We spend so much time focusing on the performance of party leaders that we often forget to scrutinise the questioners. Here, in an extract from Paul Flynn MP's How To Be An MP, we find out how it should be done. How To Be An MP is currently available for a special price of £8.99 (RRP £12.99). Paul also gives us his verdict on how the MPs performed at today's PMQs (see below)
The class act of the parliamentary circus is Prime Minister’s Question Time (PMQs). Tony Blair said it was ‘the most nerve-racking, discombobulating, nail-biting, bowel-moving, terror-inspiring, courage-draining experience’ in his political life. The probability of an MP winning the lottery for the first question is once every six years. The first question sets the mood that runs through the full half an hour. Opposition MPs try to bowl the Prime Minister a googly. The PM wants a slow ball lobbed from his own side that he can smash into the stratosphere.
‘Number One’ for an Opposition MP is the equivalent of firing the first shot in battle. This is the chance to toss in the verbal hand grenade that will blow away the Government’s defences. The cognoscenti craft their supplementaries with the devotion of poets.
Margaret Thatcher spent eight hours twice a week preparing for two fifteen minute slots. Only the foolish never rehearse their questions on others. All questions can easily crash land. The Prime Minister spots a weakness and flays the questioner. Failure at PMQs is profound, agonising and invokes terminal gloom.
As a fellow junior frontbencher Tony Blair advised me when I had my first Number One question. He told me to spend the whole morning preparing it. ‘Forget the mail. Forget telephone calls. Work on the question.’
Even then failure is possible. Blair ruefully recalled the time he was ‘handbagged’ by Margaret Thatcher. He had decided to surprise her with a question on a long forgotten Government report published exactly a year before his question was due. It was bound to be well forgotten, he thought.
He spent the morning with a copy of the report in the Commons Library, fashioning a blockbuster of a question. Confidently he asked the question, certain that she could not anticipate it.
Coolly Mrs Thatcher took a full copy of the report from her handbag and gave a magisterial reply that left Blair wide-eyed and speechless. Was it brilliant foresight? Or did someone see him doing his homework in the library? Whichever, it proves that PMQs is professional warfare and no place for the lazy or amateurish.
The champion questioner knows the key ingredients are preparation and delivery. Devise half a dozen possible wordings before the day on issues that people are talking about on the streets. Be prepared to ditch them all for the news item that breaks at half past eleven on your D day.
PMQs fall into the five categories: shroud-waver, shock and awe, current mania, parish pump and the immediately topical.
Shroud-wavers seize the sympathy of the House in the first sentence. Afghanistan deaths or serious injuries, feared diseases, vulnerable people suffering abuse, cheated pensioners – these are topics that will always silence the Chamber.
John Woodcock asked David Cameron:
After four years, fifteen-year-old Alice Pyne, who lives in my constituency, is losing her battle against cancer. She has posted online her ‘bucket list’, a simple wish list of things that she wants to do before it is too late. She wants to meet Take That, to own a purple iPod and to enter her dog in a Labrador show, but at the top of the list is a call for everyone to sign up to be a bone marrow donor. Will the Prime Minister work with the Leader of the Opposition and me to find out why too few people are currently on that life-saving register?
Cameron’s answer was serious and detailed, indicating advanced notice of the question. This was a rare civilised and constructive exchange that possibly will benefit patients.
Smart Alec shroud-waving will provoke combative responses. They may be politically gratifying but they are usually destructive. David Cameron once asked a combative and unanswerable one while in Opposition that had a re-usable formula: ‘What is the PM most proud of – the £1bn wasted on the Millennium Dome or the £1m bung from Bernie Ecclestone?’
Shock and awe are the questions that cannot be anticipated – even after eight hours of preparation. Labour’s Gordon Prentice rocked Blair back on his heels with ‘A decade ago the Prime Minister won the Labour leadership on a manifesto promising change and renewal. Now, after seven years of Government, can he think of a single dramatic act that would make the British public sit up and take notice?’ Philosopher and lorry driver Tony McWalter established his niche in politics with this brain teaser. He asked Blair ‘...could he briefly outline his political philosophy?’ Blair, the virtuoso of PMQs, was thrown twice.
