Last month I wrote to David Cameron asking him to consider alternatives to the demeaning spectacle of Prime Minister’s Questions which does so much to undermine the reputation of parliament.
With my letter I included a copy of an article, published in this week’s House magazine, calling for PMQs to be replaced by calm, dignified, intelligent exchanges.
Today, I received a reply from the Prime Minister.
Dear Paul,
Thank you for your letter of 13 May, and your enclosed article setting out your suggestions for Prime Minister’s Questions, which I have read with interest.
Prime Minister’s Questions is an important part of our modern, democratic process – a way for Members of Parliament to hold the Prime Minister to account on a range of issues and an opportunity for them to raise constituency matters. As you say in your article, suggested reforms have been mooted over the years. Some have worked others but, ultimately, PMQs has a long tradition of robust exchanges and debate and, while we all have a responsibility to ensure that the session is conducted in a respectful manner, the behaviour of Members must remain a matter for The Speaker.
I am sure that you will share your views and ideas with Mr Speaker.
Yours,
David.
His reply is well timed. Today marked the first session of PMQs since the general election – and it reached the dismal standards to which we have become accustomed. The exchanges between party leaders were venomous. The Prime Minister’s answers were not connected to the questions he was asked.
I have taken the Prime Minister’s advice and today written to the Speaker to ask that he look seriously at reinventing PMQs in a way that presents the best of parliament to the public, instead of continuing to represent the worst.
Dear John,
Enclosed is a reply I’ve had from the Prime Minister and a letter I sent him, plus a copy of an article printed in the House magazine this week.
Today’s Prime Minister’s Question Time was down to the usual, low expectations that we have of it. Both in the venom of the exchanges and in the irrelevance of most of the prime ministerial answers to questions posed.
I believe that five years more of this will further demean the reputation of parliament. It should be one of our prime objectives to reinvent the format for Question Time into a robust exchange of views that can still be calm, dignified and intelligent.
Best wishes,
Paul Flynn.
Five more years of the weekly self-humiliation of PMQs will do great damage to the reputation of politics. Failure in the previous five years to reform politics meant that extreme parties gained advantage by criticising the political class and putting distance between themselves and the reputation that politicians have acquired. We have to work as a prime objective to raise the status of parliament and parliamentarians in the eyes of the public.
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