Tributes (Speaker Martin)

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 1st May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

Michael Martin would have been an MP for nine years when his successor but two was born. It is worth noting that if had he remained in the Chair until now and then gone on for a few more years, he might have been Father of the House as well as Speaker. How he would have heard the nomination and dragged himself to the Chair I am not quite sure, but he probably would have found a way.

It is worth noting that some of the criticism of him was absurd. A quarter of a million pounds was thought to have been spent on Speaker’s Green, which was supposed to have been his garden. The fact that it is a bike rack and a goods yard for the rebuilding of the Palace shows how sometimes our journalists think that a story is too good to check. He put up with that with good nature, and it is worth noting that his reason for retiring from the speakership was the unity of the House.

He and I once had a conversation when he was Speaker about how it might be possible to have a debate in the House about the conduct and role of the Chair without that being an implied criticism of the Speaker. Perhaps you as his successor, Mr Speaker, might find a way for that to happen every two or three years, because there are many things that happen when a Speaker might like to get the sort of direction that Speaker Lowther claimed that he had when he had Charles I to deal with.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Speaker Lenthall.