Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, it is an important principle that the punishment should fit the crime. Although a criminal act may not have been carried out, it is important that the committee has a range. I do not know enough about the workings of the committee to know what would have merited five days, 10 days, 15 days or whatever, but it strikes me that 10 days is far too narrow a spectrum. Someone may have done something which is pretty unacceptable but not sufficient to justify them being recalled. If the committee decides on nine days or eight days, I can just imagine what the hue and cry might be from certain sections of the media.

The very process is apparently designed to improve public confidence in the House of Commons, and indeed my noble friend has talked about the position of the lay members. I see that debate as being another manifestation of the House of Commons not having confidence in itself and its own Members, and responding to that kind of pressure not by putting its own house in order and having systems that are seen to be workable and effective, but by looking to some external body. Let us not forget the arguments we had on the previous amendment.

At one time when I was younger, I was in favour of capital punishment. Two things persuaded me to change my mind. One was that innocent people could be convicted and the other was that juries might not be prepared to convict in those circumstances. I am worried about the Standards Committee finding itself thinking, “Well, if we give nine days, people will say that that is a ridiculously short suspension, so we have to go for 10 days”, which may not be justified. I do not understand why this has been compressed. Given that the Government started off with the view that it should be 20 days, it should be very easy for them to accept this amendment.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

I entirely agree with the noble Baroness, with whom I had the great pleasure of serving when I was acting as deputy shadow leader in the other place. We worked together on the Privileges Committee and I came to have a very high regard for her total integrity and judgment. I still have that high regard. What she said this evening was entirely right.

I think that the other place is in danger of talking itself down. That is something that we really need to focus on. I remember reading many years ago a comment by one of the great 18th century admirals—I think from memory it was Admiral Rodney—who, as many others did, served in the House of Commons. He made a remark to the effect that there was no greater honour that any man could have—it was just men in those days—than to be in the House of Commons, representing a constituency. That was long before the days of anything approaching modern democracy. When I was elected in June 1970 I certainly felt that. I am sure that those others of your Lordships’ House who have had the privilege of serving in the other place would have had similar feelings.

In any group of 600 or 650 people you are bound from time to time to have some who transgress. However, it always has been and it is—and please God it always will be—the exception. For the past few years, since the expenses scandal and the witch-hunt that followed—and it was a witch-hunt—there has been a real reluctance on the part of Members of the other place to think highly, not of themselves, but of the institution of which they have the honour to be Members. We are, in fact, playing to that tune in putting this Bill through Parliament. I accept that it is going to go through. I regret that infinitely, because I think it does no service to Parliament in general or to the House of Commons in particular. That is a deep sadness to me and, I know, to many others.

However, if the Bill is to go through, this amendment is essential. Sentences of a few days can be given for offences which are in no sense improprieties in the generally accepted sense of the word. Every institution must have the power to discipline its members. If somebody is consistently failing to obey the Speaker or to abide by the rules of the House, of course they will suffer. We know some who have done so. I can think of the late Lord Bannside as Ian Paisley; Andrew Faulds, one of my dearest friends; Tam Dalyell, who was mentioned earlier; and others, who have, for perfectly honourable reasons, even though I may have disagreed with them, flouted the rules, been named and excluded for a period. But the House of Commons would have been a much poorer place without any of those Members. The thought that anyone like that, for a parliamentary transgression, could be in danger of recall is just too awful to contemplate.

This places a great weight on the shoulders of those who serve on that committee. I am bound to say that I regret that there are lay members on the committee, because I think it should be, as it always was, a committee of Parliament. I agree entirely with the noble Baroness when she said that, as Leader of the House, she decided not to chair the committee and that the chair should be a respected Back-Bencher. I think that that was a very wise and modest decision. It was the right decision. You should be judged by a group of your peers, unless you are transgressing the law of the land, and then, of course, other procedures follow. We all recognise that. However, I would beg my noble friends on the Front Bench—and particularly the Front Bench opposite, because this originated with an Opposition-led amendment—to think again about this. For 20 days, the offence has to be reasonably serious.

The other point alluded to by the noble Baroness, which was a very good and powerful one, was that there could be a danger of politicising these things, in a party sense, particularly in the sort of frenetic pre-election atmosphere that we have at the moment. One of the distinguishing features of the other place, and indeed of this place, is that Members in committee—particularly Select Committees, one of which I had the honour of chairing for five years—look at issues on their merits and seek to have recommendations that address the issues without polarising or dividing the committee. I would deplore anything that led to the former tendency in the Standards or Privileges Committees.

The least that we can do to help mend this very broken vehicle that is being pulled before us is to accept this amendment. I hope we can accept it tonight, without any Division or controversy at all. If not, I hope it can be accepted on Report. It goes just a little way to making a Bill that has come about, frankly, because certain people do not have enough confidence in that great institution at the other end of the Corridor and because party leaders have been rather craven—I use the word deliberately—a little better than it is at the moment. We want to put this right. This amendment will achieve precisely that.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I thought that my noble friend Lady Taylor put it very well in terms of the huge significance of a 10-day suspension, with it basically being the end of a parliamentary career. It is rather like the point about the death penalty made by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. This is not a marginal decision between whether you give someone nine days or 10 days; it is not even the difference, to use a footballing analogy, between a yellow card and a red card. It is the difference between a yellow card and a ban for life.

We touched on this in earlier exchanges, but it seems to me that being suspended for 20 days clearly indicates a very serious offence. That is shown by the House of Commons Library research paper, according to which there have been just two cases in the last 25 years when that would have happened. As we have all remarked already, that would be even less likely to happen if it was known that it would lead to expulsion from the House because it would trigger a petition—as it would have, had this provision been in existence then. There has to be some doubt whether even the two that passed the test, if you like, would still pass the test, because Members would be very reluctant to impose a 20-day suspension.

Perhaps we are all in danger of repeating ourselves, but surely the position as it stands at the moment is that the House itself can expel someone and that, in effect, the provisions of this Bill—as it stands, a 10-day suspension; as it originally stood, a 20-day suspension—amount to the equivalent of expelling someone from the House. My view is that if that is what the House wants to do, the House has the power to do it now and we do not need a Bill to enable it to do that. To that extent, as with so many of the other provisions of this Bill, the organic mechanism by which Parliament operates tends to deal with these matters without introducing legislation that is not needed. That is the substantial point I want to make, but I want to ask a question to which I should know the answer, and I doubt whether the Minister will know the answer immediately.

I think there may be an odd juxtaposition here. Unless I am completely wrong, the Speaker of the House of Commons can suspend people. I cannot think of an occasion when someone has been expelled for as long as 10 days, but I think that, as my noble friend Lord Maxton says, if someone is suspended until they apologise, heaven knows how long that could be.

Am I then right in thinking—I would love to be told that I am wrong—that we now have a situation where 10 days, as imposed by the Standards and Privileges Committee, results in, “Thank you, goodnight, you are out”, whereas 10 or 11 or 12 or 13 days from the Speaker is, “Come back, all is forgiven and we are off to the tearoom”. I need an answer to that question because I do not know the answer to it myself. If it is the case, that needs sorting out.