Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Thomas Docherty and Lady Hermon

Monday 24th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Lady Hermon]

Will the hon. Gentleman add to the criticisms that he has kindly and very well articulated the point that new clause 2 and amendment 15 would leave independent Members and Members who belong to small political parties extremely vulnerable because they could not afford to fend off multiple applications made under those provisions?

[Thomas Docherty]

The hon. Lady is entirely right. There is significant concern, not only in Northern Ireland but in other parts of the United Kingdom, that repeated, harassing private prosecutions could be brought by well-funded groups.

By the admission of all concerned, more work still needs to be done on these two processes. It is less than satisfactory to be sending to the other place something that, by any standard, is not in a fit condition. To be clear, this House is being asked to delegate to the House of Lords responsibility for producing workable recall mechanisms. I regret to have to inform the hon. Member for Cambridge that I cannot, in good conscience, encourage colleagues to vote for new clause 2 and amendment 15 and their associated amendments, because it would be better if they were withdrawn and a fresh look at the whole issue was taken by the other place. May I make him an offer? If he withdraws his new clause and amendment, Labour peers will work with him and his Lib Dem colleagues to draft workable, robust and watertight proposals. We are clear that we are not giving up on the principle behind the new clause and amendment, and we urge him to take the same approach.

I want briefly to respond to the new clause and associated amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle and others. We fully understand the rationale behind his new clause. The requirement that a Member of Parliament must take the oath before being allowed to represent the people who have elected them has placed not just his party—the Social Democratic and Labour party—but many others in an invidious position. The SDLP, in particular, has wrestled with this problem for many years, and I suspect that we are not going to solve it in one afternoon. He has raised a broader, quite interesting idea about whether the oath or pledge we undertake to fulfil is to our country as a whole or just to the constituents who may or may not have voted for us. I therefore suggest that the both the narrow question of whether the oath should be supplemented, or even replaced, by a pledge and the wider question of its purpose should be considered more fully.

The House will already be aware that the Labour party has proposed a constitutional convention that would meet after the general election to consider how we are governed, including the future shape, size and accountability of the second Chamber, and to examine codifying our constitution and reforming our political system. I urge my hon. Friend to seize that opportunity to make his case, as I am sure he will receive a sympathetic hearing. In that spirit, I urge him not to press his new clause to a vote but to ensure that his party plays a full part in the convention next year.

Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Thomas Docherty and Lady Hermon

Monday 3rd November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Lady Hermon]

I was indeed intending to rise. It is so nice of you to call me, Sir Roger.

This is a very important provision. I was under the illusion that the Bill would apply equally throughout the United Kingdom. I was encouraged by the Minister when he read out, very quickly and precisely, the carefully and very skilfully drafted words in relation to expenses, schedules and donations. The Minister built up my hopes by explaining that in Northern Ireland there would have to be a declaration when £500 was donated. However, exemptions will continue for donations to political parties under the Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2014.

We have the most unusual and completely unjustifiable situation in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland can be safe enough to host the G8 summit in Fermanagh, a border county that at one stage was the heartland of the Provisional IRA and where many people were killed. Northern Ireland was safe enough to host the world police and fire games. Thousands of police and fire officers came to compete and absolutely loved the experience. Despite that, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland introduced the 2014 Act, which extended the period of anonymity for donations to political parties. We are moving in the right direction and there is a time scale in which we hope to be able to remove that anonymity, but at present we do not know who donates to political parties. That is not good for the democratic process in Northern Ireland. It undermines public confidence in the political parties—as if we needed public confidence in Northern Ireland to be undermined any further than it already is.

Since the Belfast agreement, many people have tried to build bridges between the two communities. In some instances, they have been very successful. When it comes to elections, however, the people of Northern Ireland have no idea who is funding the large parties. I do not want to personalise the argument. I sit as an independent MP and that is what I stood as. I am sure the hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long) would not mind me mentioning her. She represents the Alliance party in this House. Alliance party members on Belfast city council voted to stop flying the Union flag over Belfast city hall on 365 days a year and instead to fly it on only 17 designated days. The hon. Lady, who very courageously represents Belfast East and does not sit on Belfast city council, has been subjected to death threats, and her constituency offices have been targeted regularly. She and her staff have had to put up with the most vile abuse and intimidation, but she courageously defends her seat and represents her constituents. She will not be easily intimidated and I am just full of admiration for her.

I would have expected the Minister to provide Members representing small parties like the Alliance party or those sitting as an independent, as I do, some glimmer of hope that a recall petition could not be funded anonymously by large donations to political parties that could get together to unseat a very able MP. I would hate to think that that would be the outcome in Belfast East. The hon. Lady is a very feisty lady and I am sure she will fight the general election, but that is what the recall petition could do.

The Minister insisted that the Bill has to apply evenly across the United Kingdom in terms of the eight weeks for the recall petition and only four places where people can sign petitions in a constituency. That has to apply equally throughout the UK. Constituents and MPs in Northern Ireland are therefore entitled to know, as they are in Yorkshire, Devon, Cornwall or anywhere else in the United Kingdom, who is funding the recall petition that seeks to unseat them when they have been legitimately and properly elected in Northern Ireland, just as other MPs have been legitimately and properly elected elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

[Thomas Docherty]

I will be as brief as possible. I did not think that this part of the Bill would be contentious—I assumed that that would come with clause 18 and the recall provisions—but I have been somewhat surprised by some of the points made by the Minister. I have taken the opportunity just now, in relation to the points raised by the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon), to read through both the Bill and the explanatory notes. I have a great deal of sympathy with her arguments. As far as I can see—the Minister will have the opportunity to be “inspired” and rebut my arguments—there is not a sentence in either the explanatory notes or the Bill that says the provisions will not apply equally to Northern Ireland. The exception is, of course, the donations that are allowed from the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland, but there is no specific reference to two different recall systems operating.

I suspect the Minister was not lucky enough to spend a great deal of time in Scotland in recent months during our referendum campaign, and I fear nor were those from the Cabinet Office. Many of the Government’s assumptions on collusion simply do not stack up with the reality of what we saw in Scotland. Let me explain. There was a concerted and clear effort by the Scottish National party and its supporters to co-ordinate activity. A number of organisations were set up—including Academics for Yes, Farming for Yes, Mums for Change and Christians for Yes—to receive significant donations from the same individuals, including Brian Souter and Mr and Mrs Weir, for the clear purpose of allowing multiple spends during the campaign.

There was a limit of £1.5 million that any one organisation could spend during the referendum, but the reality was that the yes campaign, through a very small number of donors, was able to stack up multiple spends. The reality is that it was impossible to prove on the ground that collusion was going on, even when brown envelopes were arriving through constituents’ doors with “Referendum information” on them containing four or five pieces of literature from Academics for Yes, Farming for Yes, Wings Over Scotland and others. Therefore, we are not convinced at this stage that the Minister has set out sufficient safeguards to avoid collusion by organisations.