Former Conservative Party Chairman Norman Tebbit has spoken of his regret at leaving the Cabinet, during tributes to Baroness Thatcher.

In a special recall of parliament on 10 April 2013, Lord Tebbit noted that she was removed from office by her parliamentary colleagues, and not by the voters.

He stood down from the Cabinet three years after his wife Margaret was paralysed in the Brighton bomb, but remarked, "I left [Baroness Thatcher], I fear, at the mercy of her friends".

Lady Thatcher died earlier in the week following a stroke, while staying at the Ritz hotel in London.

Former leader of the Liberal Democrats, Lord Ashdown, said that "if politics is defined by principles, then she was the greatest prime minister of our age".

A former member of Lady Thatcher's shadow cabinet in the 1970s, Lord Joplin, reminisced about her qualities outside of parliament.

He said that at one point she asked if any of her MPs were alone alone at Christmas, and how she would ask them to visit her.

Lady Thatcher served as prime minister between 1979 and 1990, before being elevated to the House of Lords in 1992 as Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven.

Part two of the debate can be viewed here.