DORSET and New Forest MPs said it was a “shame” House of Commons speaker Michael Martin resigned yesterday, with some claiming he had been made a “scapegoat”.

Mr Martin announced he would leave on June 21 following a lengthy row over MPs’ expenses.

Christchurch MP Chris Chope said: “The way in which he has announced he’s going has been symptomatic of two much of his tenure – indecisive when he should have been decisive.

“I think he has been partly made a scapegoat.

“He’s not the sole person responsible for the mess we’re in at the moment, so it’s unfair he should take all the blame.

“He hasn’t been good with the media and latterly he has got himself into a bit of a bunker.

“He hasn’t taken advice from a wide enough range of people.”

New Forest West MP Desmond Swayne said: “I’m not sure that hounding the speaker out of the office is the solution to the problem.

“Yes, he’s not popular and I’m getting letters saying we should get rid of him.

“But it’s not a magic solution to the enormous problem that we’ve got.”

Poole MP Robert Syms said: “I think history will be kinder to him than the Commons was today.”

Jim Knight, South Dorset MP and Schools Minister, said Mr Martin had “lost touch with the people that Parliament serves”.

But he added: “The resignation of the speaker should not be enough.

“Making him a scapegoat does not mean that MPs can then duck the difficult questions that we have to address to clean up the system.”

Bournemouth East MP Tobias Ellwood said Michael Martin had been “defending the indefensible”, adding: “He is an extremely nice man but was not the moderniser Parliament so desperately now needs to bring the archaic and corrupt system up to date.”

David Ramsden, a Bournemouth-based independent political lobbyist, said: “I think it’s a shame that it has come to be that he felt the need to resign.

“As for Michael Martin as a man, I have known him for a number of years and I have been in his company at various functions and parties, and I can say that he is a most hospitable, polite, and some will say kind man.

“He has, in my knowledge and dealings, been a gentleman in both senses of the word.”

He said recent days had seen a “total abandonment of what hitherto has been Parliamentary procedure”.