Parliamentary Accountability Quotes

It was a privilege to play a leading role in helping to safeguard our parliamentary sovereignty, and as such I am, on any view, a person with a genuine and substantial interest in the matter of defending MPs' voices.

In Westminster, I make sure I maximise my ability to represent my constituents. I can do that in a variety of ways: by asking written questions or questions in the House of Commons, through the scrutiny of bills and by sitting on the environmental audit select committee every week, as well as other committees.

The function of parliament is to hold the executive to account. We should never overlook the primacy of parliament.

In Britain the government has to come down in front of Parliament every day to explain its actions, but here the President never answers directly to Congress.

And obviously, with hindsight now, now knowing what went on in the company, it would have been absolutely appropriate back then for us to have the chief executive of the company, most senior person in the United Kingdom, come and answer for the policy they were pursuing. And we ducked that, and frankly that's a failure of Parliament.

My view is the questions in Parliament should be the questions that people out there want asked.

Is it no imputation to be arraigned before this House, in which I have sat forty years, and to have my name transmitted to posterity with disgrace and infamy?

Labour completely accepts and recognises the vote to leave the EU. The question is what is the agenda for that process and that needs to be held to account in Parliament now and that means it needs to be open to a vote.

There should be some other provisions in the Constitution whereby if the Government is not functioning well, it can be dealt with. In a parliamentary democracy, this should be done only by Parliament. The prime minister should be answerable only to Parliament and it should only be Parliament that can install him or remove him.

I fought for MPs to have the right to vote on article 50 not because I was against Brexit, but because I was, and remain passionately, an advocate of parliamentary sovereignty.

Parliamentary obstructionism should be avoided. It is a weapon to be used in the rarest of the rare cases. Parliamentary accountability is as important as parliamentary debate. Both must coexist.

Coming to Ottawa might also expose you to a parliamentary system that has a thing called question period every day, where those in the executive are held accountable by an opposition for their actions, and where demands for public debate on important topics such as missile defense can be made openly. You might also notice that it's a system in which the governing party's caucus members are not afraid to tell their leader that their constituents don't want to follow the ideological, perhaps teleological, fantasies of Canada's continental co-inhabitant.

The public treasure has been duly applied to the uses to which it was appropriated by Parliament, and regular accounts have been annually laid before Parliament, of every article of expense.

When it comes to reforming MPs' expenses, the answer is simply to keep it simple: show us receipts as they're claimed and, where there are abuses, enforce the law.

MPs are paid to be representatives of their constituents. They have to do that job.

I do strongly believe myself that members of the government who sit in the House of Lords should be accountable to the elected House because otherwise there is a democratic deficit, and that is wrong.

On form of government, there should be checks and balances, and PM should be responsible to Parliament.

I haven't yet given everything: I am still full of energy. But I wanted to make it clear that I don't have to make unwarranted concessions to national governments or to parliament. I want to avoid the impression that I am doing things just to ensure that I am re-elected. That's not the case. I have had my career.

We Indians … are so good at respecting outward forms while ignoring the substance. We took the forms of parliamentary democracy, preserved them, put them on pedestal and paid them due obeisance. But we ignored the basic fact that parliamentary democracy can only work if those who run it are constantly responsive to needs of the people and if parliamentarians are qualified enough to legislate. Neither condition was fulfilled in India for long.

The House of Commons has the undoubted rights to expel members for misconduct. This is an absolute authority which cannot be challenged in any court, as it derives from the twin concept of the High Court of Parliament being the most senior court in the land and of each House's right to regulate its own affairs.