Recall of MPs Bill

The wording is exactly the wording there would be for misconduct. First, that offence does not exist in Scotland or Northern Ireland. I will come on to that later with an example, but there are some issues. We would want Members to be equal, broadly speaking, regardless of where they have been elected from. The other issue is that although the offence of misconduct in public office is used quite regularly against police officers—there are a number of other cases—it has never actually been used against a Member of Parliament. There is a question of whether we trust the Crown Prosecution Service to be the deciding factor, particularly when there could be questions about how it would interact with various Members and Ministers.