‘He was hounded out’
ONE of Scotland’s senior Roman Catholic clergymen has accused MPs of “hounding” Michael Martin out of office.
Mario Conti, the Archbishop of Glasgow, claimed some members made the Speaker a scapegoat to shift attention away from themselves.
Mr Martin was the first Catholic Speaker of the Commons since the Reformation and some supporters claimed he was the victim of sectarian criticism.
The archbishop made no mention of Mr Martin’s religion in a letter to a newspaper but complained of a parliamentary culture of “greed, selfishness and secrecy”.
“We have now witnessed some MPs shifting the spotlight away from their own misconduct by hounding the Speaker from office,” said the archbishop.
“And this despite the fact that Mr Martin inherited the woefully inadequate system, and himself proposed changes which would have gone some way to cleaning up the culture, only for his fellow MPs to reject them.”