Ah! I begin to understand. So to answer Ascenray’s question, the “Number Seven” is citing one of a list of standard questions that always get asked, and which Mr. Blair had already answered in that session, merely to get a formality out of the way so that he could ask his “real” question, which is a supplementary question that he couldn’t ask right off the bat.
Do I have this right?
Actually visiting the House of Commons is quite entertaining.
I went there one evening, probably around 6pm. The gallery was open to the public and you could sit up there and look down into the chamber.
The evening I was there it was fairly quiet. There were maybe 30-40 Members of Parliament involved in a rather quiet debate. At the end of the debate the Speaker calls for a vote. If the show of hands is not decisive, then a ‘real’ vote takes place. At this time, all of the MPs file out of the chamber. The division bell (great name for an album :D) is rung to inform all the MPs that a vote is about to take place.
The MPs then all file back and go out again through the doors either to the left or the right of the Speaker. Thus registering their Yea or Nay vote. The amusing thing is that it is not only the MPs who were originally in the chamber. It is all the MPs who were anywhere in the House of Commons. Thus I saw hundreds of MPs, some in dinner jackets, even Margaret Thatcher in some sort of cocktail type dress, filing through the chamber to register their vote.
After the vote had finished, a different group of 30-40 MPs came back into the chamber to begin a new debate.
As has already been mentioned most of the real debating/arguement goes on in committees. What takes place in the chamber is really the public airing of the points that have been agreed upon.