—particularly as nobody else is likely to make these points.

In this case, the position is even worse because the conversation was clandestinely recorded by somebody who was at the time a close personal friend, but in due course became Michelle Brown's chief of staff, who was then subsequently sacked for gross misconduct, including breach of confidence, and he maliciously published the recording as an act of revenge.

Now, in a world where surveillance technology is everywhere, admitting this kind of evidence in disciplinary proceedings creates obvious dangers of entrapment and prejudice, and not only in relation to words. Such material would not be generally admissible as prosecution evidence in a court of law, and indeed it may breach rights under article 8 of the European convention on human rights, the right to privacy in your private life, and AMs deserve the same protection, I believe, under our rules of procedure here as the law would afford them outside.

The House of Commons claims no right to censor the private conversations of MPs. Indeed, it doesn't even claim the right to punish MPs for the most vile and disgusting public utterances, like John McDonnell, who joked apparently about Esther McVey, saying, 'Why aren't we lynching the bastard?'—that was a joke. Emma Dent Coad, the Labour MP for Kensington, who described Shaun Bailey, a black Conservative member of the London Assembly as 'a token ghetto boy' and a 'freeloading scumbag' and who has very cheerfully put on the internet—[Interruption.]—a redesign of the Tory tree logo with a black person hanging from it.