Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)

My Lords, I think the noble Lord is referring to the noble Baroness, Lady Mone. That comes back to the point I am making that the House wants to assure that it has the processes in place. The noble Baroness is at present on a leave of absence, which I do not think is a satisfactory position. I do not want to rush to judgment on any individual, but we need to have processes in place so that we can then act when any cases are brought to the attention of this House, or when we wish to do so. At the moment, there is no process in place at all for a Member to have a peerage removed, and the processes by which Members can be expelled from this House are rather limited. I can think of only one case in my time in this House when it was felt that a Member should be expelled, so we need to look at our processes. We also need to be clear that I am confident that the overwhelming majority of Members in this House behave absolutely properly, with due diligence to their own affairs, and are here only because they want to serve the public and play a role in public life. We need to emphasise that. But where people fall short of those standards, are we confident that we have the right processes in place to take action where it is needed?