Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Snape Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I did not say at all whether they would stand on their former party ticket, but there is nothing to stop the Member of Parliament standing in their constituency. That is the whole point of the commentary.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

On that particular point, perhaps I could ask the Minister about the case—I think it was the Littleborough by-election—where the Labour Member of Parliament was disqualified and prevented from standing again by a court judgment. Have the Government got anything to say about that in the context of this Bill and these amendments?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My understanding is that the gentleman would no longer be disqualified.

I will conclude, because in effect these amendments are technical. They are about implementing the will of the other place and ensuring that all convictions for providing false or misleading information in relation to parliamentary expenses claims under Section 10 of the Parliamentary Standards Act—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cormack]

I well remember that: I was sitting just behind when Reginald Maudling made his Statement. It was after Bloody Sunday, and it was a moment of high drama and great tragedy. A diminutive figure came dashing across the House and started to belabour the Home Secretary. As she did so, one of his Front-Bench colleagues grabbed at that slight figure, and Lord Home—Sir Alec Douglas-Home, as he was in the House of Commons—said, “Just you be careful what you do with a lady”. I shall never forget that. It is one of the vignettes I often recall. She was motivated by high emotion and did something that truly she should not have done. I remember a Labour Member punching Jeremy Thorpe when the result of the vote to go into the Common Market was declared. The Member was restrained, but was anything done? Of course not. At moments of high drama, things that should not be done sometimes are done; but subjecting such MPs to the sort of quasi-judicial process that this series of amendments propose—in good faith, I know—is just not on. Although it is, as I say yet again, for the House of Commons to determine its rules, we—particularly those of us with long experience in that place—have the right not to throw this measure out but to say, “Hold on a minute”. I hope that in the next Parliament there will be—to use the awful American jargon—a revisiting of this Bill.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, I made my view on the Bill plain at Second Reading, and I will try not to repeat anything that I said then. I am going to break that promise straight away. I said then that I could not imagine anything that could make this Bill worse, except perhaps for the coercion of the two Front Benches. But these amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, make an appalling Bill even worse, if such a thing were possible.

My noble friend Lord Grocott touched on proposed new subsection 3(f) in Amendment 30, which states:

“subject to the condition in subsection (4), otherwise abused or brought into disrepute the office of Member of Parliament”.

On Second Reading, I said specifically to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, that there was never a great problem in getting 500 signatures in any constituency on any matter at all. Some years ago my noble friend Lord Howarth crossed the Floor in the other place. He will well remember that I attended a meeting in his then constituency of Stratford-on-Avon. The meeting was fairly heated, as one can imagine, and a number of the people there would not only have signed a petition to achieve the magic 500 but taken him outside and hanged him, I should have thought. They probably would have taken me outside and hanged me, too, for chairing the meeting. So I should think that there would not have been any great difficulty in getting that number of signatures, or getting some of those people together to say that my noble friend, for one reason or another, had somehow brought Parliament into disrepute.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My noble friend does not exaggerate. At the Conservative Party conference that year there were lapel stickers saying, “Hang Howarth”—which, it seems, were very popular. I tried to get hold of one but never succeeded. It may be that noble Lords can still find one in their own archives.

[Lord Snape]

I have to say that, having spent 27 years in the other place, I never achieved such notoriety in West Bromwich. There is still time, of course. One never knows.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, ought to reflect that his own distinguished parliamentary career was sadly brought to an end without the necessity for this Bill, without the coercion of the two Front Benches and without these amendments which he has tabled. It was a matter of deep regret to us all, though particularly to him, that that event transpired in the way that it did. The fact is that these amendments illustrate the dangers of the Bill. I hesitate to use the clichés about a slippery slope, but we are on one. Members of the other place are apparently intent on this self-flagellation. There is not much that we can do about that except try to stay their hand occasionally to make sure that the scars they leave on themselves are not too deep.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, I listened to the Second Reading debate but did not participate because it was one of those occasions where I was not exactly sure what I thought about it. Having read the Bill, I am still not sure, and having considered this amendment, I am completely confused. This amendment is less of a slippery slope and more of a cliff. If the House will forgive me for mixing metaphors, it is also a Pandora’s box. To be fair to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, I entirely agree with the motors that have driven him to put forward this amendment together with those colleagues who have signed it. It arises from a very important point made by the noble Lord who was the Member for Warrington—

Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Snape Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend, who has accurately put his finger on the weakness inherent in the Bill. I join him in the plea for the House of Commons to stand up for itself, for a change, rather than go on accepting what I can only call the backwash of the expenses scandal by, first, setting up IPSA, as he mentioned, and now this Bill. Perhaps I am a lone voice in this debate but I am against the Bill; I think it is a bad Bill and I do not see its purpose. The amendments from our Front Bench, no matter how gracefully moved by my noble friend, worsen an already bad Bill, and personally I am not prepared to have any of it.

