Recall of MPs Bill

Thomas Docherty Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr MacNeil]

I think there is a debate going on around me here about the influence of money in politics, and hopefully we are not quite in the same scenario as the United States of America in that respect, although it would be wrong to say that the influence of money is negligible in politics at whatever level, including general elections, by-elections or, perhaps, recall elections.

Some Members have argued that a general election is a form of recall, but I dispute that. Should a Member face recall, they will be facing recall on one point, with the eyes of the country, and particularly of their constituency, on the cause of the recall. In a general election Members come face to face with other candidates, as they would in a recall election, but the issues of the day can sweep a candidate into winning a seat. We have often seen over the last number of elections that some candidates have won to their own surprise; it is clearly not the candidate who has been elected personally, but instead it is support for their party or the issue of the day that has taken them to victory. Therefore a by-election or general election is not a recall election.

One of the most concerning aspects of the recall measures before us is the Government’s wording of clause 1(3), which mentions an MP who

“has, after becoming an MP, been convicted in the United Kingdom of an offence and sentenced or ordered to be imprisoned or detained”.

The word “detained” leaves us with quite a difficult situation. According to House of Commons notes, during this Parliament at least four sitting MPs have been detained by the police but not prosecuted. I will not name them because they do not deserve that. The detaining and imprisoning of people could, under the Government’s mechanisms, enable 10% to push for a by-election, and that would be wrong.

We must, I think, conduct a thorough experiment. Not many of us would like to imagine that we live in a country in which we have politically motivated arrests and people being detained because of mistaken identity—the measure does not even allow for the possibility of mistaken identity. Let us imagine that the detention was heavy-handed and wrong. Imagine too that the system was taken as a gold standard and used in other places. We could have a situation in which different standards in a different time and place would allow somebody to be detained, which could lead to a 10% trigger to an election, and that could be taken as a benchmark across the world. It is difficult to see how people could withstand the pressure of that.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

I hope that the Minister will intervene on this matter. My understanding is that detention is not being held without bail, but is an English law term. Perhaps the Minister could clarify that situation at some point later in the debate.

[Mr MacNeil]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that, and there should be absolutely no ambiguity here. The fact is that this is a point of debate. Therefore, whether he is right, I am right or the truth lies somewhere in between does not matter. The point is that there is some ambiguity in the words, and it should not be there. If that is the situation, it leaves a process that is open to abuse. Although we would all like to think that we live in a country that follows the rules of fair play, a country that adopts this system might not. Standards might change here over time. By-elections with a biased national media are a lot more plentiful than we would imagine. The result could be quite different and justice—the point of this is justice—would not be seen to be done.

Recall has to be real, in the hands of the people and open to the circumstances of the society in which it operates. As I have said, there will be circumstances that we cannot possibly imagine today. I have already mentioned the taking of a country to war, and there will be other such situations. If the Government do not listen to our amendments, will they, at the very least, clarify what they mean by “detain”. Surely, too, they must raise the barrier of 10%. There is better thinking in front of them. I commend the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) for his work, and I agree with just about all of his amendments bar one, which we will discuss later.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lansley]

I am happy to think about that, and I am sure that our Front-Bench colleagues will also be willing to do so. My initial view is that the second trigger could be applied only in relation to serious breaches of the code of conduct of MPs so, by definition, views on policy expressed by Members in this Chamber could not in themselves represent such a breach.

[Thomas Docherty]

rose—

[Mr Lansley]

When I was Leader of the House, I always enjoyed hearing the often highly educated views of the shadow Minister, and I give way to him so that I can do so again.

[Thomas Docherty]

The right hon. Gentleman says that he was involved in the Bill’s drafting and that it is good to be filling a gap. Will he or the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young), who is sitting next to him, explain why although the coalition agreement said that the Government would

“bring forward early legislation to introduce a power of recall”,

it has taken them four and a half years to bring forward this important Bill?

[Mr Lansley]

The coalition agreement did say that, but draft legislation was published in 2011, which was reasonably early in a five-year Parliament.

[Thomas Docherty]

How were you involved?

[Mr Lansley]

I was involved not least because of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee’s comments on the draft Bill but, more specifically for my purposes, because the Standards Committee suggested that the second trigger should be recast. The Standards Committee’s reservations are now dealt with in this Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

On behalf of the Opposition, I will respond to the debate and place on the record our position on recall.

I am disappointed that the Deputy Prime Minister has not joined us at any point in this debate. His name is on the Bill, but he has not chosen to come to the House today. We have, however, heard thoughtful speeches from Members on both sides of the House, and I shall touch briefly on four or five of them.

The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) asked whether the public and, indeed, Parliament had confidence in the Standards Committee. We share his concerns and believe that there is a compelling argument for reforming the composition of the Committee on a cross-party basis.

The right hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley) spoke eloquently and at some length. He made the point, rightly, that vexatious recall petitions might be used to destabilise a Government. That is not something that we wish to see. He also said that MPs who voted for or against military action or going to war might face recall. If the lessons of the last century, and of 1914 in particular, teach us anything, it is that public opinion might be in one place at the start of a conflict, but in a different place by the end of it. The courageous MPs on both sides of the House who took a stance against the war in 1914 would undoubtedly have faced a recall petition.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) made the brief but important observation that we are representatives, not delegates. That is a position that the Opposition fully support.

