I don't think it would be profitable, Madam Deputy—I nearly said 'Deputy Speaker'—Deputy Presiding Officer, if I were to give way at this point.

I believe that what the temporary Chairman of the committee said is a serious matter: that the code of conduct applies to Members at all times, in their public and their private lives, in all circumstances. This, I believe, is a startling and sinister development that the Assembly seeks the right to police the private lives of Assembly Members, to censor them and, indeed, ultimately, to punish them for bringing the Assembly into disrepute. I don't regard the Assembly as being brought into disrepute by anything that anybody says outside this place. We all have responsibility for our own words and actions elsewhere, and I don't believe myself to be tainted by the actions or words of anybody else in this Assembly, and I think everybody else should take the same general view. After all, what does bring the Assembly into disrepute is a matter that must be regarded as highly subjective.

I regret that, in the course of the report, there is no detailed rebuttal or indeed any rebuttal of the arguments that I put forward on Michelle Brown's behalf as her advocate for the committee. I'm grateful that the committee allowed me to do that. I don't seek to defend the use of the word 'coconut'. It does appear to be in wide use, but the document that I distributed earlier on shows the huge number of highly offensive uses of the word 'coconut' by members or supporters of the Labour Party. I don't know whether the Labour group, which made this complaint against Michelle Brown, not as individuals but as a group, have made any complaints about the racism in the Labour Party, the anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, and the vile and disgusting things that are said, not in private conversations, but in public and gloried in—