Last night I watched last Wednesday’s ‘Prime Minister’s Question Time’. I was fascinated but the interplay of the two sides of the House of Commons. I wish we had something like that here. I’d like to see the President (and not just the current one) put on the spot sometime. Politics in the US (at least in public) is very severe. No bad word is spoken.
I had some questions, though, that hopefully you can answer:
Is there a similar question session in the House of Lords;
Is the PM presented with the questions ahead of time? Several times I saw him refer to notes on his tablet;
Are normal Commons sessions like that or are they more formal? There was a lot of shouting, Yeaing, Naying, and did I hear someone booing?
Is there any order to selecting the questioners? It appeared that a whole bunch of people on both sides and the Speaker would pick one. Do they submit their names as questioners before hand?
What is the title of the Speaker. Here it would be Speaker of the House.
Incidentally I loved the use of the term ‘Honourable Friend’ (see I spelled it right) among two people who, pretty obviously, couldn’t stand each other. Similar terms are used here, too.
Btw the speaker is also supposed to become neutral when he takes up his post, by convention people dont run against him in his seat so its a job for life or until you get bored of it. In Congress I understand the speaker is partisan and this reflects on the way people are chosen for committees etc.
Further on the “honourable” point: “My honourable friend” is used to describe members of the same party as the person speaking; members of other parties are “the honourable member”. There are variations depending on the status of the person being described: members of the Privy Council are “Right Honourable” and QCs are “honourable and learned” ( at least in theory ).
I noticed that the first questioner simply said ‘Question 1’ and sat down. Tony then responded with his schedule.
The Speaker of the House is elected by the majority party and is subject to change, but I don’t know whether any have changed mid-term. Certainly, though, when the majority party changes, the Speaker changes.
Also note that the PM only lists his engagements for the day the first time he’s asked. After that he just says “I refer my Honourable Friend to the reply I gave some moments ago”.
If he had to list his engagements every time then it would get boring (and time consuming).
Can I beg forebearance from the moderators of this forum if, purely in the interests of illustrating the above points, I link to this delightful discussion.
In the run-up to the war, one of the broadsheets (I think either the Independent or the Guardian) ran an enlargement of a photograph they’d snatched of the folder being carried by a civil servant to the car outside No. 10 en route to that afternoon’s session. The point being you could read most of the labels for the different subdivisions of the notes and thus infer what Downing Street had guessed was going to come up and/or was worrying them.
As you’d expect, Gerald Kaufman’s How to be a Minister (1980; Faber, 1997) goes into how you can prepare for ministerial questions in some detail. It’s an excellent read in general for anybody interested in how Parliament works.
Yes - but like everything in the Lords, it’s far more sedate
Sort of, the PM gets to see the order paper, but nearly all the Questions on the order paper will be either “Has the PM any plans to visit my constituency?” or “Can the PM give his engagements for the day?” These are deliberately vague questions asked in order to allow an open ended supplemental question. Occassionally an MP will ask a proper question on the order paper, but this is very unusual and is normally only used for serious constituency matters which actually require an answer instead of argy-bargy. In practice of course, Labour MPs tell the PM what questions they are going to ask (and in many cases get given planted questions to ask).
The PM’s notes are prepared by his advisors to give him an answer to any question they think might come up. If, for example, the stories in the news are Foundation Hospitals and Weapons of Mass Destruction, Blair will guess that it is likely that IDS will ask questions on these subjects, and prepare answers accordingly. Similarly, they check the names on the order paper and, if an MP is known to have an interest in a particular subject, they will provide a briefing on it/
Normal Commons sessions are much more well behaved. In fact, you’ll normally only have fourty or fifty MPs in there during a normal debate. Any time the chamber is full though it’s like that (with a few exceptions; resignation speeches, for example, are supposed to be heard in silence)
MPs who ask questions are selected in a number of ways, firstly the Leader of the Opposition gets 6 questions automatically, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats gets 2.
(Interesting that the Parliament site says only three or four supplementals http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/p01.pdf - certainly in practice the Leader of the Opposition always asks six Questions.)
