After the Labour Party's poor showing in the local government elections of 4 May 2006 she was linked to a campaign on a timetable for Tony Blair's departure as Prime Minister and also expressed a preference for Gordon Brown to succeed him. She also found "outrageous" the survival of John Prescott as a government minister following the reshuffle. For this criticism of the Deputy Prime Minister's behaviour, as well as for her defence of the Chinese Cockle Pickers rights in her Morecambe constituency, Richard Littlejohn described her as a "heroic MP" on the BBC's "Question Time" programme on 4 May 2006. She said that she believed William Hague would be the next Conservative Prime Minister, rather than David Cameron. In August 2009, she criticised the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 which conferred legal parenthood on a biological mother's female partner, saying "To have a birth certificate with two mothers and no father is just madness." Smith was a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Flag Group.