An MP has urged the Government to change the law that underpins the UK electoral system to ensure people who are on the sex offenders register are not allowed to stand for Parliament.

Labour’s Charlotte Nichols expressed her concern over the Representation of the People Act and its failure to explicitly prevent individuals on the sex offenders register from standing for office.

Ms Nichols called for a statutory instrument to be introduced to disbar known sex offenders from entering Parliament and ensure that those who are convicted while serving in office cannot seek re-election.

Her comments follow a debate on Monday on proposals to bar colleagues from entering the parliamentary estate if they are under investigation by police for “credible allegations of sexual or violent offending”.

During the debate, Tory former minister Sir Christopher Chope voiced his discomfort in supporting the House of Commission’s report due to the absence of explicit restrictions in the Representation of the People Act.

Speaking at business questions on Thursday, Warrington North MP Ms Nichols said: “In Monday’s debate on risk-based exclusions, one honourable member (Sir Christopher Chope) said they were uncomfortable supporting the Commission’s proposals on safeguarding due to the fact that the Representation of the People Act has never explicitly precluded someone on the sex offenders register for standing for office.

“As utterly bizarre as I found the logic underpinning this argument, it did strike me as something very easy to remedy.

“On this basis, can the Leader of the House please advise when she will be bringing forward a statutory instrument to amend the Representation of the People Act in order to disbar people we already know are sex offenders from entering this place and to ensure those who joined that register during their time in Parliament are neither eligible to stay, nor can they seek to return at subsequent elections?”

Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt said Ms Nichols raised “an interesting point”, adding: “I think that the debate on Monday was a very good one.

“Clearly members have different views on these matters, but I was very pleased that we seem to identify the areas that are still left for the Commission to do work on and I hope we will be able to come back to the House in short order.

“She will know that as Leader of the House, what she asked me to do is not in my lane, but of course, she and other honourable members can secure a debate on the matter and I would encourage her to raise the point she makes with the relevant Secretary of State.”

On Monday, Sir Christopher said the House of Commons Commission’s proposals could open the “floodgates to vexatious accusations”.

He also pointed out that MPs are not subject to the Disclosure and Barring Service, noting that as long as they are not serving a sentence or imprisoned for more than a year, they can still run for office while on the sex offenders register.

Sir Christopher said: “Members of Parliament are not subject to the Disclosure and Barring Service. As long as they are not currently serving a sentence or imprisoned more than a year they can stand as members of Parliament, be elected as members of Parliament while they are still on the sex offenders register. And are we suggesting that we should change the Representation of the People Act…?”

After several MPs from the opposition benches could be heard shouting “yes”, he added: “Let somebody bring forward a proposal to change the Representation of the People Act and do it expressly and overtly and say that there’s a certain category, an additional category of people who are ineligible to stand for election or to be elected to this place. The situation we have got here is that there’s a backdoor attempt to try and achieve that objective without changing the primary legislation.”