Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)]

My Lords, I would like to add just a few words because this is an extremely important issue. I am very grateful that my noble friend has raised it again. The remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, show how complex the issue is, and yet it is treated as very simple. His comments about the withdrawal of the Whip and the inability of someone subsequently to stand in a by-election have not been discussed and fully thought through. I think that that shows how hastily this legislation has been pushed through despite the fact that people have been talking about it for many years.

However, I support the suggestion made by my noble friend Lord Hughes. In all the times that we have discussed this matter in the House, the Minister has never said why the Government have changed their mind and why they are sticking now to 10 days when they thought that 20 days was appropriate. Like my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, I have served on the Privileges Committee in another place. I can vouch, as he does, for the fact that the discussions on that committee—in my day it was under the chairmanship of the late Lord Newton—were never political. Discussions never led to a schism in the committee along political lines. I think that there is a very real danger that that is what will happen if we do not seek some changes even at this late stage.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours for persisting with this theme, and for bringing this issue back once again at Third Reading however forlorn the prospect of acceptance of his compromise amendment may seem to be—and it is. As other noble Lords have said, the issue that it deals with is one of very great importance for the House of Commons. I believe, in any case, that by introducing these provisions for the recall process, the House of Commons has demonstrated a catastrophic lack of self-confidence. Specifically, the means of policing its own affairs that the House of Commons has traditionally used is the operation of the Standards Committee. Through the provisions in the Bill, and particularly through the amendment brought in by the Labour Party to reduce the period of suspension from 20 days to 10 days, which would trigger the recall process, the effect will be greatly to reduce the practical capacity of the Standards Committee to perform its proper function.

If the House of Commons is to rehabilitate itself in the public esteem, it must be seen to be able to take responsibility, and to provide effective means to take responsibility, for matters of internal discipline and for disciplining Members of Parliament who transgress or commit serious wrongdoing. In so reducing the realistic scope for disciplinary sanctions that the Standards Committee can recommend to the full House, the House of Commons has portrayed a lack of self-confidence and done itself a deep disservice.

So I add to the plea from my noble friend Lord Hughes of Woodside that the Front Bench will accept the amendment simply to allow Members of the House of Commons to think again about this. Very few of them participated. Very few of them voted in the debates. Many of them did not realise the import of what was approved by the House. They ought to have that opportunity to think again, in their interests and in the interests of parliamentary democracy. I think that we in your Lordships’ House are fully entitled to offer our advice to them on this matter. As another House of Parliament, and as citizens, we have an interest in the integrity, good name and good functioning of the House of Commons.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, I am very sympathetic indeed to Amendments 1 and 2 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, for the very specific reason that I have followed the progress of the Bill throughout its stages in both Houses and I can confirm to your Lordships that a whole number of implications which have arisen in this House were not addressed there—for one very simple reason: all the votes were on a free vote. I am very enthusiastic about free voting in both Houses, but of course when there is a free vote there is not the same guidance from the parties about the full implications of the measures in front of the House—whether it is this House or that House.

I can confirm absolutely the point made by the noble Lords, Lord Hughes of Woodside and Lord Howarth, that this issue of what could easily happen—in the terms that have been so forensically analysed by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours—in the Standards Committee, simply were not addressed in the debate in the other place. I suggest to my noble friend Lord Forsyth that if the recall mechanism was in place, for example, I do not believe that party leaders would feel that it was appropriate to appear to prejudge the outcome of an inquiry by removing the party Whip. I think that they would be inclined to leave it to the commissioner, the committee and then to the recall process—and eventually, of course, to the electorate, as is the intention behind the Bill.

On those grounds, I hope that my noble friends on the Front Bench will be prepared to think very carefully about how we must give the House of Commons another opportunity to think through the implications of this part of the Bill.

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[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My judgment is that it would come to the same view.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords—

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

Could I finish what I was saying? Whatever it finally decides, the point is that it has taken that decision. The argument has not been made to my satisfaction that its view is so wrong and our view so right that it is only us who are right and not it.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My noble friend is very kind to give way. She says that the House of Commons has taken that decision and she thinks that it would take the same decision again. In the figures that she just gave, less than half the Members of the House of Commons voted. Is it not the role of this House to invite the other place to think again in appropriate circumstances? Is that not exactly what we should be doing here?