Latching on to the tabloid issue of the day will guarantee the subject and the questioner a reward of ephemeral publicity. Any issue will do as long as it is likely to be of interest until the next day’s papers are written. The tabloids will never let you down with their ceaseless flow of scares and alarms. Hamster flu pandemic terror, EU plans square apples, breathing causes cancer, asylum seekers eat pets – whatever the issue, if it’s worrying the papers the PM must have a plan of action to stop it.
The safest and least demanding will be a crisis affecting only the square mile of Votingham. The parochialism should not be revealed until the final sentence, otherwise the Chamber will lose interest and return to hyper-babble that will drown your words. If a half-sensible answer is expected, the PM must be warned in advance. The Votingham Argus cannot resist a headline – ‘PM acts on Votingham scandal.’
The availability of electronic instant news is a gift for those with strong nerves and skills in impromptu oratory. News will break after the PM has started answering questions. He is likely to be knocked off his perch and baffled by a demand that he provides his detailed policy on an event he does not know about. When Alun Michael resigned as First Secretary of the Welsh Assembly the news was broadcast to all Labour MPs’ pagers. Tony Blair was caught out, stating his full confidence in Alun’s future in the job. The PM appeared to be the only Labour MP without a pager. Breaking news is now distributed at lightning speed via BlackBerries and iPads.
Meticulous presentation is essential for the television audience of millions. Write the question out. Ruthlessly edit out any syllable that is not crucial. Try out the question on friends. Don’t accept polite praise. If their faces do not light up at the final ‘punch’-word in the punch-line, start again. Ask them to anticipate the Prime Minister’s reply. Then amend your question to crush his answer. If the final version exhilarates them, it will impress the House. Get it right. Your party and voters depend on you. You may not get another chance for many years.
The classic PMQ survives. It has three parts in three sentences. Kerry McCarthy scored with a memorable one just before the student demonstration on fees:
1. Seize the attention of the House:
As someone who claims to be an avid fan of The Smiths...
2. Make a powerful new point:
...the Prime Minister will no doubt be rather upset this week that both Morrissey and Johnny Marr have banned him from liking them. The Smiths are, of course, the archetypal students’ band.
3. Pose an unanswerable question:
If he wins tomorrow night’s vote [on tuition fees], what songs does he think students will be listening to? ‘Miserable Lie’, ‘I Don’t Owe You Anything’ or ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’?
Another model question was asked by Nick Ainger to John Major, two days after John Redwood’s bid to oust Major as Leader of the Tory Party failed. It was the topical issue that was the sure-fire way to grab the attention of a noisy distracted House.
1. Attention:
Given the description by John Redwood of the Prime Minister’s leadership as ‘uncertainty based on indecision’...
2. Point:
...is it the job of the Deputy Prime Minister now to take the decisions?
3. Unanswerable Question:
Or has the Prime Minister not decided yet?
The Prime Minister’s answer to Nick Ainger’s question was a rambling prepared attack on the conduct of Tony Blair’s election, with two verbatim quotes from Max Madden and John Prescott. The logical link between question and answer was at its most tenuous. Nick Ainger won by a mile.
Ian Lucas says that he also uses this formula, as his question proves:
1. Attention:
The Prime Minister has described hospices as one of the great successes of the big society...
2. Point:
...So why, as a result of his Government’s increases in VAT and cuts in gift aid, is Nightingale House hospice in my constituency paying an extra £20,000 to his friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer this year?
3. Unanswerable Question:
Will he give it the money back?
The picador-brief, tweet-length questions are piercingly effective. Tory Michael Spicer plagued Gordon Brown with strikes that left Gordon no thinking time to frame an answer. Spicer asked, ‘What is the economic theory behind an end to boom and bust?’ Later he queried, ‘Now we face stagflation what’s he going to do about it?’ As Brown’s premiership drew to a close, Spicer asked, ‘Will the Prime Minister confirm that he will soldier on to the bitter end?’ All three wounded.
He is not known for his brevity, but the question that floored David Cameron in his marathon session on the English riots was Dennis Skinner’s: ‘The Prime Minister has been asked a simple question twice and refused to answer it: as Prime Minister, did he ever discuss the question of the BSkyB bid with News International at all the meetings they attended?’
