Recall of MPs Bill

Stephen Twigg Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the tone and tenor of the Minister’s opening speech and in particular the commitment that he has made seriously to consider amendments that will strengthen the Bill. I will come to that during my remarks.

This is a debate of critical importance to our politics and democracy. People feel more disconnected from Parliament and more disenchanted with the political process than possibly ever before. Polling and academic research reveal the pre-eminence of this distrust, but all of us know that the most vivid displays of antipathy are found on the doorstep when we meet voters while we are campaigning. People feel let down by politics, they feel angry, and they feel that too often their voice is not heard and that we politicians are out of touch.

Of course, politicians have never been the most popular people. It is in the nature of our job that we have to make unpopular decisions at times, as the Minister rightly said. But in 2009 the relationship between politics and the people reached a nadir during the scandal about MPs’ expenses. We can never be complacent or overestimate just how much damage was done to the standing of politics, politicians and this House with the public by what was revealed in 2009. In tough times, when families had been taking difficult decisions about their own household spending and with the economy in recession, revelations about the abuse of MPs’ expenses understandably left the public furious with the system and furious with the individuals involved.

[Richard Drax]

I am tired of this general slagging-off of people who work so hard for their constituencies. Like many of us here, I was not an MP then, but I admit that some dishonourable behaviour sadly occurred in this House. What we need to restore is honour; we do not need legislation for that.

[Stephen Twigg]

I partly agree with the hon. Gentleman. It is about how all of us do the job and about the culture of politics, but it is also about legislation. I will come to that now.

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I do not disagree with much of what the hon. Gentleman has said about the level of distrust, but does he accept that the lack of independence of many MPs is the biggest concern for many of our constituents? Does he not think that one of the concerns about a recall Bill broadly, which I support, is that it would largely undermine that sense of the independence of the individual MP?

[Stephen Twigg]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. Later I shall refer to a distinction that others have made in interventions and which the Minister himself made between our conduct as Members of Parliament and the issues that we vote on, and how we are held to account for our voting. The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point that although recall is, in my opinion, a correct mechanism for dealing with misconduct, it is a more questionable mechanism for dealing with issues to do with voting. One consequence of a particular model of recall could be to undermine the independence of MPs, for the reason that he gave.

In 2010 each of the main parties made proposals to change the system in response to the tide of distrust that I described. As the Minister said, each of us had a commitment to some form of recall in our manifesto. The Minister said that the Government have not rushed into this. That is an understatement: it is a shame that it has taken more than four years to have a Bill before the House. At one point both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister promised to pursue a new politics of democracy and transparency. Well, it has taken them quite a while to get round to it, and now that they have, neither of them seems very pleased with the Bill before the House.

The Deputy Prime Minister, who led on the Bill that was published earlier in this Parliament, said this summer that he agreed with the critics of that Bill, and just yesterday he said he wished that the latest attempt—the Bill before us today—had gone further. The Prime Minister, at Prime Minister’s questions last Wednesday, four and a half years after declaring his intent to pursue a new politics, said that the current Bill is the minimum acceptable. Surely after four and a half years they could have come up with something better than this.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful argument about the disgust that many of our constituents still feel about politics and politicians, and about the importance of the Bill. Does he think that the measures relating to accountability and in particular to MPs adjudicating on themselves are strong enough?

[Stephen Twigg]

I will come to those issues in a moment. The straightforward answer is no, I do not think those measures are strong enough. During the Committee stage we need to strengthen them significantly.

Labour supports recall. Our manifesto commitment in 2010 stated:

“MPs who are found responsible for financial misconduct will be subject to a right of recall”.

We need a system that improves accountability and gives more power to the public to hold their representatives to account between elections. That is a matter of fairness. People go to work each day and they know that if they break the rules, if they behave inappropriately at work, they may face the sack. The job of a Member of Parliament should be no different. If we are to regain the trust of the people, we cannot place ourselves outside or above this basic principle.

