DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well then, in the wake of the expenses scandal each of the major parties promised to introduce a recall mechanism, that’s to make MPs more accountable to their voters.  The government’s proposals will be debated finally in Parliament on Tuesday but the Conservative MP, Zac Goldsmith, has dismissed the plans saying they need to go much further and as you can see he joins me now, a very good morning to you Mr Goldsmith.  You have just got to paint for us what exactly the government has got here in terms of this Bill and why it’s taken so long to get there.

ZAC GOLDSMITH:  Well that’s a very good question, I can’t answer the second part but this is a Recall Bill that has been produced by Nick Clegg and it is recall in name only.  Anyone who understands what recall is, it’s a very simple process.  If enough people sign a petition in a constituency they earn the right to have a referendum, do they want to remove their MP or not.  This happens all over the world, there are thirty countries where recall happens, half the states in America, South Korea, Switzerland – I won’t list all thirty because I’ll get them wrong but this is not a new idea and effectively it means empowering people to hold their representatives to account at all times and not just at election time.  The government Bill, the Clegg Bill if I can call it that, is almost the exact opposite so you will be able to remove your MP under the Clegg Bill but only with the permission of the House so the institution that this is supposed to be helping people hold to account will still be in charge, it gets to decide who qualifies for recall and who doesn’t and the criteria are so narrow that …

DM: If you have been to jail for twelve months or something or are guilty of serious wrong-doing.  

ZAC GOLDSMITH:  So the triggers they have is the House throws you out briefly or you go to jail for any amount of time and even that I think, I mean I would question both those triggers.  I can think of many MPs who have been sanctioned by the House for doing noble things, I can think of MPs who have been to jail for noble reasons.  Terry Field was jailed for refusing to pay the poll tax and he was a hero in his constituency.  Caroline Lucas a month ago could have gone to jail for a few days over her fracking protest, should she have been recalled for that?  I don't think so.  In pure recall you don’t set the criteria, it’s not for the authorities to set the criteria, it’s for people to decide.  You give people the power and they can decide if they want to …

DM: You know the counter-argument that you need some hurdles here because within constituencies, and we’ve seen it in the United States in particular, you get interest groups, you get lobby groups and they get the signatures together and it is especially easy with social media to get that critical mass going and you campaign against them if you don’t like their political hue.

ZAC GOLDSMITH:  But the story of recall around the world is that that doesn’t happen so in a hundred years of recall in America, one hundred years, there have only been forty recall referendums and only half of them with successful so that’s twenty people in a hundred years, this is not something that happens over and over again.  The threshold, the protection is that 20% threshold which we’re proposing, 20% in my constituency would be 14,000 people going to the Town Hall or wherever it is they have to sign a petition, signing in person, it would have to be physical, have to be done in person.  The idea is it is high enough to prevent the kind of vexatious abuse that you’re talking about but low enough to make it actually possible so if an MP really lets the constituents down, profoundly lets them down, it should be possible to remove them.  The mad thing is at the moment that I could, the day after the next election if I’m lucky enough to be re-elected, I could go off on holiday for five years without breaking a single rule.  I could switch to the BNP, I could break every promise I made, I could do any of these things without qualifying for recall under the Clegg proposals and without being open to any kind of reprimand in the current system.

DM: And do you think more broadly on this, and this was the first question I noticed that Douglas Carswell, the newly elected UKIP MP, formerly one of your colleagues in the Conservative party, this was the first question he asked in the Chamber of the House of Commons as a UKIP MP and on that note we know why people are getting very interested in UKIP, part of it this disillusionment I suppose with politics.  Do you think this would signal coming from the government that we hear you, we understand you, we want to give you real power?

ZAC GOLDSMITH:  I think very much so and I am really grateful that the new Chief Whip seems to understand, more than any of his predecessors in my view that the UKIP factor is not about Europe, it’s not about immigration, it’s not about individual policies, it’s about the sense that the political elite if you can call it that has become so remote that it needs a spanking, it needs a slap and UKIP is an option there, the Green Party is an option there but the mainstream parties are just operating as a block that ignores the voters, that’s become so remote there is no point engaging with it.  He gets that and I believe – I don’t know this and nothing has been formally announced but I believe when it comes to the debate on the recall of members, the Conservative party at least will be offering a free vote, that’s the understanding I have and I think that’s a great indication that things are changing.  I thought the Prime Minister’s answer to Douglas Carswell also indicated a willingness to really move considerably on this issue so it’s good.

DM: So you have got a complex understanding then of UKIPs appeal, you find it quite attractive?

ZAC GOLDSMITH:  Not as an entity, no.  I can understand why people are turning to these outsider parties, these challengers from the outside.  At one point the Lib Dems would have been that party, they are not any longer so it’s Greens, it’s UKIP and so on, I can understand why people are doing that.  I think the big mistake that we could make would be to try and ape their policies in order to bring those people back because it’s not about what we’re saying, it’s about the fact that people don’t believe what we’re saying, it’s about authenticity.

DM: On Douglas Carswell, he’s a thoughtful man, we saw you walking into the Chamber with him and he is saying some quite plausible things.  

ZAC GOLDSMITH:  Look, I am a big fan of Douglas, I worked very closely with him for years, he helped out with the Bill from which the amendments that I’ll be tabling next week are based on a Bill that he helped craft along with 22 other MPs and I should say, 40,000 of 38 Degrees, this is the only crowdsourced Bill that I am aware of and they did a magnificent job, 40,000 people took part in a detailed survey and in Parliament Douglas was one of the key figures, he has been campaigning on this for years so I will work with anyone I need to work with to get this thing through.  

DM: But from the Conservative party, from your point of view you are staying with the Tories?  

ZAC GOLDSMITH:  Oh absolutely staying with the Tories, yes.  We are better off with a Conservative government above all after the next election and that requires us to back the Conservative party [honestly].  

DM: Thank you very much indeed, Zac Goldsmith there.