The Northern Echo's parliamentary correspondent Robert Merrick saw the extraordinary scenes as pro-hunt demonstrators invaded the Commons chamber.

WHEN Tony Blair promised a Big Conversation with voters, he presumably did not mean for it to happen on the floor of the Commons chamber.

Even MPs, hardened by flour bombs and horse manure hurled from above, will be shocked by yesterday's breach of so-called parliamentary security.

The flour bombers made the headlines, but they were at least sitting in the public gallery - an area they were allowed to be in. They simply had deep pockets and a strong arm.

This is different. Yesterday's invaders reached the chamber itself from the No lobby - the area set aside for MPs for the sole purpose of voting.

As an accredited member of the Press Gallery, I am security checked by MI6 and wear a pass at all times. Nevertheless, I would not be allowed in the lobby areas.

The most likely explanation is that the protestors managed to wander into the corridor behind the Speaker's Chair, from which it would be relatively easy to slip into the No lobby.

Mr Blair has a room behind that chair. It is supposed to be patrolled at all times by pass-checkers. It obviously was not.

Any claims that the invaders could have shot MPs in the chamber are false, because they would have had to go through an airport-style scanner to get into parliament in the first place.

However, there was plenty of time to do some serious damage to poor old Alan Michael, the nervous-looking rural affairs minister. And they breed them big in the country. Those were big lads.

Nothing as serious has happened since Margaret Thatcher's close ally, Airey Neave MP, was blown up an Irish republican car bomb in the Commons car park, at the start of the 1979 election.

So the fur will fly and, this time, it won't be coming from a fox about to have its head ripped off. Security has shown to be scandalously lacking and nothing can be the same again.

It is power to the elbow of Peter Hain, Leader of the Commons, who argues it is ridiculous, in 2004, for security to be in the hands of the exotically-titled sergeant at arms.

He's the man, dressed in black, who carries a ceremonial sword, under a tradition dating back hundreds of years. The man-in-tights has surely had his day.