Questions on the order paper (the “what are the Prime Minister’s Engagements for the day?”) are tabled in advance and the MPs at the top of the list are selected randomly. These questions are not actually asked (the MP will just yell out “Number Two! Mr Speaker”) and then proceed to their supplemental question.
Every MP on the order paper is entitled to a supplemental question - normally this can be on any subject under the sun. Once they have asked that, the Speaker can call other MPs to ask supplemental questions on the same topic - this is why other MPs stand up and try to catch the Speaker’s eye. This is the difference between “What are the PM’s appointments?” and “Will the PM visit my constituency?” - with the first one, other MPs can ask supplementals on any subject as it is completely open, the second type of question prevents this, as the question would have to be tied to the first member’s constituency.
The title is just “The Speaker”, though they will sometimes be referred to as the “Speaker of the House of Commons” for reasons of clarity. Note it is a completely non-party-political role, the Speaker does not change when the party in power changes, nor are they always drawn from the ruling party. Speaker Boothroyd was a former Labour MP, but became Speaker under a Conservative Government. Speaker Thomas was also a former Labour MP, but remained Speaker under Baroness Thatcher.
Given that he can easily be overlooked by members of his own party, can our American friends be expected to know who IDS is?
I’m confident that urban1z was referring to the American equivalent, not making claims about Thomas, Boothroyd or Martin etc. FWIW, the Speaker traditionally prides himself (there has only been one female Speaker) on recognising all 660 MPs by face and knowing which constituencies they represent so he can formally identify them when they enter a debate.
Now I see it was the original poster writing about the Speaker - you’re obviously right everton, but since I made the mistake I can only plead in mitigation that I was ensuring that others didn’t make the same mistake as me!
Having been involved in contributing to more than one briefing paper for the PM in my days as a quasi-civil servant, I can tell you that at least some questions are indeed submitted well in advance, particularly those requiring numerical data (which, after all, no one expects the PM to have memorized). How he presents the numbers he’s given to Parliament is entirely up to Alasta…erm, the Prime Minister.
I used to co-ordinate the preparation of replies to PQs (parliamentary questions) for an Irish government minister and I still prepare replies for questions relevant to my current work area. One thing which may not be apparent is that the vast majority of questions are never answered on the floor of the House. A lottery is drawn for the order oral questions are answered on the floor. The majority of questions will not be reached in the time available and a written reply is supplied, which appears on the record of the House. Given that Ministers only are only required to answer oral questions about once a month, most questions are submitted for written reply in the first place to ensure a quick reply. Obviously, supplementary questions do not arise when a written reply is provided. For oral replies, us civil servants try to anticipate supplementary questions and provide appropriate briefing.
In Ireland, three working days notice is given for written questions and four for orals. In the intervening period, questions can be transferred to another Minister (if the area involved is not the responsibility of the Minister to which the question was addressed) or disallowed on the decision of the Speaker on a number of specific grounds. Typical disallowance grounds are that the question is a repeat (asked within the previous two weeks), is the responsibility of an agency that doesn’t report directly to the Minister or is asking for a statement of legislation.
Thanks to all who responded. I have a much better understanding of the system now. I was surprised that ‘Question Time’ only dates to 1961. I know that many parlimentary traditions date back centuries. Does anyone know why ‘Question Time’ started?
Again, I would like to see something similar to this in the US, but it would depend very much on the president. Some would be more capable of speaking extemporaneously than others. Tony does a very good job, even admitting that he wasn’t familar with a subject and promising to look into it. I’m afraid that, here, a bullshit answer would be given.
ha-ha n. a ditch with a wall on its inner side below ground level, forming a boundary to a park or garden without interrupting the view.
So it’s a way of building a fence (often for sheep) without ruining the view out one’s window (if one happened to own a bloody enormous country estate, that is) by putting the fence below the sightline. Capability Brown incorporated these into some of his landscape designs.
Terry Pratchett fans will also be familiar with B.S. Johnson’s 50-foot deep version of this, the “ho-ho”.
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