

This is very difficult, because we are necessarily debating what the circumstances would be, but I have been struck by speeches arguing for amending the Bill on the basis that it will all be all right on the night. Well, legislation is not like that. Legislation is like writing a contract; if we write a contract with somebody—in this case with the electorate—we have to know how it will be used and what will happen when it starts to go wrong. It seems to me that at the moment the defences against those potential problems are not there in the alternative Bill proposed.

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[Mr Graham Stuart]

I suppose the worst case scenario with the Government’s Bill is when somebody does something that the public regard as pretty serious, yet which neither leads to a custodial sentence, as many noxious things do not, nor to a suspension of a sufficient number of days, and we are left with the public feeling cheated by a recall Bill that did not deliver what they would have expected.

[Mr Jackson]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, but I come back to a central issue that was touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) about the split between the Executive and the legislature. I believe one of the lessons of the expenses disaster was the failure of the Executive properly to embrace the Freedom of Information Act, openness and transparency at an early stage across all parties, and what we see here is the sins of the Executive being visited on the legislature and Back Benchers.

The concept of the Executive facing up to their own responsibility is long past, with Peter Carrington’s resignation as a result of the Falklands invasion and, for those who can remember their constitutional history, Crichel Down in 1954, when the Minister of Agriculture, who I believe was Sir Thomas Dugdale, resigned as a result of a piece of land, the sale of which was mishandled by his Department. Ministerial responsibility for the Executive is much less in fashion than it ever used to be. What we are being asked to do today, particularly with the amendments of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), is take to the nth degree the accountability of the individual Back Bencher, and therefore I do think there is an asymmetrical approach. The merit of the Government’s Bill is that at least it adequately formalises the sanctions around criminal misbehaviour and malfeasance, taking into account the reforms, openness and transparency that have been in place since the expenses crisis.

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[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow so many powerful speeches, none more so than that just given by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns).

I have supported the efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) in bringing forward a vision of a recall controlled by the public, not controlled, as it might be perceived, by Whips or by the Standards Committee, however well constituted. The speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley) was telling. The question is this: is it possible to allow the public to trigger recall for wrongdoing without that being abused so that it strays into matters of conscience or towards constraining the public from deciding what is or is not wrongdoing? The Bill sets the offence at a level that leads to a custodial sentence or, in the context of this House, to a very long and severe sanction by the Standards Committee. Earlier, I posed the question of whether the public would feel cheated when somebody did something that they felt was dreadful but that, in the view of the Committee and the processes of this House, did not lead to a suspension of sufficient time to allow them to express themselves on the subject. That is at the heart of the matter, and that is what we are agonising over.

We have heard excellent speeches from, for instance, the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), who set the issue in the Northern Ireland context. That is a good context in which to question how communities that are sometimes severely divided might seek to use the recall mechanism. Could it be misused in a way that undermines people in doing what they should do, which is to act in line with their conscience? It is worth noting that the hon. Gentleman, for his part, felt that he could trust the public, and felt that his predecessor would have been able to rely on his public even as he was doing things that they would not have agreed with, because they respected how and why he was doing them.

[Sammy Wilson]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that all the conditions that have been attached to the recall mechanism as regards the thresholds that have to be met mean, to some extent, that those who are supporting the amendments do not trust the public because they believe that they need to put in a lot of safeguards to ensure that the public do not abuse the system?

[Mr Stuart]

That is a fair point. However, the public are not one thing, are they? The public are made up of a lot of individuals, and therefore one has to allow a certain collection of them to come together before starting to suggest that a recall reflects a wider public opinion. Otherwise we stand the chance of very small numbers of people being able to trigger it.

[Mark Durkan]

The thresholds that the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) talks about would be in the hands of the public. The 5% premise petition, the 20% test petition, and then the referendum are all in the hands of the public.

[Mr Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman is right. That is why, although I will reflect on what I have heard today—I am less sure than I was about supporting the amendments —my opinion is still that we should trust the public. We want the public to trust us, and we need to trust them. However, we need to ensure that we do not allow a tiny minority of the public to use recall in a way that most people, even in the area concerned, regard as untoward and unreasonable, simply because it is there and they feel they can use it. If that small minority are feeling powerless and think that their voice is not being heard, they will pick up whatever instrument is to hand and seek to use it to propagate their case, which they no doubt feel strongly about. That balance is what we are agonising about today.

I try to look at this from the perspective of the public outside. They will wonder why we are putting so many barriers in the way of their deciding to exercise a right of recall and remove people from this place. As Chair of the Education Committee, I am reminded that so many teachers, or certainly the teaching unions, appear to go to such lengths to protect the worst-performing teachers in the system even though, in every case, the teacher who is idle, has low standards or fails their pupils undermines morale in the staff room and all the hard work of most teachers in the school, and those elsewhere who do so much to prioritise teachers. However, standing here in this Chamber, I guess I can recognise the sense of, “If they come for one, they may come for all.” A certain paranoia runs through us.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

My hon. Friend is making a strong speech. I think that the answer to his reasonable question as to why some of us are challenging the received wisdom is that, to the best of my knowledge, we have not heard an example of a Member—someone who makes laws in this House—who is a criminal who has not been subject either to disciplinary proceedings or to a criminal sanction in the past 10 to 20 years. I have not heard any such example.

[Mr Stuart]

My hon. Friend made a powerful speech. At the heart of the issue is whether the public, with no prior wrongdoing having been proved, can be trusted to use this power without it being abused in order to challenge Members on matters of conscience. I do not often speak up for the Liberal Democrats, but in this Parliament our coalition partners took an unpopular decision on tuition fees as part of a coalition agreement that they thought was in the national interest. Members representing university towns may have taken that decision even though they stood on that manifesto pledge. Following this debate, I am going to have to wrestle with the idea of whether I am confident that the proposed process would not have been used to turf out those MPs for doing what they thought was right. It would be terrible if the fear of recall were to influence not how Members treat their constituents or work on their behalf, but how they vote. That goes to the heart of the debate.

