The Government announced this week that it was going to renege on yet another promise. This promise that was written into the coalition agreement was to introduce a Bill in the life of the Government to provide local electors with a mechanism for recalling their MP if he or she has not delivered on what had been expected of them. One more broken promise, particularly on a matter that relates to the power given (or rather returned) to local people is bound to lead to greater discontent and cynicism towards our elected representatives. It adds to the lack of support for the recently adopted Lobbying Bill which has singularly failed to end the toxic lobbying of our legislators. Check out this Guardian report into the Choudhrie family and their multi £100,000 links to the hierarchy 0f the Lib Dems, none of which will be checked by the Lobbying Bill, yet the same Bill will lead to the gagging of many charities in the year before an election, despite the fact that no Political Party had previously raised concerns in public about the work of charities. The broken promise on the recall Bill is particularly disappointing as all three parties offered to address this and the Government even produced a draft Bill in 2011, although it was widely seen as poorly drafted.

Since this weeks announcement, Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith has added a petition to the Governments e-petition website and at the time of writing the petition has 5,374 signatories, a number that is bound to grow. The petition is worded as follows: “We call on the Government to introduce a genuine Recall Bill. Under such a Bill, if an agreed percentage of eligible voters (minimum 20%) sign a petition calling for their MP to be ‘recalled’, a referendum must be held. If more than half of those taking part vote for their MP to be recalled, a by-election must follow.”

Whilst I would not want to suggest that this petition is unhelpful and I have signed it myself, it certainly won’t achieve the result it promises in the most effective manner. Take a constituency with an MP who is not popular perhaps because their majority is very secure and attention to causes they do not personally support is missing in action or where they have brought their role into disrepute, leading them to leave their party but hang on as an “Independent” MP. Newark is one such example with an electorate in 2010 of 72,407 and represented by Patrick Mercer whose extra curricular activities in June 2013 precipitated the launch of the despised Lobbying Bill. Under Zac Goldsmiths proposal, 14,481 people would first need to sign a petition. Then a local referendum would be needed. Based on the costs estimated for a referendum in Brighton & Hove to resolve a community tax dispute, this would cost the state around £110,000. Finally there would be a local by-election which would probably cost at least as much money. In another setting if the Political Party chose to retain the same candidate, the prospect of removing him or her might be very low in any case such as a safe seat like the one Zac inhabits!

Zac Goldsmith’s proposals offer inadequate leverage and lack real teeth. To obtain 14,000 signatures in most constituencies would require a monumental effort by those unhappy with the actions of their MP. Why 20%? Perhaps a more appropriate criteria would be 10% of the electorate or even 5%. To get 7,000 or even 3,500 people to say they don’t think their MP is fulfilling their duties is still an enormous challenge, especially in a rural constituency. This would be 5 or 10 times as many people who are members of all Political Parties in the area. This would make the number able to trigger a recall far in excess of the numbers who select all of the party candidates and in effect choose the MP for the constituency. Indeed why not set the threshold at 1% Zac?. The referendum is also entirely unnecessary. If a significant number of electors are willing to sign a petition with their names and addresses to call for a by-election then they should be able to have their day at the polling station. Most MPs proudly say that they are willing to be held to account at the next election, the least that recall can offer to electors is the power to set the date for the election when they feel their representative is no longer representing their wishes.