Recall of MPs Bill

Mike Thornton Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (UKIP)]

I feel so strongly about recall that I recalled myself. All three established parties pretended that they were in favour of recall, too, and went into the last general election offering voters a right of recall, but four and a half years on that has not happened. They have found time to debate a referendum on the alternative vote system and to talk at length about non-existent Lords reform. We have debated every subject imaginable under the sun, but somehow we have failed to pass legislation to make MPs meaningfully accountable to voters. And we wonder why there is such distrust in politics.

Worse, the coalition now brings to this House measures so deeply flawed that they are unworthy of the name recall. Let us be clear about what is being proposed. If an MP is suspended from the House of Commons for 21 days or more, a petition process is triggered. Should 10% of local people sign it, the MP ceases to be a Member of this House and there is a by-election. Therein lies the first and most fundamental flaw in the Bill: it is a recall Bill without a recall mechanism. As those on the coalition Front Bench well know, recall mechanisms involve a local referendum that asks whether the sitting MP should be recalled—yes, or no. It should be a binary choice, not a by-election. If 50% plus one agree, there should be a by-election, but it is up to local people to decide whether there should be—not 10% of local people, but a majority of local people. Where in the legislation is that mechanism? The coalition has forgotten to include a recall mechanism in the recall Bill.

Worse than being a recall Bill without recall, the Bill will have precisely the opposite effect to that which is intended. It is a proposal that is supposed to make MPs more accountable to voters that leaves the trigger firmly in the hands of Westminster grandees. A measure designed to make MPs answer outwards to the electorate ends up strengthening the power of Whips. As the Bill is drafted, MPs and Whips, not voters, will sit in judgment on errant MPs. It is an implausible Bill from an implausible Front Bench with an implausible record on political reform.

[Mike Thornton (Eastleigh) (LD)]

If there was a way to put more power back in the hands of the electorate to decide whether an MP should be recalled, although not necessarily without any grounds whatsoever, would the hon. Gentleman feel that that was a better way of proceeding?

[Douglas Carswell]

I certainly would. My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) is going to table some excellent amendments, which I will do everything I can to support. That will ensure that we have a recall Bill worthy of the name and of the promise made to voters.

The Deputy Prime Minister has expressed his concern that real recall might leave MPs subject to partisan pressure and sectional interests, yet by leaving it to Westminster insiders to decide who gets to face a by-election, MPs are going to be vulnerable to precisely the sectional interests from which they most need protection—the party Whips.

I would like hon. Members to cast their minds back to the previous Member who represented Norwich North—Dr Ian Gibson. I mean no disrespect to the current MP, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), when I say that I have known Ian Gibson for over 20 years and I know what a good and decent man he is. More to the point, I know that his constituents in Norwich, a city I know well, knew what a good and decent man he is, yet he was thrown to the wolves by the Whips. At the height of the expenses scandal, after a couple of awkward headlines, he was judged by his party Whips to be guilty. Perhaps his real guilt lay in the fact that he failed to sign someone’s nomination papers; I do not know. However, had there been a proper recall mechanism in place, I am absolutely certain that Ian Gibson would have been exonerated by those who knew him best—Norwich voters. As MPs, we should have nothing to fear from recall.

--- Later in debate ---

[Douglas Carswell]

I am grateful for that powerful point. If I thought that this measure would allow lynch mob justice, I would be against it, but I trust the judgment of the people in aggregate. Just as we can trust a jury to decide and sometimes exercise perhaps more common sense than public prosecutors, so we can trust the electorate in aggregate to make decisions about the conduct of Members. If we proceed with this, I think we will discover that the voters are a pretty liberal bunch and a pretty forgiving bunch. I generally think that if we trust remote, unaccountable officials and grandees in Westminster, we are likely to get worse decisions than if we trusted the voters in aggregate. If we can improve the proposals by widening the body of people who decide, so much the better.

[Mike Thornton]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his forbearance. He makes a good point about jurors, but before something gets to the jury, it has to be established whether there is a prima facie case to answer. The jury is thus deciding on a case that has already had some legs to go before the judge and jury in the first place. Following the hon. Gentleman’s reasoning to a logical conclusion, perhaps there should be some way of judging a case before it came before the public through the recall petition.

[Douglas Carswell]

That strengthens my point considerably. Until the 1930s, this country had grand juries to determine whether there was a prima facie case. If that had happened, we would not have had the number of cases being brought to court when common sense would have dictated that they should never have been brought to court. If we have grand juries and trust the people, we get better decisions in the courts. If we trust a wider body of people to determine whether or not an MP should remain, we get better judgments and more effective recall proposals. Wherever more people are included in a decision-making process, we generally get better decisions.

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[Mr Davis]

This point has been made a number of times, particularly by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)but also by others. My hon. Friend is presuming that his constituents would vote on the basis of a simple political judgment, according to whether they wanted a Labour Government, a Tory Government, a Liberal Government or even a UKIP Government, but I do not believe that our constituents behave like that. I believe that they behave in a moral way and make judgments about us. I have discussed this matter with my constituents. Many of those who have never voted for me in my 20-odd years in the constituency would not vote to remove me on that basis. They would not make such a judgment on a political basis. They would recognise that this was a quasi-judicial judgment. That is why we are better off trusting the public than trusting the hierarchy in this House.

