Nick Clegg calls for US-style recall system for discredited MPs

From today’s Guardian:

A US-style “recall” system should be introduced in Britain to force MPs who break House of Commons rules to face their electorate in an emergency byelection, the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, declared yesterday.

In an eye-catching attempt to rejuvenate the British political system, which he warns is on a “life support system”, Clegg said voters should be allowed to collect petitions in their constituency if an MP is expelled or suspended from the Commons.

Derek Conway, the former Conservative MP who was suspended after failing to produce evidence that his son had worked for him as a researcher, could be unseated by the proposal, which is modelled on a US system. Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California after his supporters forced a recall election which led to the ousting of Gray Davis.

Clegg told the Guardian yesterday that once an MP had been formally suspended and been through due process in the Commons, the constituency was left with a discredited representative.

“It is right for your constituents who then organise themselves in sufficiently large numbers to have a right to automatic recall and if that recall is successful then there is a byelection.” …

Clegg said Westminster should expect to see more protests from him – last week he staged a walkout from the Commons after he was denied his “in or out” vote.

“The kind of anger, noise, direct protest that you have seen from us recently – whether it is my stance on saying that I would prefer to go to court than give my data to a compulsory government ID card database or Vince Cable’s protest against the visit of the Saudi king, or our walkout of the Commons last week – far from seeing less of that, I think you will see more.”