Lobbying (Transparency) Bill [HL]

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 18th November 2016 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

1: Clause 1, page 1, line 3, leave out “Secretary of State” and insert “Minister”

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to the amendments that I have tabled. They appear forbidding in number, but I encourage noble Lords to recognise that a large number of them are intended to put back into the legislation, were the Bill to be passed, the structures, duties and powers of the registrar in order to make the job of the registrar effective. I am not intending today to revisit the argument about the scope of the definition of what should be the subject of the register for lobbying, nor about who the lobbyists in question have to contact in order to be within the scope of the registrar.

I do not agree with the Bill—I make that perfectly clear—but the purpose of our Committee stage should at least be that, were the Bill to make further progress, it should be in a form capable of being enacted. I hope that noble Lords will understand the motivation behind most of my amendments. Some are trying to circumscribe it a little and ameliorate some of its rather expansive terminology, but most are in order to make it effective, if it could be so.

I should draw attention to my register of interests. I do not actually undertake any consultant lobbying but I suspect that what I do would be captured under the proposed register. I think that that is probably true for most Members of this House, frankly. It may not be—we need not argue about that—but it is probably best that we all make a declaration in any case that we might find ourselves in such a position.

I can be very clear about the first amendment. It is simply to make it so that the Minister in question can be a Minister from the Cabinet Office. As your Lordships will recall, I was a Minister in the Cabinet Office and I was the Cabinet Minister responsible for the Bill; I was the Lord Privy Seal. But actually the Minister in question who will be making appointments and undertaking other duties in relation to this Bill is very likely to be a Minister in the Cabinet Office and not a Secretary of State. It would therefore be more effective for the description to be that of a Minister. I beg to move.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by declaring no interest—although if this was carried some years ago I would have been caught by it. I am grateful for the comments of the noble Lord. As he is aware, we are very short on time today and I intend to be as speedy as possible in addressing what he has put before us. I also intend to be as co-operative and helpful as I can be, and I even hope to persuade him not just to move amendments to make the Bill better, as he sees it, but possibly to see some merit in giving it further support. I invite him to think about that. I accept the amendment.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

My Lords, as has been noted, this amendment would reflect the normal practice that Ministers rather than Secretaries of State are referred to in legislation. While this change might be welcome for the sake of consistency, it does not change our overall position. We believe that the existing legislation as it stands is effective and we do not think that it needs to be supplemented.

[Lord Lansley]

I am grateful for those responses.

Amendment 1 agreed.

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

2: Clause 1, page 1, line 6, leave out paragraph (b)

[Lord Lansley]

My Lords, the purpose of the second group of amendments is to remove from the Bill the intention that the Secretary of State should prepare and issue a code of conduct. Clause 1(3)(b) states that the Secretary of State should,

“prepare and issue a code of conduct”.

That is the subject of Amendment 2, and of course Clause 7 follows that in determining all the circumstances relating to a code of conduct. I will not go on at length. I think I was very clear at Second Reading that in my view there is a structure of voluntary codes that are more flexible, able to operate qualitatively and are therefore more appropriate to the task. This would be an unacceptable and unwise substitution of an inflexible and potentially much more limited statutory code for what in practice are developing as flexible voluntary codes. I beg to move.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, as the noble Lord described, a variety of codes are on offer at present from different organisations. It seems to us that this causes confusion and leads to a lack of clarity, so there is a strong case for the type of standard code that operates in other places. But in the light of the issues that we have on timetabling and to move the business forward, we have reflected seriously on this and have looked at the group of amendments closely. On balance, we have decided to make a major concession and agree that a code of practice should not be included in the Bill this time round. I am therefore prepared to accept the amendment.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

My Lords, the Government believe that the self-regulatory codes administered by the lobbying industry work well, and the 2014 Act on transparency of lobbying aims to complement rather than replace the existing non-statutory codes. It is not necessary to regulate through a statutory code of conduct as the existing systems are working well. In that regard, the amendments in this group that remove the requirement for a statutory code of conduct would be welcome. However, they do not change our overall position: we cannot support the Bill as we believe that existing legislation achieves what it set out to do and that further regulation is not necessary.

[Lord Lansley]

I am grateful to the noble Lord sponsoring the Bill for what he described as a “concession”. From my point of view it is a very welcome one. There are a number of codes. People may argue about their relative effectiveness. I know from observing the behaviour of some of the organisations—for example, the APPC—that the members on that register take this very seriously. They see it as their role to enforce it, to make judgments and to improve the code as they go along. It is demonstrating itself to be flexible. There are good instances of self-regulatory activity in this country and wherever we can support self-regulatory action we should.

I am grateful to the noble Lord. I take it that he is accepting Amendment 2 and that Clause 7 should not stand part of the Bill—as well as Amendment 14, which follows from that. I would be very grateful if the House would agree the amendment.

Amendment 2 agreed.

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

3: Clause 1, page 1, line 11, leave out subsection (4) and insert—
“(4) Schedule (The Registrar of Lobbyists) makes further provision about the Registrar.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lansley]

My Lords, the purpose of Amendment 3 is to introduce a schedule that sets out the provisions of the establishment of the registrar, which directly parallel what is in the existing legislation, for which I was previously responsible. The schedule establishes the registrar as a corporation sole, and enables the registrar to sue, be sued and enter into contracts. It means that the registrar is not exposed as an individual but has a corporate entity. That can therefore create continuity. It enables the accounts and money to be provided by the Government by way of loans or grants, and it makes the accounts and activities of the registrar subject to examination by the Comptroller and Auditor-General and, if necessary, by the ombudsman.

I hope your Lordships agree that, if the Bill is enacted, this will enable a smooth transposition from the existing registrar structure to the registrar’s new responsibilities. I beg to move.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his comments. Again, they are acceptable. I will also move Amendment 31 in this group, which makes a minor amendment to take into account that this would extend the scope from the present arrangements to cover in-house lobbyists too, if it becomes law. It is an appropriate technical amendment to make.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

My Lords, the amendment would reproduce wording that is identical to Schedule 1 of the Transparency of Lobbying Act 2014. The schedule sets out the role and functions of the registrar. We believe that the 2014 Act effectively fulfils the purpose for which it was passed and that it does not need to be changed or amended.

[Lord Lansley]

My noble friend will not be surprised that I agree with her, but since the Bill would repeal that schedule to the present Act, it is necessary, were the Bill to make progress, for the schedule to be reinserted. I am very grateful for the support on that issue. I beg to move.

Amendment 3 agreed.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

4: Clause 2, page 2, line 4, after “or” insert “controlling”

[Lord Lansley]

My Lords, in this group we are not in the territory of simply trying to put in place the necessary structures, powers and duties of the registrar, but are concerned with the definition of lobbying and who lobbyists are. I feel it is too wide-ranging. I do not want to have a debate at this stage on narrowing it right down, but there are some egregious examples, which are reflected in the amendment. So in Amendment 4 it should not apply to all shareholders but only to those who have a controlling interest. In Amendment 5, lobbying has to relate to government policy, statements and decisions: for it to include everything that relates to every government position seems excessive.

Amendment 6 would put us back in the position we are currently in and make the situation clearer, avoiding the worrying risk that we would have to decide when Members, particularly of this House, are acting in an official capacity. Is that everything that they do, on every subject, for every potential organisation which might ask us for our interventions or support? No—I think it is better to be very clear that payment, for this purpose, does not include payments to MPs and Peers. That is how it is reflected in the current legislation.

Amendment 7 reflects the current legislation and excludes statutory communications; so one cannot be required to register by virtue of the fact that one undertakes communications which one is required to do by law. Regarding Amendment 8, I was not happy that the exemption was well enough drawn to make it clear that the communications in question must be directed at public officials. If they are not directed at public officials they should not, therefore, be captured in the scope of the register.

Regarding Amendment 9, I could not understand why trade unions engaging in negotiations should be left out. When transparency is being pursued, why should it not apply to trade unions in the same way as anyone else? I was rather aghast at the presumption that media workers should be excluded from the transparency requirements altogether. The point is that when anybody is engaging in communication via the public media, that should be exempt, but media workers should not be exempt by definition, otherwise there is a risk that simply by virtue of the fact that one is employed by a media organisation, one would regard oneself as outwith the scope of the register. That should not be the case because one could, none the less, in practice be engaged in lobbying.

I realise that there are intrinsic merits in some of the amendments in this group, and people will argue about others. I hope your Lordships will find favour with one or two, particularly Amendments 6 and 7, on payments to MPs and Peers and the exclusion of statutory communications. I beg to move.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, again I express my gratitude for the explanations the noble Lord has given for these amendments. I hope he will not be surprised to hear that I am going to accept most of them. In Amendment 4, “controlling” is perfectly acceptable. I shall leave Amendment 5 to one side for a moment. Amendment 6 is, I believe, from and identical to the previous legislation, which is already in force, and I am happy to accept it. I am prepared to accept Amendment 7. The wording of Amendment 8 is better than the original, so that is accepted too. The noble Lord might not be surprised, given my background, that the bit about trade unions appears in there. I do not have quite the same close links with the media, but I do my best there, where I can, and we are prepared to accept the amendment.

The one area I am not happy about is Amendment 5, which would delete “or position”. Again, I go back to my past experience. I was in the trade union movement for most of my life but also spent some time in business —I swapped sides, almost, so to speak. I was involved with people who were coming up with ideas about how they could make public service operations more effective. They would devise ideas and I would be part of that. We put the ideas in a bag and went to, for example, Australia and sought to persuade the Government that they could do a particular piece of public policy work better if only they would adopt what we had in mind. The Australian Government had no policy on that issue but we were able to persuade them that they should do it that way. Of course, we then bid for the business. We then took our portmanteau and went to Hong Kong and all round the world, persuading different Governments, in the UK as well. Often the Government were not running public services as efficiently as they could have been, and we came along with ideas on how they might change things.

