Recall of MPs Bill

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2014 Commons Chamber

With those few words and few questions, I ask the Minister, at an appropriate time, to respond.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to be serving under your chairmanship in the Chamber, Sir Roger, rather than being hidden away in a dark corner of the House.

I have a very modest amendment to bring forth: amendment 38, which I hope the Committee will consider. All I am doing is changing one word. I am changing the word “maximum” to “minimum”, so I am in fact changing only two letters; I am changing “ax” to “in”, so we are axing “ax” and bringing in “in.” The reason for doing so is because I am a supporter of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith): I think that if we are going to have recall we should do it properly, and if we are going to do it properly we should do it generously, and if we are going to do it generously, it should be easy for people to exercise their right under it.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I know the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) is unable to be here today through illness, but in the argument he was putting forward last week in Committee he championed the fact that people would have to turn up to one place to sign the petition, arguing that that would somehow make it very difficult to achieve the threshold. Is the hon. Member for Richmond Park now saying that that was not the case?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

My amendment is supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park, and he kindly added his name to the list; indeed it appears immediately beneath mine on this amendment, so yes, indeed, it does have his support, which I am very grateful for. It is a recognition of the difference between constituencies and the fact that this point is already provided for in other areas of legislation. I listened carefully to what my hon. Friend the Minister said and he made some very important points in saying that there may be discrepancies between one constituency and another and raising the issues of cost.

[Mr Jones]

I am sorry, but the hon. Gentleman has not answered my question. The point the hon. Member for Richmond Park was arguing last week was that because people would have to turn up in person to one point—the town hall, for example—his proposed provisions would not often be used. Is the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) now saying that the hon. Member for Richmond Park is arguing we should have multiple centres to make it easier for people to take part in a recall?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman is tempting me to make arguments for somebody who is not here, which is a wonderfully hypothetical approach to be taking. I must make my own arguments for what I believe about this Bill, and my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park will make his arguments when he is here, as he did so eloquently last week in favour of his amendments to the Bill. I must focus on my amendment 38, and its purpose, however. I hope that clarifies the matter, Sir Roger.

I was saying that I completely understood what the Minister was saying on the issues of differentiation between constituencies and cost, but the first point is accepted in all our elections anyway, and is accepted in legislation that this very Government passed. The legislation providing uniform constituencies made exceptions for the very largest geographical areas, because it recognised that it is unreasonable not to make different arrangements for those beyond a certain size. Therefore, when there are thousands and thousands of acres—sometimes into the thousands of square miles—we make different arrangements from those that we have for the much smaller, more compact constituencies.

I do not fully accept the Minister’s point about cost. Clause 18 provides Ministers with considerable powers to make regulations affecting the opening hours of the places where the petition may be signed. The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) has raised this matter in the past. In my view, it would therefore be possible for people to sign the petitions in local post offices during their opening hours. This would involve minimal cost, while giving constituents in the larger geographical areas easier access to the process.

This is important because the difference in size between the constituencies is extreme. I have here a little list, at the top of which is Ross, Skye and Lochaber, whose area is 4,709 square miles. That is a little over 3 million acres, which is three times the size of the county of Somerset. To have only four places in such a vast area would place an unreasonable constraint on people’s ability to exercise the democratic right that we are proud to be giving them. We should be positive about the Bill; it is a good thing to allow constituents to have greater control over their Members of Parliament. Access to the process would be very easy in the smallest constituency, Islington North, which has an area of only 2.8 square miles. Such a constituency would hardly need more than one place, because it would not be too difficult for people to get around, unlike in Ross, Skye and Lochaber.

In my own area, God’s own county of Somerset, my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath)—whom I am happy to see in his place—represents an area of 367 square miles. The constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset (Mr Liddell-Grainger) is even bigger, with an area of 417 square miles.

[Lady Hermon]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene on his geography lesson, which is very interesting. I know that he will have read the Bill from cover to cover, and he will know that the Minister has confirmed that there will be an option to vote by post or by proxy instead of turning up and signing a petition in person. So why is he campaigning for a minimum of four locations in which people can sign? Should he not be encouraging people to make use of the postal service and to spend money on second-class postage?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I rather agreed with the hon. Lady when she expressed her concern about the difficulties of voting by post. It has become much too easy and is susceptible to high levels of fraud, and I do not believe that that is a problem only in Northern Ireland. It is increasingly a problem in England, and probably in Wales and Scotland as well. We have heard about the problems in Birmingham; my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) has made regular references to them. I would therefore prefer people to be able to go somewhere physically and add their name to a list.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

It is a Daily Mail myth that postal vote fraud is rampant. When the Electoral Commission ran its all-postal-vote pilots in, I think, 2006, it found that there was not widespread fraud, although there were problems in certain communities.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

There are undoubtedly greater difficulties with postal voting. My major concern is that it undermines the secrecy of the ballot. When ballot papers go into people’s homes, they are likely to be seen as a family affair, in contrast to the secrecy involved in going into a corner of a polling station to vote. As I was saying in response to the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon), I believe that it is better for people to turn up to vote in person and that that should be facilitated. That would reduce the need for excessive postal voting.

I shall not go through all the constituencies on my list, but I should point out that my own has an area of 122 square miles, or about 85,000 acres. That is about the maximum area that could conveniently have only four registration places. Such an arrangement would simply be unreasonable in a bigger constituency, such as that of my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome.

There is a broader point to make: the rural areas often get forgotten. There is a polling station in my constituency that is in somebody’s porch. About 85 people go to vote there. There are even smaller polling stations across the country; some have only a couple of dozen electors who are eligible to vote in them. We used to make it easy for people to turn up and vote, and if we are introducing new democratic rights, we ought to make it similarly easy for people to turn up and exercise them.

