My colleague Glenda Jackson, MP for Hampstead and Highgate, has stated that “as a woman, that is the antithesis of work”. I’m sick and tired of strong women pretending that they can’t cope with a “masculine” working environment. If they can’t deal with it they should go back home and do some knitting. I’ve got no problem dealing with men and neither should they Gender shouldn’t come into it. There are plenty of men who can’t cope with the pressures of this job either, but they would never get away with complaining in the same way that some women do.As for discouraging women from going into politics, I challenge reformers to find a single Labour seat where they can show that this has been the case and a potential woman candidate has pulled out. MPs are a self-selecting group of volunteers, and irrespective of gender have chosen this life and the responsibilities the job entails.

The job demands a lot and they have to be prepared to give a lot.And then there’s the view that we should be more “media-friendly” and manipulate our working hours to fit in with newspaper deadlines and programme broadcast times. I get on well with both the press and broadcasters, but I find it ludicrous that we should be bending over backwards to make their life easier. We are here to frame laws and scrutinise legislation; legislation that affects the media as much as anyone else, and they should recognise the importance of that.As MPs we have to remember what we are here to do We are here to represent our constituents and enact laws That’s why these plans are so wrongly conceived. By fiddling around with timetables the Government is eroding the real powers of parliamentarians. They are scaling down our ability to scrutinise and debate legislation properly.

We deal with immensely complex issues that demand to be taken seriously and looked at in real detail.Does this level of scrutiny matter? Of course it does. Even if you thought a piece of legislation deserved to go through unimpeded or you trusted the government of the day, just remember that governments change; that’s the nature of democracies. You might not be so sanguine about what a future government can push through the Commons. If we forget about properly scrutinising the legislative process we will inevitably produce bad laws.A number of radical changes were made in the last Parliament, which all had the direct effect of limiting our power. In my view, the only reform that the Commons needs is a return of these powers. Backbench MPs used to have the right to initiate not just Private Member’s Bills, but motions to debate political subjects and to get a vote on them. On Friday we could debate important subjects and get a vote of the House.