Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

The drafting of the Bill reflects that undesirable risk that matters of conscience could result in the loss of a seat. A general election inevitably follows the MP’s selection. We all make policy arguments to our electorate each time, and the ability to do that is still in place.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Several of us have serious worries about undermining not just the sovereignty of Parliament, but the sanctity of the general election. My right hon. Friend will know that Edmund Burke said in the 18th century that he was a representative, not a delegate. It is noteworthy that he was removed by the electors of Bristol in a general election shortly thereafter.

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Many hon. Members will be familiar with what Edmund Burke said:

“Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”

He made that point very strongly and was promptly thrown out by the electorate at the next election, which illustrates the point arising from the intervention made by the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick).

Our early exchanges have made it clear that the opposing poles—I hesitate to call them extremes—in the debate have good intentions, and reasonable and serious points are being made. In developing the proposals, the Government have tried to steer a sensible and reasonable course. We believe that recall has a role in dealing with serious wrongdoing. If an MP has been found guilty of serious wrongdoing and clear lines have been crossed, the public must have their say about whether that Member should remain in office.

We have stopped short of enabling recall on any grounds so that we preserve the freedom of Members of Parliament to vote with their conscience and to take difficult decisions without facing constant challenges, at the public’s expense, from their political opponents. We have, of course, considered a range of recall models, including those used internationally, but there is no direct equivalent in a constitutional system such as ours anywhere in the world, so we are breaking new ground, and it is the tradition of the House and the country that we proceed with care when making constitutional change.

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[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.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

Returning to the point made by our hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) on the efficacy of primary legislation, the House might know that in 1947 the Labour MP Garry Allingham was expelled from the House for writing disobliging comments about fellow Members—not for any criminal offence—so there is a precedent for expelling a Member whose conduct falls below that which most electors would think suitable and appropriate.

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[Richard Drax]

Ah. That is another question. I am not going to look back with hindsight. I was not even here. We are where we are, and I do not believe that a recall Bill would have made any difference in this instance. The expenses scandal has unfortunately caused all of us in this place to look backwards. The point has been made to me on many occasions, in spite of the fact that I was not here. Even now, the shadow of that appalling time hangs over this place. We have to shake it off and put it behind us. People have paid and some have gone to jail. We should move on in a way that allows us, as the responsible adults and grown-up politicians we are all meant to be, to please the electorate in the way they want to be pleased: by behaving in an honourable fashion.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

It is as well to remember that the expenses scandal in the 2005-10 Parliament was the result not merely of individual foibles but of a collective, institutional failure to embrace openness and transparency —under the previous Government but with the collusion of other parties; it was not solely the result of the malfeasance of individual Members.

[Richard Drax]

I take my hon. Friend’s point entirely; he is absolutely right.

I was not here, but I have heard from those who were that the expenses scandal was sparked not least by a lack of clarity about what could be claimed. Nowadays, there are MPs appearing in the newspapers for buying staplers and other perfectly legitimate things for the office, so it has gone from one extreme to the other. We all know if we have behaved dishonourably or done something wrong, and if it is so heinous, we should leave our job; of that I have absolutely no doubt.

I ask the Government to think carefully about the Bill. If it becomes law, I fear there will be a gathering momentum, as is often the case with such legislation, to add on bits. Indeed, amendments are already being discussed. I have listened all afternoon—it is important to hear people’s views—and people are already keen to add on bits. The hon. Member for Clacton, who is no longer in his place, was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham) about an incinerator plant that 65,000 of his constituents were against; my hon. Friend said that had he voted for the plant, it might have sparked a recall. I think the hon. Gentleman was rather amazed that the point was raised.

To conclude, we are here to represent our constituents for a period of five years—not that I agree with fixed-term Parliaments; incidentally, if I may get in some free advertising, there is a debate about that on Thursday. On the matter in hand, however, will the Government please think carefully about this Bill? It should be a matter of honour, honour, honour, not legislation, legislation, legislation.

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[Mark Durkan]

I certainly believe that hon. Members should be clearly protected when expressing their views properly, honourably and honestly as legislators in this House. I firmly believe that legislators should be properly protected in doing their conscientious duty in this House, but when someone is elected for one party and suddenly flips to join another, a constituency should be able to recall that MP. That is why I support amendments such as those proposed by the hon. Member for Richmond Park.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

I am afraid that kind words butter no parsnips. If the hon. Gentleman supports the amendments proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), he is essentially allowing a value judgment by a minority of the electorate in each constituency, subject to the recall procedure, to be the determinant factor, so he cannot give that guarantee on, for instance, a moral or conscience issue.

[Mark Durkan]

I am almost being prompted to speak specifically to some of the amendments. The hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) asked me about a decision being taken by this House to, in effect, activate the expulsion proceedings—the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) was right to say that this is an expulsion Bill, rather than a recall Bill. The principle of recall is meant to be in the hands of the voters. The voters in a constituency elect an MP and the power of recall is meant to lie with them, but the Bill is not about a power of recall that lies with the voters. It is about the power to initiate a recall petition being in the hands of this House or of the court; and, particularly if the process was activated because that Member’s views were not comfortable for others in the House, an election would be called simply on the basis of 10% of the constituents signing a petition. It is wrong that a recall should be triggered, with someone losing their seat and having to go into a by-election, on the basis of 10% of the vote.

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[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.”

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[Anne Marie Morris]

The hon. Lady makes another good point about the challenge, which the Government have faced, of trying to define triggers, rather than relying on the people to look at why and by whom an individual is being recalled. She identifies the problem, but I am not convinced her solution would be better, safer or less liable to abuse than mine: the name of the sponsor, a clear statement of the reason for a recall and the opportunity for the Member to respond.

We have debated whether the percentage is too high or too low. It is extraordinarily hard to know what the correct figure should be. It will depend partly on whether we adopt the truly democratic approach proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park, which I support, or the—in my view—more restrained democratic approach proposed by the Government. I think that my hon. Friend is right to opt for a higher percentage. I hear the argument about it being too high, but on reflection I am confident it is the right figure. We are concerned in this House, this goldfish bowl, about how the British people see us, and some are worried that others with adverse views might endeavour to misuse the Bill. I am the first to agree that every country is different—we are very different from the US—but why is it that in countries with a truly democratic recall process there have not been the catastrophic events feared by some in the House?

To return to where I started, this is a matter of trust. We spend a lot of time with our constituents. Every year, I deal with 6,000 new cases—not simply complaints, but real issues of housing, benefits, health and so on—and in dealing with so many people, one gets under the skin of a community and people come to understand and trust their MP. It is something we have to earn—it is not a right—but if we can earn it, the sort of recall process suggested by my hon. Friend can work.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

On the distinction between a legitimate issue of criminal misbehaviour and sincere, well-meaning beliefs, my hon. Friend still has not convinced me that people such as Sydney Silverman, Leo Abse, who campaigned on homosexual law reform, and others would not have been subject to recall and lost those ballots.

[Anne Marie Morris]

We can speculate about what might have happened, but it is not as simple as whether something is a criminal offence. So many things, situations and reasons could serve as a basis for recall that if we tried to over-categorise them, we could get into a legislative nightmare trying to provide for every single event. I hear what my hon. Friend says, but I do not think that even he could provide a perfect definition giving the complete protection he would like, and that brings me back to trust. Trust is something very special. Married couples need it: there are no rules or regulations for marriage; it works if there is trust and if both people want to see it through. For that reason, I think this can work.

I commend the Government for having the courage to introduce the Bill. It is very important, but I will work with my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park to try to amend it to include some of the proposals I have made, which I hope Members will accept.

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[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Let me declare an interest at the outset, as an adjunct associate professor of British politics at Richmond university. If my comments are somewhat ponderous, that will probably be the reason.

On 17 October 1834, crowds gathered on the south bank of the Thames to cheer on the conflagration that consumed the Palace of Westminster. They were cheering at the prospect of several MPs dying in the hideous blaze that had begun when the tally sticks were burnt in the oven below the House of Lords as a result of the less than diligent way in which the men were performing their duties. They had gone off to dinner, and to the pub. The point is that there have never been any halcyon days in which Members of Parliament enjoyed great popularity. They have never lived in the land of milk and honey, and to suggest otherwise would be quite wrong.