[Mike Thornton]

Much of what the right hon. Gentleman says about our constituents is true. However, he is perhaps slightly out of date in regard to the collecting of signatures. We have seen 38 Degrees inundating us with e-mails, and with modern technology it would not be as difficult as it used to be to get a great number of signatures.

[Mr Davis]

The hon. Gentleman misses the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park made. This would involve not an electronic collection but a physical collection of votes. People would have to get out and go down to their town hall or their polling station. I think we have nominated four locations for any given constituency. We thought about this very point; indeed, it is one of the things we crowd-tested with 40,000 people. They recognised, as did members of 38 Degrees, that an electronic vote would be the wrong way to carry out this process. It has to be a process in which people exercise a moral judgment and overcome a physical hurdle by going down to one of those locations and doing something about it. Again, this shows that we are better off trusting our own constituents.

There was much argument in Committee about the figure of 20%. Some people talked about 25%; others talked about less. The simple truth is that 20% is pretty much the norm internationally. Most, if not all, other countries exercising this mechanism do not experience many vexatious actions. The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones)made legitimate points about the role of big money in this exercise, but only a Californian governor has been replaced throughout the century in which this mechanism has been in place in America, despite the fact that many people would have been vehemently opposed by big corporate interests. In any event, we can deal with that through the regulations and laws that will surround this Bill when we make it an Act of Parliament.

This is an incredibly important Bill, but the Government have got it quite materially wrong. This is one of those rare occasions on which it is for the House of Commons to make a judgment that will decide our own future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Thornton (Eastleigh) (LD)]

I have been called earlier than expected, because there seems to be a lack of Opposition Members in the Chamber, which I greatly regret.

Interestingly, Members spoke about those with safe or marginal seats. For Lib Dems, there is of course no such thing as a safe seat. Looking back—I am fairly inexperienced in this Chamber—I must admit that 10 years ago I had absolutely no idea that I would be standing here to talk about recall, but I thought that I had better get up and speak.

A few people have spoken to me about America, although it has not been mentioned much in this debate. Of course, America does not have by-elections. If somebody is removed, a governor or whoever appoints somebody in their place. It therefore does not expose the seat to the sort of manipulation for political purposes that might happen in this country.

The hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) spoke about a job description. We do not have one, but we could certainly live by a code of conduct. We may need to consider that.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) said that we should be honourable. He said that there is no need for the Bill because we have honour, although not among thieves. I think that it was Lord Hewart, when he was Lord Chief Justice, who coined the phrase, “Justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done.” Perhaps the problem is that people see Members of this House as not as honourable as we are, not as hard-working as we are, and not as committed to doing what we should be doing for our constituents and the country as we are.

When I came to the House, I was incredibly impressed by how hard everyone works and how committed they are to their constituents. There are probably a few exceptions. [Interruption.] Even the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) is an honourable person who has his constituents at heart. Most of us fight for our principles, but we have to compromise to ensure that what we get done is good for the country. Sometimes we have to say, “I can’t do this, but I can do that.” We have all done that within parties and within the Government.

Unfortunately, the Bill has serious flaws. The main flaw is that, if it goes through unamended, the public will see that we are deciding who should be kicked out and who should not. I agree with what Lord Hewart said. We must not just be honourable; we need a mechanism that allows the public to see that we are honourable. The public must have a way of initiating a recall.

I have read the amendments of the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith). Not only would they open the process to political abuse, but they are so horrendously long-winded and complicated that the chances of succeeding in getting anyone recalled if they deserved it would be minimal. The process could be dragged out for two years, at which point the MP would be more or less useless and would probably resign anyway. It is just not a good mechanism.

We need a decent amendment that would allow the public to bring an issue to some sort of independent body of Parliament. I am not clever enough to say at this moment how that could be done. Perhaps a judge or someone else would be able to say, “This person has breached the code of conduct.” It does not have to be anything criminal. Teachers and social workers can lose their jobs for non-criminal activity if they breach a code of conduct. We need to allow the public to point out when someone has breached a code of conduct. If a reasonable case is brought forward—not proven, but reasonable—a recall mechanism should be instituted.

I think—believe it or not—that the 10% threshold is too high if it is demonstrated that somebody has breached the code of conduct. We need to reduce it to provide a reasonable chance that somebody who has done something wrong will be recalled. However, I do not want someone to be recalled just because somebody else feels like it. It is possible that, after my by-election, 20% of my electorate could have said, “We might be able to get rid of him and get someone else in.” I do not think that it would have been fair to have another by-election six months later.

I put it to the House that we need a compromise between the proposals of the hon. Member for Richmond Park and the Bill, which is very weak. I will vote for the Bill, but I will do so in order that a good amendment can be tabled that makes it workable, practical and fair.