Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith]

My right hon. Friend’s point goes to the heart of our debate because it deals with a much more profound concern than those three technical points with which I have attempted to deal. This is the line in the sand on which we will need to decide today. It relates to the fear that elected representatives could be unfairly hounded from office—kicked out because of how they voted on issues such as gay marriage, the badger cull or HS2. It is the idea that the mere existence of recall would make Members nervous about expressing themselves on controversial issues, and that rich and powerful vested interests could chase from Parliament those who dare to stand up against them.

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

rose—

[Zac Goldsmith]

Those fears, however sincere, are misguided, and I want to explain why before I take any further interventions.

First, on a technical level, the numbers make such a thing virtually impossible. To reiterate, under my proposals, no Member could be recalled unless 50% plus one of his or her constituents voted for that recall, so there would be no question of a minority hounding an MP out of office—unlike with the Government’s plans, under which, bizarrely, 10% of constituents could throw out their MP, even if the other 90% absolutely adored them—and no Member could even face a full recall vote unless 20% of electors, or roughly 14,000 people, made the effort to go in person to a town hall, within a limited time frame, to sign a petition asking for one. We heard last week from hon. Members who had received 500 e-mails about badger culls and 400 e-mails about equal marriage, but those figures of 400 and 500 would be nowhere near enough to topple an MP, to trigger a referendum, or even to get to the point of having a recall petition. Those numbers are pitifully small compared with those required to clear the hurdles even to instigate the process that I am describing. What is more, those letters that MPs receive are often online and in template form; they can be sent at the mere click of a mouse. We are talking about a completely different scenario.

It is no coincidence that many of the Members who have unfairly faced the greatest difficulty during this Parliament, the very people whom the critics of recall might imagine to be the most vulnerable to attack, have put their names to my amendments, and they were the first to do so—my hon. Friends the Members for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) and my right hon. Friends the Members for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) and for Meriden (Mrs Spelman). They did so because they know that the existence of recall is the best possible way of challenging a noisy minority of critics either to put up or shut up. They know that when a recall petition fails to materialise, a Member will be able to turn to his or her tormentors and say, “The silent majority does not share your view.”

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[Mr Jones]

I do not think that money should determine that or, as my hon. Friend says, how Members behave. People should be elected on a broad range of issues, and it is for the electorate to determine subsequently whether they are re-elected.

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) says that he is proposing strong financial controls, but his amendment 23 would provide only that Ministers should have the power to apply controls on spending to the notice of intent and recall referendum processes. He does not say what the controls or the financial limits might be. Indeed, the limit during the recall petition period for which the Bill provides is £10,000 per accredited campaigner, but there is no limit on the number of accredited campaigners.

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[Greg Clark]

I do, and if my right hon. Friend—I know him to be right hon.—is patient, I will make those suggestions later.

New clause 2 is operable only if amendment 1 and new clause 1 are passed. It provides for a 200-word statement by the promoter of the recall petition, and a reply by the defending MP, to be included in the petition. Let me say something about some of the flaws in that understandable provision. The notice of intent to recall could contain accusations that are unfounded or unproven. Although the MP would of course have the right to reply, the inclusion of an unfair and unfounded statement on an official communication to every elector would almost certainly damage their reputation, particularly as the petition officer has a duty to send the statement to everyone on the electoral roll. Indeed, the statement could be positively libellous, and although the MP could seek damages though the courts, the injury to their reputation would be difficult, if not impossible, to repair.

[Mr Lansley]

Whereas my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) included in clause 9 of his Recall of Elected Representatives Bill a provision whereby any process would be stayed where there was an indictment on a chargeable offence, that has not been included in the amendments before us today. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is another flaw in the amendments? Clearly a notice of intent could include statements that would be prejudicial to a police investigation, as well as potentially very libellous and unfounded. My right hon. Friend has not yet noted this—I am sure that he has read it—but in those circumstances the Member would be given two working days in which to frame a reply to the statement of reasons.

[Greg Clark]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. He points to some other flaws in the amendment, which in itself is designed to be sensible and constructive, as having a statement and a rebuttal is clearly sensible.

