Commons leader Harriet Harman has taken a "verbal battering" from shadow foreign secretary William Hague.

Ms Harman was standing in for the Prime Minister at Commons question time when Mr Hague attacked Gordon Brown's recent poor poll ratings and political problems.

Mr Hague told her: "If you want to be Prime Minister, you'd better start acting like one."

Mr Hague went on to mock the Prime Minister's drive to get families to cut down on food waste, claiming the Treasury's hospitality bill more than trebled during Mr Brown's tenure in No 11.

Ms Harman said the "last person" Mr Brown would look to for advice was "somebody who thinks a good diet is 18 pints a day".

Mr Hague quipped: "None of that was ever wasted, I can assure you."

But he claimed the Treasury hospitality bill showed Mr Brown was "preaching one rule to the country and practising another behind the closed doors of Government".

He added: "Isn't there something supremely ironic about being lectured about food waste by a Prime Minister who is past his sell-by date?"

It was "yet another example of treating people like fools, preaching prudence while practising profligacy and waste".

Continuing the attack, he said: "Isn't this why the whole country is sick of the Prime Minister and may I speak for the whole House when I wish you well in your campaign to be rid of him."

Ms Harman replied: "You shouldn't underestimate the Prime Minister, who is a man of true grit and determination.

"He will see the country through the difficult circumstances."

Mocking her reputation as an arch-feminist, she told Mr Hague: "I thank you for your kind comments about myself, but I'm afraid it wouldn't be possible because there aren't enough airports in the country for all the men who would want to flee the country."

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