{"id":701,"date":"2014-03-04T12:04:57","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T12:04:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/polsis.org\/?p=701"},"modified":"2014-03-04T12:04:57","modified_gmt":"2014-03-04T12:04:57","slug":"essential-scrutiny-or-national-embarrassment-dr-stephen-bates-lecturer-in-political-science-responds-to-the-hansard-societys-report-on-prime-ministers-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/polsis\/2014\/03\/04\/essential-scrutiny-or-national-embarrassment-dr-stephen-bates-lecturer-in-political-science-responds-to-the-hansard-societys-report-on-prime-ministers-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"Essential scrutiny or national embarrassment? Dr Stephen Bates, Lecturer in Political Science, responds to the Hansard Society’s report on Prime Minister’s Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bates-stephen\"<\/a>\u00a0There are a number of institutional reforms that could be introduced to bring about the kind of PMQs that Speaker Bercow has called for.\u00a0These reforms, some of which have been stated and \u00a0occasionally restated in various Procedure Committee\u00a0Reports over the years, include: extending \u00a0PMQs by quarter or half an hour each week; reducing the number of questions that the Leader of \u00a0the \u00a0Opposition is allowed to ask; institutionalising a set number of closed questions each week \u00a0(including for the Leader of the Opposition); increasing the toleration of \u2018referred\u2019 answers by the \u00a0Prime Minister by requiring the Prime Minister to read out (shorter versions of) departmental answers at the next session of PMQs; and ensuring that the Leader of the Opposition cannot ask his\/her questions until after a set number of backbench questions have been asked.<\/p>\n

However, there is another change that would improve parliamentary discourse and help hold the Prime Minister to greater account but that would be difficult to institutionalise formally. This change relates to how questions are posed. David Cameron is often criticised \u2013 as was Gordon Brown before him \u2013 possibly correctly, for not answering questions, yet he can only answer the questions that are put to him. If these include\u00a0ad hominem<\/i>\u00a0attacks, it could be argued that he is not obliged to answer them; this at least gives him an excuse not to answer. To take but one recent example, an opposition backbencher asked on the 6th<\/sup>November 2013:<\/p>\n

\n

“The Prime Minister has just been boasting again about 1 million extra jobs. Can he therefore explain why in my constituency the number of people unemployed for more than two years has risen by 350% in the last year alone? It is now the worst figure in the country. Nine of the 10 worst constituencies on this measure are in the north-east, including all three Sunderland seats. Is that because they are the same old Tories, who do not care about the north-east?”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The last sentence of this question is unnecessary and detracts from the important issue raised. Questions posed at PMQs should be direct, forensic, uncomfortable and challenging for the Prime Minister; they do not need to be sarcastic or sometimes plain rude to achieve this end. A change of this sort \u2013 and also a change with regard the opposite problem of toadying questions posed by government backbenchers \u2013 can only be brought about by MPs and parties themselves. If they did so, this would increase scrutiny and accountability and would help address some of the issues raised by the recent Hansard report \u2013 but without killing PMQs as a spectacle.<\/p>\n

This post was originally published on Democratic Audit<\/a> 04\/03\/14<\/em><\/p>\n

The Hansard Society’s recent report can be found here<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0There are a number of institutional reforms that could be introduced to bring about the kind of PMQs that Speaker Bercow has called for.\u00a0These reforms, some of which have been stated and \u00a0occasionally restated in various Procedure Committee\u00a0Reports over the years, include: extending \u00a0PMQs by quarter or half an hour each week; reducing the number … Continue reading “Essential scrutiny or national embarrassment? Dr Stephen Bates, Lecturer in Political Science, responds to the Hansard Society’s report on Prime Minister’s Questions”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[21,37,61,68,90,113,119],"class_list":["post-701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-british-politics","tag-david-cameron","tag-gordon-brown","tag-hansard-society","tag-leader-of-the-opposition","tag-pmqs","tag-prime-minister"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/polsis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/polsis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/polsis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/polsis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/polsis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/polsis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/polsis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/polsis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/polsis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}