However, such activities should be in the open. The public should be aware that efforts are being made to change not just the policy but the Government’s mind. We have a good example of that at the moment with Brexit. Technically, we have no real policy on Brexit, so far as I can understand—or that we have been able to elicit from the Government—but we know that positions have been reached and that people are lobbying. Technically, if you believe in transparency, that should be in the public domain. This is what the amendment would remove and it would limit the area in which it would take place. I hope I might persuade him that he should withdraw the amendment and reflect on it.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

My Lords, in some cases, such as Amendment 5, what is proposed seems to be a logical amendment to the original Bill. However, in others, such as Amendments 6 and 7, the wording is identical to that used in the 2014 Act. As those proposals already exist in statute, they would unnecessarily duplicate existing legislation. Overall, the Government believe that the definitions in existing legislation are effective and fulfil the regulatory aims the Government believe are necessary. As such, the definitions of “lobbying” and “lobbyists” do not need to be changed, as proposed in the original Bill or this group of amendments.

[Lord Lansley]

I am grateful for those responses. As my noble friend on the Front Bench will understand, my purpose here is to try to see how these elements of the existing legislation should be incorporated into a Bill that would otherwise repeal the whole Part 1 of the original Act. They would be lost and I think they would need to be reincorporated before the Bill could properly make progress.

I am very grateful for the support of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, on Amendment 4. On Amendment 5, I do not necessarily agree with the points he made but I do not think we should detain the Committee now. We can come back to it if we have the opportunity on Report. I am certainly willing to reconsider. For the moment, I do not plan to move Amendment 5.

I am grateful for what I think was the noble Lord’s acceptance of the other amendments, with the exception of Amendment 9, on the trade unions. I am not sure whether he was willing to let go—

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

Yes.

[Lord Lansley]

Very good. On that basis, I will not move Amendment 5 but will move the other amendments in due course.

Amendment 4 agreed.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

6: Clause 2, page 3, line 6, at end insert—
“( ) For the purposes of subsection (8), payment does not include any sums payable to a member of either House of Parliament—(a) under section 4 (determination of MPs’ salaries) or 5 (MPs' allowances scheme) of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009,(b) pursuant to a resolution of the House of Lords, or(c) otherwise out of money provided by Parliament or out of the Consolidated Fund.”

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

7: Clause 3, page 3, line 24, at end insert—
“( ) any communication which is required to be made by, or under, any statutory provision or other rule of law;”

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

14: Clause 8, page 5, line 44, leave out paragraph (b)

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

15: After Clause 8, insert the following new Clause—
“Duty to monitor
The Registrar must monitor compliance with the obligations imposed by or under sections (Notice to supply information), (Limitations on duty to supply information and use of information supplied) and (Right to appeal against information notice).”

[Lord Lansley]

We have happily arrived at the point where we would be by virtue of this group, which appears forbidding in its extent but is actually very straightforward. These amendments give the registrar the duties and powers that she has currently. They cover a range of things, including the issuing of information notices and the duty to monitor compliance with the register. The ability to issue information notices is in Amendment 16. Giving safeguards to those people to whom notices are issued is in Amendment 17 and a right of appeal for those people is in Amendment 18. The power to issue guidance on compliance with the register is in Amendment 27 and the ability to charge is covered by Amendment 28. A regulation-making power for the Minister in relation to the powers in the Bill is in Amendment 29. In so far as these amendments are re-incorporating powers that the registrar would need, I hope that they will find support from your Lordships.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

I will be moving Amendment 16A as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lansley]

Perhaps I may defend my noble friend on the Front Bench in this respect. She was aware that I was going through the Bill with the benefit of having been responsible for the original legislation. I think she did not feel that the work was not being done—it was just not being done by the Government, which would give the misleading impression that the Government were seeking to make this legislation in a form that they felt was worthy of enactment. It is okay for me to do that from the Back Benches, but I do not think it is quite the same thing for the Government to try to do it—so I do see a difference.

On this group, I am very grateful for the support for a number of the amendments. On Amendment 28, relating to charging, I am going to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, by persisting—but I shall say two things that might comfort him. First, the structure of the amendment, which obviously reflects what is in the current Act, enables the registrar to impose charges but does not require them to impose charges in any particular form. The form in which those charges are to be imposed would be the subject of regulations under the Act, which would have to come here and be approved by this House. It is perfectly open to the Minister, in making those regulations, to clarify where there may be exemptions. It would not require everybody to pay the same charges for the same register entry or for the same service, so there may be the ability to modulate the charging. If the Government were considering regulations, they could look at this and at whether it would be appropriate to modulate charges for the organisations that would otherwise find there was some chilling effect resulting from that.

So I will persist with this, and I hope the noble Lord might let us reflect the fact that it is necessary for regulators—in this case the registrar—to meet the cost of their activity through charging. On this group, I will move Amendment 15, and I hope to persist with the others, while accepting Amendment 16A, which is a helpful addition.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, as your Lordships probably recognise, I am in a little difficulty here, particularly with my noble friend, with whom I have worked very closely on this. I hear the explanation which has been given and see a chink of light on the degree of elbow room which already exists. I am particularly anxious that we try to proceed with the Bill and hope that the Minister may be persuaded that there are elements in here which the Government should be concerned about. I am particularly pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has, I think, accepted an extension of the requirement to register and to open it to in-house lobbyists as well as the professional lobbyists.

I am keen that the Bill moves forward. I can understand the Minister’s difficulty, but she could redeem herself if she could see a way to arrange a meeting with the responsible Minister for us to talk about the fundamentals in the Bill. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, might wish to join that meeting, along with at least two noble Lords who I know are very keen indeed to see this Bill, which is well supported across the House, move forward. If the Minister is not giving much today, perhaps she might be willing to try to facilitate that for us in the future. On that basis, I am prepared to accept the amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

16: After Clause 8, insert the following new Clause—
“Notice to supply information
(1) In connection with the duty under section (Duty to monitor), the Registrar may serve a notice (an “information notice”) on a person mentioned in subsection (2) requiring the person to supply information specified in the notice.(2) The persons are—(a) any registered person;(b) any person who is not entered in the register but whom the Registrar has reasonable grounds for believing to be a consultant lobbyist.(3) Regulations may specify descriptions of information which the Registrar may not require a person to supply under this section.(4) An information notice must—(a) specify the form in which the information must be supplied,(b) specify the date by which the information must be supplied, and(c) contain particulars of the right to appeal under section (Right to appeal against information notice).(5) The date specified under subsection (4)(b) must not be before the end of the period within which an appeal under section (Right to appeal against information notice) can be brought.(6) Section (Limitations on duty to supply information and use of information supplied) sets out limitations on—(a) what information is required to be supplied under a notice, and(b) how information which is supplied may be used.(7) Where an information notice has been served on a person, the Registrar may cancel it by serving written notice to that effect on the person.”

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

17: After Clause 8, insert the following new Clause—
“Limitations on duty to supply information and use of information supplied
(1) An information notice does not require a person to supply information if—(a) doing so would disclose evidence of the commission of an offence, other than an offence excluded by subsection (2), and(b) the disclosure would expose the person to proceedings for that offence.(2) The following offences are excluded from subsection (1)—(a) an offence under section 9 of this Act;(b) an offence under section 5 of the Perjury Act 1911 (false statements made otherwise than on oath);(c) an offence under section 44 of the Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 1995 (false statements made otherwise than on oath);(d) an offence under Article 10 of the Perjury (Northern Ireland) Order 1979 (SI 1979/1714 (NI 19)) (false statutory declarations etc).(3) Any relevant statement made by a person (“P”) in response to a requirement in an information notice may not be used in evidence against P on a prosecution for an offence under section 9 unless the conditions in subsection (4) are met.(4) The conditions are that in the proceedings—(a) in giving evidence P provides information inconsistent with the relevant statement, and(b) evidence relating to the statement is adduced, or a question relating to it is asked, by P or on P's behalf.(5) In subsection (3) “relevant statement”, in relation to a requirement in an information notice, means—(a) an oral statement, or(b) a written statement made for the purposes of the requirement.”

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

19: Clause 9, page 6, line 19, at end insert—
“(2A) It is a defence for a person charged under this section to show that the person exercised all due diligence to avoid committing the offence.”

[Lord Lansley]

Your Lordships will be pleased to know we have arrived at the final group, in which the amendments all relate to the question of offences. The structure of the Bill as it stands is such that if there was a breach of the requirements of the register, the registrar would be able to proceed only by way of seeking to impose a criminal penalty in respect of the breach, whereas the current legislation enables the registrar to act in other—and in my view more proportionate—ways by seeking a civil penalty.

The purpose of most of these amendments is therefore to introduce the option of a civil penalty and the various requirements that go with that: a civil penalty regime in Amendment 20; a requirement to notify someone who is believed to be in breach and the civil penalty that would be imposed under Amendment 21; the character of the notice under Amendment 22; the right of appeal against that under Amendment 23; the relationship of the civil penalty to any criminal offence so as not to create double jeopardy under Amendment 24; the enforcement if a civil penalty is imposed as a civil debt under Amendment 25; and further details relating to the civil penalty under Amendment 26.

Amendment 19, the lead amendment that I am moving now, is about due diligence. It illustrates the difference between a criminal offence and the civil penalty since, if someone was guilty of an administrative oversight in relation to the requirement to register, essentially the registrar observing this breach would be inclined to go down the route of a civil penalty if it was sufficiently serious. One would be very unlikely to want to create a criminal offence for those kinds of administrative oversights. If someone has failed to comply with the register but has applied due diligence, it is important that they have a defence of due diligence against a criminal offence; however, where a civil penalty is concerned with something like an administrative oversight, there should not really be that kind of defence. So this replicates the existing structure of penalties, I think it is more proportionate and I hope it will commend itself to the Committee. I beg to move.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

I am happy to accept.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

20: After Clause 9, insert the following new Clause—
“Civil penalties
(1) The Registrar may impose a civil penalty on a person (in accordance with sections (Notice of intention to impose civil penalty), (Imposition of penalty), (Right to appeal against imposition of civil penalty) and (Civil penalties and criminal proceedings)) if the Registrar is satisfied that the person's conduct amounts to an offence under section 9.(2) For this purpose—(a) section 9(2A) is to be ignored, and(b) a person's conduct includes a failure to act.”

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

27: After Clause 10, insert the following new Clause—
“Guidance
(1) The Registrar may give guidance about how the Registrar proposes to exercise the functions under this Act.(2) The Registrar may do so, in particular, by publishing guidance—(a) as to the circumstances in which the Registrar would, or would not, consider that a person is carrying on the business of consultant lobbying;(b) as to the circumstances in which the Registrar would remove a person's entry from the register;(c) as to the circumstances in which the Registrar would consider it appropriate to impose a civil penalty;(d) about how the amount of a civil penalty will be determined.(3) The Registrar may publish—(a) revisions to any guidance published under this section;(b) replacement guidance.(4) Publication under this section is to be—(a) on a website, and(b) in such other form or forms as the Registrar considers appropriate.”

