MP Recall committee meeting video

“In a democracy, you end up trusting the people”.

Those were David Davis MP’s fitting last words as he brought the MP recall committee meeting to an end on Monday.

It was a first: bringing a committee of MPs together to scrutinise a Bill funded by small donations from thousands of us. It caused a big fuss in parliament. And even made the news!

It feels like together, we’re really getting somewhere and the government is sitting up and taking notice.

The committee meeting itself was really useful. There were some differences of opinion and lots of MPs made helpful suggestions for how to improve the Bill. But most agreed with the spirit of it – that it should be voters who decide when and how MPs should be sacked for doing a bad job.

This video gives a taster of what what happened:

Throughout the meeting, the committee referred to the survey results of your views on the Bill. Everywhere in the room you could feel the presence of 38 Degrees members – and MPs felt it too!

The lawyer – paid for by 38 Degrees members – is now working on the next version of the Bill, which includes the few small changes raised by MPs in the meeting. Some are easy to implement. But there’s a really tricky bit around how to regulate how much money can be spent during the recall process. This is to ensure that it’s fair playing field and we keep big money out of it.

Last week, 38 Degrees members said that getting this part right was important – and MPs agreed. If we don’t, it will be difficult to get the support we need to get the Bill through parliament and made into law.

But this means lots more work for our lawyer and the Bill needs to be ready before MPs leave parliament for the summer next week. Can you chip in to fund the final version of our Recall of MPs Bill?

To watch the video and donate securely, click here.

It’s a pretty extraordinary thing we’re trying to do here. It’s a radical, ambitious plan to get a real recall law, but so far everything’s going well. Once we have a real recall law that both 38 Degrees members and MPs are happy with, then we can then influence the party leaders to accept it.