First, though, I observe the courtesies of the House by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Cooper of Windrush, on his eminently fluent maiden speech. I am not one of those people who is against opinion polls; indeed, back in 1983 an opinion poll that said that I was about to lose in my own constituency galvanised enough Labour supporters to save my neck by 296 votes, so if that was anything to do with the noble Lord’s company I am more than grateful after all these years.

When we refer to the Bill, as noble Lords on both sides of the House have, as helping to restore public confidence in their Members of Parliament, I am afraid that I do not believe a word of it. I was interested to hear the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, who is a constitutional expert. He took us through what he saw as a stronger Bill that might—he was careful to emphasise the word “might”—help to restore public confidence in MPs. I appreciate that he said what he said as a constitutional expert; I might put to him at another time, perhaps during the passage of the Bill, whether he would be happy to stand for the House of Commons knowing that such a Bill had become law. I do not think that those of us who spent a few years down there would be entirely happy with the principle of recall. Again, I think that the House of Commons should police itself and have the courage to suspend or reject those MPs considered or proved to have misbehaved.

I am also very much against the principle of rule by the mob, whether an electronic mob or any other sort. Deplorably, in my view, a couple of weeks ago an American, whose name I have forgotten, was barred from this country because of the crazy and laughable views that he held about the relationship between men and women. Instead of his being treated with the contempt and derision he deserved, the full panoply of the state was brought upon him to bar him from the United Kingdom—I was surprised that the Home Secretary fell for it—as a result, I put to your Lordships, of an electronic petition against him being allowed into the country. A fairly mature democracy such as ours ought to be able to allow a barmy American with even sillier ideas into our country without democracy being endangered, but therein lies the problem as far as electronic democracy is concerned.

Since the e-petitions service was set up, more than 60,000 of them have been tabled, with an average of 6.4 million signatures per year. In the first year there were 36,000 petitions and 17 million visits to the site. I listened with interest to the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, about local democracy and the views of the local electorate. He was a popular fellow in his constituency; I am sure that if he had walked down the high street there and asked a dozen of his constituents if they would sign a petition, four of them would say yes because they liked him, two might say no because unaccountably they did not, and the other half dozen would have something better to do with their time. In my view, that is what is wrong with the whole idea that somehow if you collect 100,000 signatures, that is the real force of public opinion and whatever policy they advocate should be adopted.

Not all electronic petitions have been frivolous; the ones on Hillsborough, Millie’s Trust and Sergeant Blackman—the Royal Marine who, unaccountably, was sentenced to prison—were sensible and, in my view, understandable petitions, but they were no basis on which to change the law. They were a fragment of public opinion at a particular time, signed, in my view, largely—this is easily done online these days—by people saying, “Oh, that looks all right, I’ll sign that”. That is how many of those signatures are collected. There is no issue of principle behind the signing of those petitions.

As has been mentioned by other noble Lords, not least my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport, Mr Zac Goldsmith was determined to denounce this legislation and in effect to allow recall by petition by his or anybody else’s constituents. Make no mistake about it that that is the road on which we are now travelling with this legislation. But it will not stop with Members of Parliament being charged with various offences. There will be greater pressure from those great organs of democracy, the British media and press, for this to be widened so that, if people who are unpopular for any reason transgress in any way—let us say somebody on the left of my party in the House of Commons, some of whom regularly attract the scorn of our daily papers—they will be the ones towards which the electronic mob’s ire will be directed by the press. That is no way for a sensible democracy to be run.

