UK POLITICS

Deputy Speaker: Bercow has ruined the role of Speaker with his bias

7 October, 2019
UNN Staff Writer

Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons, Dame Eleanor Laing has slammed her boss John Bercow on LBC. Ms Laing laid out exactly why she would be the best person to replace the outgoing Speaker. Andrew Pierce said many people had criticised Mr Bercow for “posturing”, “politicising” and acting more as “an activist rather than a referee on Brexit”.

Dame Eleanor agreed, saying it was “certainly true” he was “high profile”.

Ms Laing said:

“He’s done some great things. He came in with the intention of being a great reforming speaker and he’s brought about some reforms which have been good for parliament.

He’s done a lot to hold the government to account, to create more time for backbenchers, to give the opposition a full say in what’s happening, he’s allowed a lot more urgent questions and urgent debates and all that is good for democracy.

But there’s a bit of an irony, isn’t there, that he rightly says that the Speaker’s job is to protect minorities and let’s stop and think for a moment who is the significant minority in the House of Commons at the moment and that answer is MPs who voted Leave.

So I have a little bit of sympathy because it’s a difficult job.

“But you would be right to say that a lot of my colleagues, especially my colleagues on the government benches but on other benches too, do think that impartiality has been somewhat diminished and impartiality is really important for the speaker.”

When asked if that was something she would pledge to her colleagues to get their vote, she agreed “very much so”.

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