ABSTRACT
Historically, the most important power available to the House was to commit the offender to prison. Erskine May describes this power as the ‘keystone of parliamentary privilege’, but it is little used and has not been used since Bradlaugh’s Case in 1884.67 The House can vote to allow the offender to be prosecuted by the police, as happened in 1970, when a stranger threw a CS gas canister into the Chamber.68 The most regularly employed sanction is the reprimand. The House may order that a member be suspended from the House or expelled. In 1948, Garry Allighan MP was found to have lied to a committee, falsely accusing other members of taking money. The House ordered his expulsion from Parliament.69 In 1988, Ron Brown MP was suspended from the House for the contempt of damaging the Mace. In 1994, the House suspended two members, with loss of salary, for 20 days and 10 days respectively, for accepting payment for putting down parliamentary questions. Following a report from the Standards and Privileges Committee,70 a Member of Parliament, the Member for Liverpool (Mr Wareing) was also suspended for failing to register a shareholding interest in the Register of Members’ Interests. In 2004 a Labour Minister was required by the Standards and Privileges Committee to apologise to the House of Commons for failing to register her earnings as a presenter of a television show.