On the question of Mr Goldsmith and his views, he is—as the Independent tells us—the richest man in the House of Commons. I have nothing against him for that. I have seen his picture: he is handsome, in his 30s, terribly rich. I would sign a recall petition for somebody like that straight away—those are three good reasons for anyone to sign it. However, I would not necessarily want to throw him out because of those three virtues. Shortly after his own election in Richmond Park, “Channel 4 News” and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism looked at his expenses. They said that he had erected 400 posters in his constituency at an estimated cost of £8,000—his overall expenses were just over £10,000 anyway; he issued over 200 blue coats with “I back Zac” on the back to many of his helpers; and, incredibly, he published 262,000 leaflets, which presumably gave the same message. The bill for those leaflets alone was estimated at £14,000, which was considerably more than his own expenses. He said that he threw most of them away; if he is the richest man in the House of Commons, I do not suppose that that makes much difference to him. I do not think that I issued 262,000 leaflets in my constituency of West Bromwich East in seven general elections, let alone in one. He described that as “sleazy journalism” when the matter was raised by “Channel 4 News”. I raise it here just to say that, if by any chance Mr Goldsmith’s views were brought into law and there was a recall of the Member of Parliament, imagine the resources he would bring to bear in those circumstances. The whole of the constituency would be walking around in new blue coats that said “I back Zac”, would they not? That is not the right way forward as far as democracy is concerned.

I will finish as I started. If the House of Commons feels that its Members have transgressed in an improper way, they should take proper action. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, who moved the Bill with his customary courtesy, that given the number of years he spent advising Ministers, I am always surprised that his admiration for them and for politicians remains undimmed. He will have to toughen the Bill and change it considerably during its remaining stages, but I am afraid I shall remain convinced that the duty of removing errant Members of Parliament should lie with their colleagues in the other place.

Economic Leadership for Cities

Lord Snape Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I congratulate the three maiden speakers from the Liberal Benches on their contributions. I look forward to hearing from all three of them in future. I particularly single out—I hope without upsetting the other two—the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Goddard of Stockport. As some noble Lords know, Stockport is my home town. It is traditional never to criticise a maiden speech and I hope the noble Lord will not think that I am breaking that tradition when I say, as a former chairman of Stockport County Football Club, that his espousal of the cause of Manchester City will not be universally satisfactory in the town itself.

In the short time open to me, I wish to make just two points. My first is to express concern, not about the motives behind the debate today—I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, on the fluent way in which he moved it—but I have never believed that devolving power without resources is a sensible way to run things. We have been here before. It was a Conservative Government who created the metropolitan county councils, as my noble friend Lord Graham reminded us. Of course, that was partly out of a political motive as the Conservative Party could not win the big cities at that time and thought that by extending the electorate and taking in the suburbs it might be able to do so. When that proved to be fruitless, it promptly abolished the metropolitan county councils using the excuse of the abolition of the GLC. The previous Labour Government decided that some of the powers we are discussing today could perhaps be administered by the regional development authorities. The incoming coalition Government abolished the RDAs and replaced them partly with the LEPs—in my view a totally undemocratic group; women make up far less than 50% of the membership and as far as I am aware there are no women at all in the West Midlands LEP. There is nothing particularly democratic about that.

My second point is about resources. As I have indicated, if there is no money to do these things, there is no point creating a structure to do them. I was struck by the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord True. Like him, I am rather against Whitehall and Westminster dabbling in local government. I was a councillor during the passage of the Local Government Act 1972 referred to by my noble friend Lady Hollis. If the electors had felt differently, I might have been a member of Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council before the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, but democracy prevailed and my candidacy was rejected. But I do not feel that the structures set up by the 1972 Act were necessarily more efficient, democratic or fiscally responsible than the authorities that they replaced. I remain to be convinced that the devolution of powers that is behind this debate will work without adequate financing.

It is traditional in your Lordships’ House not to get too involved in politics, although what we in the other place called the Front Bench below the Gangway on the Government’s side is pretty adept at it when it comes to attacking my own party. This Government have waged a fiscal war against local government, and they show no signs of relenting. In the West Midlands, I am not alone in expressing my concern that the Chancellor of the Exchequer says that in future greater Birmingham—a greater Birmingham authority or a greater Birmingham structure—will have an elected mayor. I remind your Lordships that it is less than three years since the citizens of Birmingham, including me, voted not to have an elected mayor. Flouting democracy in that way is something that we ought to regret in this House. I see the Whip and I will sit down in a moment. I voted on the wrong side: I voted for an elected mayor. The fact is that, according to the LGA, by the end of this Parliament the real-terms reduction in government funding to the city of Birmingham will be 41.5%. In the borough of Sandwell, where my former constituency lies, it is 39%. These freedoms—the freedoms spoken about in this debate—are valueless without adequate and proper funding, and that is not what we will get under a Conservative/Liberal Democrat Administration.