Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Charles Walker and Stephen Twigg

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg]

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

[Mr Charles Walker]

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

[Stephen Twigg]

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

[Mr Walker]

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

[Stephen Twigg]

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

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

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

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