Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Hughes of Woodside Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hughes of Woodside (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the maiden speech by the noble Lord, Lord Cooper of Windrush, who has a considerable political background. It is different from mine, but it is certainly considerable. I think we may want to hear much more from him about that. He has been a political adviser to the noble Lord, Lord Owen, who was leader of the SDP. As he said, he spent 10 years in No. 10 advising the Prime Minister. How far that influence is of real value is a matter of debate. He himself said that political pollsters are sometimes described as pernicious. I would never use such a word in your Lordships’ House. The noble Lord made an interesting speech, and I hope that his years spent in the corridors of power might be explained even further. Perhaps on a future occasion he will shed some light on how the system works. I am sometimes asked, “How does Parliament work? How does the system work?”. I have been around both ends of the corridor for 40 years, and I say to them, “If you ever find out, let me know”. I hope that we will hear from the noble Lord in the future. We look forward to his contributions. He obviously finds the aspect of a maiden speech not too demanding and not too stressful.

I generally support the principle of the Bill that those who commit an offence or transgress, as defined, should be subject to recall. Despite the protestations from the Government Front Bench that this Bill sets aside the possibility of recall on political issues, it does no such thing. In fact it is the thin end of the wedge. The demand to have the right to recall MPs on policy grounds will grow; there is no stopping that.

I was elected to be the MP for Aberdeen, North in 1970, and served for 27 years. Short of imprisonment, bankruptcy or death, the only way to lose the seat was if I lost the parliamentary Whip and did not have it restored by the time of the election or if there was a vote of no confidence passed in my constituency party. In those 27 years my largest majority was 19,114, and the lowest was 9,112. I put the vagaries of that down to several boundary changes, and I hope not to my own performance.

Much has changed in the past 40 years. When I was first elected, the heavies, as we might call them, the Telegraph, the Times and the Guardian, all produced full-page reports on a daily basis of the goings on in Parliament. Even my own local newspapers, the Aberdeen Press and Journal and the Aberdeen Evening Express, each had a Lobby correspondent and a parliamentary correspondent. Now, one person does that in its entirety, if there is even a dedicated member of staff. All we are left with now in the heavies is the comedy sketches—the funnies. Every event, however serious or important is reduced to a political pantomime. It cannot be good for democracy when people see that sort of thing.

I have always agreed about and argued for accountability. There is a distinct and continuing trend these days to downgrade party politics and political parties. I concede immediately that the activities of a few MPs and some Peers brought both Houses into disrepute, but there are plenty of organisations out there on the internet who are determined to impose their particular version of democracy There is a campaign headed “Party People: How should the Political Parties select their Parliamentary Candidates?”. The intention is to have parliamentary candidates chosen by open primaries. There may well be a case for that. It happens in other parts of the world. But the proponents of that give the game away; they use as a sub-heading a quote from the political satire programme, “Yes Minister”:

“MPs are not chosen by ‘the people’—they are chosen by their local constituency parties: thirty-five men in grubby raincoats or thirty-five women in silly hats”.

That is actually quite a funny quote. But you then realise that it is intended to denigrate the hundreds of thousands of people who daily serve political parties by canvassing, raising funds and supporting their MPs and candidates. These people have raised a great deal of money, often in the cold, canvassing and doing all sorts of things, and it is the worst kind of activity to make fun of them because they do a job without personal reward.

Similar articles have surfaced on the internet—campaigns for the recall of MPs on whatever political grounds of opinion. This unwittingly reveals the agenda. The intention to destroy political parties, coupled with these sinister campaigns for recall, show a desire to have MPs who will hang and twist in the wind and follow slavishly what may be seen as the popular will of the people.

I was extremely fortunate during my 27 years in the Commons to chair the Anti-Apartheid Movement for 20 years. It is worth recalling that that cause did not have the same universal approval that it now enjoys. Indeed, I remember on one occasion a very hostile interview with BBC Scotland in which research was produced that purported to show that the majority of Scottish people believed that apartheid was the right policy for South Africa. I was later taken aside by a very senior member of the Labour Party in Scotland and gently advised that I should stick to Scottish affairs. The members of my constituency party stood by me and defended me when the local press and others demanded that I concentrate on only Aberdeen and Scottish affairs, and that it was unseemly for a Member of Parliament for Scotland to do otherwise.

As some of your Lordships may know, I held robust anti-Scottish devolution views, so much so that one branch of my party tabled a motion of no confidence. I went in fear and trembling to see the pairing Whip, the formidable and redoubtable George Lawson, MP for Motherwell, who many of my colleagues will remember was a strict disciplinarian. I thought that he would be difficult. I thought that he would say, “You made your bed, you can lie in it”. In fact it was quite the opposite. In those days, it should be recalled, one had to get permission to leave the House even on a two-line whip, never mind a three-line whip. He was very reassuring, saying, “Of course you must go to defend yourself. Leave it with me and I will cover you”.

The meeting took place and we meandered through the agenda of mundane business and finally the motion was called for debate. No one was present from the branch to move it. Therefore it fell. I was relieved and delighted. However, my chairman went on to say, “We can’t leave it there”. I had a moment or two of panic and I thought, “What the devil is he up to now?”. He got up and moved that “The constituency has full confidence in its MP” and demanded a show of hands. It was carried unanimously. The effect was to put the whole issue to bed and I was free to pursue my activities.

If there had been a recall on policy issues, I do not believe that I would have lasted 27 years in Parliament, and certainly many of my contemporaries—I had good company in those days—such as Norman Buchan, Robin Cook, Tam Dalyell and others would not have lasted either. I do not claim now, nor did I claim then, that what we did was anything special and that there was any special virtue in arguing and debating fiercely the matters of the day. We simply did what we did. It is what we were expected to do. It was natural to engage with the electorate and seek to engage them. It was natural to engage in fierce debate with members of our own party. There was none of this instant policy-making when you wake up in the morning and discover what has been said.

Of course, an MP must take account of and consider what his constituents’ views are. We all know that there are views which one holds strongly and lines that we should not cross—on capital punishment or abortion, for example. There are many other issues that engender strong feelings and emotions. What is undeniably the case is that we have not come to terms with the computer revolution. I do not know how we can deal with Facebook, Twitter and blogging. There may be other social media of which I know nothing. What is happening is a kind of pyramid selling. You get an e-mail petition that says, “Click here to show your support, and click here to send to your contacts”. An illusion is presented that somehow there is massive political support.

I fear that what is now intended, despite the best intentions of the Government and of my own Front Bench, and what we are facing is the destruction of party politics and the destruction of the trade union movement as a political force, and in their place to have MPs who will hang and twist in the wind. They will face any direction in order to get elected. It is a grim prospect and we seem unable to recognise that. Far from enhancing democracy, recall will lead to the destruction of democracy and certainly representative democracy as we know it.