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

As many noble Lords will know, I have helped defeat the Government and sent stuff back where I have believed that the other House was wrong and I wanted it to rethink. We have done that on a number of Bills. We have had victories. We have sent things back and occasionally there has been movement. It is always a judgment call. On this issue, however, my view is that we have the right figure. As I have said before in this House, it is a very delicate balance. What we do not want is such a low number—

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[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, I rise once more in support of my noble friend Lord Tyler, having also done so on the earlier occasions when he brought forward amendments designed to improve this highly imperfect Bill. As my noble friend has made clear, the objective has been the same throughout: to try to find a way of removing or at least lessening the involvement of MPs themselves in the processes by which a recall petition can be triggered. That central issue was underlined in the report on the Bill that was provided by your Lordships’ Constitution Committee, and that report has been much in our minds during these proceedings. No one could expect to be seen to be acting utterly impartially in determining a period of suspension when a heavier penalty will trigger recall and a lesser one will not.

As my noble friend has made clear, he and those of us who supported the amendment have now taken into account a major development that occurred during the passage of the Bill through this House. As my noble friend reminded us, news of a very significant report on the composition of the House of Commons Committee on Standards reached us on the very day that we consider the Bill on Report. It has now become clear that the committee members believe that its composition should be changed to give equal representation to MPs and lay members. Now that the committee has gone that far, it would surely be sensible to wait until the committee has assumed its new form and acquired the greater independent representation that is now proposed before it is given its recall responsibilities. That is what this amendment seeks to do, and I am very glad to support it.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, I argued in the previous debate that surely the way for the House of Commons to re-establish its good reputation is for it to take responsibility for its own self-government and its own self-discipline. I am therefore opposed to the propositions put forward in these amendments, and indeed by the House of Commons Committee on Standards, not only that there should be lay members of the committee but that there should be equal numbers of lay members and Members of Parliament and that the lay members should have votes. It seems to me that those arrangements would not be consistent with the House of Commons taking the responsibilities that I believe that it should.

I also suggest that what we are being invited to approve is inconsistent, first with Magna Carta, which established the principle of trial by peers, and secondly with the Bill of Rights, which asserts parliamentary privilege and insists that the proceedings of Parliament should not be questioned or impeached by those who are not Members of Parliament. It may indeed be the case that Parliament has power to set aside Magna Carta—even in its 800th anniversary year—and that it has power to discard elements of the Bill of Rights. I would suggest only that parliamentarians should draw a very deep breath and think very carefully indeed before they do so.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, is always Jacobinical—he has a splendid fury in his reforming drive—but the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, has a profound knowledge of parliamentary history. The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, who is not able to be in his place today, is deeply knowledgeable about parliamentary privilege. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, another of the sponsors of Amendment 5, is a very experienced former Member of the House of Commons. I am startled that some of those noble Lords should associate themselves with this kind of drastic change, which, in the present circumstances, when all of us are intensely concerned to see how the good reputation of Parliament can be better upheld, would surely be in effect an abdication of the central responsibility that Parliament has for itself and for its own good conduct. I am deeply opposed to these amendments.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, not for the first time this afternoon I find myself in complete agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport. This amendment, well intended as I am sure it is—I have the highest regard for those who have put their names to it—is damaging to Parliament. It is inimical to the spirit of Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights. Frankly, like the noble Lord, I am astonished that people whom I regard so highly as doughty defenders of Parliament should in fact be complicit in an amendment that, if passed, could have the effect only of further emasculating Parliament. I also agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, when he expresses concern that the committee in another place should have recommended this lay participation. That is inimical to the whole doctrine of parliamentary privilege, which is of incalculable importance and, when used correctly, is a bulwark of our liberties in this country.

There was no prouder day for me than when I was elected to another place. A number of your Lordships who were there are present this afternoon. It is interesting that those who are expressing particularly acute concerns about the Bill are mostly those who have served in another place. When I entered that place, I felt, in the words of, I think, Admiral Rodney in the 18th century, that there was no higher honour that any Englishman— of course in those days there were no women in Parliament—could aspire to than being a member of a sovereign parliament in a sovereign nation. That we should be whittling away at the very foundations of our parliamentary and civil liberties makes me profoundly sad. I could not support this amendment; I cannot support the Bill in any way, shape or form.

