Real Recall - A Blueprint For Recall in The UK

1
Real Recall:
A blueprint for
recall in the UK
Democracy
Unlock
Pete Mills
Contents
Executive summary 3
A crisis of accountability 5
A role for recall in the UK? 9
Designing recall 15
Risks and safeguards 21
Recall for the UK 29
3
Executive summary
When we vote at a general election, we dont just choose a candidate but a party and government
as well. Voters are encouraged by the electoral system to ignore the personal qualities of the
candidates and vote according to which party they want to form the government. Even if they
want to express them, voters feelings about individual candidates are crowded out by other
concerns. This means that elections deliver a verdict on the government, not the performance of
the individual MP. MPs rise and fall on the basis of their party label, not their own decisions. The
estimated 400 out of 650 MPs who represent safe seats have little to fear from a general election.
Individual accountability is weak or non-existent.
Voters want the power to hold their MPs individually to account but the current system gives them
no real opportunity to do so. The link between an MP and their constituents is supposed to be
one of the strengths of the current system. When that link provides constituents with no effective
means to hold their MP accountable, even in extreme cases like the expenses scandal, the
system is broken. The faw in the system runs far deeper than misconduct. The lack of individual
accountability allows MPs who are failing their constituents to escape the judgment of the
electorate.
Recall
Recall is a mechanism which allows voters to remove an elected offcial from offce by a
vote between elections. Full recall is a recall mechanism which gives voters themselves the
choice of when to recall and for what reason.
Recall plugs the gap in our current system by giving constituents the means to hold individual MPs
to account. As well as giving voters a way to challenge wrongdoing on the part of their MP, it would
also provide recourse in other situations where the MP has breached their mandate. Recall would
act as a safety valve, giving constituents who have lost confdence in their MP the opportunity to
vote them out between elections.
After the expenses scandal, all of the main political parties accepted the argument for recall.
Recall enjoys widespread public support: as a recent YouGov poll indicated, 68% back recall. But
as the scandal grew more distant, politicians enthusiasm for recall waned.
In 2011, the government announced plans for recall but their proposals hand a parliamentary
committee, rather than ordinary people, the power to decide whether voters should be able to
recall an MP. The public would play a minor role in the process, which would primarily empower
politicians to sit in judgment of other politicians. This year they have resurrected those plans.
The government has rejected full recall, claiming it was incompatible with the UK political system.
This report uses international examples to show how full recall could work in the party-based
Westminster system, enhancing individual accountability without compromising the collective
accountability of a government at the ballot box.
There are four key examples of situations in which full recall could strengthen the individual
accountability of MPs:
misconduct: full recall gives voters the power to determine whether an MPs behaviour
justifes a recall, rather than imposing rigid rules on what constitutes misconduct or allowing
politicians to sit in judgment of other politicians
failure to represent: voters should have the power to vote to remove an MP who fails to
meet even the most basic expectations of their constituents, such as holding surgeries or
responding to inquiries
crossing the foor: an MP who is elected on the basis of one party label and then switches
to another should face the judgment of their constituents, who should be able to endorse or
reject their decision
breaking electoral promises: voters should be able to vote to remove an MP who breaks
a policy promise made as part of their election campaign
Full recall is not without risks. If recall is too easy to trigger, it may be abused in order to divert
MPs time and effort away from their duties; if it is too diffcult to trigger, it offers no meaningful
check on MPs behaviour. However, a properly designed system of recall, with appropriate
safeguards, would minimise disruption while ensuring that it promotes accountability. Recall should
be diffcult, but not impossible.
Recommendations
Our recommendations are based on one fundamental principle: recall should be a
mechanism for political accountability, not a judicial or disciplinary process.
A constituent who wants to recall their MP should be able to apply for a recall
petition on demand. The threshold for a successful recall petition should be 20% of
the number of registered voters. Recall campaigns should have 90 days to collect the
required number of signatures.
Constituents triggering a recall petition should not have to specify the reason for the
recall on the petition.
Signatures for the recall petition should only be collected by volunteer canvassers
for recall campaigns who register with the electoral authorities.
A valid recall petition should trigger a recall referendum, where a simple majority
recalls the targeted politician. If the recall referendum is successful, the MPs seat is
vacated and a by-election is held.
There should be a grace period of six months before and after a general election and
six months after a recall referendum or by-election when no recall petition can be
triggered.
Organisations which spend more than 500 campaigning in support or opposition
to the recall petition should register with the local returning offcer. Spending limits
should be set in proportion to existing constituency limits on candidate spending,
with increased limits if the recall process proceeds to a referendum. Donations
to recall campaigns should be regulated in line with existing rules on political
donations.
The government should investigate recall provisions for other roles, including
directly elected mayors, police and crime commissioners and local councillors.
5
A crisis of accountability
Recent proposals for recall in the UK have their genesis in the 2009 expenses scandal. Upwards
of two-thirds of MPs were implicated in systematic abuse of parliamentary expenses. Although
confdence in the political system was already low, the scandal served to underline the perceived
lack of accountability of elected representatives, many of whom could rightly say that their
behaviour was within the rules. Public frustration emerged not just at the behaviour of MPs but
because the public had no power to act on expenses abuses.
After the scandal, politicians from all parties agreed that voters needed additional powers to
hold MPs to account. Yet the governments diagnosis of the problem with the system missed the
mark. Their case for recall was that voters should not have to wait for the next general election,
potentially fve years away, to hold their MP to account.
1
In other words, the only problem with the
current system was one of timing. In fact, the expenses scandal revealed a much more serious
problem with accountability in the UK. There are good reasons to believe that a general election,
even were it to arrive at the right time, would not offer voters a meaningful opportunity to sanction
their MP for misconduct.
No consequences
The expenses scandal is the perfect illustration of how the UKs system of political accountability
fails voters. Despite the universal anger which followed, MPs who were implicated faced little or
no punishment at the ballot box. Being implicated in the scandal cost the average MP a mere
1-1.5% of the vote
2
, perhaps enough to swing a marginal seat but not to worry most MPs. This is
in line with previous estimates of the electoral consequences of scandals from the wave of sleaze
allegations in the run-up to the 1997 election.
3
The 2010 general election should have been the perfect opportunity for voters to sanction MPs
involved in the expenses scandal. There were no shortage of targets; while some MPs were
deselected or stood down voluntarily
4
, of the MPs who were most seriously implicated, more than
50% chose to stand for re-election.
5
Knowledge of the scandal was widespread, as was public
anger: the 2010 British Election Study survey found 93% of voters had heard of the scandal; more
than 90% agreed that the scandal made them very angry; and 80% agreed that MPs implicated
in the scandal should resign. Voters knowledge of the involvement of their own MP was less
widespread but voters whose MP had in fact been implicated in the scandal were signifcantly
more likely to believe they were involved. Lack of knowledge was not the limiting factor in the
absence of electoral accountability.
6
In a poll conducted just before the 2010 election, 38% of
voters declared that they would vote against an MP from the party they supported if they were
implicated in the scandal.
7

Why did this anger not translate into punishment at the ballot box? At any election, voters face
a trade-off between sanctioning politicians for involvement in a scandal and expressing their
preferences on policy or choice of government. The electoral impact of a scandal is determined by
1 Recall of MPs Draf Bill, Cm 8241, p. 5
2 Pattie and Johnston, Te electoral impact of the UK 2009 MPs expenses scandal, Political Studies, 2012, vol. 60, p. 744
3 Farrell et al, Sex, money, and politics: Sleaze and the Conservative Party in the 1997 election, British Elections and Parties
Review, 8:1, pp. 80-94
4 Tough Eggers & Fisher suggest that the decision to retire was not linked to implication in the scandal, but more likely
down to the recognition that expenses would become less generous in the future, lowering MPs compensation packages (Eggers
& Fisher, Electoral accountability and the UK parliamentary expenses scandal: Did voters punish corrupt MPs?, LSE Political Science
and Political Economy Working Paper, No. 8/2011, p. 2)
5 Vivyan et al, Representative misconduct, voter perceptions and accountability: Evidence from the 2009 House of
Commons expenses scandal, Electoral Studies, 31:2012, p. 751
6 Vivyan et al, pp. 751-2
7 www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/2578/Impact-of-the-expenses-scandal-recedes.aspx
how much importance voters assign to the scandal compared to other issues, their knowledge
of the scandal and the infuence of political institutions. We should not expect that involvement in
the expenses scandal should prove a decisive factor for every voter. However, the fact remains
that voters were angry about expenses, knew enough to pick out who was implicated and yet
still chose not to punish the culprits. The lack of electoral consequences for MPs implicated in
the scandal is a surprising result that is not replicated in other political systems. In the 1992 US
congressional election following the House banking scandal
8
, candidates implicated in the scandal
lost an average of 5% of the vote signifcantly higher than in the UK despite many of the worst
offenders retiring or suffering defeats in primary elections.
9
What made the difference was the UKs political system, which encourages voters to ignore
the behaviour and characteristics of the candidate and to vote along party lines. While it is true
that voters themselves chose not to punish expenses fddlers, they do not make their choices
in isolation. Rather, they respond to the incentives and cues that political institutions provide.
Voters are well aware that at a general election, they are choosing the party that will form the
government, as well as the individual candidate. Strong party discipline and a legislature which is
dominated by the executive ensure that there are few incentives to take the individual candidates
views and qualities into account when voting.
The electoral impact of the expenses scandal was much less signifcant than that of comparable
scandals in countries like the US with political systems that encourage voting behaviour based
on the behaviour of the candidate. Only in exceptional cases has the behaviour of the individual
MP become a decisive factor in an election. In 1997, the journalist Martin Bell defeated the
Conservative MP Neil Hamilton in Tatton on an anti-corruption ticket after the Labour and Liberal
Democrat candidates stood aside. Hamilton was implicated in a cash-for-questions scandal
involving Mohamed Al-Fayed, the owner of Harrods. After the local party declined to deselect
Hamilton, Bell won the seat, overturning a 16,000 majority with a swing of nearly 50%.
In Tatton, the election effectively became a recall election, decided on the single issue of Neil
Hamiltons conduct as an MP. Bells win was widely celebrated as a victory for people power,
but what made it possible was the decision of the opposition parties to suspend normal party
competition. Once the normal pressures of choosing a party and a government were removed,
voters opted to remove Hamilton for his misconduct. Had Labour and the Liberal Democrats stood
candidates, comparison to the Conservatives national performance suggests that he would have
retained the seat.
10
The reason examples like Tatton are rare under the current system is that they challenge the basis
of the Westminster system: the collective accountability of a government at a general election.
Voters in Tatton were presented only with the choice of Hamilton or not-Hamilton. Their knowledge
of Bells position on the important issues of the day was necessarily limited. Voters were forced
to swap their right to choose between governments in order to express their discontent with an
individual MP.
8 Te House banking scandal or rubbergate broke in 1992. It was revealed that the United States House of Representatives
Bank had established a clearinghouse which allowed members to overdraw their accounts, essentially providing them with interest-
free credit. Over four hundred representatives had overdrawn their accounts at some point but the House Ethics Committee singled
out 22 of them in particular for leaving their checking accounts overdrawn for at least eight months. Te scandal is widely seen to
have fed pre-existing perceptions that the House was corrupt. For further information see: Charles Stewart (1994), Lets Go Fly
a Kite: Causes and Consequences of the House Bank Scandal, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Vol.19, pp.521-35; Mark Grossman,
Political Corruption in America: An Encyclopedia of Scandals, Power, and Greed (Grey House Publishing 2003)
9 Dimock and Jacobson, Checks and choices: the house Bank Scandals impact on voters in 1992, Te Journal of Politics,
57 (4), 1995, p. 1157
10 Farrell et al, p. 88
7
More than misconduct
The Neil Hamilton case highlights the broader trade-off between individual and collective political
accountability. The UK political system promotes strong parties over individual accountability. The
logic is that strong parties which can mobilise their MPs to vote for a political programme can then
be judged collectively on that programme at an election. This collective accountability requires
MPs from the same party to act in concert so that voters can use the party label as a shortcut
to judge individual MPs. If the party operates in a unifed manner, voters know roughly what a
candidate with a particular party label stands for without investigating their views more thoroughly.
In this system, individual accountability operates chiefy through internal party discipline rather
than direct from the voters. Parties have an obvious electoral incentive to discipline MPs whose
behaviour is unpopular or brings the party into disrepute. Individual accountability to voters
becomes a threat to the collective accountability of parties when it encourages MPs to vote against
the party line. In systems where representatives are individually accountable to voters, parties
capacity to discipline their MPs is weakened. If MPs are more inclined to act against their party
because their voters can hold them individually accountable for their actions, it becomes more
diffcult for voters to read off the views of their individual MP from their party label.
The UK political system operates through collective accountability, but does not eschew
mechanisms of individual accountability. The expenses scandal saw the system failing on its own
terms. The strong link between constituents and their MP is repeatedly singled out as one of the
virtues of the British political system. The single member plurality electoral system establishes a
direct electoral connection between individual MPs and their constituents which should in principle
provide individual accountability. Ostensibly, MPs celebrate the fact that their constituents are their
bosses and that they can hold them individually accountable for their behaviour and performance
as a representative. Take this typical statement from an MPs website:
MPs in effect write their own job descriptions and are accountable to their constituents, who
can choose not to re-elect them at the next General Election if they do not believe their MP
is doing a good enough job for them.
11
The governments Draft Recall Bill echoes this sentiment:
Politicians are held accountable at elections for the way in which they have voted or their
record in offce.
12
Political accountability is presented as a process which operates at an individual level, not just at
the level of government or party. MPs interpret re-election by their constituents as an endorsement
of their behaviour and approach to the job. Yet, as the expenses scandal demonstrates,
accountability of the kind described above simply does not exist, even in extreme cases of
misconduct. In truth, most MPs have little to fear from their constituents.
Though the expenses scandal exposed the impotence of voters when it comes to holding MPs to
account for misconduct, the absence of individual accountability means that MPs can disregard
their obligations to their constituents with impunity. MPs have switched party, broken electoral
promises and failed to carry out even the most basic functions of representation but as long as
they hold a safe seat, they are practically invulnerable. At a general election, voters forego the
prospect of kicking out MPs who they may feel are failing them in order to deliver a verdict on the
government. The system leaves them with no space to express their views on their individual MP.
Recall offers the possibility of squaring this circle, of strengthening the individual accountability of
MPs without compromising the collective accountability of a government at the ballot box.
11 http://www.daniel4shrewsbury.co.uk/daniels-job-description
12 Recall of MPs Draf Bill, Cm 8241, p. 5
9
A role for recall in the UK?
The problem in Westminster is a lack of individual accountability, which recall appears well-
positioned to remedy. However, the debate on recall in the UK has so far been dominated by
the governments proposals for recall, which combine a narrow focus on misconduct with a strict
interpretation of parliamentary sovereignty. Recall needs to enhance accountability, not simply
provide a new way for MPs to discipline others for misconduct. This section examines how a
system of recall that puts control in the hands of the voters could work in a UK context.
The wrong remedy
Recall emerged naturally as the solution to MPs misconduct during the expenses scandal,
promising to empower voters to kick out misbehaving MPs between elections. In 2010, the
coalition agreement promised legislation to introduce a power of recall allowing voters to force
a by-election where an MP is found to have engaged in serious wrongdoing and having had a
petition calling for a by-election signed by 10% of his or her constituents.
1

The Draft Bill which followed, published in 2011, proposed a two-stage recall process originating
in Parliament and culminating with a petition signed by constituents. The government proposed
two triggers for a recall petition: an MP convicted of an offence that carries a custodial sentence
of less than 12 months would automatically face a petition; the House of Commons would also be
able to pass a resolution stating that an MP was guilty of serious wrongdoing, which would open
a recall petition against them. Constituents would then have eight weeks to sign a recall petition in
approved places (akin to polling stations) in the MPs constituency. If 10% of the registered voters
in the constituency signed the petition, the MP would be recalled and a by-election would be held
to replace them.
2
The stated aim of the proposals was to ensure MPs remain accountable to their constituents.
3

However, this form of recall was designed to augment the existing disciplinary procedures of
the House of Commons rather than making MPs more accountable to voters. The governments
proposals operate on the assumption that existing UK political institutions provide an adequate
framework for holding MPs to account, and all that needs to be solved is a problem of timing. As
outlined in in the frst section (A Crisis of Accountability), this is not the case. The governments
plans treat recall as a judicial process, where an authority in this case a committee of MPs
certifes that a recall is justifed based on a set of criteria. Only then are voters allowed their say.
The role of ordinary voters in initiating the process is limited to making a complaint about an MPs
behaviour. This version of recall shuts the public out of the process and limits the scope of recall to
a tiny spectrum of behaviour.
The likely effect of restricting the grounds for recall is that no recall will ever take place. The
US experience provides a natural experiment: 12 states allow recall of members of the state
legislature for any reason, while 7 restrict recall to instances of misconduct or incompetence.
The difference between these states is stark: in the states with full recall, 39 recall attempts have
reached the election stage; in the restricted recall states, only 1 attempt has ever reached an
election.
4
Many of the states which restrict recall have broader conditions than those specifed
in the governments proposals, including not just misconduct but also incompetence and neglect
of duties. The misconduct which triggered the only recall attempt in restricted recall states of
Washington state senator Peter von Reichbauer in 1981 was switching party, which would not be
1 Te Coalition: Our Programme for Government, p. 27
2 HM Government, Recall of MPs Draf Bill (Cm 8241, 2011), London: Stationery Ofce, p. 18
4 While there are variations between states in terms of threshold, political system, and the length of the periods during
which recall has been in efect, averaging 83 years in full recall states but just 53 years in restricted recall states, per year per state
recalls occur around 15 times more regularly in full recall states than in restricted recall states.
suffcient grounds for recall under the UK governments plans.
5
In practical terms, restrictions on
recall mean no recall at all.
The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee delivered a damning verdict: the proposals
were not genuinely participatory; secondly...they would rarely, if ever, be used; and thirdly,
because, even if they were used, they would be unlikely to have a signifcant impact on the
political landscape
6
Full recall
The alternative is full recall, which allows voters to decide whether an MP should be recalled
for any reason. This would address the problem of accountability at its root, making MPs more
responsive to their constituents. Full recall represents a safety valve, which would come into play
when the MP-constituent relationship has broken down and voters have lost confdence in their
MP. There are a number of circumstances in which full recall would empower voters to hold MPs
to account: not just misconduct, but failure to represent constituents, switching party and breaking
election promises.
Misconduct
Politicians convicted of a sentence of more than 12 months are automatically excluded from
membership of the House of Commons yet instances of less serious wrongdoing are primarily
dealt with using the Houses disciplinary procedures and internally through party discipline. The
PCRC inquiry argued that the existing disciplinary mechanisms of the House of Commons were
adequate to deal with MPs misconduct. Five years after the expenses crisis, there are still serious
doubts over the idea that MPs should sit in judgment of MPs. The case of former cabinet minister
Maria Miller has again called this principle into question. In February 2014, the independent
Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards found that Miller had over-claimed mortgage interest
payments and wrongly designated her primary residence as a second home in order to make
expenses claims against it. Miller was also found to be uncooperative with the Commissioners
inquiry, even threatening to refer the Commissioner to the Standards Committee of MPs for
overstepping her authority in an attempt to forestall an investigation.
7
Despite a recommendation
that Miller should pay back 44,000 in over-claimed expenses, the eight MPs on the Standards
Committee watered down the report, accepting many of Millers claims which had been rejected by
the Commissioner and recommending repayment of only 5,800.
8
The transparency campaigner
Martin Bell commented that the weakening of the Commissioners recommendations showed that
the Commons could not be master of its own regulation.
9
In a poll after the Committees verdict,
68% of the public said they believed that Miller should lose her position as an MP.
10
Ultimately
public pressure forced her to stand down as a cabinet minister.
The doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty requires that MPs be allowed to decide on disciplinary
matters within the House of Commons.
It is a fundamental part of the United Kingdoms constitutional arrangements that each
House of Parliament must be free from interference from the executive and the courts in
arranging their own internal affairs. This is known as the doctrine of exclusive cognisance.
11
5 http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/recall-of-state-ofcials.aspx
6 Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, Recall of MPs, 21 June 2012, HC 373 2012-13, para 68
7 http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/04/maria-miller-threatened-watchdog-in-attempt-to-limit-investigation
8 Tough the committee were prepared to agree an even lower fgure for repayment, they accepted Millers calculation of
how much she should repay. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmstandards/1179/117903.htm#a5
9 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/conservative-mps-expenses/10746022/Maria-Miller-
expenses-report-rights-and-wrongs-of-ministers-claims.html
10 http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/06/maria-miller-cabinet-job-poll
11
This is based on article 9 of the 1688 Bill of Rights, which states that the freedom of speech and
debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or
place outside Parliament. If recall is a disciplinary process, parliamentary sovereignty maintains
that MPs should decide and therefore the decision of whether an MP should face recall must be
left to MPs. This appears to rule out recall mechanisms where an independent body such as the
courts, or perhaps the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards certifes that the conditions
for recall have been met. This leaves responsibility for dealing with misconduct frmly in the hands
of politicians. As was seen in the expenses scandal, politicians and the public can have wildly
diverging ideas of what constitutes misconduct, and developments since the scandal have done
little to reassure the public that things have changed.
Full recall is a political rather than a disciplinary process that leaves it to the public to make the
decision whether an elected offcials conduct should make them subject to recall. This allows for
greater fexibility than a system which automatically triggers a recall when certain conditions are
met, such as a term of imprisonment. Behaviour which does not attract a prison sentence or stops
short of MPs judgment of serious wrongdoing can easily cause constituents to lose confdence
in their MP; conversely, behaviour which does meet these conditions does not mean that a recall
is necessarily warranted. MPs have received prison sentences for crimes motivated for political
reasons, such as Liverpool MP Terry Fields, who was imprisoned for three months in 1991 for
refusing to pay the poll tax. Fields would have automatically faced recall under the governments
plans. The low 10% threshold and the absence of a further recall election stage in the proposals
would mean that a minority of constituents could recall an MP imprisoned for political reasons,
even if the majority of their constituents support them. Full recall typically includes additional
stages which involve both supporters and opponents of recall, ensuring that a majority supports
the recall, as will be outlined in the third section (Designing recall). It is therefore both fairer on
MPs and hands more power to constituents, who will be able to judge individual cases of MPs
misconduct rather than relying on politicians own collective judgment or sticking to rigid criteria for
recall. Only full recall can empower constituents to remove MPs whose behaviour has fallen below
the standards they expect.
Failure to represent
There is no clearly defned set of duties that MPs must carry out. In 2001, the Senior Salaries
Review Board published a draft job description which broadly outlined the different roles that an
MP inhabits, which include defending the national interest, representing local interests, supporting
the party to which they belong, passing legislation, holding the government to account, and
assisting individual constituents.
12
These roles will often cause confict: local interests may run
counter to national; if an MP is a member of the government this is likely to affect their ability to
hold it to account; and an MPs duties in Westminster and their constituency represent competing
demands on their time. However, there is no agreement on what priority MPs should give each
of these tasks, and which should take precedence when two duties confict. Each individual MP
follows their own path based on their own theory of what it means to represent. As a result there
are as many theories of representation as there are MPs.
The ambivalence of representation does not mean that MPs should ignore what their electors
expect of them constituents have theories of representation as well. Even though they do not
and should not provide a guide for an MPs every action, there are situations in which an MP can
fail to meet even the most basic of expectations held by constituents. If an MPs understanding
of their role and that of their constituents are completely at odds, the system of representation
has broken down. When constituents believe that an MP is seriously failing in their duty of
representation, recall can enhance representative democracy by acting as a safety valve.

Some MPs fail to carry out the basic activities expected of them, even accounting for the multi-
dimensional nature of their role. For the majority of MPs who represent safe seats, the current
system offers no meaningful check to this kind of behaviour. One MP failed to hold a constituency
12 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmcomm/685/68520.htm
surgery for 14 years.
13
Another was nicknamed the Invisible Man after failing to speak in a
single parliamentary debate for more than three years.
14
Two more decided to appear on reality
TV shows, arguing that they could better represent their constituents on national television than
in their constituency or the House of Commons.
15
Their constituents, including many of their
supporters, objected but had no recourse except to wait until the next general election. Supporters
of the MPs party then faced an unpalatable choice: to remove their MP and replace them with
another from a party they do not support, or continue to support an MP from their chosen party
despite their individual failings. The YouGov poll commissioned by the PCRCs inquiry into recall
found that 60% believed that an MP should be subject to recall for not holding surgeries or
responding to constituents letters.
16
The governments plans do not propose to deal with situations where constituents believe MPs are
failing to represent them, which can be just as corrosive to public trust as instances of misconduct.
The minister responsible, Mark Harper, argued that those things are a matter of judgment for
constituents to exercise at an election.
17
But the re-election of MPs like the Invisible Man
can hardly be taken as an endorsement of their approach to representation. A general election
provides little opportunity for voters to deliver a verdict on the record of their individual MP. The
existing system allows this behaviour to go unchallenged. These are not examples of minor
disagreements on an MPs priorities, which are unlikely to motivate a majority of constituents to
call for a recall. They are simply failures of representation.
Recall corrects extreme mismatches between constituent and MP on how they should go about
the task of representation. Full recall takes account of the ambiguities of representation: behaviour
which justifes a recall for one MPs electorate could be the very model of how to go about
representation for anothers. If enough voters believe their MP is failing to carry out their duties,
they can recall the MP. If voters do in fact believe that, for example, reality TV is a worthwhile use
of their MPs time, the absence or failure of a recall empowers that MP to pursue that approach
in the future. Unlike the governments plans, where there are automatic triggers for recall which
may not refect the way constituents feel about their MP, full recall allows voters to decide when
representation isnt working, and fx it.

Crossing the foor
There have been many instances of MPs changing party between elections crossing the foor
but MPs rarely resign to face a by-election upon their change of party label.
18
At a general
election, most voters make their decision based on which party they want to form the government,
rather than the characteristics of the individual MP. While deviations from that party-based
mandate can be legitimated on the basis of the other roles an MP must play, changing party
altogether is more diffcult to justify to constituents. If constituents elect an MP as a member of
one party, it is unlikely, though not impossible, that they would have chosen to elect that MP had
they been standing for a different party. The PCRC poll found that 52% of voters believed that an
MP should be subject to recall for changing party between elections. Crossing the foor is rarely
a decision that is taken in consultation with constituents, as the nature of party competition in
Westminster necessitates the secrecy of the back-room deal. After the fact, the MP who crosses
the foor may argue that their change in party is consistent with their mandate as an MP, yet the
fact that few MPs who switch party remain to face re-election in the same constituency suggests
that they are unwilling to test this argument. In the last 25 years, only one MP who switched party
13 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/no-surgeries-for-14-years--is-sir-stuart-bell-britains-laziest-mp-2350953.
html
14 http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/85090/Tory-MP-is-Mr-Invisible.html
15 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4587448.stm; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20217901
16 Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, Recall of MPs, 21 June 2012, HC 373 2012-13, p. 34
17 Mark Harper, Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, Recall of MPs, 21 June 2012, HC 373 2012-13, Ev 48
18 Since 1832, only fve MPs have triggered a by-election on crossing the foor - two in the past year. Te most recent were
Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless, both supporters of recall for MPs, who switched from the Conservative Party to UKIP in
2014.
13
and did not trigger a by-election remained to face re-election in the same constituency: Jeffrey
Donaldson, a former Ulster Unionist Party MP who was re-elected as a Democratic Unionist in
Lagan Valley, Northern Ireland, in 2005.
Instances of crossing the foor is an example of how the individual accountability of recall can
supplement the collective accountability provided by strong parties. In the US, there have been
a number of recalls motivated by changes in party, which have delivered contrasting verdicts.
19

In the UK, changing party has historically been a decision characterised more by the individual
ambitions of the MP than a refection of the views of their constituents. Recall provides a litmus
test: if there are enough voters who are dissatisfed with an MP crossing the foor, they can force a
vote and recall the MP; on the other hand, if constituents accept the MPs argument, the absence
of a successful recall offers a positive reinforcement of the MPs decision.
Broken promises
Voters are aware that a government will not always be able to fulfl the promises they make
at election time. If a government fails to keep election pledges, voters have the opportunity to
remove them at the ballot box. However, there are instances where voters may want to hold
MPs individually to account if their party goes back on an important promise, particularly if the
individual MP made it a key plank of their election campaign. The PCRC poll found that 50% of
voters believed that MPs should be subject to recall if they break an electoral promise. The most
prominent of these in recent years has been the Right to Recall campaign launched by the
National Union of Students in 2010 following Liberal Democrat MPs decision to back an increase
in university tuition fees, a policy they had pledged to oppose in the run-up to the 2010 election.
20

MPs also make individual promises to their electorate, which may be on local issues. In a YouGov
poll in 2012, 72% of respondents believed that MPs should pay a great deal of attention to keeping
electoral promises, while only 2% believed that MPs did pay attention to keeping promises.
21

The evidence shows that voters do want to hold MPs individually to account for their voting
record but are provided little opportunity to do so by the current system. If voters were happy to
use an MPs party label as shorthand to judge their voting record, MPs who rebel against their
party line when their constituents are opposed should see no beneft at the ballot box. However,
research into the electoral performance of Labour MPs who rebelled against the Blair government
in the 2001-5 parliament showed that voters who regarded the government unfavourably were
more likely to vote for rebellious MPs. According to the study, although there is no strong MP-
constituent legislative accountability link under the UKs [frst past the post] system...voters do
behave in a manner consistent with an effort to hold their MPs to account for their legislative
actions.
22
Holding MPs accountable on policy issues is likely to be the most controversial application of
recall, because it pulls in a different direction to the collective accountability of strong parties. The
possibility of being recalled individually for support of a policy decided collectively would force
MPs to take individual responsibility for their decisions on key votes where their constituents
strongly disagree with their party. This would strengthen individual MPs in their dealings with their
party leadership, empowering them to act against the party line if their constituents are strongly
opposed. This leverage would only be available when there was a realistic chance of recall.
Voters appetites for recall appear to be largely confned to the types of situation described above:
in the PCRC poll, 77% of voters said that simply disagreeing with an MP on a policy issue would
not justify a recall.
23
19 In 1995, California Assembly Republicans Paul Horcher and Doris Allen were recalled afer voting for a Democratic
speaker; Washington state senator Peter von Reichbauer survived a recall vote afer switching to the Republican party in 1981.
20 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11764131
21 http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/ww4o7wko1q/WebVersion_Democracy%20in%20Britain%20A5.pdf
22 Nick Vivyan & Markus Wagner, Do Voters Reward Rebellion? Te Legislative Accountability of MPs in Britain, p. 25 (http://
www.lse.ac.uk/government/research/resgroups/PSPE/pdf/2010conference_papers/Vivyan.pdf)
23 Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, Recall of MPs, 21 June 2012, HC 373 2012-13, p. 35
Would recall mean the end of strong parties? In fact, parties are less brittle in the face of dissent
than the doctrine of collective accountability would suggest. In the 1950s and 60s, party cohesion
was much stronger: two parliamentary sessions in the 1950s passed without even a single
rebellion and between 1945 and 1970 there was not a single government defeat as a result of
backbench dissent. The party whips of that era would regard todays parliamentary parties as an
undisciplined rabble and yet parties have survived. Recall would be much less disruptive than
other reforms which challenge the party basis of accountability. Parties would retain control over
candidate selection and the frst past the post electoral system means that governments would
retain the power to deliver the programme they set out at the general election.
Recall would act as a counterpart to the collective, party-based accountability of the general
election by giving voters the opportunity to hold MPs individually to account for the promises they
make as members of their party or as individual MPs. This would strengthen the link between MP
and constituent, which is regarded as the jewel in the crown of the UKs electoral system. If voters
have lost confdence in their MP as a result of them breaking an election promise, they should be
able to recall them.
Would recall be used?
How often recall would be used is unclear, and international experience may not provide an
accurate guide. In the US and British Columbia, recall is situated in political institutions which give
voters a participatory role in policy and the selection of candidates for election, such as ballot
initiatives, referendums, and primary elections. As a result, recalls are comparatively rare: in the
US, there have been 22 successful and 18 unsuccessful recall elections; in British Columbia,
there has never been a successful recall petition, although one politician who was the target of a
recall resigned when it became clear that the recall would likely be successful. As pointed out in
evidence to the PCRC, if policy disjunction between representative and represented is the source
of contention then an initiative or a referendum on a particular policy may be more effcacious and
effcient (with lower trigger thresholds) in addressing the issue than recall.
24
In the UK, where
none of these options are available to voters, recall may be more widely used than in the US.
Even if actual recalls are rare, knowing that they are subject to recall could still infuence
politicians behaviour, deterring misconduct and enhancing individual accountability. The cultural
effect of recall is more diffcult to measure than its effectiveness at removing representatives, partly
due to many recall mechanisms being too restrictive to provide an effective check on behaviour, as
well as the diffculty in distinguishing their effect from other channels of individual accountability. In
the UK, however, recall appears more likely to alter the behaviour of MPs in safe seats, who are
currently only very weakly accountable to their constituents.
24 David Judge, Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, Recall of MPs, 21 June 2012, HC 373 2012-13, Ev 95
15
Designing recall
The international experience of recall can provide valuable lessons in designing a recall
mechanism that works in the UK political context. Recall is a new feature in many democracies
and there is only a modest amount of evidence on how it works in practice.
1
However, there are
some relatively mature examples of recall which operate in political systems that are relevantly
similar to the UK. The US has over a centurys experience of recall, with a total of nineteen states
now operating recall provisions at a state level. The Canadian province of British Columbia, which
introduced recall in 1991, completed a review of recall in 2003 which recommended signifcant
changes to the way recall worked in light of the frst decade of its operation. This section does not
aim to be an exhaustive account of all the features of the recall process, but rather an examination
of the key issues at stake when designing a system of recall, presenting the different options
available to legislators.
Three stages
Not all recall mechanisms operate in the same way but most share certain key features. There
are three distinct stages: the frst is the trigger, the event that kicks off a recall attempt. In a mixed
recall, the trigger is a decision by an institution for example, a vote by the parliament, a report by
a parliamentary committee, or a judgment by the courts that indicates recall is appropriate. The
governments plans represent a form of mixed recall. This differs from full recall, which allows
voters themselves to trigger a recall.
The second stage is the petition stage. In order to demonstrate that there is demand for a recall
election, a given number of signatures from eligible voters endorsing the recall must be collected
in a given time. If a petition obtains the required number of signatures, a recall election is called.
The third stage is the recall itself. This can include a recall referendum, where if a majority of
voters support the recall, the targeted politician is recalled. An election will then be held to choose
a new representative. Some jurisdictions proceed straight from the petition to the election.
The anatomy of recall
There are a number of features of the recall process which vary to create recall mechanisms with
distinct logics.
Signature thresholds
Recall sometimes encounters two contradictory arguments: frst, that it is used too often and
therefore stops politicians doing their jobs; secondly, that it is used too little and is therefore not
worth the effort to introduce. Both of these arguments were presented in evidence to the PCRC
inquiry on recall.
2
and both may be valid for certain examples of recall. The diffculty of recall
attempts varies wildly by jurisdiction; most of this variation comes from the number of signatures
required on the petition to trigger a recall election. This threshold interacts with the time allowed to
collect petitions to determine how diffcult it is to trigger an election. Smaller thresholds and longer
timescales make recall easier, whereas higher thresholds and shorter timescales make it harder.
1 See Recall of MPs Draf Bill (Cm 8241, 2011) for a summary of international examples and http://www.ncsl.org/research/
elections-and-campaigns/recall-of-state-ofcials.aspx for a summary of US recall provisions
2 Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, Recall of MPs, 21 June 2012, HC 373 2012-13, p. 24-5, 27
Thresholds in different countries are calculated as a proportion of one of three factors. In
descending order of size:
the number of registered voters in the constituency
the number of voters in the constituency who voted in the last election
the number of voters who voted for the politician targeted by the recall
Linking the threshold for recall to the number of registered voters ensures that the recall attempt
is supported by a given proportion of those eligible to vote. This would make certain that roughly
the same level of support is required to recall each MP. The other two threshold criteria link the
threshold to the strength of the mandate enjoyed by the politician who is targeted. This would
make it easier to remove politicians who only received a weak endorsement from voters in the
frst place if their elections suffered from low turnout or they have small majorities. In the US, the
average threshold for states with thresholds based on eligible voters is around 20%; the average
for states with turnout-based thresholds is roughly 25%.
3
In practice, the turnout-based thresholds
are lower and these states have seen an increase in recall attempts as turnouts have fallen.
Though there is some logic to making the effort needed to overturn a mandate proportional to the
strength of the original mandate, linking recall thresholds to the number of people who voted in the
last election might discourage people from voting if they hope to later recall the politician elected.
This could further depress turnout in safe seats from voters supporting the losing party. Linking
recall to the number of votes cast for a candidate would be a more radical departure from the logic
of the UK electoral system, which requires only a plurality to determine a winner. MPs sitting in
safe seats with low turnouts who normally have little to fear from an election could become more
vulnerable to recall than MPs in marginal constituencies where the election is fercely competitive.
The level of the threshold depends on the nature of the successive stages. If the recall proceeds
straight from petition to a by-election, as it does in British Columbia, which requires a petition to be
signed by 40% of eligible voters, it should be towards the higher end of the spectrum. If, however,
the petition only triggers a referendum, which requires a majority of voters to endorse the recall,
then it can be correspondingly lower without creating unfairness.
The evidence shows that recall elections are uncommon even in jurisdictions with low signature
thresholds. California, for example, has one of the lowest thresholds for recall worldwide, requiring
proponents to gather signatures equalling 12% of the total number of voters who voted in the
last election. Yet recall attempts are still relatively rare in California: in the 103 years since the
state introduced recall, there have been 156 recall petitions fled against state-level offcials and
nine recall elections. Far more common are provisions for recall lying unused on the statute book
with a threshold which makes the chances of a successful recall vanishingly small. Louisiana,
which requires recall petitions to be signed by a third of registered voters, has never seen a recall
election. Elsewhere in the world, there are even more stringent requirements. In Nigeria, recall
petitions against members of the Senate or House of Representatives require signatures from a
majority of registered voters in the relevant district in order to trigger a recall election.
Time limits on petitions
The time allocated for collecting signatures should not contribute signifcantly to the diffculty of
obtaining enough signatures to trigger a recall. The logic of the recall petition is to ensure there is
enough demand for a recall; it therefore makes sense that the level of diffculty should primarily be
set by the signature threshold, rather than an arbitrary time limit. The time limit is there to ensure
that the process does not drag on.
3 Eligible voter thresholds in fve states vary from 15% in Georgia to 33.3% in Louisiana; turnout thresholds in the
remaining 14 vary from 12% in California to 40% in Kansas.
17
The governments plans envisage an eight week process for collecting signatures. With a higher
signature threshold, this could be extended without making the process signifcantly easier. Time
limits for collecting signatures in the US vary from 60 to 320 days.
Signature collection
There are a number of interests to balance in the signature-gathering process. The process should
be as open as possible to allow maximum participation, but equally the method of gathering
signature must be secure in order to maintain confdence in the process.
The vast majority of international examples of recall allow campaigners to collect signatures
for recall petitions. The collected signatures are then submitted to the electoral authorities for
verifcation, which is typically accomplished by verifying that all signatories are eligible to sign and
contacting a statistically signifcant sample of signatories to determine whether they did in fact sign
the petition.
In contrast, the governments plans mandate a signature collection process akin to an election,
where voters must go to a polling station to sign the petition under offcial supervision. Voters
would also be able to apply individually for a postal signature form, though these would not be
automatically sent to those registered for a postal ballot. In this system, the signatures are verifed
during the process.
4
This arrangement is rare: only the Austrian system for legislative initiatives
requires voters to physically sign in state offces.
5
The government has come down frmly on the side of security. The general principle of the draft
recall bill is that the recall petition should be as far as possible like a parliamentary election. This
results in a relatively closed process which is unlikely to encourage participation. The process
imposes a number of barriers on supporters of a recall campaign. They must effectively make their
choice public, since going to sign the recall petition at the assigned place indicates their support
for the petition. While the water-tight security of the ballot may satisfy the targeted politician, a
closed process is unlikely to empower voters. It may also prove inappropriate for full recall on
cost grounds; if voters were allowed to initiate recall petitions, administering the larger volume of
recall attempts, not all of which would succeed, through a supervised petition process would incur
signifcant costs at the early stages of the process.
The proposals require the recall petition to be as secure an an election because the petition is
an electoral process: a successful petition constitutes a recall, without a further vote. The only
other example of a petition triggering a recall without an intervening stage is British Columbia. In
BCs review of the recall mechanism in 2003, this was deemed unsatisfactory: treating a petition
as an electoral process poses considerable administrative challenges and also raises questions
as to the integrity of the recall process.
6
If the function of the recall petition is instead to indicate
the demand for a recall vote, in the form of a special election or referendum, other methods of
collection could be considered providing the integrity of the process is maintained.
Allowing campaigners to collect signatures that are verifed by the electoral authorities at the end
of the process has its own diffculties. In the US, legal challenges to the validity of recall petitions
are widespread. Opponents of the petition may challenge the validity of individual signatures
7

