I have written to David Cameron asking him to convene a meeting of party leaders to discuss alternatives to the demeaning weekly spectacle of Prime Minister's Questions. The PM has expressed his own criticism. Now would be the ideal time to switch to a less confrontational format.
The following article will be published in Monday's House Magazine.
Can a beloved national institution be reformed? Should a weekly national embarrassment continue? The arguments rage.
The Mother of all Parliaments is a degraded harlot doomed to endure future scandals. Attempts at reforms have been superficial. A great fresh injection of the new blood of 180 plus MPs should invigorate and inspire a determination to end the weekly self-humiliation.
PMQs of the 4th of March were described as the ‘worst ever’. The evidence is convincing. Very few of David Cameron’s answers to Ed Miliband’s questions were connected in any way to the replies.
The Leader of the Opposition asked the Prime Minister about his immigration figures promise. The Prime Minister’s answers were carefully manicured sound-bites on pensions, Sure Start visitors, health spending, TV licences, eye tests, winter fuel allowances, cancer, married couples’ tax allowances, basic state pensions, wasteful spending, carbon emissions, apprentices and election leaflets. For Olympic irrelevance, the PM wins. He set a new nadir of pointlessness.
In all other parliamentary oral questions, relevance rules. I asked at Welsh Questions about the Severn Tidal lagoons earlier that day. If the Welsh Minister’s answer had told me the price of cabbage, he would have been declared out of order. Why not the PM?
There are other degradations. Robust badinage is acceptable. Crude insults are not. Members, unable to answer back, have been described as ‘a muttering idiot,’ ‘a dinosaur,’ ‘a waste of space’ and the tediously repeated ‘weak’. This is not grown-up politics.
The hypnotically repeated mantras are mind numbing and self-defeating. They have been rumbled. Michael Cockerell’s BBC ‘Inside the Commons’ series juxtaposed several lobotomized Tory MPs who had been drilled by the whips to parrot ‘long-term economic plan’ in their PMQs. Mentioning ‘hard-working families’ brings joy to the whips, but fosters neuralgic irritation in others.
Defenders of the status quo rejoice in the worldwide popularity of the spectacle. It’s diverting, amusing show business – but ultimately demeaning. The public’s derision mounts. They fairly ask if these same bellowing buffoons can be trusted to take decisions on sending troops to war or savaging benefits.
There have been previous attempts at reform. John Major praised the collaboration he had from Neil Kinnock in reshaping the, then twice weekly, row into a civilized exchange of views. It was short lived. I tried to help by sending 10 Downing Street a copy of the number one question I was to ask in the hope of a constructive reply. The answer John Major gave me was described in a Times Editorial as ‘a typical civil service briefing with a party political sting in the tail.’ Scalded, I never again wasted a chance to surprise a prime minister.
Michael Cockerell’s programmes were beneficial to our reputation in revealing, in an amusing, attractive format, the best of the House. Intelligent, hard-working MPs were shown toiling for the benefit of their constituents. The public judge us by their disgust at the screaming nightmare of the expenses scandal and the laughable bedlam of PMQs. PMQs is probably un-reformable in its present state because of the advantages of direct confrontation to prime ministers. If we are to regain public trust a new format is needed.
It should retain the robust gladiatorial challenge to power while maintaining a respectful decorum. It could retain the Opposition's advantage of choosing the subject while allowing the Prime Minister to have the last word. Debating value would be enriched if questioners were allowed supplementaries.
The adversarial, mass bear pit of the Commons could be replaced by the less confrontational Westminster Hall. Questions could be put by opposition leaders plus thirty randomly selected MPs who would be allowed supplementaries. Passion, heat and posturing could be reduced by cool, intelligent, civilized exchanges.
A surprising number of MPs no longer attend PMQs. The public’s disdain is visceral and growing. Parliament is better than PMQs. We should prove it.
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