Enabling the Public to call a General Election

Debate between Richard Burgon and Martin Vickers

Tuesday 15th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon]

I thank the hon. Member, who is ever assiduous in attending and contributing to these important debates, for his intervention. My opinion is that this Government have had more than enough chances to deliver, and while we disagree on the need for a general election now, I will make some wider points that he might be interested in considering.

I hope that this discussion will help to kick-start a conversation about why we need to modernise our democracy to empower ordinary people and prevent an unrepresentative Government or unrepresentative Governments from clinging on to power when people have had enough. Of course, such a mechanism should only be able to be used in extraordinary times, but the current crisis shows why it is needed.

Such a Bill is part of a series of measures that we need to restore trust in our democracy. For example, last year I introduced a Bill seeking to ban MPs from taking second jobs. My latest proposal is for a form of recall mechanism, and it is a response to the political crisis we face. We have had two new Prime Ministers since the public last had their say at the 2019 election. Just 80,000 Conservative party members put one of those Prime Ministers into Downing Street, and even fewer people had a say with her successor, who was chosen solely by Conservative MPs. Both these Prime Ministers have been intent on tearing up the promises that their party was elected on in 2019. For example, who voted in the 2019 election for the new wave of austerity that looks set to be announced later this week?

This Government have no mandate. They have also undermined political trust. Institute for Public Policy Research findings on levels of trust in our politics should concern every single Member of this House. It found that trust in politicians is at the lowest level on record, with two in three now seeing politicians as “merely out for themselves” and just 4% of British people believing that parliamentarians are doing their best for the country. No one side in this House can take satisfaction from this. Voters across the political spectrum are united in their distrust: 67% of remain voters, 68% of leave voters, 64% of Conservative voters and 69% of Labour voters believe that politicians are merely out for themselves.

Trust, I am afraid, is in free fall. The 9% fall we have witnessed over the last 18 months shows a rapid acceleration of growing distrust. In comparison, it took seven years for the previous drop of 9 percentage points, and 42 years before that. The IPPR warns that a decrease in trust in politicians is profoundly disturbing. It is linked to long-term damaging consequences such as lower voter turnout, especially among under-represented groups. The Office for National Statistics reports similar concerns with trust in our democratic institutions. Deep reform of our economy and politics will be needed to address this.

It is clear that our democracy is not fit for purpose, and there are two ways of dealing with this crisis of democracy. There is the method of this Government, which is to attack hard-won civil liberties and curtail democratic rights. This authoritarian drift combines anti-trade union legislation with draconian attacks on the right to peaceful protest and voter suppression through the introduction of voter ID, which will target black, Asian and minority ethnic and working-class voters. This authoritarian approach has even led to police arresting journalists covering protests. The alternative is to strengthen democratic rights and modernise our democratic processes.

That brings me on to my proposal, which is a form of recall procedure through a verified petition to call a general election. The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance describes such recall processes as a form of “direct democracy” and a

“political instrument through which the electorate in a particular electoral jurisdiction can express their dissatisfaction.”

It adds that

“the procedure of the recall is associated with the idea that representatives must remain accountable to the people who elected them.”

So, voters should be able to terminate the mandate before the end of a term when their representatives fall short of expectations.

Welp and Whitehead explain in their 2020 book “The Politics of Recall” that

“The idea of ‘recall’ elections is not a last minute ‘add on’ to principles of representative government, but a logical strand of thought interwoven into its foundational reasoning.”

In the same book, Matt Qvortrup traces the development of the recall in the history of political philosophy from the Roman republic to the present day. While I do not have time today to recount the history of recalls in full, I would like to highlight that movements that did so much in the development of our own democracy envisaged mechanisms with echoes of what I am proposing today. During the English revolution, the leading Leveller, Lieutenant Colonel John Lilburne, championed recall as one of the democratic correctives to the risk of an oppressive, overbearing Parliament. The Chartists envisioned annual elections, with the arguments given then not so different from those offered by contemporary movements in favour of recall. There was even a provision for the recall of congressmen by their voters in the first draft of the American constitution written by James Madison.

Later in the United States, the Socialist Labour party and the Populist party pushed that idea as we approached the 20th century. Recall was then included in the new charter of the city of Los Angeles in 1903, and within a decade, it had been taken up by 200 cities and three states. Switzerland was the first modern liberal democracy to introduce recall at the end of the 19th century, although only at a sub-national level.

In the post-war era, recall was used as part of a series of direct democratic provisions in Japan from 1947 to empower citizens with the right to initiate petitions to dissolve local assemblies, recall individual assembly members and recall mayors or governors. More recently, the push for recall has been linked with the introduction of democracy. After the demise of Latin American dictatorships in the 1980s, recall increased its presence and integrated representative democracy with participatory democracy. Likewise, Germany and Poland introduced recall powers after the fall of the Berlin wall.

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

I allowed the hon. Gentleman to develop his argument, because I assumed that he was going to at least give a date by which time a recall would be permissible. Surely, if we are to have any form of stable Government, there must be a time limit between the election of a Government and a recall petition of at least—what?—two years?

[Richard Burgon]

The hon. Gentleman anticipates the point that I will move on to. It may be a case of great minds think alike.

That brings us to today. A form of recall power exists in a diverse range of countries and political systems. Over the past century, the countries that have made the greatest use of recall are Peru, Japan, the United States and Poland. Academic researchers note that recall provisions also exist at one level of Government or another—local, regional or national—in Argentina, Bolivia, Canada, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Germany, Japan, Liechtenstein, Mexico, Latvia and Switzerland.

Perhaps the most famous case of recall in recent decades is the 2003 recall in California of Governor Gray Davis, where growing dissatisfaction about energy provision and public services led to the election of Governor Schwarzenegger. Because of the high interest in the recall election, the new governor received 650,000 more votes in his election than Governor Davis had received. Recall is generally used to remove individual elected officials, including Presidents, but there are examples, including the German Land of Berlin, where recall, initiated and approved by citizens, can be applied to the entire Parliament. Latvia goes even further: the electorate have a constitutional right to initiate a national referendum to recall Parliament. It is worth noting that recall is now supported by the largest progressive party in France. Mexico held its first-ever national recall election on the President earlier this year. Although that was initiated by the President, perhaps Mexico will be the next country to hold a citizen-initiated recall in the future.

According to Welp and Whitehead, the recall is currently in a “boom phase”, with Welp noting that recall provisions

“have been introduced more frequently since the 1980s”,

while

“in the past were restricted to small municipalities, they have recently reached bigger units such as California, Warsaw, Lima and even presidents.”

Why is recall becoming more popular? Welp and Whitehead explain that

“citizen dissatisfaction with their elected representatives is sufficiently acute and widespread to generate persistent pressure for the introduction of more direct forms of accountability.”

They argue that although recall is not without risk,

“There is some serious empirical support for the proposition that recall mechanisms...can indeed provide genuine improvements to the quality and credibility of democratic institutions when introduced and integrated into the rest of the representative system in a careful and constructive manner.”

My proposal would, as a starting point, seek to amend the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 to allow people to directly call an election under the following circumstances: first, if we are more than halfway through the five-year maximum period for a Parliament; and secondly, if at least half the number of voters in the previous general election endorse the call for an early general election via an official petition process.