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

30: After Clause 12, insert the following new Schedule—
“SCHEDULETHE REGISTRAR OF LOBBYISTSStatus1_ The Registrar is a corporation sole.2_ The Registrar exercises the functions of that office on behalf of the Crown.Appointment3_(1) The Registrar is to be appointed by the Minister.(2) The Registrar holds office in accordance with the terms and conditions of that appointment; but this is subject to sub-paragraphs (3) to (6).(3) The term of office for which the Registrar is appointed must not be more than 4 years.(4) A person may be appointed for a second or third term; but the term for which a person is re-appointed must not be more than 3 years. (5) The Registrar may resign by giving written notice to the Minister.(6) The Minister may dismiss the Registrar if the Minister is satisfied that the Registrar is unable, unwilling or unfit to perform the functions of the office.4_(1) A person is ineligible for appointment as the Registrar if, at any time in the previous 5 years, the person—(a) was a Minister of the Crown or a permanent secretary, or(b) carried on the business of consultant lobbying or was an employee of a person who carried on that business.(2) For the purposes of this paragraph—“Minister of the Crown” means the holder of an office in the government, and includes the Treasury;“permanent secretary” means a person serving the government in—(a) the position of permanent secretary or second permanent secretary in the civil service of the State, or(b) one of the following positions—(i) Cabinet Secretary;(ii) Chief Executive of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs;(iii) Chief Medical Officer;(iv) Director of Public Prosecutions;(v) First Parliamentary Counsel;(vi) Government Chief Scientific Adviser;(vii) Head of the Civil Service;(viii) Prime Minister's Adviser for Europe and Global Issues.(3) Regulations may amend the positions in the list above by adding or removing a position.5_ A defect in the Registrar's appointment does not affect the validity of anything done by the Registrar.Remuneration and staffing6_ Service as the Registrar is not service in the civil service of the State.7_(1) The Registrar may make arrangements for sums in respect of the following to be paid to or in respect of the person holding office as the Registrar—(a) remuneration;(b) allowances;(c) pension.(2) The sums paid under sub-paragraph (1) are to be determined by the Minister.8_(1) The Registrar may make arrangements with the Minister or other persons—(a) for staff to be seconded to the Registrar;(b) for accommodation or services to be provided to the Registrar.(2) The payments that may be made under arrangements under sub-paragraph (1)(a) include payments to the staff in addition to, or instead of, payments to the person with whom the arrangements are made. Accounts9_(1) The Registrar must keep proper accounts and proper records in relation to the accounts.(2) The Registrar must prepare a statement of accounts in respect of each financial year.(3) The Registrar must send a copy of the statement, within a period specified by the Minister, to the Comptroller and Auditor General.(4) After the Registrar has sent a copy of a statement of accounts to the Comptroller and Auditor General, the Comptroller and Auditor General must—(a) examine, certify and report on the statement, and(b) arrange for a copy of the certified statement and the report to be laid before Parliament as soon as possible.(5) In this paragraph “financial year” means—(a) the period beginning on the day on which section 1comes into force and ending on the following 31 March, and(b) each successive period of 12 months.Funding
10_(1) The Minister may make grants or loans to the Registrar.(2) The grants or loans may be subject to conditions (including conditions as to repayment with or without interest).Amendment of other enactments11_ In Schedule 1 to the Public Records Act 1958 (definition of public records) at the appropriate place in Part 2 of the Table at the end of paragraph 3 insert—“The Registrar of Lobbyists”.12_ In Schedule 2 to the Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967 (departments and authorities subject to investigation) before the entry for the “Registrar General for England and Wales” insert—“The Registrar of Lobbyists”.13_ In Part 6 of Schedule 1 to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (other public bodies and offices which are public authorities) at the appropriate place insert—“The Registrar of Lobbyists”.”

Community Pharmacy in 2016-17 and Beyond

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

The point about the pharmacy integration fund is that we want to think up more joined-up ways in which we bring everything together. That is why we very much focus on the deployment of clinical pharmacies and pharmacy services in the community and primary care settings. It will include groups of general practices, but it also includes care homes and urgent care settings, such as NHS 111.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for repeating the Statement. She has rightly highlighted that over recent years the number of community pharmacies has increased—indeed, by more than 1,000 pharmacies in the last five years. That is welcome, because it is a means by which there is a reach into the community that is unparalleled elsewhere in the health and care services. But it is about how we go about diversifying pharmacy income. For a long time, it has been clear that it should not be wholly reliant on dispensing fees and the global sum, as it has been in the past. We need additional services, enhanced and locally commissioned services, to grow. My noble friend’s Statement said exactly that, but the question is how we do it. By and large, it will not be done out of the public health budget of local authorities, although some will be. It is potentially mainly out of things such as the better care fund, enabling us not just to have pharmacies embedded in GP and other health services but using the community pharmacies’ reach in the community to deliver support to people with chronic conditions. Will my noble friend say that there will be an effort to promote this? At the moment, we have no good data from the past two years on local commissioning of those enhanced services. Can we get those data sorted out so that we can see whether pharmacies are being used as they should be and diversifying their income?

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

I agree with everything that my noble friend has said—data are extremely important. Of course, with those new reforms we will have the opportunity to make changes and be absolutely sure that the integrated services are working as we want them to work.

Community Pharmacy

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

There is no reason why this should stop that happening. As I mentioned, the pharmacy access scheme absolutely ensures that no area will be left without access to community pharmacy, and that targets the rural areas in particular.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I know that my noble friend will agree that community pharmacy has a tremendous reach in that 1.6 million people every day visit a community pharmacy. It can play a vital part in enhancing care in the community, particularly, as my noble friend said, looking after those who are older and/or with chronic conditions. It tries to ensure that people are diagnosed and looked after, and that their needs are met in the community, not defaulting to costly hospital admissions. In that respect, my noble friend said that value-added services are key to this. They are, and for years we have wanted pharmacies to be able to diversify out of reliance wholly on dispensing fees and the allowable profit margin, to raise resources themselves by services provided to the NHS locally. Can my noble friend say to that extent how far clinical commissioning groups themselves use the opportunity of local pharmacies to offset what would otherwise be the pressures of demand upon NHS services?

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

I thank my noble friend for that question. On the last part, I may have to get back to him, because I do not know the answer to that. It is important to remember that the proposals that the Government have been consulting on are part of a wider package of reforms to ensure that the NHS funds are allocated in the most efficient way possible, while promoting a high-quality community pharmacy service which is fully integrated with primary and urgent care and which makes better use of pharmacies’ valuable skills.

Lobbying (Transparency) Bill [HL]

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Friday 9th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate on this Bill and thank the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, for bringing forward these issues. I declare a couple of interests. First, in common with many Members of this House, I do not engage in consultant lobbying, but if the Bill were to pass, advisory activities in which I do engage would become lobbying activities under the terms of the Bill. To that extent, interests are engaged.

Secondly, I declare an interest in that, as the then Leader of the House of Commons, I was responsible for the passage of the legislation to which the noble Lord referred—the transparency of lobbying legislation of 2014. I did so as a coalition Minister. I was the most senior Cabinet Minister in the Cabinet Office other than the Deputy Prime Minister, so that task fell to me when it might otherwise have fallen to the Deputy Prime Minister to take that legislation through. That was his gain and probably my loss.

The noble Lord illustrated in his introduction and explanation of the Bill many of the issues that we had to think about quite hard in the process of bringing forward Part 1 of the 2014 Act. There was a balance to be struck. I freely confess that the balance was struck on a minimalist basis of the balance between transparency on the one hand and burdens to be imposed on the other. In considering the legislation before us, your Lordships must also consider that balance very carefully. I am afraid that in my mind the noble Lord’s Bill still demonstrates the difference between a government Bill on the one hand and a Private Member’s Bill on the other, where the government Bill basically says, “We believe in the principle and we will take practical steps but we do not want to create a large bureaucracy”. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, in referring to the legislation in a debate last year, referred to the vast bureaucracy that would otherwise result from the extension of the regime in the way this Bill proposes. The noble Lord has put it all in the Bill—everything that anybody suggested to us—it is all there. The vast bureaucracy that would result is not only all there but would have to be paid for by the taxpayer, whereas, at the moment, the register of consultant lobbyists is paid for by those who place entries through a charging regime.

There was one omission in the noble Lord’s explanation of the context of the Bill to which I wish to draw attention. The 2014 Act was not the first element of a transparency regime implemented under the last coalition Government. The first, and in my view still the more important measure, was the disclosure of who Ministers and Permanent Secretaries meet. It is always a moot point, and should be part of the debate on this Bill with the Government, how effective that process is and how far it should reach beyond its present confines. In that context, the definition of “consultant lobbying” in the 2014 Act was constructed around the transparency regime whereby Ministers and Permanent Secretaries publish their external meetings. The 2014 Act allows for that to be extended to special advisers. That has not happened. It would be interesting if my noble friend the Minister were able to tell us anything about whether the Government have considered that matter and, indeed, the extension of the transparency regime to special advisers. The noble Lord and many of your Lordships will be aware that, while that is treated with alarm in Whitehall by special advisers themselves, it is none the less, we all know, actually of considerable importance in terms of the relatively small number, I submit, of those in Government whom we want to ensure are captured by the transparency regime.

I do not want to detain the House long because I have explained in the past, and it is all on the record, why I felt the burden of a Bill of this kind went too far. I simply illustrate this by saying that we are dealing with an intention to take the definition of “consultant lobbying” and add to it in-house lobbyists. During the passage of the previous Act, I never understood why people imagined that there was some lack of transparency about the fact, for example, that Heathrow is lobbying to have a new runway. The fact that they have in-house lobbyists engaged in that is neither here nor there. If they hire other people to act as lobbyists on their behalf, that much should be in the register, and would not be lawful were it not in the register. So to that extent, I am not sure what people do not know about. That people lobby on their own behalf seems to me perfectly transparent. It is a natural course of events. What is more important is to know under what circumstances decision-makers are reached by that lobbying. That gets me back to the point about the transparency regime on the part of Ministers, very senior officials and special advisers rather than the question of having to declare in a register that one is engaged as an organisation in lobbying on one’s own behalf.

