Yes, and it is remarkably poorly used, for the simple reason that it is regularly taken to appeal—[Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman wants to intervene
again, I would be happy to give way to him, although I would probably be being generous with other people’s time rather than my own.
My argument is that these are imprecise terms. That is not a good way of legislating, not least because at the moment that a court decided that there had been misconduct such as that on which the hon. Gentleman wants it to decide and that none of the get-out clauses in new clause 3(5) applied, to all intents and purposes the court would have decided, in the public mind, that the Member of Parliament was guilty—end of story—and I cannot see how that would not affect whatever might happen in a subsequent recall.
I have one final problem with the drafting. I understand why the hon. Member for Cambridge has provided in subsection (7):
“Nothing in this section shall be construed as affecting any provision of the Bill of Rights 1689.”
That appears because several Members have pointed out that there is a problem: if the Bill of Rights says that no proceeding in Parliament should be “impeached or questioned” in any court of law or any other place, it would be a bit rum for a court expressly to be told that it can go forward on the basis of whether or not an MP has “misconducted” themselves in a proceeding in Parliament. The new clause expressly says that one of the criteria that can be considered is “conduct”, whether it be as a Member of Parliament or not—completely and utterly irrelevantly.
I believe that there is a fundamental contradiction in the new clause. Under it, the court could decide that how somebody had spoken in Parliament or engaged in a proceeding in Parliament could be considered as relevant to a misconduct hearing. That would limit free speech, which we should guard jealously in this House, and, essentially, undo the Bill of Rights. It is a contradictory provision. For all those reasons, I could not support new clause 3, tabled by the hon. Member for Cambridge.