Political Parties and Elections Bill

My Lords, we already have a problem, and I am sure that the noble Lord, as a student of matters procedural, will recognise that that makes it difficult to proceed. Perhaps this is an opportunity to have a discussion about the other issue, which relates to the circumstances under which censure would take place. Although the amendment does not mention it, it has been stated in the press and by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, in his introductory remarks that this would be an option where a motion of censure had been passed on a Member of the House of Commons. That would trigger a mechanism by which a petition, a referendum or a by-election would take place. We are unsure about which at the moment. There already is a mechanism: a Member of the House of Commons whose case has been highlighted and who has not yet been censured has chosen to apply for the Chiltern Hundreds, thereby causing a by-election in Norwich North and giving people a say on this. The noble Lord is on to something and does us a service by tapping into a huge level of anger and concern at the revelations that have been made. He may have a point about the mechanism of recall, although we would like to see a recall of Parliament en bloc and a general election called as a way of testing the public mood on these matters. But the recall of individual Members of Parliament could be considered. There would need to be safeguards against the malicious prosecution mentioned by my noble friend Lord Hodgson. The experience in the United States has not exactly been wonderful. In California, 5 per cent of the electorate—a pretty large number—voted to recall Gray Davis to allow Governor Schwarzenegger eventually to be elected. There remains a series of questions about the mechanism and how this would take place. If this is simply a probing amendment, I think that it does the House a service. If it is a serious amendment, I cannot see how we could possibly support it, unless there were further evidence as to how it would work.