Saturday 9 March 2024

Cutting out the middleman

 

The six week suspension handed to one of Plaid’s Senedd members has provoked a comparison with the position at Westminster – in similar circumstances, a Westminster MP would be facing a recall petition and a probable by-election, but there is no such sanction available in the case of this list MS. It’s a valid question, but the suggestion of instituting a similar provision for the Senedd seems to be based on the English constitutional fiction underpinning the Westminster process, which is that people vote for an individual, not for a party. In the case of list members, the vote is unquestionably for the party. And whilst introducing such a provision for members elected on a closed list is not impossible, it does rather look like twisting the system, when there is actually a very much simpler process available.

The recall process is comparatively novel in the UK’s system, and to date there have only been five instances of a petition being called. The first of those was in Northern Ireland, where none of the UK parties operate, and in a constituency which was not seen then as being particularly competitive – it was widely assumed that the DUP would win anyway. That petition failed to attract the necessary support of 10% of the electorate. In all other cases, the 10% was reached, and it doesn’t take a genius to work out why. I doubt that there is a constituency anywhere, no matter how apparently popular the transgressing MP might be, where a determined opposition party or parties could not find 10% of the electorate wanting to get rid of their MP. We can probably, therefore, take it as read that once a petition is called, it is overwhelmingly likely to be successful.

To date, only in one instance has the transgressing member stood in the subsequent by-election (although in another case, the member managed to arrange for his party to select his girlfriend, a situation which led to a remarkable lack of external support for her candidacy). The one who did stand again was defeated in the by-election. Indeed, the idea that an MP who has either been convicted of a criminal offence or else suspended by his or her fellow MPs for a serious breach of parliamentary rules would be presented by his or her party as a suitable person for re-election is a strange one, a form of political madness. Certainly not something likely to be repeated any time soon.

So, regardless of the objective of the recall principles (that the electors should be given the opportunity to call for a by-election and that the individual should have the opportunity to stand again), the electors are always likely to say yes to a by-election, and the party is always likely to disown the previous member and select a new candidate. It is, therefore, in practice if not in principle, a process where a member in breach of the relevant rules ends up being expelled from the parliament and replaced by a new member who may or may not be from the same party. In which case, instead of trying to come up with a complex set of rules for list members to face by-elections, why not simply cut out the middleman, and declare that, on conviction (in the case of criminal acts) or suspension from the parliament for more than a specified period (in the case of a serious breach of the parliament’s rules or standards), the seat becomes vacant and the member is replaced through the normal process which would apply in the case of death or resignation? For a constituency member, that means an automatic by-election, avoiding the cost, time and effort of a petition, and for a list member, it means the appointment of the next eligible member on the relevant party’s list. It’s both simpler and more rapid than the current process, which seems to have been designed (with a remarkable lack of forethought) to maximise the chance of the transgressing member being returned to the club.

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