John Mann: 30,000 people stood up to the Blackshirts on Holbeck Moor, we need to learn from that

It was on nuclear power in Bridlington, and Arthur Scargill sat in the front row, he got a standing ovation.

But even as a teenager, he had already learned six years earlier how to run a committee room, taught by his grandmother and five generations of political involvement.

Now, as he stands down from the Commons to enter the Lords - the first person to go straight from one chamber to the other since 1892 - he says political debate has become “dismal”, especially in the last two years.

Now Lord Mann of Holbeck Moor in the City of Leeds, who was MP for Bassetlaw for 18 years, said: “Parliament has ceased to function.”

He criticised outgoing Speaker John Bercow, who he said “couldn’t plan anything”.

He said: “Every day you had no idea what the business was. The Government always had too much power in setting the parliamentary agenda in my view, but this time it just shifted over to the Speaker.

“So, you prepare for a debate, for that debate to be squeezed into an hour instead of the six hours that was allocated, purely by his arbitrary decisions. That isn't democratic, and that's not good practice.”

And he said the Commons was stuck talking about the same thing.

“Some people have made the same point on Brexit, literally hundreds of times. Now there's a consistency. But it's incredibly boring. That's not debate. And it's just the worst kind of politics, Parliament needs to grow up.”

Now going into the Lords, Lord Mann said he hoped he could eventually vote himself out of a job.