However, the system of recall needs to reflect what the job of a Member of Parliament is. We are not delegates to this place. We have a representative democracy, in which Members of Parliament are sent to represent their constituencies, and sometimes that involves making difficult decisions. A balance has to be drawn between giving people the opportunity to recall MPs for misconduct, and allowing MPs to make difficult decisions. For misconduct, recall makes sense. For holding MPs to account for their voting record, general elections are the appropriate mechanism. We will support this Bill on Second Reading, but look forward to strengthening it in Committee.

We believe that the Bill is an unacceptably minimalist interpretation of the right to recall. For example, as the Minister set out, one of the triggers in the Bill is when an MP is suspended from the House of Commons for at least 21 sitting days or 28 calendar days. Had this rule been in operation over the past 25 years, there are only two occasions on which Members of Parliament would have been caught by this proposed change. As my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Mr Roy) pointed out, for the Members of Parliament who were caught up in the “cash for questions” scandal in the 1990s, because of the nature of the punishment they faced, recall would not have been triggered.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

Can the hon. Gentleman envisage a situation where the political pressure would be on the Standards Committee to increase the penalties? The political pressure means that 21 days’ suspension has to be given as a punishment to bring in the trigger mechanisms, so in some ways the trigger is a foolish mechanism, and the Standards Committee probably should not be involved at all.

[Stephen Twigg]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. I will address the role of the Standards Committee in a moment. These are precisely the sort of issues that we want to address in Committee next week.

[Greg Clark]

To correct the shadow Minister and for the information of the House, I point out that there are in fact six Members of Parliament who would have been caught by the provisions. I mentioned Chris Huhne and Eric Illsley on the imprisonment aspect. In terms of suspension, there would have been four more—Teresa Gorman, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), Denis MacShane and Patrick Mercer.

[Stephen Twigg]

The Minister is including Members who resigned from the House before the Standards Committee’s proposals were considered, but I acknowledge what he says. I still think that six is a very small number, considering the scale of the challenge that we face. With reference to the particular example that my hon. Friend cited of the “cash for questions” scandal in the 1990s, there is a concern that the length of period covered by the Bill would not have affected the MPs in that case.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is providing a strong critique of the Government’s Bill and I agree with much of what he says. At the Committee stage there will be a wide range of views about what needs to be done to improve the Bill. The indication is that the Conservative party will be offering a free vote. Will we hear that from the Labour party as well?

[Stephen Twigg]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. I will refer shortly to some of the proposals that he has made. I am not in a position to make announcements about the Opposition’s whipping arrangements or the Government’s, but they will be made available in due course.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

While we are correcting the record, the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), who is no longer in his place, said earlier that Garry Allingham was thrown out of the House for passing on notes. In fact, he was suspended from the House because he had alleged that other MPs had been bribed by journalists with drinks to give them tittle-tattle. The only person who had been thus involved was the said Member, Garry Allingham. Interestingly, the one person who felt that he could not vote to suspend a man for drinking too much with a journalist was Winston Churchill.

[Stephen Twigg]

I thank my hon. Friend for putting that on the record.

The example of the “cash for questions” scandal in the 1990s exemplifies the weakness in the Bill. If we accept the principle of recall, then surely such clear examples of misconduct should fall within the criteria that I set out.

[Mr Heath]

The stories mentioned by the hon. Members for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) demonstrate part of the problem, which is the self-importance of this House and its willingness to act as a gentlemen’s club rather than, at the end of the day, giving the verdict to our constituents. That is why this Bill, with I hope, a widening of the trigger mechanism, is so important.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Twigg]

I absolutely agree. That is why the principle of recall is so important and why this Bill is welcome, but I hope that over the coming weeks the House will work hard to strengthen its provisions.

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman believes, as I do, that the Bill needs to be strengthened and expanded. We have heard several interventions about the limits that result from the triggers. Would he trust the electorate such that, instead of having triggers, we simply said that a reason for recall had to be given, with the name of a sponsor calling for it? Might that be a better way forward, because we would not try artificially to prescribe in advance what the trigger might be?

