Helen Grant, another Tory MP running to be a deputy speaker, is focusing on the improving parliament’s working environment and wants to see an expansion in the creche facilities available at Westminster, and the expansion of proxy voting for MPs who have to look after a relative.
“Being an MP is a high pressure job in lots of different ways, whether that’s the separation of families and the extent to which one of the partners who is left looking after the children,” she said.
“There are lost of bars, events and other pressures and so family breakdown rates can be high,” said Grant, who was a Legal Aid family lawyer for 23 years.
Others standing include Nusrat Ghani, a Tory MP and former minister who emphasised the threats to British democracy from overseas and at home.
“I know this first hand, having been sanctioned by Russia and China for exercising those freedoms – the only female MP to have been targeted in this way,” she said.
She added: “Many of us have suffered severe harassment, and some of our friends are no longer with us. Parliament must have confidence that its Speakers are alert to the threats we are facing.”
Other declared candidates include Roger Gale, Wendy Morton, Sharon Hodgson and Judith Cummins.
Restoring parliament’s “badly damaged” reputation needs to be a priority, MPs have been told by a senior Conservative MP taking part in hustings today for the role of a new deputy speaker.
Carolines Nokes said that an experienced had was needed in the chair for what she predicted would be a “stormy” new parliament.
The conduct of MPs in the Commons chamber has already come under the spotlight this week after Victoria Atkins, the former health minister, was reprimanded after she stood at the dispatch box and attempted to loudly interrupt Environment Secretary Steve Reed.
“I’m very conscious that there is a very big Labour majority so there will be a need to ensure that backbench voices and those of brand new members can be heard,” she told the Guardian.
“But we’ve also have some interesting characters elected. There is the ongoing dispute between Jeremy Corbyn and Labour, more Greens than we have ever had and Reform UK.”
Nokes, who has been chair of the Women and Equalities Select Committee for four years, also said that parliament needed to become more accessible when it came to people with disabilities.
She wants MPs’ bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct training to be mandatory and for the team of speakers work with party whips to create an “absolutely explicit behavioural code.”
Three Deputy Speaker positions – two of which will come from the opposition ranks and one from the government side – are available ahead of a vote on Tuesday.
