Parliamentary Representation Quotes

As a new member (of Parliament) you will also be instructed in the details of what is expected from you as a backbencher…. It will be made clear to you that your role in the decision-making process is to raise your hand when you are told to and to occupy your seat in the house when it is required.

No representation of the Colonies in parliament alone, would however be equivalent to a subordinate legislative among themselves; nor so well answer the ends of increasing their prosperity and the commerce of Great-Britain. It would be impossible for the Parliament to judge so well, of their abilities to bear taxes, impositions on trade, and other duties and burdens, or of the local laws that might be really needful, as a legislative here.

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.

What the government has to do, if it wants to govern for any length of time, is it must appeal primarily to the third parties in the House of Commons to get them to support it.

I remember at one time there were 44 mining MPs.

People like to think about MPs in very crass terms: you're either an uber-loyalist babe, or you're a rebel. There isn't any grown-up room to be thoughtful. There isn't space in public debate for that.

There are lots of things one can criticise about the European parliament, but it does work pretty well in terms of the speed with which you can vote, the fact that there's room to sit, the fact that there are offices when you arrive.

I was not born and bred a Chancellor of the Exchequer; I am one of the Parliamentary rabble.

As far as our rulers in Brussels are concerned, Her Majesty can stand for the European Parliament and vote in the elections for it. She doesn't, but she could.

Considering the question of Reform … the Queen thinks the proposal of merely adding neighboring towns to the small boroughs an improvement on the original plan, which contemplated the taking away of members from some boroughs, and giving them to others. Thus the animosity may be hoped to be avoided which an attack upon vested interests could not have failed to have produced. Much will depend, however, upon the completeness, fairness, and impartiality with which the selection of the towns will be made which are to be admitted into the electoral district of others.

The tough thing about these senatorial jobs is you get 'yes' or 'no' votes. Your whole job is to either say 'yes' or 'no' and explain why.

[Sir Robert] Walpole was a minister given by the King to the people. [William] Pitt [the Elder] was a minister given to the King—as an adjunct.

My job is to be an MP. It's not just about Europe.

On the back benches, you can have your say but no power to do anything.

No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.

Just as radical heirs apparent are said to lay aside all inconvenient revolutionary opinions when they come to the throne, it was believed that Mr. Mill in Parliament would be an entirely different person from Mr. Mill in his study.

We never said that we don't have faith in Parliament. We have great respect for Parliament.

I have toured my constituency maximum number of times as a member of the Lok Sabha among the MPs from Madhya Pradesh.

I'm a solid Labour party supporter. I aspired to be a Labour MP, but it's difficult to make the leap from the Foreign Office.

If you'd said to me when I was 21, 'You're going to get into parliament, be a senior minister of state, shadow health secretary, shadow home secretary, a privy councillor, be endorsed by the Times as a candidate for Speaker, have four novels published, and then have great fun after you retire,' I'd have said, 'That sounds like a good life.'

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.

In the parliament of the present every man represents a constituency of the past.

Rich and great people can take care of themselves; but the poor and defenceless - the men with small cottages and large families - the men who must work six days every week if they are to live in anything like comfort for a week, - these men want defenders; they want men to maintain their position in Parliament; they want men who will protest against any infringement of their rights.

The standing orders of the Parliamentary Party, however, apply to me, apply to every other Member of the Parliamentary Labour Party and they put into a context the way in which those rights to freedom of speech should be exercised.

Give us our parliament in Scotland. We will start with no traditions. We will start with ideals. We will start with purpose, with courage. We will start with the aim and object that there will be 134 men and women, pledged to 134 Scottish constituencies, to spend their whole brain power, their whole courage and their whole soul in making Scotland into a country in which we can take people from all the nations of the earth and say: this is our land, this is our Scotland, these are our people, these are our men, our works, our women and children: can you beat it?