Defecting MPs should resign their seats

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Chris Skidmore MP calls for action which would mandate that any Member of Parliament who decides to defect during the course of a Parliament would be required to resign and fight a by-election.

Many politicians defend the strength of our personal mandate, regardless of party politics. However, it is impossible to ignore the fact that for the most part, voters cast their ballots with party preference firmly in mind. With public trust in politics and politicians remaining at a very low ebb, it is clear that the political system needs to be more attuned to public expectations, and that we recognise that the public expect a new relationship with their Members of Parliament

That’s why today I will be introducing a ten-minute rule bill, which would mandate that any Member of Parliament who decides to change their political party during the course of a Parliament would be required to resign and fight a by-election.

Its principal aim is to tackle the spectacle of the political defection. The idea that an MP can be elected to Parliament fighting on a party manifesto, only to defect to another party without resigning their seat, breaks a crucial bond of trust between the MP and their constituents, disenfranchising them of their own mandate to decide which political party should represent their local area in Parliament.

This complaint is certainly not new. When Shaun Woodward made his high-profile defection to Labour in 1999, his true-blue Witney constituents urged him to resign his seat and stand for re-election as the Labour candidate. Unsurprisingly, Woodward considered discretion the better part of valour, leading to accusations from Chris Mullin of his actions “discrediting the political process”. Tony Benn was even blunter: “It is totally wrong for people to treat their constituents as just agents of their own will.”

There are precedents for a parliamentary by-election to be caused by a political defection. Bruce Douglas-Mann voluntarily triggered one in 1982, in the then Mitcham & Morden constituency, when he left Labour for the SDP. In 1973, Dick Taverne resigned from the Labour Party to be re-elected under the banner of ‘Democratic Labour’. This was the first example of a resignation and subsequent by-election on these grounds since William Allen Jowitt’s 1929 Preston by-election victory. By-elections like these should become the rule, not the exception.

The problem of dealing with political defections is one that is recognised in a number of other countries – all of whom operate parliamentary systems similar to our own. The lower house of the Indian parliament, the Lok Sabha, has a rule that disqualifies an MP from parliament if they change their party allegiance. The law was introduced as a constitutional amendment, when at a time of frequent coalition governments and political instability; there was a tendency for unscrupulous and ambitious legislators to switch parties to attempt to gain advancement. The rapid elevation to ministerial office of Quentin Davies following his defection to the Labour Party, and his subsequent peerage, demonstrates that our own politics are not immune to this temptation.

New Zealand introduced something similar with the Electoral Integrity Act in 1999, having seen a spate of unprincipled political defections which, in a finely balanced parliament, had a disproportionate effect. And in another Commonwealth country, Canada, an almost identical bill to my own was debated only this month, following nine similar attempts to legislate since 1997.

Obviously, there is a need for safeguards to be built into the system. First of all, this bill would only apply to those MPs who leave their party voluntarily, to ensure that parties do not have the power to effectively expel MPs. Those who have the whip withdrawn should not be forced to stand down. Perhaps the best way to square the circle would be to combine this with the proposed recall law, which would give constituents the right, if sufficiently numerous, to force their representative to seek a fresh mandate.

Though the Burkean principle of individual representatives is a fine one, I do not believe that it should be the be-all and end-all of constitutional debate. British politics has changed considerably since the 18th Century, and so have the predilections of voters. My experience before the general election was that nearly everyone I spoke to was casting their ballot with some thought as to whether they would prefer David Cameron or Gordon Brown as their prime minister. We should not pretend that political parties do not exist, simply to maintain a polite constitutional fiction.

Members of Parliament must be accountable for their decisions, but above all to the people who voted them in. If any MP plans to cross the floor in future, the very least they should do is ask their constituents what they think.

Chris Skidmorehas been Conservative MP for Kingswood since 2010