Angry MPs

Rosie Winterton made the following remarks in the Commons yesterday -

With regard to the allocation of time for the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, can the Leader of the House tell us whether he thinks there will be adequate time to put right the abject failure of the Deputy Prime Minister to explain why public inquiries into parliamentary constituency changes are to be abolished? It was fairly clear on Monday that the Deputy Prime Minister has employed the services of the Tory grandee, "Sir Gerry Mander", as his special adviser, but surely even he must realise that removing the right of local people to have a say in constituency boundaries is not only wrong in principle, but will also lead to endless expensive judicial reviews in the courts.


We now have clear advice from the Clerk of the House that the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill is similarly ill thought-out and will also end up being challenged in the courts. Those two Bills are prime examples of the betrayal of the promise of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government to have pre-legislative scrutiny wherever possible. Worse than that, they are in the first case anti-democratic and in the second case unworkable. The only thing the Leader of the House should do is withdraw those Bills, go back to the drawing board and come back with legislation that respects our democracy and respects Parliament. I urge him to do so.

On another matter - Tom Watson spoke of  "the tawdry secret" see the clip posted on Washminster yesterday.

Are MPs getting angrier? I it synthetic or are there real issues at stake? Now that the tea party organisers have crossed the Atlantic to advise on tactics, and public sector unions are gearing up to fight the coming cuts - are we about to set politics becoming angrier in Britain?

Your comments please - either via this page or to info@washminster.com