Thirdly, I seriously object to the proposition that the definition of “lobbying activity” should extend beyond lobbying in its practical sense and include other forms of communication, advice to those who are engaged in lobbying and works to support those activities. This is reaching way out to the point where one is encompassing almost people who are not engaged in any kind of lobbying at all, not trying to deliver a particular decision from a Minister, official or parliamentarian, but are simply giving advice to people about what that process consists of. It would include, frankly, every academic who tells people what the process of Parliament is like and advises on parliamentary processes. It is all included in this catch-all,

“advises others in a professional capacity”,

in relation to meetings with public officials, because public officials includes all of us and all Members of Parliament.

The definitions are extended not only to in-house lobbyists but to advisers; they include not just the decisions of government in a narrow form but regulations, policies and positions of Her Majesty’s Government, which therefore covers pretty much everything that government is engaged in. “Public officials” is very widely drawn, including not only Permanent Secretaries and their equivalents but all civil servants, pretty much everybody who works in executive agencies—for example, everybody who works in agencies such as Ofcom or Ofgem, and so on—and everybody who works in Public Health England, which is an executive agency, and so it goes on. Millions of people would be defined as public officials. The organisations that are included in in-house lobbying and otherwise include large numbers of not only businesses but trade associations, trade unions and the like. Therefore, I am afraid that we would end up with legislation which seems to say: “On this register we should have almost everyone, whenever they talk to almost anyone else in the public sector at all, about any issue and in any fashion”.

This is not a small register. The noble Lord in his legislation proposes to go from a minimalist to a maximalist position. I contend to the House that in the course of debate on this legislation, whether it succeeds on this occasion, we can do a service by debating how far we move from the minimalist position, but we should certainly reject a maximalist position. It seems that the legislation goes far too far. It would behove Members of your Lordships’ House to think about what it would mean for us. We would be regarded as public officials, so this would include anybody talking to us in any circumstances; Members of Parliament are okay, because their constituents can talk to them. Just imagine: every all-party group would become a complete nightmare of lobbying disclosure where everybody is talking to everybody else. Any Peer who seeks to talk to any public official—which includes all of us—and any time any of us talk to anybody else about anything, it would have to be on the register.

I am afraid that definitions in legislation have to be a sight better than this for it to be a rational way to undertake legislation. As regards the register, where we end up it has to be much clearer about issues of who is being reached; we might logically go beyond where we are now, but it should still include genuine decision-makers, not everybody in the public service. We should look carefully at whether the transparency regime rather than the register should be expanded as the operative mechanism for delivering the improvement in the transparency regime that we want. We should be much clearer about what kind of communications are to be included; in-house lobbying should not form part of this. I am very uncertain about the process of having a code of conduct in the public sector rather than it being done on a voluntary basis.

I am concerned about the structure of the register as it is in the legislation, and we need to come back and look at those issues. Failure to comply is a criminal offence, as it is in the current legislation, but there is not scope for a civil action to be taken by the registrar; that forms part of the current legislation and should form part of any change to the powers. There should be a due diligence defence, which the noble Lord seems to have omitted from his legislation which would replace the existing Part 1, and there should be both a power to charge those who are on the register so as not to make this a large potential call on the taxpayer, but also to enable the registrar to do her job properly. The power to issue guidance should clearly be continued and seems to have been discontinued for reasons I do not understand.

Therefore some of all that is an interesting debate, and the legislation allows that debate to happen. I cannot give the Bill my support, but if we have the opportunity to take it further in Committee, it might enable us to explore in some detail what further reform of the transparency regime might look like in future.

Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr Huppert]

I am not a lawyer; I dropped out of studying law after my first year because my exams coincided with the general election, so I bow to the hon. Gentleman’s expertise in how litigious lawyers can be and how they will seek to make money out of whatever proposals there may be. I do not agree, however, that the new clauses will lead to a huge amount of litigation, so allow me to outline how I think they would work. If the hon. Gentleman has proposals for improving the Bill, I would be happy to hear them.

No Government amendment contains all the required measures, so my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome and I worked on the amendments and adjusted them in the light of criticisms from right hon. and hon. Members across the House. Although we do not have the Government’s seal of approval, we believe this is a workable approach that can, if necessary, be tweaked in another place, which has more specialist constitutional lawyers than this House. We feel that we should not simply hand the Bill over to the Lords unamended and say, “Try to sort the whole thing out”, without giving them a strong steer. Recall applies to Members of this House; the other place can consider the detail, but it should not be considering the principles.

Our proposed option would be in addition to triggers already in the Bill and would mean that 500 electors could sign a petition alleging misconduct by an MP. An election court would hear evidence of that misconduct and any rebuttal by the MP, and decide

“whether, on the basis of the evidence, it is reasonable to believe that the MP has misconducted himself or herself, to such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public’s trust in the MP, without reasonable excuse or justification.”

If the court upheld the allegation, that would act as another trigger for a recall petition in the same way as a suspension by the standards Committee of this House would do. However, because there would have been no proof of misconduct, only evidence of reasonable belief, we would require a slightly higher hurdle for the petition—15% rather than 10% of the electorate. That change is one of a number that we introduced, and we hope that the new clauses answer the criticisms that were made.

Let me highlight our other changes. The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby and the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) both felt that 100 petitioners, as in the original proposal, was too low a number and too easy to achieve, so we increased that to 500. We are not keen to go higher because the court’s role in ruling out unsubstantiated trivial or vexatious cases is best before the complaint has built up a large head of steam. Otherwise, it rather obviates the point of the later petition phase, which needs 15% of the electorate. The provision also simplifies the rules on expenses. Five hundred is a substantial barrier to a small or trivial claim—one annoyed individual, for example—but not if there is a real sense among the public that an MP has done something wrong.

The hon. Members for North Down (Lady Hermon) and for Liverpool, West Derby pointed out one serious flaw in our previous drafting—my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome was explicit about this. We were trying to apply the common law offence of misconduct in public office to Members representing Scotland and Northern Ireland, where that common law offence does not apply. We sought to get around that by stipulating that courts would act as though the offence were in England and Wales, on the basis that the House is in England, but that was inelegant and we accept that it was flawed. We solved the problem by specifying in the Bill the definition to be used, which is taken from the Attorney-General’s advice on common law in England and Wales. We are therefore no longer asking a court to determine anything based on a jurisdiction that is not its own, and we can still benefit from existing case law for that wording.

[Mr Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I am sure that my hon. Friend knows that the House, when in Committee, was sympathetic to the view that there should be a mechanism by which members of the public in a constituency are able to initiate a recall process, but it has to be one that we understand will work. Is the test, which the new clause intends to apply, analogous to the offence of misconduct in public office, or is it something less than that? If it is that, why will it not, if a court determines there is prima facie evidence, trigger a prosecution?

[Dr Huppert]

The wording is exactly the wording there would be for misconduct. First, that offence does not exist in Scotland or Northern Ireland. I will come on to that later with an example, but there are some issues. We would want Members to be equal, broadly speaking, regardless of where they have been elected from. The other issue is that although the offence of misconduct in public office is used quite regularly against police officers—there are a number of other cases—it has never actually been used against a Member of Parliament. There is a question of whether we trust the Crown Prosecution Service to be the deciding factor, particularly when there could be questions about how it would interact with various Members and Ministers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huppert]

I will have to check the wording of the article—[Interruption.] Sorry, I am not challenging the hon. Gentleman; it is possible, in writing it so speedily, that I miswrote it, because that is certainly not what it ought to say. That is not how it ought to work, and if I wrote that, it was my mistake and I apologise to him and anyone else who read it. I will check it as soon as I have a chance.

The system in Minnesota, which is similar to what we are suggesting, seems to work. Our proposal would protect MPs from trivial recall petitions, but allow the public a route, not mediated by the House, to recall MPs who have committed misconduct. I hope, therefore, that the House will support new clauses 2 and 3, along with the consequential amendments, when I put them later today.

I wish to turn briefly to the other amendments in the group, many of which are in my name and that of the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) and others.

[Mr Lansley]

Before my hon. Friend moves on to other amendments, I would find it helpful if he explained whether new clause 3(1), which says that the conduct that has to be alleged by the petitioners to a court must constitute

“misconduct in the office of member of parliament”,

is consistent with subsection (2), which says:

“The court may consider…conduct…whether or not it is committed directly in carrying out the office of member of parliament.”

We would be in the curious position where conduct unrelated to the office of a Member of Parliament and duties consequent on that office might be used to allege misconduct in that office. Is that not contradictory?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lansley]

I want to express my support for the Bill as it finishes its passage through this House. In particular, I want to repeat the point made by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary that the Bill was introduced on the basis that the principal parties in this House went into the last general election with manifesto commitments to a form of recall, and that is substantially reflected in the Bill.

Some Members have attempted to wear the cloak of democracy and say that we should have passed a completely different Bill that said something radically different and that would have rewritten, on the back of a day or two’s debate in the Chamber, the relationship between MPs and their constituents. The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) was rightly critical of that proposal and made it clear that it would change us substantially from being a representative democracy to being a more direct democracy whereby the electorate, notwithstanding their decision at the general election, could reach into the Chamber of the House of Commons, pull out Members and try to eject them on whatever grounds they chose, and at a time of their choosing, between one general election and another.

For that reason, I do not think the Bill is friendless. The Bill has merit and the fact that it will be relatively sparingly used in practice will, I hope, reflect the changed climate of behaviour in this House. It is important to note that during this Parliament the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority has not referred anybody to the Standards Committee to be sanctioned for breaching the expenses requirements of this House. The Standards Committee has been acting in relation to events that took place before this Parliament, not during it. We have changed since 2009-10. We have introduced proper independent scrutiny and we have a structure of sanctions.

Contrary to the points made on Report by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), I do not think that the Bill’s second trigger simply hands the issue to a committee of parliamentarians upstairs. I hope that when the House of Lords considers the Bill, we in this House will continue to consider how to make the work of the Standards Committee more independent and transparent. I know that the Standards Committee, and its Sub-Committee led by its lay members, is now looking at that matter.