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[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 4 would reduce the petition signing period from eight weeks to six weeks. On Report, we debated the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, to reduce the signing period to three weeks. The Government felt that shortening the availability of the petition to this length of time would make the petition process unworkable, especially for those who wished to sign by post. However, it was clear from that debate that the decision to increase the number of signing places to a maximum of 10 could allow us to consider a reduction in the signing period.

We have listened carefully to the arguments put forward for reducing the signing period and believe that a reduction to six weeks is a sensible and practicable step. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and also to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, who is not in his place today, whose amendments at previous stages of the Bill’s consideration have raised this question. Having reflected on the issue, we consider that a shortened period of six weeks would strike the right balance between tightening the process and enabling proper access to signing. It would allow sufficient time for electors to consider the campaigns for and against signing the petition and enable those who wish to sign by post to make an application.

Additionally, the revised period would still allow the petition officer to check and approve postal applications in good time for signing sheets to be issued and returned, including making the important check that an elector has not already signed the petition in person. A further benefit of shortening the signing period, which was referred to in previous debates, is that constituents will find out the result of the petition sooner, and if a by-election is to be held, this would enable the election of their Member of Parliament more quickly.

In considering this issue, we have taken very seriously the views of your Lordships’ House and we believe that the amendment is a sensible improvement to the operation of the recall petition. The amendment has the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for which I am most grateful. For those reasons, I beg to move.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Gardiner of Kimble and Lord Wallace of Saltaire, for their characteristic generosity and their willingness to reflect upon the issues that were raised in the debate on Report, to meet me and my noble friend on the Front Bench, and the decision they have reached to reduce the signing period from eight weeks to six weeks.

There were four essential arguments in connection with this. One was that, as a result of the most welcome amendment which the Government themselves brought in on Report increasing the number of signing places to up to 10, there will not be the same difficulty for registered electors to find their way to somewhere where they can sign.

There is also the question of cost. We do not want to prolong this process and its associated costs any longer than is necessary. Maintaining no fewer than two staff, I should think, who will work quite long hours for eight weeks and in up to 10 signing places, with the costs of premises and equipment, will be pretty expensive. Indeed, I would be interested to know if the Government have made any calculation or estimate of how much per week they anticipate this process to cost. Anyway, it is highly desirable that it should be kept to the minimum.

Another argument was very strongly made by my noble friend Lady Hayter of Kentish Town that it is most important to minimise the period during which citizens in a particular constituency would not have the services of their MP available to them, whether in the constituency or in the House of Commons.

Finally, what is for me the most important argument is that it is desirable to minimise the period of what I think will be an intensely unpleasant political process. We will see journalistic vultures circling around what they take to be political carrion. As people witness this experience—I hope to goodness that they never will and that the provisions of this Bill never have to be operated in practice—I fear that the unpleasant nature of this political process will deepen the revulsion that many feel for politics and that any gain in accountability will be more than offset by an increase in public disaffection with politics.

While I do not want in any way to be churlish, I think that the Government have perhaps been unduly timid in reducing the signing period from eight weeks to only six weeks. My amendment on Report proposed a period of three weeks and that was perhaps a little optimistic, but I would have thought that the necessary processes could be transacted in four or five weeks. I was unpersuaded by what was a key argument put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, that ample time should be made available for people who do not already have postal votes but decide that they would like to sign this petition by way of a postal procedure to be able to apply to do so. I think that that is a bit of a luxury that is not really needed. At all events, the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, pointed out to us in an earlier debate that a whole general election can be conducted in four weeks; we are about to have a general election conducted over a period of five and a half weeks including the Easter holiday. So I think that insisting on a period of no fewer than six weeks for a petition, which would find its conclusive result if only 10% of the electors sign it, is unduly timid.

However, as I say, I do not wish to be churlish and I am genuinely grateful. A reduction from eight weeks to six weeks is 25% off, and that is pretty good. I thank both noble Lords and I am happy to support the government amendment.