Questions to the Prime Minister.
| Ed Milliband |
 |
| David Cameron |
Questions to the Prime
Minister. The weekly excursion into the world of “Yaboo” politics
where each side of the House of Commons can indulge themselves in
mindless baying and snide remarks from one side, no doubt shouted in
order to provoke reaction from the other side or to draw the
“referee” Mr. Speaker to intervene with “Order, Order” or a
phrase that Mr Bercow has taken to using over recent years of “The
honourable member should calm down”.
Questions to the Prime
Minister now demonstrates for around 30 minutes each Wednesday,
everything that is wrong with British politics and why, generally,
there is such disillusionment amongst many people in this country
with the political structure. Scoring cheap political points or
“landing blows” on your political opponents is not the way that
we should expect our elected representatives to behave. In fact I
would propose a plague on all your houses.
Prime Minister's Question's could, and should, be
a very useful tool in the democratic process of this country and
could provide the opportunity for backbenchers to interrogate the
Prime Minister on his, or her, actions. All too often it becomes a
forum for “planted questions” to be asked, giving the Prime
Minister of the day, the opportunity to either goad the leader of the
opposition or to “free publicity” to some new government
proposals.
Yesterday's questions
(Wednesday 27th February) were no exception to the usual circus.
Cameron not answering Milliband's questions, except by asking
questions of his own and Milliband pursuing the cul de sac of, “Will
he answer, Yes or No?”
This general preoccupation
with point scoring amongst the members, leads to missing many issues
which should be seized upon and expanded at the time. For example, in
response some 13 minutes into the session from a question from Gordon
Banks which related to food banks, the Prime Minister pointed out
that the use of foodbanks “increased 10 fold under the last Labour
Government”. A misleading response, seeking to score points and
deflect from the issue.
The truth, which Cameron
conveniently avoided in his answer is that in 2010 there were 79
foodbanks in the UK. Today there are more than 250.
Or to put it another way
the number of people relying on foodbanks in 2008 t0 2009 was 26,000.
In 2012 the figure was 128,607 and the estimated number for 2013 is
predicted to be in excess of 200,000.
This fact should have been
taken up at the time, or at least reported in the media, but as usual
the issue became lost in the general “ya ya ya ya” from the Tory
benches and the “No, rubbish nay” counters from the Labour
benches.
All in all, an important
subject to many people, but not it seems to the members of House of
Commons (or the reporters from the media).It must be many years since
a politician promised that the days of “Yaboo” politics in the
House of Commons were over and that business would be conducted on a
more professional level. A week is a long time in politics, and this
promise has gone the same way as all the others.
A plague on all your
houses.
Comments
Post a Comment