Seating Arrangements

David Simpson asked at PMQs when something was going to be done about Sinn Féin's MPs being paid, drawing expenses and even claiming the equivalent of Short Money despite not taking their seats.

By winning, they have made their point. They do not want to be there. They do not believe that they ought to be there. So they do not turn up. Fair enough. But in that case, they ought not to be paid, and, since they do not want their seats, the second-placed candidates in their constituencies should be declared elected in their stead, in order that the business of parliamentary representation might continue. Who could object to that, and why?

Among the many reasons why this needs to be done, there is the need to disapply in the United Kingdom anything passed by the European Parliament but not by the majority of those MEPs certified as politically acceptable by one or more seat-taking members of the House of Commons, so that we were no longer subject to the legislative will of Stalinists and Trotskyists, neo-Fascists and neo-Nazis, members of Eastern Europe’s kleptomaniac nomenklatura, neoconservatives such as now run France and Germany, or Dutch ultra-Calvinists who refuse to have women as candidates. Or, indeed, people who believe the Provisional Army Council to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland.