The House of Commons is the elected lower house of the British Parliament and is designed to be representative of the people. Although most adults are eligible to stand in a general election, certain categories of people are ineligible.
Candidate Eligibility
In basic terms, anybody who is a British, Commonwealth or Irish Republic citizen can stand as a candidate in a British general election provided that they are aged 21 or over.
However, eligibility is not quite as clear-cut as it may at first appear since there are in fact several categories of people who are disqualified from sitting in the House of Commons. These categories are:
1. Members of the House of Lords
2. Clergy of the Church of England, Church of Scotland, Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church
3. Undischarged bankrupts
4. Offenders who have been sentenced to more than one year of imprisonment
5. Persons convicted of corrupt practices at elections are disqualified from standing for 7 years
6. People holding offices listed in the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 since they must be politically impartial when carrying out their jobs. The included offices are:
- Senior civil servants
- Judges
- Ambassadors
- Members of the regular armed forces
- Members of the police force
- Paid members of the boards of nationalised industries
- Government-appointed directors of commercial companies
- Directors of the Bank of England
What Happens If a Disqualified Person Successfully Stands In a General Election?
There have been occasional instances where a disqualified person has been elected in a general election. Where a disqualified person has successfully stood for election, that person is unable to take their seat in the House of Commons and their defeated opponent can apply to have the election declared null and void. There are 2 fairly recent occasions where this has occurred:
- Tony Benn was the MP for Bristol South East when, in 1960, he inherited a peerage on the death of his father and so was disqualified from membership of the House of Commons. Despite this, Benn stood at the 1961 by-election and was re-elected. His defeated Conservative opponent had the election declared null and void and so was declared the winner. However, the publicity that surrounded all of this led to the Government introducing the Peerage Act 1963 which allowed peers to disclaim their titles and so become eligible to sit in the Commons. Tony Benn promptly disclaimed his peerage, the sitting MP stood down and in the by-election that followed Benn was re-elected.
- Despite his serving a fourteen year prison sentence at the time, Bobby Sands was elected as the Republican candidate in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election. Sands was legitimately elected but was unable to sweat the oath of allegiance or take up his seat due to his imprisonment. Sands died on the 9th April 1981 and so the Commons avoided having to decide whether to expel him or not but his election did lead to the Representation of the People Act 1981 which disqualified those serving more than one year in prison from standing for election.
Although certain categories of people are ineligible to stand in a general election, the vast majority of people are eligible to stand for Parliament and this is one of the essential freedoms of British democracy.
References:
McLean, I. and McMillan, A. (2003) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (2nd Rev Ed.) (Oxford University Press)
Jones, B. et al (2006) Politics UK (6th Ed.) (Longman)
Kingdom, J. (2003) Government and Politics in Britain: An Introduction (3rd Ed.) (Polity Press)
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