or other technical aspects of the petition.
8
The effect of these legal challenges are to undermine
confdence in the process and make the effective threshold for the recall petition signifcantly
higher to avoid challenge: in Wisconsin, the recall petition to recall state governor Scott Walker
5 100,000 signatures (roughly 1.25% of the electorate) must be collected in eight days in state ofces to endorse a legislative
initiative. Tis is a non-binding recommendation to parliament on a policy issue. http://www.idea.int/publications/direct_democ-
racy/upload/direct_democracy_handbook_chapter4.pdf, p. 87
6 Elections BC, Report of the Chief Electoral Ofcer on the Recall Process in British Columbia, November 2003, p. 15
7 http://www.denverpost.com/ci_23700398/group-challenge-suspicious-petition-signatures-morse-recall
8 http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/07/04/recall-eforts-against-pro-gun-control-colorado-dems-survive-challenge/
included more than a million signatures, almost double the 540,000 threshold required.
9
Allowing
recall campaigns to shoulder the cost of collecting signatures reduces costs but processes for
verifying signatures and the lengthy legal challenges which accompany them have costs of their
own.
The UK government is particularly concerned with preventing double signatures on the petition.
This fear is understandable but appears overblown. In British Columbia, where recall petitions are
on the same scale as envisaged in the UK, double signatures are extremely rare: the 2003 review
examining submitted recall petitions found there was no evidence of obviously fctitious names,
nor was there evidence of any deliberate attempts to subvert the process by falsifying signatures
or multiple signing.
10
The majority of invalid signatures were from ineligible voters, which
appeared to be a result of failures on the part of canvassers and complex criteria for qualifying
signatures.
11

British Columbia offers a middle way between the open but less secure petition processes typical
in the US and the secure but closed process proposed by the government. Signatures on a
recall petition may only be collected by volunteer canvassers who are registered with Elections
BC. They must personally witness each signature and carry other responsibilities to ensure the
integrity of the process.
12
This combines a relatively open process signatures can be gathered
anywhere provided they are witnessed with more robust security. If each signature is traceable
to a registered volunteer who has legal responsibilities, the conduct of recall campaigns can be
monitored much more effectively. The mechanics of registration would themselves incur running
costs, whether a recall election is in progress or not. However, they are likely to be signifcantly
less than the costs associated with running a supervised process or the lengthy legal disputes that
come with a collection process left completely in the hands of campaigns.
After the petition
What happens when a petition obtains the required number of signatures differs by jurisdiction.
There are three options, which in order of complexity are:
the successful petition recalls the targeted politician; their seat becomes vacant and a
by-election is held
the successful petition triggers a special election, where the incumbent retains their seat
until the date of the election
the successful petition triggers a recall referendum, where every voter can approve or
oppose the recall; a simple majority recalls the targeted politician and a by-election is held
The UK governments plans for recall proceed straight from the petition to a by-election, as does
the system of recall in British Columbia. This is the simplest approach, but it denies supporters
of the politician targeted by the recall the opportunity to express their opposition to the recall,
since only supporters of the recall can sign the petition. The British Columbia recall review was
unsatisfed with this system, recommending that
If a petition process is used, the outcome should be a vote on recall, by way of a special
election or referendum vote. All voters would then have the opportunity to participate in the
process that determines the recall of their duly elected Member.
13

The special election, which is employed in four US states, leaves the targeted politician in place
9 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/us/organizers-say-1-million-signed-petition-to-recall-gov-walker-in-wisconsin.html
10 Elections BC, p. 10
11 In British Columbia, signatories must both currently be registered voters in the relevant constituency and also have been
registered in the same constituency at the election at which the targeted politician was elected.
12 http://www.elections.bc.ca/index.php/referenda-recall-initiative/recall/faqs/
13 Elections BC, p. 16
19
until voters decide whether to recall them and replace them with another candidate. In all other
respects, a special election is like a normal by-election.
In the US, the recall referendum is the most common stage that follows a successful petition. A
recall referendum decides the question of whether the sitting representative should be recalled:
voters choose yes or no and a simple majority is suffcient to eject the targeted politician. This
distinguishes the decision to recall the incumbent from the election of a successor. If the recall is
approved, a by-election is held.
The referendum distances the process of recall from the normal process of party political
competition, giving voters the opportunity to deliver a verdict on the individual MP. A referendum
also introduces a further check on the process by requiring that a majority of voters support the
recall. This ensures that opponents of the recall process are allowed to register their opinion
before the recall is carried out.
In California and Colorado, in an attempt to reduce costs and increase turnout, the recall
referendum is held on the same day and on the same ballot paper as the subsequent election.
However, these combined elections have posed problems for voters. Voters are frst asked to
indicate yes or no to the question of whether to recall the targeted representative, and then
choose their preferred replacement should the recall be successful. This means that voters who
oppose the recall are asked to choose a preferred successor even though they hope that the recall
will not succeed and that this preference will not be needed. This hypothetical element of the ballot
paper caused confusion during the 2003 California recall campaign against Gray Davis, resulting
in the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger; voters who opposed the recall but preferred a Democrat
be returned if the recall took place had to vote no to the recall but yes to a Democrat successor,
a factor which contributed towards Schwarzeneggers victory.
Recalled politicians
If a politician is successfully recalled in a recall referendum, should the recalled politician be
allowed to stand in the subsequent by-election? Disqualifying the recalled politician from standing
in the subsequent by-election would ensure that a successful recall would stick. In the US, seven
states disqualify the recalled representative in order to prevent them from being re-elected by a
plurality after being rejected by a majority in a recall referendum.
14
This empowers voters who have lost confdence in their MP but still support their MPs party, as it
guarantees that if the recall is successful they will have the choice of a different candidate. It could
also reduce the potential for abuse of recall by opposition parties. If opposition parties know that a
recall election may result in the replacement of an unpopular MP with a different, potentially more
popular MP from the same party, using recall to unseat an MP is likely to be less attractive.
If the recalled representative is not excluded, much of the effcacy of recall depends on the
decisions of the constituency party of the recalled MP, who may decide to choose a different
candidate in the subsequent election. However, this is by no means guaranteed. Constituency
parties may be inclined to ditch recalled MPs as a proven electoral liability, but in a safe seat even
a recalled MP stands a good chance of being re-elected. To return to an earlier example, the local
Conservative association in the Tatton recall election resisted pressure to deselect Neil Hamilton
despite substantial evidence of wrongdoing.
Disqualifcation, however, would mark a signifcant departure from current UK electoral law. Under
the existing system, disqualifcation is applied to certain categories of individual, including peers,
civil servants and judges, and some prisoners. Disqualifcation from standing for a certain period
can also be part of the sentence for corrupt or illegal practices during an election campaign.
15

