I wholly agree with everything that Mark Reckless has said. I believe that this motion raises fundamental questions of due process in the context of our standards committee and the way it works. This is a quasi-judicial body and it does have the power to impose sanctions that are both financial and of other kinds. It has the power to exclude from this Assembly to which we've all been elected by the people outside. These are very serious powers and therefore should be exercised with caution, and the procedures for the investigation of complaints, on the basis of which any sanction is applied, should be fair and should be relied upon by everybody who is a member of this place, equally, and individuals should not be singled out. 

Now, this motion applies only to one complaint against one Member. The commissioner has written to say that there is no provision in the procedure laid down by the Assembly for reconsideration of a complaint, either at the request of the original complainant or a third party. However, each of the requests that he has now received in relation to this specific matter contained a complaint about the video, and he has decided that each request should therefore be treated as a fresh complaint. Now, this is a reconsideration of a complaint that has already been considered, not on the basis of compelling new evidence, which the double jeopardy Act, brought in following the Lawrence inquiry, has provided for, for example, DNA evidence that was not available before. In those circumstances, one can well see that miscarriages of justice involving serious crimes like murder may call for a reconsideration on the basis of new evidence. There is no new evidence in this case. There is only the video, and it's a matter of subjective opinion what one thinks of it. I haven't seen the video either, although I have myself been the subject of such a video—[Interruption.] I have myself been the subject of such a video on YouTube, where my head was put in place of Miley Cyrus's in 'Wrecking Ball'. I laughed that off; I certainly wouldn't regard that as a serious criticism worthy of consideration by the standards committee.

I do believe that double jeopardy is a serious matter. The United Kingdom is signed up to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, article 14.7 of which says:

'No one shall be liable to be tried or punished again for an offence for which he has already been finally convicted or acquitted in accordance with the law and penal procedure of each country.'

If this motion passes this afternoon, it is flatly in contradiction of Britain's obligations under that specific provision. And I see a fellow lawyer laughing at this, which I'm very surprised at, actually, because he could well find himself in a similar position in future. If we are to say that, regardless of the commissioner's decision, further complaints that are identical in form can be considered and reconsidered ad infinitum, then there is no end to this process. One of the main reasons for supporting the double jeopardy rule—