Apart from the rigged one, every recall petition has easily passed. Is this a good thing? I'm of two minds.
The interesting thing is that the current system is a weird hybrid; it was originally intended that a recall would happen if you were suspended for longer than 10 days from the House. This often only happened in rather obvious breaches of rules of traditional parliamentary rules e.g not declaring free flights or hotel trips, doing lobbying etc and this had to be investigated by the standards committee and was relatively rare.
But then the ICG scheme was introduced which specifically created a body that could investigate bullying and sexual harassment by MPs; this has in several cases reported and caused MPs to quit rather than face the indignity of a recall.
By my count this is the 10th by election related to members personal conduct
It has never been said but I assumed the hope is that one way to stop this behaviour is that for MPs to realise that breaches of the behaviour code will lead them to lose their jobs; I can't recall all the reports but the committee & body basically now have a button (recommendation of suspension for more than 10 days) which can lead to a by election.
Yes, it’s definitely a record for members resigning or being recalled due to scandal. It’s interesting to look at how the makeup of by-elections has changed over the years; before the expenses scandal (which led directly to the resignations of Michael Martin and Ian Gibson and helped midwife the recall system) it was basically unheard of for MPs to resign because of a scandal. Instead, the principle cause of by-elections tended to be deaths, which have declined dramatically in recent parliaments, presumably due to most MPs being younger/healthier. It would be interesting to have seen how many by-elections the Major government would have had to endure had the modern rules and mores around the personal conduct of MPs been in place then.
Or indeed if it would have impacted election timing: the Major government initially got a majority of 21 and by very early 1997 a combination of defections, whip suspensions and by-election defeats had cost them their majority (believe they lost it on paper but with enough suspended Conservatives by 1996 and then in reality in 1997). Factor in all of the scandals in that parliament; the clear mood of the country and the nature of the Tory party and I suspect you'd have seen an election earlier. They did admittedly have the 13 unionists (9 UUP, 3 DUP plus Kilfedder who was basically a Tory MP) that would have helped but like it'd have taken one unpopular move in Northern Ireland for that to swing and suddenly there's a confidence vote and an election in 1996 instead of 1997.