We should think about the rural areas: they have fewer people, but their democratic rights are just as important as those of people who live in dense urban areas, as the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) so rightly said. There are differences between constituencies, and we recognise them in other ways. In passing, it is worth mentioning the great county of Yorkshire, which has a particularly large number of seats that cover large areas and have small populations. Yorkshire has more acres than there are words in the Bible, if the Apocrypha is excluded, and it is divided into very large geographical constituencies. Again, each of them ought to have more than four places for people to go to. I hope that the Government will listen on this matter, and understand the need for rural populations to exercise their rights as freely, properly and easily as the urban mass population.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I want to comment on amendment 38, which the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) has just spoken to. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David), I am generally sympathetic to the idea that having a maximum of four places would be disadvantageous and totally impractical in some large rural constituencies. In the Western Isles, for example, there would have to be a decision about which islands should have such a place. There is a genuine need for the Government to consider that problem.

--- Later in debate ---

[Thomas Docherty]

May I first welcome the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) to his place? I understand that yesterday in the south-west he was seen on television but not heard. This evening we have had the benefit of both seeing him and hearing his wisdom. I shall deal first with a number of the points he made before turning my attention to the rest. He talked about minimum versus maximum and explained that he was looking to change only two letters, which perhaps is a new record, even for his minimalist approach. However, I am slightly surprised that he tabled the amendment: I know him to be a great believer in parliamentary process, yet he is seeking to overturn the advice of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. Although we recognise the strength of his argument, we were slightly surprised to see him going against his colleagues.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman will recognise that I take the view that the Chamber is the final and highest authority.

[Thomas Docherty]

I thought the hon. Gentleman took the view that Her Majesty was the final authority; he is obviously becoming a republican in his older age.

We have a great deal of sympathy with the hon. Gentleman’s argument. He was right to talk about having two constituencies side by side, or indeed one surrounding the other—I think that his constituency completely surrounds that of Bath—and made some valid points about the square mileage and number of hectares in each. We do not necessarily agree that the situation differs for rural and urban constituencies. As the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) pointed out, that would be determined more by public transport links, particularly the provision of bus services.

None the less, we think that the hon. Member for North East Somerset has raised a valid point. For example, we are concerned that Ministers are not at this stage able to give us greater clarity about opening hours, and that relates to a broader point. I refer the House to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee’s report, which set out a concern about the use of Henry VIII powers. That simply means that the Government are seeking to state in primary legislation that all the detail will be covered by secondary legislation, and they have not yet had a chance to set out those provisions.

We are concerned that the Government do not have a clear position on opening hours. There is an argument that opening hours should be from 7 am to 10 pm, as they are in a general election. Equally, however, if the Government are proposing ultimately to use city chambers, town halls and council offices, perhaps it would be unreasonable to require additional opening hours over an eight-week period. My understanding is that central Government would pick up those costs, rather than individual local authorities, so I wonder whether the Minister, if he receives inspiration before having to reply, could say, when the Government worked out the £55,000 cost of running a recall petition, was that based on opening hours of 9 am to 5 pm in up to four locations, or opening hours of 7 am to 10 pm?

The hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) raised an important point about security—if I recall correctly, she made the same point last week during the Committee’s first day of considerations. The Government must accept that clearly more work needs to be done to answer those points. Several hon. Members have made the point, rightly I think, that the Government are yet to set out whether in practice they would use a marked register. If we take the example of having just one location for signing a recall petition—I am conscious that we are in danger of slipping into consideration of clause 18, but this relates to the question of where a petition can be signed—is it the Government’s intention that the petition officer would be sitting with the marked register and would cross off constituents’ names as they sign the petition, or would it not be made available?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gyimah]

I will have to get back to the hon. Gentleman on that specific point of detail.

In rounding up this debate, I urge my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset not to press his amendment. When establishing an electoral process, the Government believe that we have to ensure that we make it as open as possible. There are many cases where a smaller number of signing places will serve constituents just as well as a large number, but we must not set out in statute expectations of service that could be hard to meet. The flexibility that the Government have built into the Bill following pre-legislative scrutiny provides enough physical locations for signing when people wish to do so in person.

Before I sit down, I want to clarify one point. I said that the MP would not be an MP during the petition process. In actual fact, it is the seat that is vacated if the threshold is reached, but the MP would have to stand in the by-election and win in order to retake their seat. In that sense, the seat would be lost, albeit only temporarily.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

rose—

[The Temporary Chair (Sir Roger Gale)]

Order. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to make a point of order, I will take it, but he knows that once the winding-up speech has been completed no other member will be called. If he wishes to refer to his amendment, I will come to it at the appropriate time, which is not now.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 6 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

[The Temporary Chair]

We now come to amendment 38, which has not been moved, so it is a question of whether any hon. Member who is a signatory to the amendment wishes to move it. You cannot withdraw it, because it has not been moved.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I thought I had moved it in the speech I made earlier.

[The Temporary Chair]

Let me explain, for the benefit of the whole Committee, that only the lead measure, which in this case was clause 6 stand part, is moved. Other amendments and clauses are moved in the order that they are reached, so technically amendment 38 has not been moved, although the hon. Gentleman has spoken to it.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

May I move the amendment with a few words, Sir Roger?

[The Temporary Chair]

No.

Clause 7

Where and from when the recall petition may be signed

Amendment proposed: 38, page 5, line 27, leave out “maximum” and insert “minimum”—(Jacob Rees-Mogg.)

This amendment changes the number of designated places for the signing of a recall petition from a maximum of four to a minimum of four.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

Question negatived.

Clause 7 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 8 to 10 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Clauses 11 to 13 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 14

Determination of whether recall petition successful

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.