The right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young), apart from a three-week sabbatical in 2012, served for four years as Leader of the House and Chief Whip. He was perhaps, therefore, more than anybody else, the midwife of the Bill. He spoke eloquently about whether it is a cause or a conduct that we are trying to regulate. Like the right hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire, he warned about the possibility of destabilising campaigns.

The right hon. Member for North West Hampshire also spoke about the role of the Standards Committee. I asked a question of the House of Commons Library and, with its usual efficiency, it responded to me during the course of the debate. There have been 15 occasions when the Standards Committee has recommended suspension. On not one of those occasions has the House sought to overturn the recommendation of the Committee. That suggests that the House gets it right on suspensions.

Finally, the hon. Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns) made a powerful and eloquent speech. I hope that we will see more of him in the Chamber during the Committee stage.

The Opposition will support the Government in the Lobby this evening if there is a Division. As has been said several times, there was a commitment to introduce recall in the Labour party manifesto, as well as in the Conservative and Liberal Democrat manifestos. In the coalition’s programme for government, the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister stated jointly:

“We will bring forward early legislation to introduce a power of recall, allowing voters to force a by-election where an MP is found to have engaged in serious wrongdoing and having had a petition calling for a by-election signed by 10% of his or her constituents.”

Given that this is the fifth year of a five-year Parliament, I wonder what happened to the “early legislation” part of that promise. I am sure that the Deputy Leader of the House will have a good answer when he responds.

We think that the Bill can be strengthened in a number of ways. We will set out our exact amendments in the next few days. However, I will talk briefly about two issues: the principle of recall and whether the provision should be extended to the holders of other public offices. There is cross-party support for the principle that where it can be shown that serious wrongdoing has occurred, the public should have the right to remove their representatives between elections. The public have a right to expect that those elected to represent constituents behave with probity. Where an elected representative has fallen well below the standard expected of the person holding office, it is unacceptable that they should be allowed to continue in office for up to five years without challenge.

Equally, however, we do not support allowing vexatious or purely political attempts by well-funded vested interest groups to subvert the democratic will of the people, and we are concerned at the suggestion that recall could be triggered without genuine wrongdoing having occurred. It is not enough to dislike how a Member of Parliament has voted, and we will therefore consider carefully any amendments that widen the scope for recall. We are clear, however, that the trigger for recall should be a Member’s conduct, not the expression of an opinion with which some constituents disagree.

There is a long and noble tradition of parliamentary pioneers, and the society we take for granted today was achieved only through a democratic struggle that stretched over 350 years. I am personally a great admirer of Charles James Fox, whose statue guards the public entrance to St Stephen’s Lobby. Fox was a thorn in the side of George III and many of his Prime Ministers. He was a campaigner against slavery and the slave trade. He fought for religious tolerance and personal freedom, and he opposed both the principle and conduct of the war with the colonies in North America. There is little doubt, however, that Charles James Fox would have faced a recall petition on more than one occasion if the proposals set out by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) had been adopted at that time.

There are equally great parliamentary reformers from the last 50 years. As the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) said, Leo Abse was one such MP. Along with Lord Arran, he was a great champion of the decriminalisation of homosexuality. After Humphrey Berkeley lost his seat in 1966, Leo Abse took up the private Member’s Bill that ultimately led to the change in the law. What would have happened to Leo Abse—or indeed other parliamentary supporters—if recall had been available in 1967? I fear that some of those brave and forward-looking MPs would have been recalled.

My constituency has suffered from the issue of probity, and I will explain why for those Members who may not be familiar with the situation. Shortly after being elected as the Member of the Scottish Parliament for the constituency of Dunfermline in 2011, Bill Walker was revealed to have repeatedly assaulted a number of women in his family over 30 years. In August 2013 he was convicted of 23 counts of domestic violence against three of his ex-wives, and one count of violence against his stepdaughter. In the case of his stepdaughter, such was the level of violence that he broke a frying pan over her head. However, my constituents were powerless to remove Bill Walker from his £60,000 a year job because the law as it currently stands requires a sentence of a year and a day in custody before disqualification. The maximum sentence that the Sheriff Court could hand out—and which indeed was given—was exactly one year. Only after a tenacious campaign by the Dunfermline Press newspaper did Mr Walker bow to public pressure and resign.

I place on record my thanks to the Dunfermline Press for the public service it performed. That was an excellent example of a local newspaper providing leadership in its community, but it should not be the responsibility of a newspaper to take on that role. Parliament should be acting now to ensure that no constituency is in that ridiculous situation again, and that is why Labour supports the Bill. We believe that where there is clear evidence of serious wrongdoing, the public have a right to remove and replace their MP.

We agree with those who argue that the Bill does not go far enough. It would not have captured any MPs embroiled in the 1990s cash for questions scandal, it does not reform the standards procedure, and the scope is so narrowly drawn that provisions for recall cannot be extended to other elected representatives. For example, if a councillor is found to have committed a serious breach of the local authority code of conduct, why do the Government not propose that their constituents also have the right to recall them?

Will the Deputy Leader of the House explain why the Bill makes no provision for councillors, or indeed for police and crime commissioners, and will he update us on what progress—if any—has been made in talks with the Scottish Government on devolving this power to Holyrood? Why does the Bill not cover the three devolved Assemblies in Cardiff, Belfast and London?

The Opposition support the Bill’s rather belated appearance. We look forward to working across the House to strengthen the Bill further, so that we can ensure that the final legislation is both robust and commands public confidence.