More Labour sleaze?

This from The Daily Mail about Speaker Martin. Plenty to read, here are a few highlights "he must be well aware of allegations that where predecessors were punctilious about maintaining impartiality, Mr Speaker Martin is seen winking at Labour MPs and leaning over the side of his chair, gossiping with former party colleagues.

For example, late last year, he leaned forward once and murmured: "Thank you, Gordon" at the end of Prime Minister's Questions.

He also stumbles over his words and has managed to call Conservative leader David Cameron "Mr Campbell".

In one astonishing scene, when the distinguished former Tory cabinet minister David Heathcoat-Amory approached the Speaker's assistants to express disappointment that he hadn't been called to speak during a debate on one of his specialist topics, he was subjected to a bizarre rant, with the Speaker even jabbing his finger at him.

Many MPs are too frightened of Martin's power to speak their mind openly about him.

"I might not get called for months," said a leading backbencher yesterday, "and I might get a writ from Carter-Ruck" - a reference to the Speaker's recent use of the famous libel lawyers to defend himself against critics, at a cost to the taxpayer of an estimated £3,000. "


"So, what to make of Mary Martin, as she seeks to arrange her life in the Palace of Westminster - with the gilded carriage, four-poster bed and extensive staff at her husband's disposal - to be just a little more tolerable?

MPs who may in future have to fully justify putting close relatives on their pay-rolls in the wake of the Derek Conway affair, felt justified in wondering yesterday just how tolerant the taxpayer has to be towards the wife of Mr Speaker.

It recently emerged that over the last three years, she has run up a bill of almost £50,000 on air travel expenses - having been given special permission to support her husband in his official duties.

This comprises a staggering £25,000 of taxpayers' money on foreign flights, and a further £24,000 flying from the couple's Glasgow home to their Westminster grace-and-favour apartment.

Earlier it was disclosed that she had run up £4,280 of taxpayers' money going shopping by taxi - shopping, it was hastily explained, "in connection with household expenditure that supports the Speaker's duties".

And for at least the first three years, when Mrs Martin was sharing her husband's official residence in London as £136,677-a-year Speaker of the House, she was being paid an estimated £20,000 a year for secretarial duties involving his Glasgow North-East constituency.

He never made a full public statement about how much work she was able to carry out, but she no longer does it.

Last year, in the row over public access to details of MPs' travel expenses, Mr Martin was accused of trying to silence opposition to the exemption of Parliament from Freedom of Information rules.

Just a few months ago it was revealed that, after disputes with security staff, Mr Speaker's wife had been given special immunity from normal parliamentary checks. "



The Mail also gives a nice insight into the family links - "Paul (Michael Martin's son) is a member of the Scottish parliament, sitting for Springburn, roughly the same comfortably safe Labour Glasgow area held by his father at Westminster, and their daughter, Mary, is her father's constituency secretary.