UKIP says that we should have recall elections to put the fear of God into troughing MPs.

UKIP Leader Nigel Farage has launched a radical new approach to dealing with the ongoing scandal of MPs abusing the expenses system. Here he explains...

"We need a solution to this political problem and we in UKIP have one: recall elections.

"No, this won't solve the problems over the greed of MPs getting their snouts in the trough, the moat cleaning, the houses and the dog biscuits, but it will allow us to do something about it. We'll be able to do something to the people who have done this with our hard earned money that we've had to pay in taxes, to punish them.

"We need to change the law so that we can have recall elections. This isn't a new idea, Aristotle describes it as part of the system in Athens in Ancient Greece. It's also the way that Arnold Schwartzenegger became Governor of California. Very simply, if enough voters decide that it's time that a politician went then there should be an election to decide if that politician should indeed go.

"In California for example, if 12% of the voters at the previous election sign a petition asking for a new election then there will be one. There doesn't have to be a specific reason, simply if enough of the voters think that they deserve to choose again then they can indeed choose again.

"Democracy has been described as a system where we get occasional chances to throw the bums out. But we only get those chances occasionally and in our current system it's whenever the Prime Minister decides we should get a chance. What we in UKIP want, what recall election would give us, is that we get to decide when the time is right. When the time is up for someone who's been shovelling our money into their pockets. We get to decide when to throw the bums out, not just whether.

"Some will say that this won't work, that anyone with a grievance will be able to make trouble. But we can make sure that doesn't happen too. Anyone who has ever tried to organise anything knows how difficult it is to get 12% of the electorate to sign a petition. The organisers who want the recall election must not only manage this, they also have to pay for them all to be checked by the electoral authorities. A serious challenge, one that won't be taken on lightly. So much so that only two Governors of US States have ever had this happen to them.

"So recall elections are going to be rare, they'll be difficult to organise, but won't they put the fear of God into the political classes? An idea whose time has come again I think."