My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) spoke to set out our case for our amendments and to respond to those tabled by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) and others. In my speech, I will focus on the cross-party amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) and others.
I want to restate the fact that Labour supports the principle of recall. It was in our manifesto, which the Minister quoted:
“MPs who are found responsible for financial misconduct will be subject to a right of recall if Parliament itself has failed to act against them.”
Against that test, our view is that the Bill is not strong enough. That is why we tabled the amendments that my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife set out on lowering the suspension limits that might trigger recall and adding additional conditions, including on conviction for financial misconduct.
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Clearly, we need to strike a careful balance between allowing our constituents to recall their Member of Parliament if they are guilty of serious wrongdoing and designing a system that might, however inadvertently, allow powerful vested interests to take action against MPs simply because they disagree with our views or dislike our politics. That would risk hampering our democracy.
It is for that reason that we are drawn to the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome, which would provide a public trigger for recall. He made a powerful and persuasive case for such an approach and admitted openly and candidly that further work needs to be done on the detail. Amendments 42 and 43 and new clauses 6 and 7 provide for a form recall that is independent of any parliamentary Committee. It would allow direct access to a petition for the public, but would allow recall only in cases of misconduct. Importantly, it seeks to avoid MPs adjudicating on the behaviour of other MPs or, as the Minister put it, MPs marking our own homework.
The amendments of the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome would allow a recall process to be triggered if 100 electors petitioned an election court and the court was satisfied that there was prima facie evidence that the MP had a case to answer in respect of the criminal offence of misconduct in public office. Our view is that the proposal for an election court as a trigger of recall is a serious proposal that merits further consideration. Work needs to be done to refine the amendments between now and Report stage. I will give a couple of examples of how.
In new clause 6, the third recall condition would allow just 100 people to bring a petition to an election court. That is significantly lower than any of the thresholds proposed in the Bill or in the amendments of the hon. Member for Richmond Park. We need to consider whether the bar of 100 petitioners is too low. Is there not a risk that the courts would be clogged up with unlikely recall petitions? A possible change would be to add an earlier stage during which a court, on the basis of the papers, could filter out petitions that would be highly unlikely to succeed before deciding whether to hear the cases.
We believe that we need to consider the definition of “misconduct”. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome spoke about that himself. In new clause 7, the court is asked to consider the common law offence of misconduct in public office. In addition, it states that
“gross dereliction of duty as an MP may be considered misconduct in public office.”
The offence in common law is defined as a public office holder wilfully neglecting to perform their duty or committing misconduct to such a degree as to abuse the public’s trust in that office holder. I suggest that we should consider on Report whether that is clear and correct. Does the court need further clarification? Alternatively, could we use the code of conduct for Members of Parliament as the basis for the work of the election court?
The hon. Gentleman’s amendments allow for a recall petition without a conviction. As they stand, the MP need not be guilty of any offence. It is only that a prima facie case must be answered. Do we not want an opportunity
for the Member of Parliament to have his or her case heard, or is it enough for a judge to find that there is a case to be heard and for the public then to be consulted? Alternative bars could be set, such as whether the election court is sure beyond reasonable doubt that the Member of Parliament is guilty of misconduct.
A significant refinement of the amendments is needed. In principle, giving the power to the people to bring a case against their MP before the election court is a good idea. It treads the fine line between undermining an MP’s constitutional role and giving power to the people to hold their Member of Parliament to account for his or her conduct. Labour Members will work with the cross-party group of MPs who have proposed these amendments to attempt to ensure that we can make them workable, and we look forward to returning to the matter on Report. As a result, we will not be pressing any of our amendments to a vote, and I urge other Members not to press their amendments to a vote today.