Recall of MPs Bill

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith]

My point about the 5% in Tuesday’s debate was that every constituency, without exception, will have one or two or a handful of people who will want to initiate the process. My point was that the 5% notice of intent to recall might well bubble away in constituencies up and down the country, but in a world where recall existed that is something to which we would become accustomed. If a petition began to reach the 3,500 mark in a one-month period, I would say that that would be a fairly good indication that the recall petition was merited in that constituency, for whatever reason it had been initiated.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

In signing this amendment I have signalled my support in principle of it, but I think it would be strengthened if the petition officer had before him a definition of what should represent justification for recall. He could then judge, at the very start, whether it was a case of hounding out or something less serious.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I would argue that that is exactly what the coalition Government have attempted to do, but they have failed. It is very hard to define wrongdoing by a Member of Parliament, because our jobs mean something different from constituency to constituency. Any number of Committees, my own included, have attempted to define wrongdoing by MPs, but it is almost impossible to do so. For example, an amendment tabled by the Liberal Democrats, with support from Members of other parties, suggests that an MP who engages in “gross dereliction of duty” would qualify for their new trigger for recall, but how is it possible to define the duty of MPs when there is no job description? Would that include an MP who never turns up to Parliament to vote? I suspect not, because if it did we would have a problem with Sinn Fein and open a whole can of worms that many Members would not want to open at this stage.

Those amendments are a complete waste of time because it is impossible to define wrongdoing. The only people who are qualified to define whether an MP is behaving well or badly and living up to expectations or not are the people that MP represents. That is why the protection needs to be in the threshold, not in the definition.