I will not repeat all that I said on Second Reading, but it is important that the Committee does its job in the right way. When I was the Leader of the House, I put to the Committee my view that it should enhance the role of the lay members, and I made it clear not only that they should not bring forward a report without the support of the lay members, but that if they did, my successors as Leader of the House, whoever they were, would see it as their duty to ensure that the lay members’ views, including any contrary views, were put to the House for a decision. The truth of the matter is that, constitutionally, only the House itself can determine the sanctions applied in relation to membership of the House as a consequence of the actions of Members as Members of Parliament.

I hope that the House of Lords will recognise that the second trigger is not a cosy example of parliamentarians exercising judgment on parliamentarians. I hope that the Standards Committee, following its scrutiny, will propose in its report that the process should be led by lay people as much as by parliamentarians.

Parliamentarians and lay people should act on the basis of proven investigations. Much of what we have heard in the debate has concerned the idea that Members of Parliament should be subject to recall in relation to allegations, which they have to reply to, with no proper investigation and with no proven outcome from any investigation. That is where the Standards Committee, with the benefit of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, should deliver a sound basis for deciding whether a Member of Parliament has been found guilty of any wrongdoing. That is a sound basis on which to proceed with recall.

It is a perfectly legitimate view of the nature of our democracy for people to want, as some clearly do, to have a much more open recall system, in which Members can be pulled out of the Chamber by their constituents at any time, but that view should be tested at a general election by being proposed in a party manifesto. I will not be standing at the next election, so it is not for me but for future MPs to make such a decision. For now, it is right and proper to deliver on the pledges we made to our constituents in our manifesto at the last election. We should not be in the least bit hesitant about saying that that is the right and proper step to take.

Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith]

My right hon. Friend’s point goes to the heart of our debate because it deals with a much more profound concern than those three technical points with which I have attempted to deal. This is the line in the sand on which we will need to decide today. It relates to the fear that elected representatives could be unfairly hounded from office—kicked out because of how they voted on issues such as gay marriage, the badger cull or HS2. It is the idea that the mere existence of recall would make Members nervous about expressing themselves on controversial issues, and that rich and powerful vested interests could chase from Parliament those who dare to stand up against them.

[Mr Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

rose—

[Zac Goldsmith]

Those fears, however sincere, are misguided, and I want to explain why before I take any further interventions.

First, on a technical level, the numbers make such a thing virtually impossible. To reiterate, under my proposals, no Member could be recalled unless 50% plus one of his or her constituents voted for that recall, so there would be no question of a minority hounding an MP out of office—unlike with the Government’s plans, under which, bizarrely, 10% of constituents could throw out their MP, even if the other 90% absolutely adored them—and no Member could even face a full recall vote unless 20% of electors, or roughly 14,000 people, made the effort to go in person to a town hall, within a limited time frame, to sign a petition asking for one. We heard last week from hon. Members who had received 500 e-mails about badger culls and 400 e-mails about equal marriage, but those figures of 400 and 500 would be nowhere near enough to topple an MP, to trigger a referendum, or even to get to the point of having a recall petition. Those numbers are pitifully small compared with those required to clear the hurdles even to instigate the process that I am describing. What is more, those letters that MPs receive are often online and in template form; they can be sent at the mere click of a mouse. We are talking about a completely different scenario.

It is no coincidence that many of the Members who have unfairly faced the greatest difficulty during this Parliament, the very people whom the critics of recall might imagine to be the most vulnerable to attack, have put their names to my amendments, and they were the first to do so—my hon. Friends the Members for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) and my right hon. Friends the Members for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) and for Meriden (Mrs Spelman). They did so because they know that the existence of recall is the best possible way of challenging a noisy minority of critics either to put up or shut up. They know that when a recall petition fails to materialise, a Member will be able to turn to his or her tormentors and say, “The silent majority does not share your view.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

I do not think that money should determine that or, as my hon. Friend says, how Members behave. People should be elected on a broad range of issues, and it is for the electorate to determine subsequently whether they are re-elected.

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) says that he is proposing strong financial controls, but his amendment 23 would provide only that Ministers should have the power to apply controls on spending to the notice of intent and recall referendum processes. He does not say what the controls or the financial limits might be. Indeed, the limit during the recall petition period for which the Bill provides is £10,000 per accredited campaigner, but there is no limit on the number of accredited campaigners.

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Clark]

I do, and if my right hon. Friend—I know him to be right hon.—is patient, I will make those suggestions later.

New clause 2 is operable only if amendment 1 and new clause 1 are passed. It provides for a 200-word statement by the promoter of the recall petition, and a reply by the defending MP, to be included in the petition. Let me say something about some of the flaws in that understandable provision. The notice of intent to recall could contain accusations that are unfounded or unproven. Although the MP would of course have the right to reply, the inclusion of an unfair and unfounded statement on an official communication to every elector would almost certainly damage their reputation, particularly as the petition officer has a duty to send the statement to everyone on the electoral roll. Indeed, the statement could be positively libellous, and although the MP could seek damages though the courts, the injury to their reputation would be difficult, if not impossible, to repair.

[Mr Lansley]

Whereas my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) included in clause 9 of his Recall of Elected Representatives Bill a provision whereby any process would be stayed where there was an indictment on a chargeable offence, that has not been included in the amendments before us today. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is another flaw in the amendments? Clearly a notice of intent could include statements that would be prejudicial to a police investigation, as well as potentially very libellous and unfounded. My right hon. Friend has not yet noted this—I am sure that he has read it—but in those circumstances the Member would be given two working days in which to frame a reply to the statement of reasons.

[Greg Clark]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. He points to some other flaws in the amendment, which in itself is designed to be sensible and constructive, as having a statement and a rebuttal is clearly sensible.

Let me turn to the amendments tabled by a group of colleagues on both sides of the House, including the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome, my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), the hon. Members for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) and my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith). I have a great deal of sympathy with the thinking behind the amendments, which the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome set out comprehensively. They would give the public a role, which some have felt has been missing, in initiating recall, and provide an answer to the charge that one flaw of the Bill is that it is about MPs marking their own homework. Those are two themes that emerged on Second Reading. In line with our manifesto commitments, and with the views of many Members who spoke on Second Reading, and indeed today, the important point about the amendments is that they would keep the recall process focused on misconduct, which I think is the advantage of the approach he has set out.

The amendments propose that where misconduct in public office is alleged, electors in a constituency would be able to start a petition to initiate a recall process. They would require 100 electors to support the petition before it could be presented to an election court. I do not need to labour the point—my hon. Friend mentioned it—that this is a suggested way forward that clearly raises important legal drafting requirements, so I do not think that it will be possible at this stage to commit to endorsing them. But I think that he has proposed an important avenue and the possibility of a third trigger that is linked to an initiative of the public, which is valuable.

With regard to some of the difficulties, there is a widening of the definition of misconduct to include “gross dereliction of duty”. As others have said, that would require some understanding of what that might embrace.

--- Later in debate ---

[Crispin Blunt]

I have absolutely no idea. The Prime Minister is trying to run a coalition. He has to keep within this coalition our colleagues who are helping us to govern and delivering a majority in voting for taxes that make for some form of fiscally sensible arrangement. Of course there are going to be grubby deals—they have to be done. My hon. Friend has possibly given an example, although I have no idea of whether what she says is accurate.

The proposals by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park open us up to the possibility of being subject to recall all the time. That would make it immensely more difficult to support a Government in maintaining a coherent programme. There is a reason why Governments do the difficult things in the first few years of the Parliament: it is because they know they are going to be unpopular.

Part of my hon. Friend’s argument was to say, “The key thing here is about public confidence.” I accept that there is a lack of public confidence in this institution; that is why the Government have finally got round to proposing this measure. However, we must ask ourselves whether that will be addressed by our cowering yet lower in the face of it, or whether we should get off our knees, have some institutional self-confidence, and make the case that we are, in fact, regulated to an enormous extent as Members of Parliament. We have the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, the criminal law—which, if we are convicted, will result in our being thrown out—the Standards and Privileges Committee, the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and all the rest. An enormous number of bodies now oversee this place and our behaviour.

The question is whether this Bill is trying to address a real, practical problem about our behaviour, individually or collectively. The answer, I suggest, is no. Is there a reputational issue? Of course there is, and we have to work out the right solution to that. The Government’s proposals, which try to find a limited way of doing something to create the principle of recall, are not right and do not address the issue practically, while the proposals by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park are frankly dangerous. I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) and my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) about the dangers that they open up. Those arguments were also made by the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones).

[Mr Lansley]

I put it to my hon. Friend that there is a gap in the regulation, which the Bill is intended to fill. When the public see instances of gross misconduct that result in either a court sentence or a substantial period of suspension from this House, they say that in any other normal profession people would lose their jobs under such circumstances. This Bill puts Members in that position when it might not have happened otherwise.

[Crispin Blunt]

Do we have an actual problem or a perception of a problem that does not actually exist? In practice, we do not have a problem. If a Member is sentenced to imprisonment for a period of less than a year, it is highly likely that they will choose to stand down, as has happened. Equally, the same thing is likely if Members receive a sentence from the Standards and Privileges Committee, as happened with our former colleague Patrick Mercer, who decided to stand down. There is not a practical issue that we are trying to address. I accept there is a perception issue, but we have to work out the right way to address it.

The hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) made a further practical argument against the measures proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park. When I lost the executive vote on my reselection, the issue was put to a simple vote of the members of the Conservative party in Reigate, but take it from me: that occupied most of my attention for the two months it took to complete the ballot. I won by a margin of five to one, but the process was something of a modest distraction from my other work representing my constituents. The hon. Member for Swansea West made an absolutely valid point: the suggested process would be the most enormous distraction from the duties we are actually here to do.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough has said, are we not already subject to recall? Every five years we have to face the electorate in a general election.

European Council

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We have not changed our plans on this in any regard at all: the plans we have set out are still the plans to have that vote. What matters most of all is that we give the police and the security services the powers they need to keep our country safe.

[Mr Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend believe that the provisions for the UK rebate on the EU budget contribution apply to any additional demand made by the Commission? I think that they should and, therefore, that whatever the final calculation of any demand may be, up to two thirds of it should be rebated back to the United Kingdom.

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the important questions that needs to be asked and properly answered about this proposed sum of money, which, as I have said, is still an estimate, is how much of it is applicable for the rebate. Obviously, that would make a potentially significant difference to the amount.

Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

As I have made clear, there are many views about the level of the recall and what the mechanism should be. I look forward to my hon. Friend’s contribution to the debate and think that all Members will understand the point he makes. One of the consequences of imprisonment, of course, is that an MP is prevented from attending, so at least part of that is covered by that provision.

[Mr Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Although the decision to suspend a Member is one for this House, the effective trigger for that process is a recommendation from the Standards Committee. Does my right hon. Friend therefore agree that it is important not only that we recognise that it results from an independent inquiry by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, but that in the current review we strengthen the lay participation and voice in the Standards Committee? Does he agree not only that that should include an increase in the number of lay members, but that this House should hear directly from the lay members if in any respect they do not agree with the conclusion of the Standards Committee as a whole?

[Greg Clark]

That is exactly what I was alluding to when I said that the Standards Committee is considering ways to strengthen its credibility with members of the public. My right hon. Friend has substantial experience of those issues from his time as Leader of the House. I am sure that he will make an important and serious contribution to the debate.

I recognise that the creation of a recall mechanism for Members of Parliament clearly raises the question of how recall might fit with the disciplinary arrangements for other office holders in future. The triggers in the Bill have been carefully designed to fit with the particular rules of this House, and for that reason cannot be automatically applied to the recall of other elected office holders. This is not, and is not designed to be, a one-size-fits-all piece of legislation—that would be even more difficult to establish a consensus around—but we must of course learn the appropriate lessons from its implementation, which might in future be applied to other areas. I know that there will be debate, both today and later, on which other areas it might be appropriate to extend recall to. However, this Bill is narrowly about Members of Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

[Zac Goldsmith]

The regulations we are using for those who sign the recall petition are exactly the same as those proposed by the Government. I do not want to mislead the House, but my belief is that names and addresses would not be published, and that this would be an anonymous process. The recall would need to be verified by the returning officer, but names would not be publicly available. The name of the person who initiates the 5% stage and the notice of intent to recall would be made public, however, as would the description. I think that is right for a number of reasons, including that there would be a person to whom the authorities could go if the 5% stage was fraudulent—if there were duplicate signatures or if children or people from other constituencies were asked to sign. It is much easier to attach legal responsibility to a named individual, as opposed to something entirely anonymous.

In responding to interventions I think I have described the process—I hope so; I am slightly lost—and I was beginning to describe what genuine recall would look like: the 5% of constituents; then the 20% at the business end, the 14,000 people going to the town hall and signing. If that 20% is met, the bell would be rung and a recall referendum would be announced. That would be a simple yes or no, where a majority—not a vexatious minority—of an MP’s constituents would be required to boot them out in order to trigger the next stage, which is a by-election.

[Mr Lansley]

As I understand it, my hon. Friend’s alternative approach would enable a recall petition to be triggered for any reason. Will he explain at what point somebody who might be the subject not of a political complaint, but of allegations relating to their personal affairs, their conduct in this House, or conduct that might be the subject of a criminal investigation, would be subject to a petition? How would he prevent a petition from being triggered in circumstances where no allegation had been proven against that person?

[Zac Goldsmith]

One supporter of the amendments that will be tabled is my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans), whose circumstances match closely those just described. I hope that he speaks at some point in the debate—I do not see him here. He chose to support the amendments because he was reassured by provisions in them that once the judicial process begins, the recall process would be suspended. It would not be possible to seek to recall a Member once such a process had begun, until it had concluded. I think that is right, and there was an overwhelming consensus that that is right among the 40,000 people or so who responded to the survey. The measure would provide the protection that is required.

To reach its logical conclusion, before getting to the by-election the process would require an absolute minimum of five and a half months. This process would not happen over a weekend, and five and a half months would also allow Members to make the case to their constituents in a way that they could not in a short period of time. That is another reason why my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) —he has had similar experiences that I do not need to rehearse because everybody knows about them—is very much a supporter of the Bill. He feels that the five-month process was far longer than he would have required to engage with his constituents and make the case. The same is true of two other Members of the House who have had difficulties in their lives and who began the debate very much in opposition to recall. They now both support the amendments because they feel that they will get a fairer trial from their constituents than they ever would from social media, the mainstream media, or from a standard committee of parliamentarians, susceptible and fragile as we all are to tremendous pressures from newspapers and social media. The thresholds and protections are there.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this interesting debate, and I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan). In a sense, he and others who support the alternative approach, as set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), are looking for a Bill that would achieve a substantially different end from that of the Government’s Bill. I was surprised, however, that he and my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park appear to argue that we should adopt that alternative approach precisely because they have constructed it in such a manner that it would be unlikely to have any effect. I know that accusations have been made, perhaps with some justification, that the Government’s Bill would result in relatively few instances in which a recall would be triggered, because Members would very likely resign instead, as other Members have in the recent past. However, I do not think we should be looking for a system that is so difficult to manipulate and in which recalls are so unlikely to happen that Members would, in practice, be proof against it.

My starting point is that Members would have little to fear from being the subject of a referendum vote of the kind postulated in the Recall of Elected Representatives Bill, as opposed to the Bill we are considering today. I believe in the genius of the masses. The experience of my 17-plus years representing South Cambridgeshire has taught me that, although I might on many occasions have done something that a minority of my constituents disagreed with, I doubt that they would ever have actually turned me out between elections on those grounds. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) made a similar point.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

My right hon. Friend makes the point that those in favour of these amendments believe, as I think we all do across this argument, that most Members of this House behave honourably and that there will be very few instances in which the public, when they reflect seriously on the issues, seek to throw us out, but that is not a reason for not putting in place a recall—put that power with people and put trust in people to exercise it properly. The fact that it will be rarely used does not mean it is not important.

[Mr Lansley]

I agree. I have been listening carefully to the debate, and it is interesting to consider under what circumstances the kind of mechanism—the kind of trigger for recall—that is not in the current recall Bill but that is proposed to be put into it in its place would impact on Members. I do not think it would be the prospect that they would be the subject of a referendum vote with 50% voting to have a by-election and the seat vacated. I think that is extremely unlikely. Much more likely, and in my view much more pernicious, is the possibility of large numbers of Members, over the course of a Parliament, being subject to a notice of intent to recall—with all the attendant impact that can have on an MP, not least when deployed by, and in the hands of, the media—for taking steps that may be in line with their manifesto and with the policy of their party or for taking an independent and potentially unpopular line, which, frankly, is even more laudable.

If the hon. Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell) and some others were here, they would say, “That’s simply putting yourself in a position where you have to listen to your constituents and respond to them.” That is fair enough. We could accept that if this was done simply on that basis, but I think it would be more dangerous if it was deployed in other circumstances.

I made a point to my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park about a Member who had not been the subject of due process. Under his Bill, somebody being charged with an indictable offence would stay the process, but we know perfectly well that substantial periods can pass during which people are the subject of very damaging allegations but are not charged with an offence.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I prosecuted nine murder trials and all manner of other things in my previous career, so I can endorse the fact that there will be a huge time gap in these matters. If we adopted the proposal made by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), the Member involved would simply be hounded out.

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has such expertise, for endorsing that point.

It goes even further. Often we are talking about offences that are not indictable. They are what are regarded as offences in the mind of the electorate. They may be genuine or they may not be genuine, but if they are genuine and bear upon conduct in this House and are, on the face of it, a breach of our code of conduct, they should be considered by due process. We are trying to make the process in this House as fair as possible.

I have heard Members, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden, be very critical of the processes relating to past decisions of the Standards and Privileges Committee. Let us be clear: we have made changes in this Parliament to standards and privileges. We now have a Standards Committee that examines matters not solely at the behest of MPs who are members of the Committee but has three lay members. We should consider this Bill alongside, and I hope with the benefit of, the review that will be conducted by the Standards Committee and its lay members. I am sure that in Committee the Chair of the Standards Committee will be able to add further to that.

When I was Leader of the House I made it clear to the Standards Committee that I saw these two things happening to some extent side by side, because the second trigger in this Bill depends upon the credibility and authority of the Standards Committee and the recommendations it makes. We can improve that. I think it will require more lay members and I think it will require a veto whereby a recommendation from the Standards Committee may not be made without the support of its lay members.

For reasons not least of parliamentary privilege we cannot give lay members a vote. However, as Leader of the House I said—I would be grateful if my right hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House confirmed this—that if there was a recommendation arising from a vote in the Committee on Standards relating to the conduct of a Member that did not have the support of the lay members, when the House came to consider that recommendation, I would see it as my responsibility, as I hope that my successors would, to put alongside any motion that was presented by the Chair of the Committee an amendment that would reflect the view of the majority of the lay members of the Committee. Therefore, while it would remain true that the membership of the House as a whole was responsible constitutionally for the regulation of the conduct of Members of this House and for a decision to suspend or expel a Member, it would be transparent whether the House was acting directly in accordance with the majority view of lay members. It would of course be acting with the benefit of the advice of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend places a lot of emphasis on the issue of due process, but due process is not necessarily just the preserve of this House. There can be due process through a proper and appropriate trigger, threshold and referendum. Ultimately, an election has a due process. We have heard about being concerned about reputational damage from spurious allegations and the rest. If there is a judicial process, the recall could be suspended. We are already besieged by spurious complaints. Surely we should put this to a proper recall mechanism so that the electorate can put up or shut up.

[Mr Lansley]

I understand my hon. Friend’s point. I am afraid that there are too many risks to be confident that the process of notice of intent to recall leading to the 20% petition could necessarily be regarded as objective and fair. All that is required to be done to damage substantially and perhaps fatally the reputation of a Member of Parliament is for such an allegation to be made, which may or may not lead to any charge for an offence or even relate to an offence and which may be something that is the product of their private and personal life and not of their activities in their professional responsibilities as a Member of Parliament. The fact that that kind of recall can be triggered for whatever reason gives an opportunity for substantial damage to be done without any objective and fair conclusion having been reached, which should be the case if one is going to have one’s livelihood put at risk in that way.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

Is my right hon. Friend not drawing the distinction between the Government’ proposals, which, although not perfect, are formalising the fact that the recall process will be around criminal behaviour and misdemeanours rather than the proposals of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), which will be focused on conscience and policy issues? That distinction is very dangerous, which is why my hon. Friend’s amendments should fall.

