Prime Minister's Questions: why bother?

The government despatch box.
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.

Tony Blair changed PMQs significantly.
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

Where next for British politics?

Image credits: tolomea

Head, as ever, up in the political clouds, Online Features Editor Imogen Watson anticipates the General Election 2015.

It has been a funny old these last three-and-a-bit years since the current coalition government was elected to power back in May 2010.

We have seen the rapid decrease in the Liberal Democrats already-muted popularity, a sad surge in support for the United Kingdom Independence Party, ministers hurried in to and shepherded out from the Cabinet and more politicians making stupid comments, and some of them intentionally. Sadly the latter is not something that can only be attributed to Britain, but neither are our elected representatives succeeding in blazoning a path towards common sense.

The Conservative-led government has become quite the talented driver, performing incredible numbers of U-turns at rapid speeds. It has become quite the disappointment, too, that is if anyone was expecting anything impressive from them by now.

Granted, regardless of political affiliation, the situation
the government inherited was not far short of terrible; economies beginning to collapse worldwide and ordinary people worrying about what future was to come, at a loss to explain quite how this had happened. Since hitting recession under the last Labour government in 2008, only a few will have been lucky to have avoided the effects. I, for one, have only really had any money of my own since the recession began, and so having got used to the current situation hope that there will be a day in the future where my money stretches a lot further than it does now. One can dream.

 

Image credits: The Prime Minister’s Office

But there is a window for improvement, and the government has missed it. The UK, not having been as badly affected as certain other European economies, is one of the last to pull itself towards the vague light of recovery, after more than three years of a new government. “Pull” is, perhaps, the wrong verb here. Let us go instead for “drag”. The latest news of hope that the economy is heading in the right direction is pretty pathetic. We ought to have been receiving this news along with the United States, instead of watching our credit rating being downgraded and hearing warnings of a triple-dip recession. How embarrassing, somebody get a grip.

As I pointed out, however, life should be looking up, after all four thousand fewer people were unemployed last month than in June, and David Cameron says that this is “encouraging”.

What he neglected to comment on is that actually youth unemployment is up, again, and the number of people undergoing long-term unemployment is up too – again. Unemployment in the West Midlands? That’s up too, to just a smidgen under one in ten people, a region which once employed so many in manufacturing and industry and is now in danger of serious neglect. I wish one could even say this particular region’s figures were the worst of the bunch, but one cannot. Encouraging? David Cameron, I am afraid, is simply out of touch.

The Coalition has been prone, as most governments are, to hurl the blame backwards in time to the Labour Party – in politics, where the diciest of relationships occur, it most certainly is always a case of “it’s not me, it’s you”. This attitude sticks for a while, but nearly three and a half years down the line, is it not time a government started taking responsibility for its actions, when numerous experts have openly criticised spending plans because they do not look to have the right, or indeed any, effect?

The problems are not only economic. Recently certain boroughs of London were treated to the sight of vans scaremongering both legal British citizens and illegal immigrants alike: go home or face arrest. It was Vince Cable – a Liberal Democrat partner in the Coalition – to stand out from the government and point out that actually, “We have a problem but it’s not a vast one. It’s got to be dealt with in a measured way dealing with the underlying causes.” According to the New Statesman, David Cameron may not have even been aware of the campaign before it happened.

Numerous issues are damaging this government – I could continue for hours. Not through misfortune, but through poor decisions, and a great (meaning large, not fantastic) game of blame and pass-the-buck. The problem is that viable alternatives are not currently waiting in the wings.

We need a good, honest (I cannot stress that enough), thorough debate on the issues. We do not need more coalitions, failed promises and people wondering what they are paying politicians for. It is fair to say that the Liberal Democrats, like beforehand, are in no likely position to be forming a stable government any time soon, nor even the largest party. The UKIP fun and laughter is dying down or at least beginning to flatline, and heaven forbid it should increase again as more and more of their candidates out themselves as bigoted and xenophobic ignoramuses. Even if they were to surprise me in 2015, their support will be the Lib Dems’ old problem – spread too thinly across the nation to gain any great number of seats.

Labour really needs to pull its act together. Although lots of people continue to struggle through benefit changes,

“Fresh ideas”? Where are they?
Image credits: EdMiliband

lack of jobs to go around, increased student fees, rising debt, payday loans and more, there is an indication that life is looking up and it is an indication to which public feeling has latched on at least a little. Labour policies are lacking in response, and even my mother is considering not voting in 2015 (trust me, that means something). The Party shed its bigwigs and party elders – perhaps they should bring them back again. There is a mini squabble going on at the top of the Labour Party which is helping nobody’s public image, and instead of coming out fighting, united, there is a whole lot of nothing coupled with one or two mishaps to fill the gap and get everybody talking – about the wrong thing.

Something tells me that since Andy Burnham (Shadow Secretary of State for Health) piped up in the not too distant past, Labour policy may be just around the corner. I hope so, and I hope the wait has made it good, or it might be too little, too late.

Imogen Watson, Online Features Editor