Oh dear. It seems Tory MP Nadine Dorries skipped the sermon in which the congregation were told that telling lies to people doesn’t go down well with Jesus. (As ever, the permalinks don’t work properly at Dorries’ ‘blog’, so you’ll need to scroll down a bit to find the post.)

Sam Coates of The Times called this morning, regarding my non attendance of the Innovation and Skills Select Committee. I am actually a member of the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee; however, the old Science and Technology Committee did become Innovation and Skills, following the publication of the abortion report. I have never sat on the Innovation and Skills Select Committee.

Unfortunately, Hansard says otherwise…

8 Nov 2007 : Column 370

Innovation, Universities and Skills

That Adam Afriyie, Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods, Mr Ian Cawsey, Mrs Nadine Dorries, Dr Ian Gibson, Dr Evan Harris, Dr Brian Iddon, Mr Gordon Marsden, Bob Spink, Ian Stewart, Graham Stringer, Dr Desmond Turner, Mr Phil Willis and Mr Rob Wilson, be members of the Innovation, Universities and Skills Committee.

As for being a member of the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee, the Parliament website notes that:

The Committee was appointed on 19 January 2009 and has 14 Members.  The Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Department of Energy and Climate Change and its associated public bodies.

The first meeting of the Committee was held on 21 January, when Mr Elliot Morley was elected as Chairman.  Details regarding initial inquiries will be placed on this website.

Sam Coates’ article in the Times does a fair job of highlighting the extent to which some MPs have been failing to live up to their obligations in regards to participating in Parliamentary Select Committees but falls a little short of telling the full story of Dorries’ tenure as a member of the Science and Technology Committee for lack of a little additional digging.

A quick check into Parliament’s sessional returns for the previous two years shows:

Dorries attended 37 of the 62 meetings of the Education and Skills Committee, on which she sat before moving to the Science and Technology Committee.

After switching to the Science and Technology Committee on 7 July 2007 she attended a total of eight of meetings, up to the end of that year’s Parliamentary Session (October 2007) but only one of the 50 scheduled meetings of the Innovation, Universities and Skills Committee, which replaced the ST&C in November 2007.

Dorrries joined the Science and Technology less than three weeks before the committee issued the press notice announcing its inquiry into Scientific Developments Relating to the Abortion Act 1967 (26 July 2007), an inquiry that issued its full report on 7 November 2007.

Responding to Coates’ article, Dorries trots out her standard whinge that the Science and Technology Committee had been somehow ‘nobbled’ by the Labour ‘sisterhood’ and and assortment of other pro-abortionists, when it met to consider the scientific evidence relating to abortion. You can read more examples of her conspiralunacy on Sam Coates’ blog.

Parliament’s sessional returns provide a very different story. Nadine Dorries appears to have, quite cynically, inveigled her way onto the Science and Technology Committee in an effort to wreck its efforts to provide parliament with a clear, unbiased and scientifically sound review of developments relating to the UK’s existing abortion laws.

Hence Dorries’ abject lack of interest in attending the new Innovation, Universities and Skills Committee when that came in being.

Reader comments

1. Liberal Conspiracy

   New post: Nadine Dorries MP ignores her parliamentary obligations http://tinyurl.com/dz4syp

   [Original tweet]

2. SOCIALIST UNITY » "SMEARGATE" - TORIES RELINQUISHING THE HIGH GROUND

   [...] Politics aside, at a personal level, I find Nadine Dorries very likeable. A few weeks ago on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions she stuck up for Jacqui Smith over the expenses row in a generous and non-partisan way, and there is something distasteful about the faintly bullying tone of her critics. [...]

3. Graham Linehan

   @tomdaylight and all this. http://bit.ly/cN1Kk4 I'm sure she's not the worst of them, but she certainly caught my imagination

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