I am saying two things, and I hope that the noble Lord will listen carefully. First, I do not believe that it can be in the interests of
this country that people are thrown out of Parliament when they maintain what may be a very consistent position of principle which puts them at odds with the law at that particular moment. There have been occasions when we have passed laws in this country which have nothing to do with the ordinary notion of criminality, but have been passed under emotional circumstances, such as the ones I have already described. We do not want a Parliament of ciphers; we want a Parliament of individualists. We want a Parliament of people who are responsible directly to their electorate.
4.45 pm
That brings me to the second point. I disagree profoundly with my noble friend Lord Foulkes. Here I am defending my own conduct, but I have always been totally consistent about this. There are two reasons why it would be a great mistake to force a by-election on someone who had changed parties. The first is that one can change parties, as I did, not so much because I changed my political views, but because the party that I joined back in the 1970s very substantially changed its political views. I could not possibly have imagined at the last election I fought as a Conservative that the Conservative Party would win, elect David Cameron as its leader and withdraw from the European People’s Party. I had been in the shadow Cabinet when we decided and gave a written commitment to join the European People’s Party. I felt very strongly about that. I admit, frankly, as everybody knows, that I was at odds with the Tory Party and had been for some time on a number of other issues, but that was the trigger of my leaving.
I believe profoundly—this is the second point of principle where I disagree with my noble friend Lord Foulkes—that it would be quite wrong to turn Members of Parliament into mere delegates of political parties. If they want to do that, they should introduce proportional representation and a list system for electing the House of Commons. We do not have that, thank God. We have individuals who are directly responsible for their conduct. At the end of a Parliament, if they wish to renew their mandate, they come to give an account of their actions and are judged accordingly on their actions as a whole. We do not want to have a situation—