Labour’s chief whip has risked the wrath of party backbenchers by attacking some for their “idleness”. Nick Brown, a close ally of Gordon Brown, said he was drawing up targets to oblige MPs to do more work around the House of Commons.
He will urge the prime minister to impose a quota system to ensure that all MPs do a certain amount of work. This could deal with the “5 per cent” of Labour MPs who were responsible for a quarter of all unauthorised absences, he claimed in a speech to the parliamentary press gallery.
