Image credits: Harry Lawford
Parliament is back in session, and David Cameron and Ed Miliband are shouting from despatch box to despatch box once again. Online Features Editor Imogen Watson debates whether this tradition is really helping anybody.
Questions to the Prime Minister is a prime example of why the country is so frustrated with the political world. The shouting, the arguments and the incessant sound of jeering is highly reprehensible from the so-called “mother of democracy”, and it represents just what is wrong with our Parliament.
Prime Ministers have answered questions from the Commons for centuries, but its previous fixed format was only established under Winston Churchill. Theoretically, Members of the House of Commons can put questions to the Prime Minister in the hope of an explanatory and helpful answer, as part of a sure-fire way of keeping the transparency of politics alive.
For those unsure of the process of Prime Minister’s Questions, it works as follows. Backbench Members of Parliament submit their names to the Order Paper and allocations for question slots are distributed by ballot. The first question is almost always a request for the Prime Minister to list his engagements for the day, followed by a supplementary question from the same MP. The Leader of the Opposition can ask a maximum of six questions. All that bizarre standing up and sitting down is the way in which MPs who were not selected on the ballot attempt to “catch the eye” of the Speaker should they wish to speak. Tradition is an odd thing.
It used to be that Prime Ministers were forced for face the wrath of the Commons twice a week, on a Tuesday and a Thursday to be precise, for fifteen minutes at a time. Arguably this allowed for a wider scope of questions, especially seeing as certain Prime Ministers were far more commanding of attention, or perhaps, so as not to deride our current and recent esteemed leaders, at least the Commons was better behaved. In Thatcher’s time, there were an approximate 0.6 interruptions per session, as opposed to over six in Cameron’s.
Image credits: Chatham House
Nowadays, thanks to Tony Blair, Prime Ministers defend themselves at the despatch box for a thirty minute session every Wednesday at noon. Except if they were really answering questions for half an hour it would be a miracle; as per the aforementioned fact about interruptions, Prime Ministers and their questioners rarely speak for that long at all due to the volume of noise stopping anything productive from happening. Blair himself refers to PMQs as “the most nerve-racking, discombobulating, nail-biting, bowel-moving, terror-inspiring, courage-draining experience in [his] prime ministerial life, without question,” which explains the desire to not go through it twice a week.
Indeed, the whole spectacle is a debacle. Can you remember the last time you watched the event televised, or a clip of it? I would wager possibly not, but if you can, can you remember the last time you were satisfied with an answer? Sometimes, the Prime Minister will satisfy a questioner, and sometimes he will go away and find more information, which is great. Unfortunately, most of the time when the Prime Minister is allowed to speak through the shouting of his own backbenches at the questioner, or the shouting of the Opposition at the ongoing sight of the Prime Minister, answers are sufficiently unhelpful. If this description sounds like a playground, that is because it looks like one too.
The times either Prime Minister or questioner have been sufficiently humiliated are the videos so delightfully uploaded to YouTube. The greatness of someone’s question or response? Not so common. Now there is a standard for which to aim.
Exeter’s MP Ben Bradshaw said in June that “PMQs has become so awful I would rather be doing something more useful with my time like responding to constituents’ letters… The noise and rowdiness in the Commons’ chamber is much worse than the public realise, because they only hear what is broadcast by the single microphone activated above the head of the person speaking.”
Misbehaviour and volume of voice are not the only problems. Male MPs have been known to make gestures juggling imaginary breasts at female MPs and Ministers, and rather eloquently shout comments such as “Melons!” David Cameron got into hot water by telling Angela Eagle, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury at the time to “calm down, dear”. Encouraging, perhaps, for more women to get into politics.
Lucky enough as I was this summer, I was able to view the final PMQs before the summer recess live and in front of the security glass (installed post Blair’s experience with condoms filled with purple flour – no doubt on YouTube if you have no idea what this means). I am one of those people who has regularly watched, or has seen parts of the noon session on television or online. I had once found it interesting.
It is entertaining to watch it in such a manner – or arguably in any manner at all – for maybe ten or fifteen minutes. Afterwards, sadly, it just turns into a head-in-hands event. When you can hear through the wall of noise (if only this were an exaggeration), it is, granted, slightly amusing when somebody slips up, or when somebody has a great line. But otherwise in its current form it is a shambles of an element of democracy. There is no way it is a good way of holding government and the Prime Minister to account: questions are not consistently asked for a real answer, they are asked to embarrass, and answers are not desired to be heard. If MPs could jeer any more loudly, certainly they would.
Whilst there are good intentions in its existence, Prime Minister’s Questions is simply a show and – I am even saying this as a political bean – an embarrassment of one.
Imogen Watson, Online Features Editor
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