Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Martin of Springburn Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

I was not going to speak in this debate, but I think it is important that some of us who have not got a parliamentary background contribute. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, on making his contribution, even though I do not reach the same conclusion as he does.

I am raising this as a former member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, rather than as a parliamentarian. I know that this remark is tinged with Second Reading—but this is the worst form of populism. One has to ask the question, will it improve standards in public life? My view is that it will not. Will it improve the standing of Members of Parliament? My view is that it will not. Could it be the thin end of the wedge? That is open to debate. It is very important that we do not go down this sentimental road of talking about all these brave MPs who have done this, that and the other. We need to look at it from the point of view of the future. Are there other ways of improving the standard of Members of Parliament? Yes, by enhancing parliamentary democracy. I am concerned that an agreement has been reached by the Front Benches to support this Bill but that it does not necessarily enhance parliamentary democracy. I have to say that it is in the interests of Front-Benchers who want to be in government, or are in government, to improve and enhance the power of the Executive, if necessary at the expense of parliamentary democracy. I do worry about that.

There are issues such as the whole area of expenses, which people may think have been improved, but I do not. There is an argument for a very large salary for MPs, with no expenses and no second home allowances or anything else, and having a clean-cut, sensible and transparent system of payment, which is aligned to some recognised body and which could be determined by an independent body. You could then get rid of IPSA overnight. I have a number of other suggestions but will not take up the time of the Committee, and apologise to the noble Lord, because I realise this is not, strictly speaking, relevant to this particular amendment. However, the sooner this piece of popcorn disappears off the legislative agenda the better.

[Lord Martin of Springburn (CB)]

I have often been careful in the past to remind Members in the other place that they should not use amendments for Second Reading purposes, but perhaps I can stray, because the expenses situation has been mentioned by my noble friend and others and I find it interesting with regard to the recall of MPs. When I came into this House, some Members who had served in the other place were quick to condemn those who were, for want of a better word, exposed in the expenses scandal and said that it was a terrible thing. It was a terrible thing because five years of expenses were exposed at one time, because of freedom of information and the way it was handled. I have often thought this to myself and now say it out loud: if only some of those ex-Members who are now Members of the House of Lords and who were quick to criticise had been prepared to explicitly produce their bank statements, we might have been able to see what they claimed in parliamentary expenses.

However, that is not the reason I am on my feet. Forgive me if I do not get the first name right, but I remember Harold McCusker, who went to jail on a principle regarding the Troubles in Northern Ireland. He had a different point of view from myself and the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, but I got on well with Harold McCusker. After he came out of jail, he said to me that it is a very humbling experience when the door is slammed on a prison cell, and you are in there wondering whether you have done the right thing. I often read the lovely articles that the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, writes when he speaks about recall and I ask him to think about the following point that I would like to make about expenses.

The media have their favourites—let us not kid ourselves. I go back to the expenses. There was a Member of Parliament—and good luck to him; I do not like using names, and in fact, I think there is a rule that we should not criticise Members of Parliament in the other place—who got into serious difficulty. Members of the media publicly said, and they were entitled to do so, “Well, you see, he was gay. He did not want his mother to find out about it”—I am not going to hammer this home—“because he was a Catholic”. Well, my mother brought up five children, and she was the most devout Catholic I ever met and am ever likely to meet. I tell you this: she would have known if one of her sons was gay. Then I look at the sum concerned, quite a fantastic sum of money. The power of forgiveness is important, and I do not deny anybody the right to defend someone who has erred. I think it was Robert Burns who said:

“Then gently scan your brother man,

Still gentler sister woman”,

and if you find that they have erred:

“To step aside is human”.

Here is the point I make to the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, and maybe he can think about it with some of his friends in the media. There was a man in the other place who went to prison. Those of us who were dealing with that individual before he went to prison knew that he should have been cared for with regards to alcoholism. He should have been in the Priory or some other institution. I speak as a teetotaller. At that time I spoke to parliamentary Whips about his difficulties. Anyone who knows about alcoholism knows that one of the difficulties with an alcoholic is you sometimes cannot tell them that they are their own worst enemy. For a small amount, he went to jail. Not one individual in the media stood up and said, “That man needs help rather than prison”.

Here is where I go when we come to recall. You get a recall, and let us say that you get people in a marginal seat. There could be a single issue in that constituency at that time. It could be a threatened hospital closure or some other big issue. Then mob rule can prevail.

The other place is entitled to do what it wants. Our great strength is to draw on our experience and the life that we have had and to say, “Watch, and be very careful what you are doing”. The aftermath of the expenses fiasco—the debacle, the scandal—has meant that it introduced IPSA. No one can even purchase as much as a postage stamp or a half a pint of milk but it has got to be made public. There is talk and complaint about that. The rigid system that exists there has come out of the difficulties of the past. We have a serious problem. Any time that I have been involved in legislation where both sides of the House and the third party are in agreement, then within a short space of time we rue the day that we made that decision.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, this has turned out to be a rather more interesting discussion on the amendments than I had anticipated. I do not want to repeat my Second Reading speech, but I remind the House that particularly this third arm, if you like, was added by our party with great support in the other place. It was not added because some of us wanted to be Ministers. In fact, when some of us supported it, we were not even in this House. It was because those outside Parliament were deeply shocked when they saw MPs doing things which, if they were in any other profession, would have lost them their jobs. They saw these people still turning up at their place of work the day after they had done things that any other employer would have dismissed them for.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Grocott]

If that is the answer, it is, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, knows perfectly well, not a very good one.

As I say, I simply put it to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, that the proposed measure is so all-encompassing that the thin end of the wedge argument is encapsulated in these amendments. I do not want to see MPs thrown out in these circumstances. I do not want to get personal and refer to any particular MP who I would be very pleased to see spend more time with his family. However, we should not seek to remove Members of Parliament for certain actions that they have taken, for which they are answerable in any case as and when a general election comes about.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

My Lords, I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I have misunderstood the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, but I think that he said that there was an exception to the rule in the case of some Members of Parliament from Northern Ireland who make it a point not to come to Westminster to take the oath. However, we have been talking about expenses and it should be remembered that the Members concerned are not slow to claim their full expenses, including secretarial expenses, and in some cases—I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I am wrong—I believe that they claim their allowance for living in London. I am very fond of Northern Ireland but I remember that a Member of Parliament from Northern Ireland, Frank Maguire, who may have served alongside the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, was famous in connection with a vote of confidence. Frank promised his electorate that, if elected, he would attend Westminster only when abortion was being discussed and for nothing else. We could have a situation whereby some Members of Parliament would not even be looked at by the proposed judicial body whereas others would be by reason of their non-attendance. That is where I see flaws in the argument.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I shall never forget Frank Maguire on that March evening in 1979. He had been brought over to sustain the Labour Government. He was hospitably entertained during the day and then came the vote. The Government fell by one vote and it was discovered that Frank had not voted. “Ah, but to be sure, I came to abstain in person”, said Frank. He was behaving entirely properly as a Member of Parliament. He had laid before his electorate the terms on which he sought to be elected.

I say to my noble friend Lord Tyler, for whom I have an affectionate regard, that his series of amendments would just make a bad Bill worse for the reasons alluded to in a very elegant brief speech by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth—namely, that they would introduce another constraining element. A Member of Parliament should not be cribbed, cabined or confined in any way. He or she should be able to—following the Burkean principle—give of their industry, knowledge and service to their constituents, but they should not be delegates.

That means that from time to time a Member of Parliament will be at odds with a large percentage of his constituents. As the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and my noble friend Lord Tyler have tellingly illustrated, when a Member of Parliament is elected he may often have the tiniest and flimsiest of majorities. By definition, those who voted against him will be disappointed by the result. But disappointment should not in any way be a springboard for action against that Member.