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20/05/2009
Archbishop Defends Speaker, Attacking 'Selfishness' Of MPs
A senior Scottish clergyman has weighed in on the ongoing MPs' expenses row, lambasting parliamentarians for "hounding" the Speaker out of office.
Mario Conti, the Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow, said the pressure put on Michael Martin to resign was contrived to deflect attention off MPs themselves.
Mr Martin made an historic announcement yesterday, revealing he would leave office next month.
He is the first Commons Speaker to stand down in over 300 years.
Archbishop Conti said the "unseemly and undignified" attacks on Mr Martin, a Glasgow MP, reminded him of an "assembly of unruly pupils, seeking to humiliate their headmaster for misdemeanours they themselves had perpetrated".
Writing in the Herald, the Archbishop said: "The parliamentary culture of greed, selfishness and secrecy, which has been exposed by the press, is shameful."
"And this despite the fact that Mr Martin inherited the woefully inadequate system, and himself proposed changes which would have gone some way the cleaning up the culture, only for his fellow MPs to reject them," added the senior Roman Catholic figure.
(PR/JM)
Mario Conti, the Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow, said the pressure put on Michael Martin to resign was contrived to deflect attention off MPs themselves.
Mr Martin made an historic announcement yesterday, revealing he would leave office next month.
He is the first Commons Speaker to stand down in over 300 years.
Archbishop Conti said the "unseemly and undignified" attacks on Mr Martin, a Glasgow MP, reminded him of an "assembly of unruly pupils, seeking to humiliate their headmaster for misdemeanours they themselves had perpetrated".
Writing in the Herald, the Archbishop said: "The parliamentary culture of greed, selfishness and secrecy, which has been exposed by the press, is shameful."
"And this despite the fact that Mr Martin inherited the woefully inadequate system, and himself proposed changes which would have gone some way the cleaning up the culture, only for his fellow MPs to reject them," added the senior Roman Catholic figure.
(PR/JM)
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