Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Snape Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend, who has accurately put his finger on the weakness inherent in the Bill. I join him in the plea for the House of Commons to stand up for itself, for a change, rather than go on accepting what I can only call the backwash of the expenses scandal by, first, setting up IPSA, as he mentioned, and now this Bill. Perhaps I am a lone voice in this debate but I am against the Bill; I think it is a bad Bill and I do not see its purpose. The amendments from our Front Bench, no matter how gracefully moved by my noble friend, worsen an already bad Bill, and personally I am not prepared to have any of it.

First, though, I observe the courtesies of the House by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Cooper of Windrush, on his eminently fluent maiden speech. I am not one of those people who is against opinion polls; indeed, back in 1983 an opinion poll that said that I was about to lose in my own constituency galvanised enough Labour supporters to save my neck by 296 votes, so if that was anything to do with the noble Lord’s company I am more than grateful after all these years.

When we refer to the Bill, as noble Lords on both sides of the House have, as helping to restore public confidence in their Members of Parliament, I am afraid that I do not believe a word of it. I was interested to hear the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, who is a constitutional expert. He took us through what he saw as a stronger Bill that might—he was careful to emphasise the word “might”—help to restore public confidence in MPs. I appreciate that he said what he said as a constitutional expert; I might put to him at another time, perhaps during the passage of the Bill, whether he would be happy to stand for the House of Commons knowing that such a Bill had become law. I do not think that those of us who spent a few years down there would be entirely happy with the principle of recall. Again, I think that the House of Commons should police itself and have the courage to suspend or reject those MPs considered or proved to have misbehaved.

I am also very much against the principle of rule by the mob, whether an electronic mob or any other sort. Deplorably, in my view, a couple of weeks ago an American, whose name I have forgotten, was barred from this country because of the crazy and laughable views that he held about the relationship between men and women. Instead of his being treated with the contempt and derision he deserved, the full panoply of the state was brought upon him to bar him from the United Kingdom—I was surprised that the Home Secretary fell for it—as a result, I put to your Lordships, of an electronic petition against him being allowed into the country. A fairly mature democracy such as ours ought to be able to allow a barmy American with even sillier ideas into our country without democracy being endangered, but therein lies the problem as far as electronic democracy is concerned.

Since the e-petitions service was set up, more than 60,000 of them have been tabled, with an average of 6.4 million signatures per year. In the first year there were 36,000 petitions and 17 million visits to the site. I listened with interest to the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, about local democracy and the views of the local electorate. He was a popular fellow in his constituency; I am sure that if he had walked down the high street there and asked a dozen of his constituents if they would sign a petition, four of them would say yes because they liked him, two might say no because unaccountably they did not, and the other half dozen would have something better to do with their time. In my view, that is what is wrong with the whole idea that somehow if you collect 100,000 signatures, that is the real force of public opinion and whatever policy they advocate should be adopted.

Not all electronic petitions have been frivolous; the ones on Hillsborough, Millie’s Trust and Sergeant Blackman—the Royal Marine who, unaccountably, was sentenced to prison—were sensible and, in my view, understandable petitions, but they were no basis on which to change the law. They were a fragment of public opinion at a particular time, signed, in my view, largely—this is easily done online these days—by people saying, “Oh, that looks all right, I’ll sign that”. That is how many of those signatures are collected. There is no issue of principle behind the signing of those petitions.

As has been mentioned by other noble Lords, not least my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport, Mr Zac Goldsmith was determined to denounce this legislation and in effect to allow recall by petition by his or anybody else’s constituents. Make no mistake about it that that is the road on which we are now travelling with this legislation. But it will not stop with Members of Parliament being charged with various offences. There will be greater pressure from those great organs of democracy, the British media and press, for this to be widened so that, if people who are unpopular for any reason transgress in any way—let us say somebody on the left of my party in the House of Commons, some of whom regularly attract the scorn of our daily papers—they will be the ones towards which the electronic mob’s ire will be directed by the press. That is no way for a sensible democracy to be run.

On the question of Mr Goldsmith and his views, he is—as the Independent tells us—the richest man in the House of Commons. I have nothing against him for that. I have seen his picture: he is handsome, in his 30s, terribly rich. I would sign a recall petition for somebody like that straight away—those are three good reasons for anyone to sign it. However, I would not necessarily want to throw him out because of those three virtues. Shortly after his own election in Richmond Park, “Channel 4 News” and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism looked at his expenses. They said that he had erected 400 posters in his constituency at an estimated cost of £8,000—his overall expenses were just over £10,000 anyway; he issued over 200 blue coats with “I back Zac” on the back to many of his helpers; and, incredibly, he published 262,000 leaflets, which presumably gave the same message. The bill for those leaflets alone was estimated at £14,000, which was considerably more than his own expenses. He said that he threw most of them away; if he is the richest man in the House of Commons, I do not suppose that that makes much difference to him. I do not think that I issued 262,000 leaflets in my constituency of West Bromwich East in seven general elections, let alone in one. He described that as “sleazy journalism” when the matter was raised by “Channel 4 News”. I raise it here just to say that, if by any chance Mr Goldsmith’s views were brought into law and there was a recall of the Member of Parliament, imagine the resources he would bring to bear in those circumstances. The whole of the constituency would be walking around in new blue coats that said “I back Zac”, would they not? That is not the right way forward as far as democracy is concerned.

I will finish as I started. If the House of Commons feels that its Members have transgressed in an improper way, they should take proper action. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, who moved the Bill with his customary courtesy, that given the number of years he spent advising Ministers, I am always surprised that his admiration for them and for politicians remains undimmed. He will have to toughen the Bill and change it considerably during its remaining stages, but I am afraid I shall remain convinced that the duty of removing errant Members of Parliament should lie with their colleagues in the other place.