'Give voters power to force polls'

Voters should have the power to force by-elections to remove expense cheat MPs, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said.

Mr Clegg said the public could not understand why MPs kept their jobs for doing things other workers would face the sack for and should be handed recall powers.

"One of the reasons people are so angry about all these revelations about MPs' expenses is that they feel powerless and they now think MPs are going to act as judge and jury on their own failings," he said.

"That's why I think that for those MPs who have clearly been shown, proved, to have done something wrong - particularly those that are then suspended in the House of Commons - there should be a mechanism where a small number of people in the constituency can say 'I don't want this MP to carry on'.

"They should be in effect sacked by their own constituents and you should have a by-election."

Speaking on BBC1's Andrew Marr Show, he said: "People reading about these revelations ask themselves a very simple question: if I did something like this at work I would be out, I'd be sacked.

"And they cannot understand why there seems to be no way that they, the people, who are the boss, cannot exercise that kind of right over MPs who are supposed to be serving them."

Mr Clegg has banned his MPs from the "really abusive" practice of making any profit from selling homes which have benefited from taxpayer-funded second home payments.

But he said the MPs' expenses revelations were "the tip of the iceberg" of fundamental problems in what would be looked back on as a "rotten" parliament.

An early general election could be necessary, he said.