My concern about the Bill and the amendments being put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) is that they are predicated on myths. As my right hon. Friends the Members for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley) and for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young) have said, the merit of the Government’s proposals is that they make a clear distinction between malfeasance, criminal conduct and misbehaviour and they address the legitimate concerns that have been expressed about scapegoating people with deeply unpopular or unfashionable views. Examples could include Willie Hamilton, an ardent republican, or Sydney Silverman, with his long-standing commitment to the abolition of capital punishment, or Leo Abse, who was in favour of homosexual law reform. They were all decent, honourable Members of this House, but they might have fallen foul of a recall process instigated by powerful vested interests in their constituencies and across the country.

Many myths have been flying around, one of which is that turnout has been falling. It has not. Over the past two general elections, it has gone up to 65% from the low point of 59% in 2001. I was corrected by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) when I mentioned Garry Allingham, an obscure Labour MP who was, I think, a journalist for the Daily Mirror. He was as obscure then as he is now. He was expelled from the House of Commons in 1947 for saying that MPs were unable to vote properly because they were drunk. He was called to the Bar of the House and expelled. So disciplinary procedures were in place then, and a precedent was set, but not on the basis of criminal activity. The bar was set much lower, and he was expelled on the ground that he had upset the sensibilities of hon. Members on both sides of the House.

I have grave concerns about the efficacy of introducing primary legislation at the end of this Parliament, because to do so fails to take on board the fact that there has been a significant amount of incremental reform, both administrative and legislative, in this Parliament. For example, we now elect the Chairmen of Select Committees and, from within party caucuses, Select Committee members. The power of the Whips is now much less acute than it was even five years ago. And of course we elect the Speaker.

The idea put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park that 100% of MPs vote 100% of the time is palpable nonsense. I am a walking, talking example of that fact, and the reason I behave in that way is that I was never consulted over the coalition agreement. I was elected as a Member of Parliament on the basis of the Conservative manifesto. When my principles coincide with those expressed in the coalition agreement, I will vote with the Government; otherwise, I will not. We now have something akin to a Regency Parliament, in that we have collections of different interests, and Members voting as they see fit. The idea that we are all ciphers and automata who toe the party line is complete nonsense. We have also made reforms to the Standards and Privileges Committee.

I believe that this legislation would undermine parliamentary sovereignty. It would undermine the sacred bond of faith and trust that exists at election time between Members of Parliament and their electors, and it is nonsense to suggest that that would not be a problem. I simply think that we are looking through the wrong end of the telescope. The reason that people feel disempowered and alienated from politics is that they do not feel that politics matters to their lives, because decisions are taken by supranational bodies such as the European Union, by obscure far-away bodies including quangos such as the Highways Agency and the Environment Agency, and by big local government, which is seen as a self-perpetuating elitist cartel. That is the reason; it is not because they think all MPs are liars, cheats and thieves, although a lot of them do. Actually, that is not even as simple as one might think, because they think everyone else’s MP is a liar and a cheat and a thief, but theirs is a charming young man who came and opened their summer fete last year, and who is trustworthy, decent and a great person.

[Nick de Bois]

Not that young.

[Mr Jackson]

Yes, not that young in some cases.

I also take issue with the comments of the hon. Member for Rhondda—who is not in his place at the moment but who is a gifted historian whose book on the history of Parliament I have read—that a party caucus chooses a Member of Parliament, not the electorate. That is a very arrogant and disdainful attitude. An election is like a jigsaw puzzle, and every single piece is a part of that puzzle, and when it all comes together that is the beauty of democracy. That is not for party caucuses.

Bad’uns have always existed in politics, whether it is Sir Charles Dilke, Horatio Bottomley or many other Members of Parliament. Bad’uns get elected as well as get thrown out. We only have to think of someone such as Oswald Mosley in the 1930s. Essentially, I believe in the wisdom of crowds. I believe in the sanctity of that bond between the electors at the general election. That is the recall process: an election where there is perfect competition and perfect knowledge by the voters to understand the record, vision, policies and principles of a prospective Member of Parliament.

[Mr Burrowes]

I recognise my hon. Friend’s wisdom and understanding of political history, but, on history, may I take him back to February 2008, when he joined me and 26 other hon. Friends, part of the 2010 intake, in a letter to The Daily Telegraph? The letter stated that recall

“would increase MPs’ accountability, address some of the frustration felt by a disenchanted public and help restore trust in our democratic institutions.”

