My Lords, I thought that my noble friend Lady Taylor put it very well in terms of the huge significance of a 10-day suspension, with it basically being the end of a parliamentary career. It is rather like the point about the death penalty made by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. This is not a marginal decision between whether you give someone nine days or 10 days; it is not even the difference, to use a footballing analogy, between a yellow card and a red card. It is the difference between a yellow card and a ban for life.
We touched on this in earlier exchanges, but it seems to me that being suspended for 20 days clearly indicates a very serious offence. That is shown by the House of Commons Library research paper, according to which there have been just two cases in the last 25 years when that would have happened. As we have all remarked already, that would be even less likely to happen if it was known that it would lead to expulsion from the House because it would trigger a petition—as it would have, had this provision been in existence then. There has to be some doubt whether even the two that passed the test, if you like, would still pass the test, because Members would be very reluctant to impose a 20-day suspension.
Perhaps we are all in danger of repeating ourselves, but surely the position as it stands at the moment is that the House itself can expel someone and that, in effect, the provisions of this Bill—as it stands, a 10-day suspension; as it originally stood, a 20-day suspension—amount to the equivalent of expelling someone from the House. My view is that if that is what the House wants to do, the House has the power to do it now and we do not need a Bill to enable it to do that. To that extent, as with so many of the other provisions of this Bill, the organic mechanism by which Parliament operates tends to deal with these matters without introducing legislation that is not needed. That is the
substantial point I want to make, but I want to ask a question to which I should know the answer, and I doubt whether the Minister will know the answer immediately.
I think there may be an odd juxtaposition here. Unless I am completely wrong, the Speaker of the House of Commons can suspend people. I cannot think of an occasion when someone has been expelled for as long as 10 days, but I think that, as my noble friend Lord Maxton says, if someone is suspended until they apologise, heaven knows how long that could be.
Am I then right in thinking—I would love to be told that I am wrong—that we now have a situation where 10 days, as imposed by the Standards and Privileges Committee, results in, “Thank you, goodnight, you are out”, whereas 10 or 11 or 12 or 13 days from the Speaker is, “Come back, all is forgiven and we are off to the tearoom”. I need an answer to that question because I do not know the answer to it myself. If it is the case, that needs sorting out.
9 pm