Whips Accused of Secret Plot to Make Beckett Next Speaker

The race to become the most powerful Commons Speaker in modern history is being undermined by party whips who are trying to install Margaret Beckett as their anti-reform candidate.

Senior Labour figures have been accused of colluding with Conservatives to ensure that Mrs Beckett is elected today. She was the only candidate not to endorse plans to remove the powers of patronage from the Whips’ Offices — so that MPs, rather than party whips, would choose the chairmen of select committees.

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Disgraced Speaker Michael Martin To Be Elevated to the House of Lords

Michael Martin faces elevation to the House of Lords just as the Upper Chamber prepares to overhaul its system of expenses to give peers a less generous deal than before.

The Speaker will move from the eye of one expenses storm to another as the House of Lords is today expected to launch an independent inquiry into the £18m a year claimed by peers for expenses.

This will give Mr Martin’s new Parliamentary home a familiar feel. Speakers are given a peerage on completion of their time in the chair regardless of the circumstances of their departure.

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Absolutely fucking criminal!!!

Speaker of the House of Commons Blocks Inquiry Into Himself

Up to 20 MPs are understood to have written to Mr Martin requesting that he authorise an investigation by The Standards and Privileges Committee into the controversial police search of Mr Green's Commons office last month.
But Mr Martin refused to sign off the inquiry, which means that it cannot go ahead.

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