My Lords, I will continue and I hope that it will then unfold. Obviously there can be moot discussion as to whether it should be 5%, 30% or 40%; all sorts of figures could be suggested. However, if I may outline a bit more, the by-election itself would determine who was the MP; the petition would simply trigger the by-election. So while it could be argued that 10% of constituents signing the petition could mean that 90% of them wanted to keep the MP, if that were indeed the case, they would have a chance to show that at the subsequent by-election.
On average—I think this goes to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, was seeking to wrestle with me about why 10% was chosen and not 15%, 20% or 5%—a constituency has around 70,000 to 75,000 constituents. With a threshold of 10%, around 7,000 to 7,500 signatures would be required to trigger a by-election. That is one of the reasons why the Government came to the view that that was about the right number; it was a serious number of people. Increasing the threshold to 20% would obviously require between 14,000 and 15,000 constituents to sign in order to trigger a by-election. Again, this is a matter of balance, but there was a feeling that raising the level to 20% would make it more onerous for constituents worried about an MP after serious wrongdoing to hold that MP to account.
One can have all sorts of interesting discussions about what the right percentage would be. The Government set out 10% in the coalition programme for government, and that was the figure contained in the draft Bill and which the other place was content with as the correct level at which to set the threshold. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, asked me for a straight answer. Those are the sorts of considerations that came into it.