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend leads me on to the most important aspect of this, which is that what is being sought here is an opportunity for recall in order to seek to influence the views of Members of Parliament. If that is not the case, why would the public be doing it? I have made the argument about allegations of poor behaviour. The Government’s recall Bill, which I support and was involved in, directs itself towards a perceived gap in the regulatory process relating to Members of Parliament who commit criminal offences or who behave in a manner that seriously breaches the code of conduct.

My hon. Friend makes an important point. It would be wrong to have a power of recall to try to sanction Members of Parliament. This recall Bill puts in place an objective and fair process whereby, if something is proven, members of the public may, by means of a petition, recall a Member of Parliament and subject them to a by-election. However, the amendments that we will consider in due course would put in place a substantially different process by giving people the opportunity to intervene by saying, “You, as my Member of Parliament, are expressing a view with which I do not agree”—for reasons of conscience, policy, party or whatever it might be—“and I want to demonstrate that you are doing something that we do not agree with to try to influence you to take a different approach.”

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I agree with everything that the former Leader of the House is saying, and I want to ask him a genuine question because he has tremendous expertise in this matter. Does he think that there might be scope to amend the Bill further on Report so that it is absolutely clear that no procedure may be initiated simply on the basis of a Member’s votes or views? Is there room for improvement?

[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.

[Mr Charles Walker]

As important as recall is, what was much more important in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 was fixing this country’s economy, and ensuring that people could pay their mortgages and remain in work. Let us not overestimate the Bill’s importance, because—dare I say?—the Public Gallery is not doing so.

[Mr Lansley]

I do not suppose that I am overestimating the Bill’s importance, although it was important that we delivered on our manifesto promises and the coalition agreement. Achieving that was at the forefront of our minds as we set out our legislative programme, for which I had responsibility.

I was slightly amused that the speech made by the hon. Member for Clacton was largely about the importance of delivering on promises made at the previous election. The Bill exactly delivers on the promise in the Conservative party’s general election manifesto, and I think that that was why the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), started his speech by reminding us what that manifesto said. For me, as a Conservative, the Bill is directly in line with that promise, and shifting to a process that is substantially different from that under the Bill would involve making a presumption about what the legislation should be without our having a mandate from the electorate. The hon. Members for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and for Clacton showed in their speeches that they would like a different constitutional settlement, of which the power of recall that they want is only one small aspect.

[Mr MacNeil]

rose—

[Mr Graham Stuart]

rose—

[Mr Lansley]

I will give way first to the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), who is being very persistent, as ever, and then to my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart).

[Mr MacNeil]

I am trying to understand exactly what the right hon. Gentleman is saying. Is he saying, for example, that were a future Prime Minister to lie in order to take the country to war, duping Parliament and, by extension, its Committees, the public should have no sanction other than years later at a general election, when many other issues could be at stake?

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting question, and not a hypothetical one—let us face it: he is referring to a decision of the kind taken in 2003. We have asked today how many people would sign petitions, write to their Member of Parliament or go to one of four designated places in a constituency in order to do something. Well, in my recollection, 2003 was the point when it was most likely that large numbers of the public would have taken some specific action in relation to a Government policy that they had not sanctioned, that certainly was not part of any previous manifesto promise and that they felt was wrong. That raises the following question: what would have happened in 2003 had recall been available?

I say this in a disinterested way, because I did not vote for the invasion of Iraq and so this would not have affected me, but I think there are those who would argue that that is what it is all about—that in those circumstances members of the public would have had an opportunity to say, “Not in our name” by setting up petitions and giving notice of the intention to recall. Throughout the period of the conflict in Iraq there would have been a rebellion among the electorate.

Is that right or wrong? I happen to think that necessarily it is wrong. To return to the constitutional point, we are a representative democracy in which we owe our constituents our collective judgment. We come here not as an independent legislature separate from the decisions of the Government, but to form a Government and sustain them through the legislature. That Government have to make decisions and secure the majority of this House, and we have to stick by that. This proposal would have completely undermined that.

If we are looking for a way to undermine the proposal, let us imagine that it had been possible for the organisers of protests in 2003 to focus on the Prime Minister’s constituency and get 20% of the voters there to sign a petition. They would have done so, even though they recognised that there was no way they could get 50% on the subsequent vote, but it would have had such a destabilising impact on the Prime Minister of the day, in circumstances in which he was doing something that was deeply unpopular but that he felt was right—whether or not he was right is not the matter. I cannot see how a responsible Parliament in a representative democracy could go down that path.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for honouring his pledge to give way to me. I think that he has now come to the heart of the matter, certainly as far as the amendments from our hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) are concerned: whether the electorate would seek to use the power of recall to challenge Members on matters of conscience, on how they vote and, fundamentally, on how they do their job in this place. Hon. Friends who represent university towns might have found themselves subject to such proposals when it came to voting on tuition fees. On balance, I do not believe that the electorate would abuse that power, but I recognise that there is a risk. Does my right hon. Friend have any evidence that it would be misused, as we would see it, in that way?

[Mr Lansley]

This is very difficult, because we are necessarily debating what the circumstances would be, but I have been struck by speeches arguing for amending the Bill on the basis that it will all be all right on the night. Well, legislation is not like that. Legislation is like writing a contract; if we write a contract with somebody—in this case with the electorate—we have to know how it will be used and what will happen when it starts to go wrong. It seems to me that at the moment the defences against those potential problems are not there in the alternative Bill proposed.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Surely the evidence my right hon. Friend is looking for is in the bit of the Bill that is covered by the amendments. I have not been e-mailed by a single member of the public who is not also a member of 38 Degrees.

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend will recall that I am not enamoured of 38 Degrees, but it is interesting to make that distinction.

My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park and his colleagues have constructed the proposition that one must physically go to one of four places in a constituency in order to disempower 38 Degrees and those who would try to create petitions on an online basis. If we start down this path, that is where the pressure will come. People will say, “In this modern age we should not be dependent on physically having to go somewhere”, in the same way that they blithely talk about electronic voting and so on. It will rapidly get to the point where it is not about visiting particular physical locations but about generating large numbers of electronic signatures on online petitions. Then we will see a substantial change in the relationship between Members of this House and their constituents.

I have no problem with the idea that I should engage fully with my constituents and listen to them. In practice, we have moved subtly in that direction. Anybody who cares to remember, as I can, the debate in 2003 before the invasion of Iraq and the debate that took place last year on the intervention in Syria will recognise that last year more Members were responding in short order to substantial online representations, in larger numbers, from their constituents. In 2003, I got a very large number of letters, but they were actual letters, and overwhelmingly individual, not template, letters. A lot of Members felt burdened by the weight of opinion that was coming to them on the Syria vote.

[Mr MacNeil]

The right hon. Gentleman has used the phrase “representative democracy” on a number of occasions. If this is indeed a representative democracy, surely he has nothing to fear from a recall Bill. In fact, having this Bill in the voters’ locker as a big stick used lightly might ensure that it was a representative democracy as regards the two examples he has given—tuition fees, given the promises made by one of the coalition parties, and the Iraq war.

[Mr Lansley]

It is not that Members have something to fear from participation in our democracy—far from it. I believe completely in the wisdom of the masses, but we have to recognise when and how that is properly to be tested in the formal sense. We are a representative democracy, and we increasingly change the character of our democracy anyway. The referendum is a participatory democratic vehicle. We have used it more, and it is likely to be with us for the future, but only in specific circumstances. That illustrates the nature of the constitutional question at the heart of the potential amendment to the Bill.

Shifting to a recall process is not about addressing the individual behaviour of Members—it is much more likely to be used to try to influence the policies of political parties, of Members of Parliament, or of the Government. It would relate to particular individual issues, unlike a general election. As other hon. Members have said very forcefully, a general election is a vital moment in a representative democracy, because people take the whole presentation of party and candidate and consider it in the round. The recall mechanism is designed to enable the public to intervene in and, notwithstanding what the decision in a general election might have been, to impact directly on an individual decision on an individual policy issue.

[Zac Goldsmith]

My right hon. Friend is describing Parliament as if it were made up of hundreds of free spirits whose decisions might be corrupted by the pressure brought about by recall, but surely he realises—in fact, I know that he knows this—that the pressure applied by party hierarchies through the Whips is on a dramatically different scale from the tiny pressure that might be felt as a consequence of this remote and unlikely threat of a three-line whip that constituents might find themselves holding from time to time. There is no comparison—surely my right hon. Friend understands that. Most Members do exactly what they are told by the Whips for 99.9%—sometimes 100%—of the time.

[Mr Lansley]

I am quite old fashioned: Members would have to look quite far back to find a point at which I did not vote in accordance with the Whip. I think that the last time I defied the Whip was on the question of same-sex adoption rules.

I see part of my role as having been elected as a Conservative. A number of Members have said, perfectly reasonably, that we are primarily and overwhelmingly elected—the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) has accepted this—on a party rather than an individual basis. I do not see that as meaning that individual Members of Parliament should not have a conscience or be able to exercise their judgment, because they owe that to their constituents. They will have to come to a judgment on great matters of conscience that are relevant to their constituency. That was true on Iraq: I did not vote for the invasion, even though it was my party’s policy to do so. To suggest, however, that we should behave as individuals outside party discipline is nonsense, because the whole system will begin to break down if we go in that direction.

The point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park was slightly the other way around. He said that we all behave in the way the Whips tell us, but this has been a more rebellious Parliament—for good or ill—than ever before. I am not sure whether that is a good basis for the argument in favour of recall, because Members clearly feel that they can respond to their conscience and their constituents without the need for a recall mechanism.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) has suggested that if we took the Whips out of the process of deciding whether a Member should be suspended from this House—actually, I do not think that the Whips are part of that process— that would somehow relieve us of the impact of the Whips controlling our behaviour. The recall mechanism proposed as an alternative to this Bill, however, is a greater risk to Members. If a Member were subject to an allegation—a serious allegation, but not a criminal one—that threatened their reputation and position in the constituency, it is clear that they would then be subject to a notice of intent and at risk of a recall petition. The situation would develop rapidly and the question for their party would then be whether it supported them or not.