Usually a PM can forge a mildly convincing link between question and answer from his lengthy prepared notes. Hours are devoted each week to anticipating subjects that will be raised. Manifold damaging facts about the constituency and interests of the questioning MP are assembled for the red folder. The Prime Minister’s red book is crammed with annotated information, laced with quotes, witty retorts and killer facts.
The delivery of the question depends on the strength of your natural voice, dramatic timing and, often neglected, positioning your voice immediately under a microphone. Many great questions have been ruined by Members standing equidistant from two microphones. This is a particular problem for female Members and men with weak or shrill voices. The timbre of thin voices cannot be adequately amplified by the sound system. The questions disappear, drowned by the disproportionately loud background babble.
Government backbenchers have a relatively easy task. They can contact 10 Downing Street or the whips at 9 a.m. and ask what question the PM would like to be asked that afternoon. The PM’s minions are always pleased to oblige.
It’s a simple matter of standing up straight and asking the question nicely. Remember to be awestruck or titillated with amusement when the Prime Minister gives the answer that the same minions have scripted for him.
But it can fall apart. Everyone is subject to a possible three-second seize-up of the brain receptors. Have a parachute handy. Prop a large lettered prompt on the bench in front of you, have one held up by a friend or write notes on a gesturing hand. The luckless Sebastian Coe endured seconds of hell when he dried up at his first PMQs.
A question may flop in the House but succeed on television and radio. It is easy to become dispirited by the catcalls or indifference of political hacks doing their duty. One former Lib Dem leader, Charles Kennedy, endured a weekly purgatory. He said of his scalding: ‘What may seem flat or drowned out in the Chamber can come over as the sole, sane voice in the asylum to the real world outside watching on television.’ Iraq gave me my opportunity. We were asking the awkward questions of Tony Blair that the Tories could not. And the House wanted to hear his answers. At one stage I felt dispirited, until a senior Cabinet minister approached me and encouraged me to persist. ‘You’re asking the questions half the Cabinet would love to ask – but can’t.’
The controversy of PMQs continues. John Major announced when he first became PM that he wanted to get rid of the ‘Yah/Boo’ at PMQs. It was to be a civilised exchange of views. To my great regret I co-operated with him. I had question Number One drawn for PMQs. In the spirit of the new arrangements, I sent a copy of the question to Downing Street a few days early. It was a reasonable request for action on the then future scandal of mis-sold personal pensions. The answer that John Major gave me was described in a Times editorial as ‘a typical civil service briefing with a party political sting in the tail’. He gave his ‘Boo’ when I had not given my ‘Yah’.
Speaker John Bercow has called for ‘more scrutiny, more civility, less noise and less abuse masquerading as inquiry’. He described PMQs as ‘a litany of attacks, sound bites and planted questions from across the spectrum’, and proclaimed that ‘if it is scrutiny at all, then it is scrutiny by screech’.
Cardiff West MP Kevin Brennan has a recipe for reform: ‘If there was a hooter at the clerk’s desk that sounded every time the Prime Minister made a factual error, that might help to prevent the patronising of people who are just putting him straight with the facts.’
Some disagree. Stephen Pound says: ‘Never, in my fourteen years in this House, have I ever heard any constituent complaining that they despise shouting at PMQs.’ The Daily Mirror’s associate editor, Kevin Maguire, ventures: ‘I don’t think the public would watch it if it were a Socratic debate.’
‘Yah/Boo’ is the future.
So, how did MPs do with asking their questions today PMQs? Paul gives his verdict:
Today was the PMQs of the shriek.
Female MPs have problems because of the range and timbre of their voices. Maggie Thatcher changed hers from annoying whine to sultry purr. Today the unknown Tory MP Anne Marie Morris startled the Commons with her non-house-trained banshee. She had her left arm in a sling.
She began with a high-pitch orgasmic shriek, turned red and increased the volume. Incomprehensible, painful and as useful as a fire alarm at emptying a room, her voice terrified the Chamber. She waved her damaged arm in a threatening gesture before reaching the climatic final sounds that only dogs could hear.
A heckler from the Labour side bellowed; ‘Next time, get the whips to break her other arm’.