Two good Green MPs

Henry Cooke writes:

Lawrence Xu-Nan is not a native English speaker. But he speaks it a lot.

The first-term Green MP has spoken more in Parliament than any other MP this term. Not by a little either – Xu-Nan has said 420,000 words, over four times the 102,000 words the average MP has managed.

Xu-Nan has made 1,302 speeches in the House. This is part of the job of an MP – to debate and scrutinise legislation. He has done it six times more than one of the TPM co-leaders. This is a duty many backbench MPs are less than keen on (it can be rather boring!) but it is important.

I reported back in March that Francisco Hernandez has asked three times as many written questions as any other MP. This is also part of the job – gathering information in your portfolios. It takes a lot of time to not just ask the questions (of course staff help), but to read through all the answers and work out what information is useful.

You don’t have to agree with an MP on policy issues, to want then to be diligent and hard working. We should praise Xu-Nan and Hernandez for taking their roles seriously. Some MPs seem to think their job is to get social media likes only.