Rejection by the electorate in a recall referendum may indicate wrongdoing, but not necessarily
14 In California and Colorado, where the recall election and the election of a replacement are held simultaneously, this has
the same efect as excluding the recalled politician from the subsequent by-election.
15 Representation of the People Act 1983
on the same scale as the offences which currently justify disqualifcation. So while disqualifcation
would only cover the by-election and not subsequent elections, this would still be a stretch from
the current system. Constituency parties would also be unlikely to welcome restrictions on their
freedom to choose their desired candidate.
Restrictions on recall
In most jurisdictions. there are restrictions on the number of times or the periods in which a recall
can proceed during a given parliamentary term. Grace periods before and after an election have
a dual purpose: they avoid recall elections which would result in the removal of an elected offcial
when a regularly-scheduled election already provides an opportunity to exercise accountability,
and limit sore loser recalls immediately after an election. Grace periods vary in the US from 60 to
320 days.
16
Some states also restrict the number of recall elections that can be held to once per legislative
term, both to prevent repeated recall attempts intended to harass the targeted politician and to
restrict the costs of holding repeated elections.
17
At fve years, the UKs parliamentary term is
longer than most of the legislatures in jurisdictions with recall, which would make limiting the
number of recalls a more stringent restriction.
Stating reasons
Full recall does not prescribe the reasons on which a recall can be initiated. However, some
jurisdictions still require the petitions proponent to set out the reasons for the recall, although they
are not subject to review.
18
This typically takes the form of a 200 word statement which appears on
the petition. The elected offcial subject to recall usually has the option to fle a similar response.
This is intended to inform signatories to the petition of the issues at stake in the recall campaign,
and to make sure that the targeted offcial has an opportunity to reply to the charges levelled
against them.
However, requiring petitioners to state their reasons for the petition may have the opposite effect,
encouraging them to frame their reasons as widely as possible in order to maximise the number of
signatories. This is borne out in the experience of petitions in British Columbia, where the majority
of reasons were generic failure to represent.
19
Recall campaigns are unlikely to be successful
unless they articulate reasons for the recall; the petition gathering process and, if it follows, the
election stage offer ample opportunity for both proponents and the targeted offcial to make their
case. In the UK, the Electoral Commission has followed the rule that ballot papers for elections
and referendums should be as simple as possible, only containing factual information about the
decision being made. Allowing competing statements from recall supporters and opponents to
appear on offcial materials would mark a sharp break with previous practice.
19 Elections BC, p. 37-41
21
Risks and safeguards
Recall hands power from politicians to voters. This process is not without risk. Extending direct
democracy, even in a mild form such as recall, has the potential to interact with existing institutions
in unpredictable ways. Paradoxically, extending individual accountability could have damaging and
potentially undemocratic effects. The gains in accountability that recall brings may not be worth it if
it hampers good decision-making and leaves politicians vulnerable to attack. Here some of these
claims are tested against the evidence, and safeguards outlined which could curb the potential for
disruption.
Recall campaigns would be dominated by big money
The US has the longest and most extensive history with recall and so naturally its experience
tends to dominate the perception of recall in the UK. However, there are important features of the
US system that would not be replicated in the UK. The most obvious is the system of campaign
fnance, which in the US is largely unregulated following a series of Supreme Court decisions
to strike down campaign fnance rules.
1
Spending in recall campaigns in the US often exceeds
spending at regular elections, which itself dwarfs spending levels in the UK.
Looking at recalls targeting politicians who are roughly equivalent to MPs, the discrepancy in
spending is stark. In 2013, two Colorado state senators were recalled following their support
for gun control legislation. The senators represented districts each with approximately twice the
number of constituents as British MPs (140,000), though lower voter turnout meant that the actual
number of voters in elections to the state senate were comparable to those in UK constituencies.
The number of signatures required to trigger the recall was also comparable to proposed threshold
levels for recall of MPs. Yet spending during the recall campaign was on a completely different
scale: the recall campaigners spent $600,000, while supporters of the targeted senators spent
$4m.
2
Though campaign spending was not decisive the senators were recalled successfully
despite spending several times more than recall proponents it illustrates the potential for recall to
become a focus for powerful interest groups.
The prospect of recall campaigns paying commercial organisations to drum up signatures is
a specifc example of how money can pervert the recall process. During the 2003 California
gubernatorial recall campaign, millionaire businessman Darrell Issa contributed $2m to pay for
the collection of signatures for the recall petition, which had a decisive impact on the campaign.
Without paid canvassers, there would have likely been no recall: they collected 1.3m of the 2.1m
signatures on the recall petition.
3
This would simply not be tolerated in the UK political system,
where paying political canvassers is a criminal offence.
4
This scale of spending would seriously undermine trust in the outcome of any recall vote. Recall
must not be an outlet for money on a scale that would not be permissible at other electoral
contests. Spending on promoting or opposing recall campaigns must be regulated in line with
spending limits for other forms of election. Spending limits for recall should take into account the
unique nature of the recall mechanism: a lengthy petition-gathering process, potentially followed
by a recall referendum. Recall campaigns will need to be able to sustain a publicity drive and a
signature-gathering operation in order to have a realistic prospect of success.
In setting spending limits for recall campaigns, a number of existing models may be relevant. The
governments proposals for regulating spending during recall campaigns in the Draft Bill provide
1 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission (2014)
2 http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/12/10/did-guns-beat-money-in-colorado-recalls/
3 http://niemanreports.org/articles/tracking-money-in-the-california-recall-election/
4 Representation of the People Act 1983, Section 111
for registered organisations to spend up to 10,000.
5
However, this is unlikely to be enough to
cover the additional signature-gathering costs that campaigns would assume if signatures were
collected by campaigns themselves rather than in designated places under supervision from the
electoral authorities. The spending limit for by-elections (100,000)
6
is signifcantly higher than
constituency spending limits for general elections
7
, which refects the high-profle, high-intensity
nature of campaigning at by-elections. This indicates that existing UK electoral law is sensitive to
the need for higher limits in one-off electoral contests. The Electoral Commissions principles on
spending limits for referendums are a useful guide to what the regulation might look like for recall:
limits should be set at a level which allows effective campaigning for all outcomes of
a referendum, deters excessive spending, and is not so low as to distort reasonable
campaigning behaviour and affect transparency, for instance by giving campaigners an
artifcial incentive to split their spending between multiple campaigning bodies.
8
During referendum campaigns, registered organisations can apply to the Electoral Commission
to become the lead campaigner for their side of the referendum, which confers benefts such
as higher spending limits. A similar arrangement could be considered for recall campaigns, with
the targeted MP leading the campaign against the recall and the initiator of the recall petition (or
a nominated organisation) assuming the same role on the other side. The Lobbying Acts rules
on non-party campaigning, which requires third party organisations campaigning for a party or
candidate in coalition to jointly account for spending, may more reasonably be applied in the
context of recall campaigns.
The image of recall as the tool of rich donors may hold true in the US, though perhaps no more
so than US politics as a whole. However, there is no prospect that recall in the UK would result
in importing US spending levels. Proper regulation of spending would ensure that recall is not
dominated by big donors.
Recall would encourage political parties to re-run the general
election
Recall must be more than a way of trying to rerun the election to get a different result.
9
The principle behind recall is that voters should be allowed to revoke their representatives
mandate if they have lost confdence in them. Typically, this will involve some failure to live up to
expectations set during an election: misconduct, changing party, failing to represent, or breaking
an electoral promise. However, since full recall leaves the decision up to voters, it opens up the
possibility that sore losers voters and political parties whose candidate lost the election simply
use recall as an opportunity to re-run the election before the term is up. In the past decade, a
pattern of sore loser recalls has developed in the US. Would this happen in the UK?
6 http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/briefng-papers/SN04611/election-expenditure-controls
7 Candidate spending limits are based on the number of electors in the constituency: 7,150 for both borough and county
constituencies, plus 5p and 7p respectively for each elector on the electoral register. Tis implies an average spending limit of
11,550 in the short election period (afer the dissolution of parliament) and 29,350 for the long period. (http://www.elector-
alcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_fle/0008/166355/2013-Candidate-spending-limit-review-UKPGE-and-LGEW-Final-
Recommendations.pdf) Tere are no constituency spending limits for parties; rather, the national spending limit is calculated by
multiplying 30,000 by the number of constituencies being contested. Tere are however spending limits for England, Scotland,
Wales and Northern Ireland. (www.parliament.uk/briefng-papers/SN04611.pdf)
8 http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_fle/0004/87412/Referendum-Principles-Paper-2010-06-02-
FINAL.pdf
23
Case Study: Wisconsin when recalls attack
The wave of recall elections in Wisconsin in 2011-12 provide a textbook example of how recall
can provide a fashpoint for partisan tensions. The 2010 general election saw the Republican
Party take control of both houses of the state legislature; Republican Scott Walker was also
elected governor. Less than a year later, Walkers 2011 budget included large spending cuts which
generated uproar amongst voters. There were extensive protests against the cuts and Walkers
moves to restrict the collective bargaining rights of public sector workers. Opponents of the budget
quickly turned to the idea of recall. A gubernatorial recall petition was initiated at the earliest
possible date, 15
th
November 2011.
10
Petitions to recall Republican state legislators who supported
the budget were also initiated, as were petitions to recall a number of Democratic senators who
had left the state in order to prevent the budget vote from reaching a quorum. Money poured into
both sides of the campaign: an estimated $125-130m was spent in total on the wave of recalls.
11

