Parliament is being recalled on Friday to debate the UK response to the Iraqi Government's request for support against ISIL. But what is ‘recall’, how is it decided when MPs and peers should be summoned back to Westminster when Parliament isn’t sitting, and how unusual is it?
Recall refers to the return of Parliament during a recess or weekend due to an event of major national importance. The mechanism for recall is set out in Standing Order 13 which dates from 1948. The Speaker of the House of Commons determines whether it is in the public interest for the House of Commons to be recalled on the basis of representations made by ministers. He or she also decides what day or days the House should sit during the recall. If the House of Commons is being recalled then the House of Lords is usually recalled by the Lord Speaker (after consultation with the government) on the same day – sometimes it is already sitting because the Houses’ calendars are not identical.
Since 1948, the House of Commons has been recalled for 27 reasons on 25 occasions (two occasions had a double rationale). The most recent occasion was on Thursday 29 August 2013 when the House of Commons and the House of Lords were recalled to debate Syria and the use of chemical weapons. The government’s motion to intervene militarily in Syria was defeated in the Commons.
The most common reasons for recall are:
war/international crisis (13 occasions)
Northern Ireland/domestic terrorism (3 times)
prorogation (as the House of Commons has to be sitting in order to be dissolved for a general election (3 times)
economic policy/crisis (3 times)
tributes to prominent figures (twice – Baroness Thatcher and HM the Queen Mother)
civil disorder or emergency (twice)
public confidence in the police and the media (once – following revelations about phone hacking in 2011).
As this data shows, recall is not all that uncommon. Parliament is regularly given the opportunity to express its opinion when a matter of national urgency arises. However, one criticism of the process is that only government can ask the Speaker to recall the Commons. In 2001 the Hansard Society Commission on Parliamentary Scrutiny argued that the legislature as well as the executive should be able to ask the Speaker to trigger a recall. In 2007 the Labour Government proposed making this change in their The Governance of Britain Green Paper but the proposal was never implemented.
The devolved legislatures have differing mechanisms for recall. The Welsh Assembly’s is most similar to the Commons – the assembly can be summoned by the Presiding Officer at the request of the First Minister. So far this has happened once. In the Scottish Parliament, where recall has so far happened three times, a recall is purely a matter for the Presiding Officer and does not require representations from ministers. The Northern Ireland Assembly can be recalled by a notice to the Speaker from ministers or from 30 or more members. So far it has been recalled twice.
There is no current sign of a change to the recall mechanism in Westminster, but in the current spirit of openness to constitutional change, this may yet be an issue that returns to the agenda.
