Written questions are an essential tool – rationing them would diminish Parliament’s purpose
4 min read
The recent publication of the Procedure Committee report on Written Parliamentary Questions in September has thrust a comparatively little-known aspect of parliamentary procedure a little closer to the spotlight.
Not quite in it, but this has the potential to come under its full glare should some of the committee’s proposed changes be implemented.
Written Parliamentary Questions are an essential tool for Members of Parliament, critical in gaining information that is yet to be volunteered, clarifying ministerial comments and media statements and scrutinising the government with a level of minutiae that is not always possible in the House of Commons Chamber, or certainly not if you want an actual answer rather than a ministerial soundbite.
As a backbench MP, particularly in opposition, opportunities to ask questions of the government are vanishingly rare. To illustrate the point, one only needs to look at how difficult it is to ask a question in the Chamber. Since the start of this parliamentary session in May I’ve tabled 62 oral questions, of which just two have been selected to be asked – a strike rate of just over three per cent. When as an MP you have a 97 per cent failure rate in gaining opportunities to ask questions of the government, you are forced to explore the other avenues available to you. This is where Written Parliamentary Questions pick up the slack.
But the government appears to want to curb this avenue of parliamentary scrutiny. The Labour-dominated Procedure Committee has made a number of recommendations that seek to restrict Members’ ability to hold the government to account.
The machinery of government doesn’t stop when Parliament is in recess. Throughout the summer we saw the new government make announcement after announcement, release statements, give speeches and media interviews; all without the ability to scrutinise any of it in Parliament. Given the pace of the news cycle, conflict in Ukraine and Iran, domestic drought and wildfires, there were any number of issues which required MPs to be able to challenge government decision making, and yet we saw the facility for doing so on a six-week hiatus.
Inter alia, the Procedure Committee has recommended MPs be restricted to just 10 written questions for every full week Parliament is in recess, 70 to 90 questions fewer each week than when Parliament is in session, and these cannot be tabled until the end of the recess. To put that into context, there are multiple government departments that are yet to respond to questions I tabled during summer recess, some two months ago, those being questions relating to issues from earlier in the summer. Waiting three months for the government to answer a question is frankly unacceptable, yet who enforces their lack of response? What is the penalty for ignoring scrutiny? It would have been useful if the Labour-led Procedure Committee had investigated the inability of the government to respond to scrutiny rather than recommend limiting MPs’ ability to hold them to account.
The machinery of government doesn’t stop when Parliament is in recess
A new government that has seen just 20-odd parliamentary sitting days in the first 100 of a new Prime Minister can ill-afford to be seen to be shying away from opposition backbenchers.
Written Parliamentary Questions are a powerful tool in the limited arsenal MPs have available to them. With the opportunity to ask questions to ministers in the Chamber becoming increasingly rare, and with speeches usually capped at just three minutes, if you are selected to speak at all, the move to ration our ability to ask questions of the government via other means further diminishes the purpose of Westminster.
With a government that appears open to the introduction of proportional representation, seeking to make sweeping changes via the Modernisation Committee and now looking to stifle scrutiny, it is easy to see the influence MPs are able to exert slowly ebbing away.
This is one decision that should certainly come under scrutiny from MPs.
Ben Obese-Jecty is Conservative MP for Huntingdon and shadow minister for defence procurement
