Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Leader of the House – in the House of Commons at 2:30 pm on 8 January 2007.
Andrew MacKinlay
Labour, Thurrock
2:30,
8 January 2007
I welcome what the Leader of the House has said, but surely it is implicit that as well as there being an affirmative resolution of the House of Commons to deploy troops, there needs after some years of deployment to be a reaffirmation of that decision by a vote in this House. And if we ever have to do this again, there needs to be an institutional mechanism by which this House has direct access to the security and intelligence services, because such information should not be given to us by Ministers.
The House of Commons is one of the houses of parliament. Here, elected MPs (elected by the "commons", i.e. the people) debate. In modern times, nearly all power resides in this house. In the commons are 650 MPs, as well as a speaker and three deputy speakers.