Petitions, Polling Stations and Paisley: the First Outworking of the Recall of MPs Act 2015



Tonge, Jonathan ORCID: 0000-0002-4350-9101
(2019) Petitions, Polling Stations and Paisley: the First Outworking of the Recall of MPs Act 2015. The Political Quarterly, 90 (1). pp. 143-147.

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Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>The Recall of <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">MP</jats:styled-content>s Act 2015 allows constituents to petition for their <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">MP</jats:styled-content> to be unseated. A petition of recall is opened, for six weeks, if an <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">MP</jats:styled-content> has received a custodial sentence or been suspended from the House of Commons for ten or more sitting days. Should 10 per cent of constituents sign the petition, a by‐election is required, which the deposed <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">MP</jats:styled-content> has the right to contest. The first test of the Act came in 2018, when Ian Paisley, <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">MP</jats:styled-content> for North Antrim, was suspended from the Commons for thirty days. This article examines how the Act was implemented and assesses whether procedural oddities played any part in the petition failing to attract sufficient signatures to trigger a by‐election.</jats:p>

Item Type: Article
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 07 Jan 2019 11:42
Last Modified: 18 Sep 2023 16:32
DOI: 10.1111/1467-923x.12640
Related URLs:
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3030760