Wisconsin state law does not place limits on the maximum individual donation that can be made to
pro- and anti-recall campaigns.
In total, 16 petitions split evenly between Republicans and Democrats were initiated. 6 of the 8
Republican petitions and 3 of the 8 Democratic petitions gathered enough signatures for recall
elections to take place in 2011. A further four recall elections would take place in 2012 including an
attempt to recall Walker himself. The gubernatorial recall election was a straightforward re-run of
the 2010 election, with the same candidate returning to oppose Walker. The results of this wave of
recalls were that three state senators were recalled whilst Walker survived with a slightly increased
share of the vote.
The US context may not be the most relevant guide to how recall might work in the UK. The
two-party system in the US incentivises parties to seek out every opportunity to unseat elected
offcials, as one partys loss is almost invariably the other partys gain. Successful recall attempts
in the UKs multi-party system would likely involve a level of collaboration between supporters of
multiple parties to gain the necessary level of support to unseat a sitting MP. If a recall campaign
is transparently intended for one partys political gain, it is unlikely to mobilise the required level
of support. The example of the 1997 Winchester by-election suggests that the public have a low
tolerance for attempts to re-run the election. Mark Oaten was elected MP for Winchester in the
1997 general election by a majority of just two votes. The defeated Conservatives challenged
the election on technical grounds, which resulted in a by-election in October 1997. This election
returned Oaten as MP with a majority of 21,556, with the sore loser effect becoming part of the
campaign; the unoffcial campaign slogan was when the umpire gives you out, you should walk.
12
The sore loser pattern of recall tends to occur in already highly polarised political systems, such
as the US or Venezuela. Recall campaigns elsewhere, even when initiated on policy issues rather
than misconduct, have generally dealt with instances where a politician has reneged on election
promises. For example, in 2010, several members of the British Columbia legislature were the
subject of recall campaigns for their support of the Harmonised Sales Tax. The BC government
had denied they supported the HST before the election but had signed up to it immediately after
being re-elected. Ultimately, the recalls proved unnecessary as a province-wide referendum
resulted in the abolition of the tax.
13
The UK appears more in line with these examples than with
the US. The biggest policy-based campaign for recall in the UK has been the NUS call for Liberal
Democrat MPs to be recalled following their support for increased tuition fees, which was the
subject of a policy pledge before the election.
10 Wisconsin has a grace period of one year afer an election when an elected ofcial cannot be recalled.
11 http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/spending-on-state-recalls-exceeds-125-million-group-says-
hb5mriv-157906265.html
12 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/tory-tries-the-woolly-pully-way-to-power-1294333.html
13 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/hst-recall-campaign-takes-aim-at-5-mlas-1.869346 ; http://www.cbc.
ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-returns-to-old-sales-tax-afer-hst-rejection-1.1357314
Recall becomes more attractive to political parties where unseating individual candidates would
result in gaining control of the executive or a change of control in the legislature. This has
prompted campaigners to seek multiple recalls to shift political control: the prospect of gaining
control over the state legislature was a motivating factor for both the Wisconsin and the Colorado
recalls. In the UK, the size of the chamber and the frst past the post electoral system ensures
that it is rare that governments have so small a majority that it would be practical to overturn with
co-ordinated recalls. After the 2010 general election, the effective coalition government majority
was 83; overturning that majority would therefore require 42 successful recalls more than the
number of recall elections held in the entire history of recall in the US.
14
A recall election for an
individual MP would likely have a very different focus to the general election campaign in the same
constituency.
Money has played a key role in the recent proliferation of recall attempts at the state level in the
US in the past decade. Weakening of campaign fnance rules means that there is a practically
unlimited supply of money to fow into election campaigns. In states like Wisconsin which have
less stringent rules regarding donations to recall campaigns, recall attempts may provide more
attractive opportunities to channel money to unseat an elected offcial. UK political parties are in a
much more precarious fnancial position.
15
The challenge for UK political parties is fnding enough
income to keep up in existing electoral contests, not fnding more opportunities to channel money
into election outcomes. Recall campaigns may generate additional donations as donors respond
to the urgency of a campaign to unseat an MP. However, if recall spending is regulated in a similar
way to other electoral contests, donations to a recall campaign are likely to cannibalize regular
donations which fund general election campaigns. In the UK context, parties would have to think
very carefully before supporting a recall campaign which may exhaust the funds needed for an
election campaign.
In certain contexts, recall has the potential to infame existing political antagonisms. However,
there are good reasons to think that this effect would be limited if recall were introduced in the
UK. Voters have little appetite to recall an MP just because they disagree with them and stricter
spending limits and UK political institutions provide little incentive for political parties to pursue
recall strategies used in the US.
Recall attempts would be used to disrupt the work of MPs
Fighting a recall election is a considerable investment of time and resources that could be devoted
to the business of representation. A recall campaign would force an MP to divert attention from
representing constituents and making laws to defending their seat. This disruption must be justifed
by the gains in accountability. Allowing voters to initiate recall on demand potentially opens up the
door to abuse: recalls on frivolous grounds, personal issues or baseless accusations. However,
the evidence is that even in jurisdictions where low signature thresholds make recalls relatively
easy, such as California, this happens rarely if at all. Once a recall meets the election threshold, it
stands a good chance of success: over 50% of state-level recall elections result in the recall of the
targeted politician.
Although recall in theory provides the opportunity to disrupt the work of elected representatives by
repeated recall attempts and spurious accusations, this threat simply has not materialised. There
is no signifcant evidence of frivolous recall attempts in the US, British Columbia, or elsewhere,
and none at all have reached the election stage. A recent comparative study of recall found that
there is little evidence that provisions for revoking the mandates of elected representatives have
disrupted politics.
16

14 Te last government that would have been vulnerable to recall campaigns was the 1974-79 Labour government, which
ultimately lost its majority of 3 following a series of defections and by-election defeats.
15 Both Labour and the Conservatives have reduced election spending in recent years in order to pay down debts incurred
during the 2005 election campaign.
16 Matt Qvortrup, Hasta La Vista: A Comparative Institutionalist Analysis of the Recall, Representation, 47(2) (2011), pp.
161-170, p. 168
25
Recall would stop MPs from making unpopular decisions or
speaking out on controversial issues
One of the governments main reasons for rejecting full recall was that recall would prevent MPs
from making diffcult decisions:
If a model was adopted...which allow[ed] for a person to be recalled for political reasons,
this may only serve to prevent MPs from tackling controversial issues or taking on vested
interests.
17
The fear is that making MPs individually accountable to a public which is easily manipulated by
media or corporate interests will make backbenchers more timid and ministers more craven. The
threat of recall would have a chilling effect on MPs pursuing unpopular causes or challenging
powerful vested interests. Witnesses to the PCRC cited Tam Dalyells opposition to the Falklands
War, Conservative MPs supporting gay rights, or Tom Watsons campaigning on phone hacking as
examples which would have been subject to recall campaigns.
18
Variations on this argument claim
that the inevitably parochial views of constituents would privilege the short term over the long term
and the local over the national interest.
19
In short, recall would subordinate good governance to the
caprice of the voter.
Full recall leaves the decision to recall in the hands of ordinary voters. The prospect of a recall
campaign is indeed intended to infuence politicians behaviour, deterring misconduct and
enhancing individual accountability. Would it also clip the wings of maverick MPs? The evidence
of voters actual opinions on the role of an MP and on justifcations for recall is promising. In a poll
commissioned by the PCRCs recall inquiry, 77% responded that simply disagreeing with an MP
on a policy issue would not be suffcient grounds for a recall.
There is no signifcant evidence that recall is employed in this way. Despite the polarised political
culture of the US, which would seem to provide ample opportunity for recall based on controversial
views, there are very few examples of this kind of recall. There have been two successful recalls
and one unsuccessful recall election on the subject of specifc gun control legislation.
20
The only
other example that fts this mould is that of Edwin Grant, a California state senator recalled in 1914
over his votes in favour of prohibition and legislation restricting prostitution. MPs are unlikely to
be put in the same position. Government control of the legislative timetable means that individual
MPs are unlikely to have a decisive impact on controversial legislation and are therefore less likely
to attract this kind of recall attempt. In Westminster, the free vote system is well-understood and
respected by MPs and constituents alike. Voters regularly express a preference for MPs using
their own judgment rather than simply following the party line. Internationally, there is not a single
example where simply speaking out has triggered a recall.
There already exists a mechanism used to remove MPs with controversial views: deselection.
Constituency parties can vote to deselect their MP as a candidate for the next general election.
This has indeed been used in the manner described. MPs have faced deselection for a variety
of controversial opinions, from pro-European to anti-immigration views. Homosexuality or
support for gay rights has been a popular justifcation for deselection for the past sixty years.
21