The hon. Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell) mentioned Ian Gibson, who accused his party of abandoning him. The most dangerous thing for a Member is to be abandoned when they are at risk of having to stand in a by-election in their constituency. If the party takes the Whip away from a Member, they would, in effect, have no chance in a by-election—unless they were in a very strong position—and they would be undermined. The power of the Whips as to whether a Member has the Whip—and, therefore, their power over that Member’s position in an election—would be unchanged by this or any other recall Bill. The power of the Whips is often exaggerated, but in so far as it exists, it would be unchanged by the recall mechanisms, whatever they might be.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

This is also a constitutional issue. We make judgments on behalf of our constituents on issues that are not in our manifestos. We also carry out manifesto commitments, but we are not delegates. I think that is where people tend to get a little confused: there is a big difference between making a judgment on behalf of constituents and being mandated as an individual delegate to represent something.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We are not delegates or ciphers; we are representatives. As Members have rightly said, we owe our constituents our judgment and our conscience and we are here to represent their interests, but we should not necessarily subordinate any of that to their opinions or, still less, to some calculation of what might be their opinions.

It is very difficult to know precisely what one’s constituents’ opinions are. For example, it was often asserted with great confidence that my constituents were against the legislation on same-sex marriage, but that was absolutely untrue. I knew that they were in favour of it. Even those who contacted me were generally in favour of it. I say this advisedly to Government Members, but some Members in the Chamber voted for it and felt that they were right to do so despite their constituents being against it. They could not have taken much comfort from the last Conservative manifesto, because the proposal was not in the manifesto as such, although it was referred to in other documents. Under the recall mechanism, in that sense they would be at risk. That brings us back to the argument made by proponents of the alternative recall mechanism, which is that it would never have come to that. In that case, we have to ask under what circumstances recall would get to such a point, and I mentioned some of those circumstances earlier.

To sum up, first, we are delivering on the promise we made; and, secondly, we are very clear that in past cases of wrongdoing Members—either somebody, a long time ago, who was given a prison sentence or, more commonly, a period of suspension from the House—would not necessarily, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) put it, have done the honourable thing and resigned. Recently, such Members have done so, but, frankly, they were not required to do so.

To return to an earlier point, regulatory processes in the House for managing the conduct of Members should show that we are willing, able and have mechanisms in place so that, as we promised, somebody who commits serious wrongdoing will be subject to a process that may lead to their recall and expulsion from the House at a by-election. We have seen possibilities for doing that in the past, and we would stick to such a system in future.

Over the past couple of years or so, Ministers have tried to make the Bill as robust as possible, and we have not stopped doing so. However, there is a big gap between where we are now and a recall mechanism that is completely different constitutionally, because it would allow the public the opportunity—on individual decision-making and policy issues—to reach in to the Chamber of the House of Commons in the middle of a Parliament, and pull out a Member on the grounds that they had done something the public did not like between one general election and the next. That would undermine the general election as the critical moment for accountability, and it would undermine Members if it was abused, as inevitably most mechanisms can be abused. Constitutionally, it would take us in the direction of participatory or direct democracy, which is not the direction in which we in this Parliament want to go.

Notwithstanding the fact that many Members will vote for the Bill on the grounds of wanting to change it, I and I hope others will vote for it, although it is susceptible to amendment, because we in principle—the Second Reading is about the principle—support the Bill as it is.

Tributes to Tony Benn

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Andrew Lansley)]

Today, this House has had its opportunity to bid farewell to one of our own—someone who gave so much to this House of Commons and who so passionately believed in the centrality of this House to our democracy. The debate has been full of memories. For one Parliament, I served in this House with Tony Benn. Even then, we knew that he was a great parliamentarian, one of the central parliamentary figures of the second half of the 20th century. I want to add my condolences to his family. There is no doubt that the sense of loss is great when one loses someone whose presence and character has been there throughout one’s life—we feel for them.

As a Member of this House for nearly 50 years, Tony Benn was a champion of the rights of Members to hold the Executive to account. He said in his book, “Arguments for Democracy”:

“We need a strong government to protect us; and those who see that need must also be most vigilant in seeing that it is, itself, fully democratic in character.”

I hope that he would approve and applaud the changes that we make in this Parliament to promote the interests of Select Committees, which he called for in the 1980s, and indeed the rights of Back Benchers.

Tony Benn was also one of the central influences on the character of our modern Parliament, including in his role in the disclaiming of peerages. His views on reform of the House of Lords were trenchant from his early days in the Commons, as the shadow Leader of the House recalled. He consistently believed in the primacy of the Commons and argued strongly for the abolition of the Lords. He said:

“I am not a reluctant peer but a persistent commoner.”.

A commoner yes, but never commonplace.

Beyond this place, his influence was far-reaching. Even for those who did not share his ideology, the power of his speeches, the intellectual challenges of his views and the originality of his world view, provoked, inspired and always engaged.

Tony Benn himself said:

“I think the most important thing in life is to encourage. If anybody asked me what I want on my gravestone, I would like, ‘Tony Benn, he encouraged us’. That would be all I need!”

He can rest in peace in the knowledge that he did indeed encourage generations of his fellow commoners.

[Mr Speaker]

Right hon. and hon. Members might like to know that Her Majesty has agreed that Tony Benn’s coffin will be brought to the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft, the Crypt chapel, on Wednesday afternoon next to rest overnight before being taken to St Margaret’s church for his funeral service. The Speaker’s Chaplain, Rev. Rose Hudson-Wilkin will undertake an all-night vigil. The private family service to receive the coffin in the crypt will be followed by a period when parliamentary passholders may file past his coffin to pay their respects.

Tributes to Nelson Mandela

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Andrew Lansley)]

I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House who wonderfully reflected the debate and recalled the many moving, thoughtful and evocative speeches that we heard during the course of this remarkable tribute to Nelson Mandela.

May I join the shadow Leader of the House in thanking you, Mr Speaker, for enabling us to have this tribute to Nelson Mandela? I also look forward to Thursday afternoon and the opportunity for civil society and the wider public to come here to the Great Hall at Westminster to share the opportunity not only to commemorate the life of Nelson Mandela and dedicate themselves to his memory, but to celebrate his life. There will be organisations that, for decades, have supported his struggle and the people of South Africa. There will be South Africans in this country who will want to come and show their love and respect for Nelson Mandela, and it is a good and welcome opportunity for them to do it here at their Parliament.

We have heard many memorable speeches. Today has been an unprecedented opportunity for us to express our views, and we have met on the same day as the South African Parliament. Helen Zille, who was referred to by a number of Members, said that Nelson Mandela’s death

“united the world in grief but it has also united us in hope.”

That was evident in many of the speeches that we heard today.

Many speeches were prompted by personal memories. Most memorably, the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain) talked about a lifetime of memories of Nelson Mandela and the struggle against apartheid, from which many of us learned. The hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) referred to the character of the struggle over decades against the evil of apartheid. Many Members talked very movingly and importantly about the nature of that struggle, which I know will also be reflected in the ceremony on Thursday.

The shadow Leader of the House referred to the remarkable speech of the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown). There was mention of shared ambitions and the further ambition that Nelson Mandela showed after he had left office as President of the Republic of South Africa in wanting to achieve great things, not least in the eradication of child poverty across the world.

The right hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy) and a number of Members talked about personal memories of living in South Africa. All of them told of a man whose courage, constancy of moral purpose, as the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) said, and power of forgiveness, as the Leader of the Opposition said, have been a world-changing feature of our age. As the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) and the shadow Leader of the House said, it is sometimes said that he somehow transcended politics, but that is wrong as he used political means to achieve political objectives and in doing so was the epitome of a politician. He recognised that it is the nature of politics for there to be a conflict of interest, but the very best politician is somebody who enables those competing interests not to lead to conflict but to be reconciled. His pursuit of forgiveness and reconciliation is an inspiration for us all.

I visited South Africa in 1995 on behalf of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, and even in the space of those few years and the year after that first election it was remarkable how parliamentary democracy and the assumption of parliamentary democracy for the future had been adopted in South Africa. That has persisted and for us, in this Parliament, that is something with which we can feel a strong fellow feeling.

The speeches have of course captured the character of a remarkable man, recalling his deeds, his achievements, his words, his unfailing courtesy, his personal courage, his values and, of course, his often mischievous sense of humour. A number of Members talked of him as a great man and the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) rightly talked of how he had inspired him, and what a great man he was. The right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) talked about when he was asked by the National Portrait Gallery to nominate great figures of the 20th century, and Nelson Mandela was one of three whom he nominated. The hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) talked about him as a towering figure of the 20th century.

I am reminded that when Nelson Mandela retired as President, Tony Leon, whom I met in South Africa back in 1995, spoke of the fact that one can think of leaders who are great and good but that there is a special category beyond that. He described them as those who are great and good but have

“a special kind of grace”.

He could only think of two people who fitted such a category: Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.

We are talking about somebody who is close to unique, but we can also think of him as unique. Not only was he clearly a towering figure of the 20th century, but he will also be regarded as a towering figure in the 21st century, not just because of the ambitions he enunciated after he left the presidency but because of his character, the nature of his approach to truth and reconciliation, the power of forgiveness, and his ambition and how he expressed it. As the right hon. Member for Neath and others recalled, at the Rivonia trial he articulated his determination that he had fought against white domination but would also fight against black domination —he was committed, and if necessary would give his life, to upholding justice and freedom. Those things will endure and we have as much need of them in this century as we did in the last.

In the South African Parliament today, Deputy President Motlanthe called on South Africa and the world to consider how Nelson Mandela’s legacy might be carried forward. In today’s debate, we have heard speeches on exactly that. The right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath talked about the eradication of child poverty and other Members spoke about the necessity of promoting justice and freedom in the world, of reducing poverty, discrimination and inequality and of using those principles of reconciliation and forgiveness around the world in areas as far apart as Korea and Syria and in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Members such as the right hon. Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr O'Brien) talked about how Nelson Mandela’s ambitions and approach in South Africa are entirely relevant and needed in the continent of Africa in this century and in the future. In that sense, many of today’s speeches would be regarded across the world as showing how we in this House and this country believe that Nelson Mandela’s legacy might be carried further.

Mr Speaker, my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) suggested that you might bind a copy of the speeches in today’s debate and send it to the South African Parliament. I hope that you will and that when you do, the South African Parliament will recognise that on the same day as they paid tribute to Nelson Mandela, we did so in like fashion. Like them, for us the dream has not ended.

[Mr Speaker]

Thank you. I will.

Adjournment

Resolved, That this House do now adjourn.—(Amber Rudd.)