Is Margaret Hodge the ‘tarantula’ good for politics?

It’s not just on the Health Select Committee that election fever is starting to take hold. The Public Accounts Committee had a party-political row this week too, with accusations that Tory members had blocked plans to question Lord Green over HSBC. There is now a leak inquiry underway about who from the committee told the Guardian that Tory MPs blocked a bid for Green, while those Conservatives insist that they are happy for him to give evidence if he is needed for the inquiry.

This sort of jostling on a committee isn’t particularly surprising given the proximity of an election, but while the PAC by tradition doesn’t have the sorts of stormy votes that other select committees have, it has seen some political tensions. Most PAC members have quite a lot of respect for Margaret Hodge, with one telling me that ‘she’s a bit like a tarantula: you don’t want to become intimate with it but you admire its danger and grace’.