[Stephen Twigg]

Clearly, we will have amendments to that effect before the House meets next Monday, and it is right that we consider them in detail in Committee. The danger with that very pure approach is that we could cross the line between misconduct and how we vote as Members of Parliament. That is problematic, for reasons that I will set out later.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend think that there is any room in this Bill to deal with the situation where Members of Parliament are elected and then do not take their seats, but continue to get substantial amounts of money? Surely that is, in some way, bringing this House into disrepute.

[Stephen Twigg]

My hon. Friend is tempting me into an area that I do not think I will be tempted into. I am sure she will have opportunities to raise those issues in the House at later stages.

[Lady Hermon]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to tempt him in a related but different direction. Will he confirm to the House that the Labour party welcomes the fact that this Bill extends to absentee MPs, given that the Minister said, correcting his earlier reply to me, that it applies to all MPs on the day after polling day, not when they take their seats, and therefore does apply to Sinn Fein?

[Stephen Twigg]

Yes indeed. It is very important that this legislation applies to all elected Members of Parliament from the point at which they are elected. I thank the hon. Lady for giving me the opportunity to confirm that from the Dispatch Box.

It is important that the public are able to hold Members of Parliament to account for serious wrongdoing and misconduct—for example, taking financial reward for everyday parliamentary activity. Any system of recall needs to pass that rudimentary test. In Committee we will look at ways to strengthen that aspect of the Bill.

The length of suspension required to trigger a recall petition is currently too high, and it fails to catch some of the clear cases of misconduct that we have witnessed. There is also the question of how we can and should improve the process of suspension that would lead to recall. As the Minister confirmed, the Bill does not mention changes to that process, or, indeed, changes to the Standards and Privileges Committee. I hope that in Committee we will look at ways in which we can ensure that the process is not party-politicised and, as a number of Members have suggested in interventions, more independent. It is sensible to rebalance the Standards and Privileges Committee so that it does not reflect a Government majority, whoever is in power, and to increase the lay membership of the Committee, as the former Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley), said.

The second trigger in the Bill allows for a petition if an MP receives a custodial sentence. As the Minister said, some of the people who would have been caught by these proposals received a custodial sentence for political protest. One of my predecessors in Liverpool, Terry Fields, who was the MP for Liverpool Broadgreen, would have faced a recall petition when he was sent to prison for refusing to pay the poll tax. We need to bear these issues in mind when we are debating this aspect of the Bill. At the same time, I think it would be widely felt that if a Member of Parliament committed a crime and was sent to prison, it would be appropriate that, whatever their motive, the public in their constituency had the opportunity to sack them if they wished to do so rather than moving to a general election.

[Zac Goldsmith]

The hon. Gentleman’s point about Terry Fields proves exactly why it is so hard to define what is wrongdoing. In those circumstances, it would not just have been a matter of his constituents having the choice of recalling him—it would have required just 10% of them to throw him out of his job, even if he might then have clawed his way back through a by-election. That is one of many problems with the Bill.

[Stephen Twigg]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point of substance that we need to consider as the Bill progresses. I imagine that Terry Fields would have been re-elected by a massive majority for the stand that he took against the poll tax.

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

A moment ago my hon. Friend referred to the need for lay members to be involved in the process of trigger determination. Does he agree, however, that it is important that we do not just get the usual kinds of people but have genuine members of the public involved?

[Stephen Twigg]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; I am glad that he has made that point. That will be a crucial part of our consideration not only in Committee but in some of the wider discussion that is happening about the future of the Standards and Privileges Committee. The political membership is contentious in terms of MPs policing ourselves. We could address that by ensuring that the lay membership is genuinely credible with the wider public.

[Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (UKIP)]

There has been some discussion about the need to ensure that we have more lay members involved in deciding whether to trigger a recall. Surely the lay members are called constituents, and we should have a mechanism that allows them to decide whether a recall is triggered. They are, after all, the lay members who count most.

[Stephen Twigg]

I know that the hon. Gentleman has campaigned on this issue for a very long time and has a consistent stance that is reflected in his intervention. I am going to set out my thinking on such a proposal in a moment, so if he could be patient I will respond to his point.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman said that Terry Fields would probably have been re-elected with a massive majority. Would it not be a failure of any legislation if it brought about a situation where a Member faced a by-election and came back with a massive majority? Surely the point of recall legislation is to put the issue to the test on something that is marginal and not something where there could be a situation involving vexatious constituents who perhaps opposed the poll tax and knew full well that the MP would be returned with a massive majority.

[Stephen Twigg]

The hon. Gentleman is making an important point about the risk of a relatively small minority of—to use his phrase—vexatious constituents abusing the system. That is a risk with a pure recall system, as I will explain in a moment.

[Mr Charles Walker]

I have great admiration for members of the public—after all, they are my electorate—but could the shadow Minister define “genuine members of the public”?

[Stephen Twigg]

I do not understand why the hon. Gentleman is asking that question. Did I use that phrase?

[Mr Walker]

The shadow Minister agreed with the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) that we should involve “genuine members of the public”, but what does that mean? “Genuine members of the public” is a political phrase like “innocent victims”—I have never come across a guilty victim. What are “genuine members of the public”?

[Stephen Twigg]

They are those who are representative of the full range of the public. Often people who are appointed to some of these committees will tend to be—how shall I put it?—the great and the good, who are not necessarily entirely representative of the full range of the public. That is what I understood by the phrase, “genuine members of the public”. Of course, there will be strong opinions on both sides of this debate, which is why the Committee stage will be so important.

Let me now address the amendments that the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) is likely to table. First, I welcome his contribution and that of all Members on the committee chaired by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). It is probably fair to say that the Government may not have put this Bill before the House had it not been for their hard work and persistence. The proposals of the hon. Member for Richmond Park manage to avoid some of the problems associated with the Government’s Bill. As he said in his intervention, there would be no issues about unfairly allowing a petition when an MP is imprisoned for protest; about having to debate the length of suspension from this place; or about the independence of any recall trigger mechanism. His likely amendments would allow for the trigger to be in the hands of the people, and there is a simplicity to that proposal that is, of course, attractive.

The hon. Gentleman’s proposals, however, run into trouble when we assess the potential effect on the constitutional role of Members of Parliament. If we accept that the job of an MP is to be a representative, not a delegate, that has consequences for where we stand in this debate. MPs on both sides of the House need to be able to sometimes make difficult decisions. Sometimes they have to fulfil roles in government and there is a risk that the hon. Gentleman’s likely amendments could challenge that.

For example, the hon. Gentleman’s model of recall—the pure model—has the potential to give enormous power to well-funded, wealthy groups and organisations that could run concerted campaigns to pressure MPs to act in a certain way.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a very good point. We need look no further than the United States, where the Koch brothers use their multibillion-dollar war chest for no other partisan reason than to get rid of individuals who do not agree with their warped sense of the world.

[Stephen Twigg]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, which reinforces a concern felt by many—not just in this House, but outside it—that without proper regulation a system of pure recall could be subject to abuse.

[Richard Drax]

May I add to the excellent point the shadow Minister has just made that if there were three or four petitions against a sitting MP during a five-year term, their reputation would be damaged, perhaps unfairly, and their chance of being re-elected severely reduced? That cannot be right.

[Stephen Twigg]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman and will return to that point in a moment.