[Zac Goldsmith]

None of the Lib Dem Members with whom I have spoken believe they would have been recalled on the back of the tuition fee debacle. If recall had been possible, it is more likely that they would have thought twice about pledging such unrealistic and undeliverable things before an election. Under such a regime, Members would have to think much more carefully about the promises they make.

[Mr Stuart]

My hon. Friend, as ever, makes a subtle and important point, which takes me back to the observation of my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) about US Congressmen always looking over their shoulders because they are elected to serve only two-year terms. It is not entirely a bad thing, however, that MPs are always looking over our shoulders to ensure that we communicate to our constituents why we are doing what we are doing and why we have made certain promises and voted in certain ways.

I do not know whether this has already been mentioned, but I accept that we are taking a risk. If we give the public the right of recall without any prior wrongdoing having been proved, we do not know how it will be used or what the pressures—political or otherwise—that may occur in coming years will do. I suggest, therefore, that this process is a perfect candidate for a sunset clause, whereby it would be trialled for a five-year Parliament. It might be said that after giving the public the right of recall, there is no way this House would ever have the courage to take it back from them. I suggest, however, that if that right ends up being used not for wrongdoing, but to challenge Members on how they vote, this House should then have the courage to do something about it.

It is not just proven wrongdoing that is of a criminal character or that is so severe that a Member is suspended for 21 days that upsets the public. If Members look at the data that WriteToThem, which is part of the TheyWorkForYou stable of internet tools, used to produce its league table, they will see that an awful lot of colleagues from all parties appeared not to respond to constituents: they did not write back to or take care of them. It is up to the electorate to decide whether they are being properly served by a Member of Parliament. That is at the heart of the issue for those of us who wish to give the public that right, and we hope, albeit in the spirit of optimism, that it will be used in the right way.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I support the Bill. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that this is not about whether we trust the public, but about the fact that for the past 50 years brave Members of Parliament have had to take positions that were in advance of public opinion on social issues such as homosexuality, hanging and race relations, for which they were later vindicated?

[Mr Stuart]

I take that point on board. For the entire period during which I have been involved with the Conservative party, I have for ever been hearing how old, out of touch and ludicrously right wing many of its members are. It was said that they would never select anyone to stand for Parliament who did not accord with their views. It turns out that whatever their views—in times past, if they had very strong views on capital punishment, they may have said in advance that they would only choose a candidate who believed in capital punishment—they eventually selected someone completely different, because they respected that person and wanted to back them. I put it to the hon. Lady that I am not sure that the many people who have been mentioned today would be disowned by their constituents for taking brave and unpopular decisions. They are quite likely to be backed in their local area, but I recognise that we are taking a risk, which is why I suggested a sunset clause.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

That may possibly be the case. However, if a very well-financed individual or organisation campaigned against a Member on subjects such as those mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), the Member would have to go through the recall process. Even if the MP were re-elected, they would have had to spend all their time on that. I am sure a lot of people would be put off from raising principled issues that have changed life in this country for the better.

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[Mr Stuart]

The argument against the amendments of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park is that powerful interests would come along and act. It always strikes me that the vulnerability of British politics to money is tremendous; yet I suggest that the cases in which it is abused are remarkably few and far between, notwithstanding the righteous efforts of the hon. Gentleman to highlight those he comes across. I simply ask him why we should not give this a chance for a Parliament. If the public in a local area was of the opinion that there had been an abuse, people would be able to divine who was behind such an attempt and see through what was behind it, even if the person named as bringing it forward was a front person. Time will tell: we perhaps need to give it a chance to find out whether that is true or not.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I support the principles behind the Bill. The hon. Gentleman must be aware that over the years there have been systematic intense media campaigns against Members of the House—Tam Dalyell, Tony Benn and others—as can be seen just from reading the newspaper headlines of the time. It is quite conceivable that a media campaign with a huge amount of money behind it could succeed in getting rid of a Member of Parliament who was taking unpopular decisions. That is big money: it might not be big money paid to individuals, but it is big money influencing public opinion.

[Mr Stuart]

Ultimately, however, it would not be the press barons but our electorates who decided. If the hon. Gentleman is saying that our electorates are easily moulded by the tabloid press, I point out that the public would decide, not the press barons. That goes back to the earlier point that this is about trusting the public to exercise their judgment and come to the right conclusion.

[Chris Bryant]

Is not the truth that the people we are talking about—Leo Abse, Sydney Silverman, David Steel and, for that matter, people from previous generations, such as Plimsoll—all enhanced their reputation with the public even though they advanced unpopular causes? It would be exactly the same today.

[Mr Stuart]

I tend to agree. There is an idea that powerful outside forces will pick on a Member of Parliament, but as many Members have commented, whatever the public disgust with MPs in general—rightly or wrongly—people tend to have a much higher opinion of the MP in their own area. If such an MP was under threat for doing his or her job and for bravely standing up for what he or she thinks is right, I would trust local people to send out the strong message that they will have no truck with such efforts to destabilise and remove the MP. There would be risks, as there always are, but at least the decision would rest with the public in the constituency, who would ultimately decide the MP’s fate.

We are where we are, and there is a crisis at least of public trust, although not of Parliament. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) made a powerful speech on the importance of speaking up for Parliament and about the fact that Parliament works, whatever problems people may have with parties or individual MPs. None the less, I think that we need to trust the public to do the right thing. If we do that, they will feel that we have given them a say in judging whether or not we have done wrong.