If that was right in 2008 and right in our 2010 manifesto, why is it not right now?

[Mr Jackson]

My hon. Friend is such a decent and generous gentleman that he did give me notice yesterday that he would ambush me in this way, and I thank him and have an enormous amount of respect for him, but I have changed my mind, as I have changed my mind on many things over the years. I have changed my mind on House of Lords reform, for instance. I think it ludicrous that we have an upper Chamber that is the largest unelected body outside the people’s congress of China, and believe that should be reformed, even though I am a Conservative, of course. So I have changed my mind on that.

I have looked at the details of the Government’s Bill and I accept that it does make that distinction between moral conscience issues and policy issues and real issues of misdemeanours and criminal conduct.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

I suppose the worst case scenario with the Government’s Bill is when somebody does something that the public regard as pretty serious, yet which neither leads to a custodial sentence, as many noxious things do not, nor to a suspension of a sufficient number of days, and we are left with the public feeling cheated by a recall Bill that did not deliver what they would have expected.

[Mr Jackson]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, but I come back to a central issue that was touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) about the split between the Executive and the legislature. I believe one of the lessons of the expenses disaster was the failure of the Executive properly to embrace the Freedom of Information Act, openness and transparency at an early stage across all parties, and what we see here is the sins of the Executive being visited on the legislature and Back Benchers.

The concept of the Executive facing up to their own responsibility is long past, with Peter Carrington’s resignation as a result of the Falklands invasion and, for those who can remember their constitutional history, Crichel Down in 1954, when the Minister of Agriculture, who I believe was Sir Thomas Dugdale, resigned as a result of a piece of land, the sale of which was mishandled by his Department. Ministerial responsibility for the Executive is much less in fashion than it ever used to be. What we are being asked to do today, particularly with the amendments of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), is take to the nth degree the accountability of the individual Back Bencher, and therefore I do think there is an asymmetrical approach. The merit of the Government’s Bill is that at least it adequately formalises the sanctions around criminal misbehaviour and malfeasance, taking into account the reforms, openness and transparency that have been in place since the expenses crisis.

[Nick de Bois]

Is my hon. Friend not highlighting the case for the amendments of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith)? He referred to Ministers being accountable for their actions in the past. The amendments introduce accountability to the people, whereas the Bill talks about accountability to the Houses of Parliament.

[Mr Jackson]

Again, I have enormous respect for my hon. Friend, but my big concern about the amendments is mission creep. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley) made the point that it seems peculiar to establish in legislation, by the incorporation of those amendments, a system that we expressly do not want to be enacted. It is like saying, “We are just putting it in place just in case circumstances arise where we have to use”—

[Zac Goldsmith]

I think that everyone here who believes in the recall of MPs would like to see a system that is not used a great deal. None of us wants to see MPs slung out of this place on a daily basis. The idea is that the threshold is low enough that it is possible to achieve in extreme circumstances but high enough that it cannot be abused in the way that many Members in this House fear it might be.

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[Mr Jackson]

I understand. Let me put it on the record that my hon. Friend is a decent, diligent and caring Member of Parliament who wants to see this House improved and its reputation enhanced. I have never resiled from taking that view and his motives are not ignoble. None the less, we may have mission creep, whereby powerful groups, elites and well-funded individuals and organisations may use those particular mechanisms to oust Members with whom they bitterly disagree. Again, I will call on examples from the past. I ask the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) whether his illustrious predecessor, John Hume, the Member for Londonderry, would have taken the same very brave and principled decisions against people in his own community and the other community in Northern Ireland were he subject to the vagaries and the vicissitudes of a recall process? That is an open question.

[Mark Durkan]

I worked for John Hume as his Westminster assistant for many years, and the truth is that he would have taken the same decisions. Nothing would have dissuaded him from his course. He came under great pressure not from his constituency but from the media and all sorts of establishments, and he stuck that course with the support of the people of Derry come what may.

[Mr Jackson]

I defer to the hon. Gentleman’s knowledge. Of course John Hume was greatly liked and respected in this House, but that does not mean that vexatious, pernicious and dangerous elements would not have sought to remove him using a recall process. None of us knows the answer.