18 Mark Harper, Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, Recall of MPs, 21 June 2012, HC 373 2012-13, Ev 34
19 Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, Recall of MPs, 21 June 2012, HC 373 2012-13, p. 27-8
20 Two of these are the Colorado state senators previously mentioned, who voted for compulsory backgrounds checks on
gun purchasers and restrictions on high-capacity magazines; the other is David Roberti, a California state senator who survived a
recall based on his support for a ban on assault weapons.
21 H Montgomery Hyde (Unionist) was the frst of several MPs to be deselected in the run-up to the 1959 election over their
support for the Wolfenden Report recommending the decriminalisation of homosexual acts; Maureen Colquhoun (Labour) was
deselected in 1977, partly in reaction to her being outed as a lesbian by the tabloid press; the same factors were allegedly at play in
the unsuccessful deselection attempt of Crispin Blunt (Conservative) in 2013.
However, deselection is not especially democratic. Typically the electorate of local constituency
party members numbers in the hundreds, rather than the minimum of over 14,000 who would be
involved in a recall process. Even if MPs were subject to recall for controversial opinions, opening
up this kind of process to the whole electorate is likely to make it less rather than more vulnerable
to manipulation. It is hardly democratic for there to be two classes of MPs: those in marginal
seats who are accountable to their electorate, and those in safe seats who are accountable to an
unrepresentative minority.
Recall is a mechanism of positive as well as negative feedback. As one study of recall in the US
noted, one of the outcomes of [unsuccessful] recall elections has often been the paradoxical
one that the incumbent has been strengthened.
22
Ronald Reagan faced three recall attempts as
governor of California, but was able to leverage the failure of the recall petitions to build support
and vindicate his record in offce. Unsuccessful recall attempts, whether they fail at the petition
or election stage, can empower the targeted politician by gauging the level of discontent at their
approach. A recall defeated by a close margin could give an MP the chance to change their
approach before the next general election. Equally, a recall attempt which peters out at the petition
stage could encourage an MP to pursue their approach with renewed vigour. This could provide
feedback that MPs cannot derive from a general election result determined by the governments
record rather than that of the individual MP.
Recall promises to extend individual accountability, but if it forces politicians to make bad decisions
for fear of ouster, it may paradoxically undermine confdence in good government. There is some
evidence that recall could promote short-termism and unrealistic expectations of politicians. In
1993, fve members of the city council of Covina, Los Angeles County were recalled over the
introduction of a 6% utility tax. As a result of lost revenue from the utility tax, the library and fre
station came under threat of closure and 42 city employees faced redundancy. The councillors
who were elected as replacements then introduced an 8.25% tax.
23
However, there are just as
many instances where the accountability recall provides has contributed to more measured
decision-making. In Arizona, Republican state senator Russell Pearce was recalled and replaced
by another conservative Republican in 2011 after pursuing draconian anti-immigration legislation
which made Arizona a national pariah and was repeatedly declared unconstitutional by federal
courts.
24
How would this work in the UK? As previously discussed, MPs have a multiple role, both
representing their local constituency and acting as national legislators. This multiple role raises the
possibility that making MPs individually accountable to their voters through recall would shift their
focus away from national issues towards the sectional interests of their constituents. This is not
inevitable. Voters have more complex views on the role of an MP than any caricature presented of
them as short-sighted nimbys.
Constituents understand that their MP is both a national and a local representative. An Ipsos-Mori
poll in 2013 found that 56% of voters believed their MP should put the national interest frst, while
only 40% believed the interest of their constituents should be top priority.
25
Nor are constituents
opposed to MPs using their own judgment on political issues: 28% said that MPs should pay a
great deal of attention to their own judgment in making decisions.
26
MPs themselves differ on
the extent to which they take the local interest into account when voting in the Commons. In
matters which specifcally affect an MPs constituency, voting on the basis of the local interest is
accepted as perfectly legitimate. To take one recent example, MPs whose constituencies would
be affected by the High Speed 2 rail link generally voted against the HS2 Bill, acting as local as
well as national representatives. What recall would do here is force MPs to be ready to justify
22 Qvortrup, p. 164
23 Felchner, M. E., Recall Elections: Democracy in Action or Populism Run Amok; Congressional Quarterly Inc, vol 25. no.
5, 2004
24 http://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/09/politics/arizona-recall-vote/
25 http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3184/Trust-in-MPs-poll.aspx
26 http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/ww4o7wko1q/WebVersion_Democracy%20in%20Britain%20A5.pdf
27
their decisions when they vote against a clear local interest. If an MP is out of step with their
constituents on a issue of major local interest, they would have the chance to make their case
during any resulting recall campaign. Under the existing system, in a safe seat the MP may never
have to make that case.
Recall is not a bludgeon with which constituents beat politicians into submission. Looking at
the actual practice of recall, it is clear that the claims that MPs would be cowed into silence are
overblown. Indeed, recall would be fairer on maverick MPs who may face deselection for their
controversial views. Equally, recall is unlikely to compromise good decision-making in government.
Even if recall affects decisions on the margins, the gain in accountability clearly outweighs any
limited impact it might have.
Recall would give constituents of MPs with ministerial offce
undue power
The PCRC inquiry also pointed to the potential anomaly of constituents whose MP is a minister
or even the prime minister having the power to recall their MP on policy matters. This appears to
hand some constituents a power over national issues that is denied to those represented by mere
backbench MPs.
27
However, this is less of an anomaly than a refection of the individual character
of representation in the UK. Ministers and prime ministers are not elected by the country as a
whole; indeed, they are selected by the prime minister and by their party, respectively. The same
anomaly exists at a general election, where the results may be a return for the sitting government
but would still require a change of prime minister if the incumbent were defeated in their
constituency. A general election may involve the whole country, but it is more accurately described
as 650 local elections.
Ministers are quite aware that taking a ministerial post means negotiating their multiple role as
local representative, national legislator and member of a national executive. Take the fairly typical
statement of Esther McVey on her recent appointment to the Cabinet: I wanted a voice from
Merseyside, a voice from Wirral, at the top table making decisions there.
28
This kind of statement
makes little sense if the extension of the local role into the membership of the national executive
is not matched by an extension of accountability. A ministerial post should not give an MP a free
pass.
Conclusion
For many MPs who sit in safe seats, the introduction of recall would make them individually
rather than collectively accountable to their voters for the frst time. MPs whose party label has
ensured their survival, even when seriously out of step with their constituents, may be right to
worry about recall. However, there is little evidence to back up many of the wilder claims about
recalls populist tendencies. Our understanding of recall is coloured by the experience of the US,
which provides useful examples of how recall works in practice, but is not a wholly accurate guide
to how it might work when adapted to the UK political context. The UK public is strongly in favour
of recall but they have little appetite for its use as a nakedly partisan tool. UK political institutions
also offer constraints which smooth the potential for disruption. Recall would signifcantly improve
accountability without jeopardising good governance.
27 Alan Renwick, Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, Recall of MPs, 21 June 2012, HC 373 2012-13, Ev 7
28 http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jul/16/nick-clegg-tweet-mocks-daily-mail-coverage-women-cabinet
29
Recall for the UK
Introducing the governments proposals for recall, Nick Clegg wrote, It is crucial we do all we can
to ensure that MPs remain accountable to their constituents.
1
The proposals that followed failed
to live up to this promise, maintaining the principle that only politicians are ft to sit in judgment
over other politicians. Now that the government have resurrected those same proposals, it is vital
to demonstrate that real recall is viable within the UK political system. Here we offer an alternative
blueprint for recall, one which gives voters, not parliament or the courts, the power to decide when
an MP should be recalled. This would create real accountability for individual MPs, strengthen the
link between MPs and their constituents, and rebuild public confdence in the political system.
Our recommendations are based on one fundamental principle: recall should be a
mechanism for political accountability, not a judicial or disciplinary process. A recall
process which deals solely with misconduct fails to address the problem highlighted by the
expenses scandal. There is a serious lack of individual accountability for MPs built into the UK
political system that runs far deeper than misconduct, allowing MPs who lose the confdence of
their constituents to avoid consequences at the ballot box. Recall would make the link between
an MP and their constituents a meaningful accountability mechanism, enhancing the individual
accountability of MPs without compromising the collective accountability of a government at a
general election.
Previous proposals for real recall
This recommendation is informed by previous proposals for real recall, including Private Members
Bills from Zac Goldsmith, Douglas Carswell and 38 Degrees Draft Recall Bill, published in June
2014, after the Queens Speech announcement of the return of recall.
The 38 Degrees Draft Bill follows the governments framework for recall closely in order to
demonstrate that a proposal for real recall can accommodate as many of the governments
concerns as possible. The 38D Bill retains the supervised signature-gathering process of the
governments proposals, but introduces an initial stage where signatures are gathered by recall
campaigners themselves in order to trigger the supervised petition stage. It also provides for a
referendum before the recall is complete.
In detail, the 38D process is as follows:
notice of intent to recall: recall supporters must gather the signatures of 5% of the
registered voters in the constituency in 28 days
recall petition: a successful notice of intent triggers a recall petition, where 20% of the
registered voters in the constituency must sign the petition in approved places in the
constituency in 56 days
recall referendum: a successful petition triggers a recall referendum, where a simple
majority recalls the target politician and a by-election follows
2
However, 38 Degrees may have conceded too much ground to the governments proposals.
The introduction of a referendum stage makes the security requirements that the government
mandated for the preceding petition stage unnecessarily restrictive. As the petition functions
only to indicate the demand for a recall referendum and not an electoral process in itself,
signatures can be collected by registered volunteers and verifed by electoral authorities without
compromising the integrity of the recall process.
2 38 Degrees Draf Bill
Summary of proposed recall process
recall petition: recall supporters must gather the signatures of 20% of voters registered in
the constituency in 90 days
recall referendum: a successful petition triggers a referendum, where a simple majority
recalls the MP
by-election: a successful referendum vacates the MPs seat and a by-election is held to
replace them
Recommendations
A constituent who wants to recall their MP should be able to apply for a recall petition on
demand. The threshold for a successful recall petition should be 20% of the number of
registered voters. Recall campaigns should have 90 days to collect the required number of
signatures. This threshold and time limit ensures that there is a signifcant level of demand for a
recall referendum without imposing unrealistic requirements on recall supporters. Internationally,
the risk that recall thresholds are set too high, undermining public confdence in the accountability
of politicians, is far more evident than the potential disruption caused by frequent recall attempts.
With the additional check of a recall referendum, this threshold would not expose MPs to recall on
the whims of a minority.
Constituents triggering a recall petition should not have to specify the reason for the
recall on the petition. This empowers voters, not campaigners, by leaving the individual reasons
for the recall in the hands of the voter. The recall process provides ample opportunity for recall
campaigners and supporters of the targeted politician to articulate their views, and it is extremely
unlikely that a campaign would succeed without presenting reasons to the electorate.
Signatures for the recall petition should only be collected by volunteer canvassers for
recall campaigns who register with the electoral authorities. Registered volunteers would
be responsible for witnessing signatures, which would be collected on offcial petition materials.
Volunteers should be able to collect signatures in any location. Where practical, electronic
signatures should be permitted if they are obtained while the canvasser is present; however,
remote electronic signatures should not be permitted. This would balance the openness of
the petition process with the need for security. Registering volunteers would ensure that recall
campaigns are accountable for the signatures they collect.
A valid recall petition should trigger a recall referendum, where a simple majority recalls
the targeted politician. If the recall referendum is successful, the MPs seat is vacated and
a by-election is held. A recall referendum gives every voter a say in whether their MP is recalled
and ensures a majority supports the recall. It would also focus the recall process on the actions of
the individual MP, rather than the question of who will replace them.
There should be a grace period of six months before and after a general election and six
months after a recall referendum or by-election when no recall petition can be triggered.
This would help avoid sore loser recalls, where a recall is simply an attempt to re-run an election
to get a different result. This would also minimise the potential disruption to an MP from repeated
recall attempts.
31
Organisations who spend more than 500 campaigning in support or opposition to the
recall petition should register with the local returning offcer. Spending limits should be set
in proportion to existing constituency limits on candidate spending, with increased limits
if the recall process proceeds to a referendum. Donations to recall campaigns should be
regulated in line with existing rules on political donations. This follows the governments
proposals for regulation of campaign spending during the recall process. Spending limits should be
adapted to take into account the different structure of the process and the fact that campaigners
will shoulder many of the administrative costs of collecting signatures for the petition.
The government should investigate recall provisions for other roles, including directly
elected mayors, police and crime commissioners and local councillors. The case for recall
is even stronger where political power is concentrated in a single executive position. However,
successive governments have expanded directly elected executive positions without giving voters
the power to remove them.
About Unlock Democracy
Unlock Democracy is the UKs leading campaign for democratic reform. Established in 2007
following the merger of Charter 88 and the New Politics Network, we campaign for a vibrant,
inclusive democracy that puts power in the hands of the people.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial 2.0 license. To
view a copy of this license, visit www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk
This report is published by Unlock Democracy, a not for proft company limited by guarantee,
number 2440889.
Unlock Democracy
37 Grays Inn Road
London
WC1X 8PQ
020 7278 4443
unlockdemocracy.org.uk
[email protected]
facebook.com/unlockdemocracy
@unlockdemocracy

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