Speaker apologises as election calls grow

By Adrian Croft and Keith Weir

LONDON (Reuters) - The most senior official in the lower house of parliament apologised to the nation on Monday for an expenses scandal among MPs that has prompted growing calls for an early general election.

"Please allow me to say to the men and women of the United Kingdom that we have let you down very badly indeed," Speaker Michael Martin said in a speech to a packed chamber.

Sidestepping calls to quit over his handling of the crisis, Martin said he would meet party leaders in the next two days to discuss reforms to a system which saw claims for everything from bathplugs and biscuits to cat food and tennis court repairs.

"We must all accept blame and to the extent that I have contributed to the situation, I am profoundly sorry," said Martin, dressed in the Speaker's black robe.

Forcing Martin's resignation would be a constitutional landmark on a par with the abdication of a monarch or a U.S. president's impeachment, said John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University.

"There is a reverence about the office ... a kind of mythology about it," he said. "It is the equivalent of an abdication crisis. There is no doubt we are in a pretty old whirlwind. We are going to remember this one."

Conservative MP Patrick Cormack likened the situation to the wartime debate in parliament that led to the resignation of the then prime minister Neville Chamberlain in 1940.

"What is at stake is the institution of parliament and its integrity," Cormack told the lower house after Martin's speech.