In conclusion, the Government’s Bill is not perfect, but something that most people could possibly support. I will argue passionately and cogently against the amendments put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park, although I accept his bona fides in wanting to improve this Bill. We are pushing at an open door here. There is the danger that we will open a Pandora’s box. American congressmen can never really look at the big picture, because as soon as they are elected they are fundraising every two years. They can never really look at the strategic overview for their country, district, county or state. I suspect that something like that might happen with the recall process here in that we will be constantly looking over our shoulders at the mad, bad and dangerous to know, the pernicious and vexatious, which is why I will abstain on Second Reading and argue vigorously against the amendments of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park.

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[Mr Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman is right. That is why, although I will reflect on what I have heard today—I am less sure than I was about supporting the amendments —my opinion is still that we should trust the public. We want the public to trust us, and we need to trust them. However, we need to ensure that we do not allow a tiny minority of the public to use recall in a way that most people, even in the area concerned, regard as untoward and unreasonable, simply because it is there and they feel they can use it. If that small minority are feeling powerless and think that their voice is not being heard, they will pick up whatever instrument is to hand and seek to use it to propagate their case, which they no doubt feel strongly about. That balance is what we are agonising about today.

I try to look at this from the perspective of the public outside. They will wonder why we are putting so many barriers in the way of their deciding to exercise a right of recall and remove people from this place. As Chair of the Education Committee, I am reminded that so many teachers, or certainly the teaching unions, appear to go to such lengths to protect the worst-performing teachers in the system even though, in every case, the teacher who is idle, has low standards or fails their pupils undermines morale in the staff room and all the hard work of most teachers in the school, and those elsewhere who do so much to prioritise teachers. However, standing here in this Chamber, I guess I can recognise the sense of, “If they come for one, they may come for all.” A certain paranoia runs through us.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

My hon. Friend is making a strong speech. I think that the answer to his reasonable question as to why some of us are challenging the received wisdom is that, to the best of my knowledge, we have not heard an example of a Member—someone who makes laws in this House—who is a criminal who has not been subject either to disciplinary proceedings or to a criminal sanction in the past 10 to 20 years. I have not heard any such example.

[Mr Stuart]

My hon. Friend made a powerful speech. At the heart of the issue is whether the public, with no prior wrongdoing having been proved, can be trusted to use this power without it being abused in order to challenge Members on matters of conscience. I do not often speak up for the Liberal Democrats, but in this Parliament our coalition partners took an unpopular decision on tuition fees as part of a coalition agreement that they thought was in the national interest. Members representing university towns may have taken that decision even though they stood on that manifesto pledge. Following this debate, I am going to have to wrestle with the idea of whether I am confident that the proposed process would not have been used to turf out those MPs for doing what they thought was right. It would be terrible if the fear of recall were to influence not how Members treat their constituents or work on their behalf, but how they vote. That goes to the heart of the debate.

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[The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Tom Brake)]

We have had an impassioned debate and I am very grateful to all hon. Members for their contributions. I will do my best in the time remaining to address as many of the points raised, but I think that will prove challenging.

As we have seen, there are many different views on ways in which we ought to hold MPs to account. For some, this does not require a recall system at all. For others, a recall system should be available on any grounds and at any time. All three parties committed to a recall system in their manifestos and it was included in the coalition’s programme for government. MPs are elected to serve a term of five years and we believe they should continue to have the freedoms to carry out their job and make difficult decisions where necessary. However, the Government think it important to fill a gap in the current accountability of MPs by providing assurance that where an MP has been found guilty of serious wrongdoing—whether serving a prison sentence for committing a crime or a long period of suspension from the House for breaching the MPs code of conduct—the public will have a chance to have their say on whether the MP should continue to represent them.

It would be a much better situation if there were no instances of wrongdoing that engage the triggers in the Bill, but where MPs commit serious wrongdoing, whether in the eyes of the law or the House of Commons, under the Government’s Bill they will be subject to a recall petition, We hope we have struck a middle ground by providing sensible and balanced proposals for a recall mechanism aimed at addressing wrongdoing. Our proposals aim to provide a robust, fair and open process that is suitable for our system of parliamentary democracy.