The constant pressure of notices of intent, even if they are supported by only a very small minority in a constituency—a notice of intent could be triggered by just 5% of the electorate—could prove destabilising to the ability of the Member of Parliament to fulfil his or her duties, both in this place and, frankly, in their constituency. Politicians often have to make decisions that are unpopular in their constituency, but they may be decisions that are ultimately right for the country as a whole. In our system, a Secretary of State is accountable to this House, but if they are a Member of this House they also have a constituency. Does it make sense for a Secretary of State to face recall for making a decision that may be unpopular in their own constituency but may make sense for the country as a whole?

[Mr David Davis]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for referring to our committee, but I think he underestimates the wisdom of the public. When I had my by-election, the policy I was campaigning against had the support of 72% of the public, and yet I was returned by 75%. In the proposal authored by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), the thresholds are sizeable: there would need to be, in effect, 15,000 votes in a normal constituency and then 50% of the constituency would have to agree before a recall could be triggered. That is a much higher threshold than this rather ill-thought-through Government proposal.

[Stephen Twigg]

The right hon. Gentleman has anticipated the next and, Members will be relieved to hear, final part of my speech. I accept that his committee produced rather high thresholds for the later stages of its proposal, but the 5% threshold for a notice of intent is low. There are sensible ways in which some of these concerns could be countered. Is there a way in which we could ensure that MPs could be recalled only for their misconduct?

[Mr Winnick]

Is there not a danger in all this of intimidating Members of Parliament against taking up unpopular causes? For example, as a Labour Back Bencher in the late 1950s, Barbara Castle argued for a settlement in Cyprus when British troops were being killed by EOKA. It was a very unpopular cause and one can well imagine what would have happened to her had there been recall legislation. She may have survived it, but she would have felt under intense pressure. At the end of it all, of course, she was right: there was a settlement in Cyprus.

[Stephen Twigg]

My hon. Friend makes that case strongly, as have others, both in this place and elsewhere. That is why I reaffirm the distinction between causes, which my hon. Friend has just mentioned and for which the election is the vehicle for accountability, and conduct, which is, rightly, the focus for recall.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Will the shadow Minister give an indication of the Labour party’s thinking? If the House of Commons is going to have a recall mechanism, no matter what it is, does the Labour party agree with the principle that the other Parliaments of the British state, including the National Assembly for Wales and the Scottish Parliament, should also have the ability to introduce their own recall mechanism, whatever type it may be, should they so wish?

[Stephen Twigg]

That is a matter that should be decided by those devolved bodies. I understand that there have been discussions in Scotland about doing so. [Interruption.] I am being tempted to announce a policy on Welsh devolution, but that is slightly outside my remit. I think that, in principle, if this House has a reserve power, it should give it up so that it becomes a matter for the devolved bodies themselves to decide, but a decision would need to be made by those bodies. I suspect that I may have moved party policy on, so some clarification might be given later, but the principle has to be one whereby the decision is made by the appropriate body.

By the way—I think my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty), who will wind up the debate, will talk about this—there is also a very good case to be made that the kinds of recall mechanisms we are discussing for Members of Parliament should be considered for other positions, such as those of police and crime commissioners and mayors. That may be outside the scope of this Bill, but we should consider it at an early opportunity.

I will close with some final comments on the proposals of the hon. Member for Richmond Park. I have said that we should look at whether there are ways in which MPs could be recalled only for their misconduct. To address the issue raised by the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax), could there be a limited number of recall petitions per Parliament? Some of the American states with the power of recall limit the number of times it can be allowed within a legislative term. Are the proposed thresholds reasonable? Could there be a higher threshold at the early stage?

Members on both sides of the House are in favour of the principle of recall. [Interruption.] I hear some dissent. I think that most Members of this House, as will probably be demonstrated in today’s vote, are in favour of the principle of recall. There will be very important debates in Committee about what the best system might be and how best to deliver it. As I have said, the Bill needs to be strengthened considerably from its current state in order for it to have meaning. The “minimum acceptable”—which was the phrase used by the Prime Minister last week—is simply not good enough. The public will, rightly, expect more. We will support the Bill’s Second Reading, but we will work hard in Committee to strengthen it.