"Why should you be allowed to draw a salary and claim expenses for your staff and all that kind of stuff if you're not actually doing the job of turning up?"
Tory MP Nadine Dorries who announced her immediate resignation from Parliament in June but who is yet to hand in a formal resignation, is now facing a plan to force her out should she fail to attend for six months.
Dorries has faced criticism from the opposition as well as from within her own party, with Rishi Sunak labelling her an ‘absentee MP’ who is not properly representing her constituents.
She has said she will only formally resign when she gets more information about why she was denied a peerage.
Now Labour MP Sir Chris Bryant, chair of the Standards Committee, has put forward proposals and wants to table a motion ‘saying the member for Mid Bedfordshire — and, for that matter, anybody else who hasn’t turned up for six months — must attend by such-and-such a date or will be suspended from the House for 10 sitting days or more’, the Financial Times reported.
If MPs approve a suspension of 10 days or more this can trigger a by-election in the constituency. Dorries has not spoken in the Commons since July 2022 and last voted in April.
Six months on from her last vote in Parliament would be 26 October.
Sir Chris told the BBC that he wanted to see MPs held to the same standards as councillors, who automatically cease to be a councillor, triggering a by-election, if they fail to attend any meetings for six months without good reason.
He said: “I just think this is bringing the whole system into disrepute.
“Why should you be allowed to draw a salary and claim expenses for your staff and all that kind of stuff if you’re not actually doing the job of turning up?”
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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