In the time that remains, I will try to address some of the comments, concerns and criticisms that were raised. The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) and the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty), in the Opposition’s opening and summing-up speeches, referred to cash for questions. I think the suggestion was that cash for questions would not be covered under the Government’s proposals. That is not correct. Cash for questions would clearly constitute a breach of the code of conduct. It would therefore be perfectly in order for the Standards Committee to consider the matter and recommend a duration of suspension that could lead to a recall.

The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) made a number of points. He suggested that the Bill sets back democracy because its scope is too narrow. That is not the Government’s view. The concerns we have about his proposals—this point was not picked up by him, or by any of the supporters of his proposals—relate to the 5% petitions: the initial stage where, as far as I understand it, people or campaigns could spend as much as they wanted on drumming up support that could then be transferred or translated into the starting point of the petition process. That issue needs to be addressed and he did not respond to it. As I understand it, when he and colleagues had an initial discussion on this, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) raised the need to address it because he had identified that it was a problem in the Californian system. As I understand it, this is not a matter that has been addressed in the amendments proposed by the hon. Member for Richmond Park.

The hon. Gentleman referred repeatedly to the threshold of 14,000 or 15,000 people to achieve the 20%. That is true, but I think that in most constituencies the process of initiating the 5% petition—the indication of the need for a petition—will be used again and again, rather than people necessarily raising the 20% required for a referendum.

The hon. Gentleman said that we are all susceptible to the pressures of newspapers. That is exactly the point about how the process of starting the initial petition, the indication of the 5%, will be used. He referred to the fact that in America recall has apparently been used only 40 times in the past 100 years. However, the figures I have are that in 2014 alone, and in California alone, there have been 30 recall petitions initiated at different levels of government. It is not a process that happens only once in a while; it happens regularly. He also challenged the Government’s estimate that a constituency referendum would cost about £90,000. If he has a different figure, I would like to see it, but I stand by ours.

The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) raised an interesting point about whether courts would give an MP a lesser sanction than others found guilty of a similar offence. On the contrary, I wonder whether they might not impose a higher sanction.

The hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) made a balanced and sensible contribution. He thinks that perhaps MPs have lost respect because we have given too many powers away, but often one of people’s greatest concerns about Westminster is that we are holding on to far too many powers, as opposed to giving too many away—or at least that we are not giving powers away in the right places by pushing down the decision-making process.

The hon. Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell) referred rather disparagingly to Westminster grandees and the lay people on the Standards Committee. I should perhaps declare an interest in that I know one of the lay people, Sharon Darcy, who is also a leading light in my local citizens advice bureau, and in no way is she a Westminster grandee, and nor would she have her views pressurised by anyone in this place, be they Whips or anyone else. He also drew some parallels between trusting a jury and trusting the electorate, but my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Mike Thornton), who is no longer in his place, intervened to point out that there must be something to answer for before reaching the jury stage, which is not the case in relation to the proposals from the hon. Member for Richmond Park.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

Last weekend, in response to the hon. Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell), the Prime Minister agreed that the Government would look at the amendments, yet the Deputy Leader of the House seems to be setting his face against them. Do the Government intend to table amendments accepting the central premise of the amendments proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith)?

[Tom Brake]

Both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister have indicated that the Bill could be improved and that we are willing to listen to proposals, but that does not necessarily mean adopting the proposals from the hon. Member for Richmond Park.

The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden said we were better off trusting our own constituents. Like all Members, of course I trust mine, but it is not the constituents who are the issue; it is the campaign groups and vexatious individuals who might decide to launch repeated recall petitions with no basis, as opposed to challenging MPs because they have committed serious wrongdoing.

The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil)was worried that people who had been detained in a police station might be caught by the Bill. Clearly, that would not be the case in any circumstances. The word “detention” is designed to capture circumstances where an MP, having been convicted and sentenced, is ordered to serve their sentence somewhere other than in a prison—for example, a young offenders institution or a hospital.

I welcome the very rational comments from my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) on the EU and immigration—I am just sorry they will not do him any good. I wonder, however, whether in three years he might not feel that it is his party that has deserted him and that instead of him leaving his party, he should stay put and other people should move to another party.