Let me turn to the amendments tabled by a group of colleagues on both sides of the House, including the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome, my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), the hon. Members for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) and my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith). I have a great deal of sympathy with the thinking behind the amendments, which the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome set out comprehensively. They would give the public a role, which some have felt has been missing, in initiating recall, and provide an answer to the charge that one flaw of the Bill is that it is about MPs marking their own homework. Those are two themes that emerged on Second Reading. In line with our manifesto commitments, and with the views of many Members who spoke on Second Reading, and indeed today, the important point about the amendments is that they would keep the recall process focused on misconduct, which I think is the advantage of the approach he has set out.

The amendments propose that where misconduct in public office is alleged, electors in a constituency would be able to start a petition to initiate a recall process. They would require 100 electors to support the petition before it could be presented to an election court. I do not need to labour the point—my hon. Friend mentioned it—that this is a suggested way forward that clearly raises important legal drafting requirements, so I do not think that it will be possible at this stage to commit to endorsing them. But I think that he has proposed an important avenue and the possibility of a third trigger that is linked to an initiative of the public, which is valuable.

With regard to some of the difficulties, there is a widening of the definition of misconduct to include “gross dereliction of duty”. As others have said, that would require some understanding of what that might embrace.

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[Crispin Blunt]

I have absolutely no idea. The Prime Minister is trying to run a coalition. He has to keep within this coalition our colleagues who are helping us to govern and delivering a majority in voting for taxes that make for some form of fiscally sensible arrangement. Of course there are going to be grubby deals—they have to be done. My hon. Friend has possibly given an example, although I have no idea of whether what she says is accurate.

The proposals by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park open us up to the possibility of being subject to recall all the time. That would make it immensely more difficult to support a Government in maintaining a coherent programme. There is a reason why Governments do the difficult things in the first few years of the Parliament: it is because they know they are going to be unpopular.

Part of my hon. Friend’s argument was to say, “The key thing here is about public confidence.” I accept that there is a lack of public confidence in this institution; that is why the Government have finally got round to proposing this measure. However, we must ask ourselves whether that will be addressed by our cowering yet lower in the face of it, or whether we should get off our knees, have some institutional self-confidence, and make the case that we are, in fact, regulated to an enormous extent as Members of Parliament. We have the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, the criminal law—which, if we are convicted, will result in our being thrown out—the Standards and Privileges Committee, the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and all the rest. An enormous number of bodies now oversee this place and our behaviour.

The question is whether this Bill is trying to address a real, practical problem about our behaviour, individually or collectively. The answer, I suggest, is no. Is there a reputational issue? Of course there is, and we have to work out the right solution to that. The Government’s proposals, which try to find a limited way of doing something to create the principle of recall, are not right and do not address the issue practically, while the proposals by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park are frankly dangerous. I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) and my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) about the dangers that they open up. Those arguments were also made by the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones).

[Mr Lansley]

I put it to my hon. Friend that there is a gap in the regulation, which the Bill is intended to fill. When the public see instances of gross misconduct that result in either a court sentence or a substantial period of suspension from this House, they say that in any other normal profession people would lose their jobs under such circumstances. This Bill puts Members in that position when it might not have happened otherwise.

[Crispin Blunt]

Do we have an actual problem or a perception of a problem that does not actually exist? In practice, we do not have a problem. If a Member is sentenced to imprisonment for a period of less than a year, it is highly likely that they will choose to stand down, as has happened. Equally, the same thing is likely if Members receive a sentence from the Standards and Privileges Committee, as happened with our former colleague Patrick Mercer, who decided to stand down. There is not a practical issue that we are trying to address. I accept there is a perception issue, but we have to work out the right way to address it.

The hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) made a further practical argument against the measures proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park. When I lost the executive vote on my reselection, the issue was put to a simple vote of the members of the Conservative party in Reigate, but take it from me: that occupied most of my attention for the two months it took to complete the ballot. I won by a margin of five to one, but the process was something of a modest distraction from my other work representing my constituents. The hon. Member for Swansea West made an absolutely valid point: the suggested process would be the most enormous distraction from the duties we are actually here to do.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough has said, are we not already subject to recall? Every five years we have to face the electorate in a general election.