May I apologise to the House for the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath)—not yet a right hon. Member, despite the praise that was heaped on him in Committee—who is currently acting as our trade envoy in Africa and is unable to be here? My apology is that Members will have to put up with me arguing the case, rather than him.
This is an important Bill. It delivers on the manifesto commitments of most of the parties in this House in some way or another. It means that it will be possible for MPs who are sent to prison to be recalled, no matter how long they are in prison, and that MPs who are suspended by this House for long enough may also be subject to recall.
However, the Bill has rightly been criticised for allowing MPs to mark their own homework, as it were. Unless there is a jail sentence—a threshold that was not mentioned in the manifesto commitments of any party in this House—it is ultimately us who will have to decide whether someone has behaved so badly that they should be subject to recall.
The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) —it is good to see him in his place—proposed one solution to that problem in Committee, but many of us felt that it would have caused more problems than it solved. There was a concern that it might lead to trivial or vexatious complaints, or complaints based on political or policy differences, rather than complaints about genuine misconduct. There was extensive debate about that in Committee.
My hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome and I proposed another route, by which a court would assess whether there were grounds reasonably to believe that an MP could have committed a common law offence of misconduct in public office. If there were, that would lead to the same recall process as the Government have described for those who are suspended or sentenced to jail. That amendment was tricky to write. We were clear in Committee that there were technical challenges in writing it. We therefore did not press it to a vote at that time.
We were encouraged by the cross-party support for our proposal. For example, the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), said that he was drawn to our ideas and that:
“In principle, giving the power to the people to bring a case against their MP before the election court is a good idea.”—[Official Report, 27 October 2014; Vol. 587, c. 134.]
The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) said that our proposals
“have appeal because they enable a public trigger that is still based around wrongdoing.”—[Official Report, 27 October 2014; Vol. 587, c. 77.]
It is good to see both Opposition spokesmen here.
We also had support from the Government. The Minister of State, Cabinet Office, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), said that he had
“a great deal of sympathy with the thinking behind the amendments”. —[Official Report, 27 October 2014; Vol. 587, c. 98.]
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah), praised it as an “interesting idea” that should be returned to on Report. That is what we are doing now.
I had hoped that the Government would take over the work of doing the drafting and that we would now be looking at Government amendments that had all the benefit of parliamentary counsel’s detailed advice. Sadly, that is not the case. Indeed, it is striking that not a single Government amendment has been tabled for debate today—not even those of a technical nature to fix the errors that were highlighted in Committee.