My Lords, I shall never forget Frank Maguire on that March evening in 1979. He had been brought over to sustain the Labour Government. He was hospitably entertained during the day and then came the vote. The Government fell by one vote and it was discovered that Frank had not voted. “Ah, but to be sure, I came to abstain in person”, said Frank. He was behaving entirely properly as a Member of Parliament. He had laid before his electorate the terms on which he sought to be elected.
I say to my noble friend Lord Tyler, for whom I have an affectionate regard, that his series of amendments would just make a bad Bill worse for the reasons
alluded to in a very elegant brief speech by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth—namely, that they would introduce another constraining element. A Member of Parliament should not be cribbed, cabined or confined in any way. He or she should be able to—following the Burkean principle—give of their industry, knowledge and service to their constituents, but they should not be delegates.
That means that from time to time a Member of Parliament will be at odds with a large percentage of his constituents. As the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and my noble friend Lord Tyler have tellingly illustrated, when a Member of Parliament is elected he may often have the tiniest and flimsiest of majorities. By definition, those who voted against him will be disappointed by the result. But disappointment should not in any way be a springboard for action against that Member.
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The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, used the analogy of the thin end of the wedge, and I talked about the slippery slope. If anything was needed to demonstrate that what I said in those brief remarks was correct, it is this series of amendments, because this is the slippery slope. I repeat what I and the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, have said: of course we are not going to stand in the way of the other place in this matter. It has decided. But we are entitled to say, “You really have taken a very dangerous step”. This measure does indeed fly in the face of the Bill of Rights. It flies in the face of the very concept of parliamentary democracy, and the integrity and independence of the Member of Parliament—who, after all, is answerable to constituents at the end of the Parliament.
We now have fixed-term Parliaments. Like the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, I hope that that will not be the case for much longer. After a maximum of five years, if re-election is being sought, the Member of Parliament has to go back to the constituents and seek that re-election. It is for the constituents to come to a decision.