When was pmqs first televised

But where did this leave Parliament, which politicians still regarded as the proper centre of politics? The BBC had long wanted to broadcast direct from Westminster. But even in the s, a majority of MPs were still reluctant to let in either microphones or cameras. But a growing number in the Commons were campaigning for change.

At the start of the 70s, with industrial strife, conflict in Northern Ireland, tensions over immigration, end economic crises at every turn, they envisaged a Britain of deepening divides.

Studio debates would be increasingly fractious and harder to manage. How to proceed? After the Election, there was a more willing generation at Westminster. It looked as if the best hope of the broadcasters now lay with the much less obtrusive medium of radio. On 24 February a Commons vote, while rejecting cameras, finally approved the presence of microphones. But in June there was a month-long experimental period. Inside the BBC, political reporters were delighted. Listeners to Radio 4, many of whom were having their regular afternoon plays disrupted, were less convinced.

Sometimes they were simply bored. Behind the scenes, however, there was growing momentum for radio to be joined by TV. This next interview offers a fascinating insight into why, in , it was the Lords rather than the Commons, which first voted to let in the cameras. What are the roles of back benchers?

How do MPs help constituents? How do MPs represent interest groups? What was the effect of the coalition on the UK parliament? What are the Parliament Act and Salisbury Convention? Does the House of Lords scrutinise effectively?

Have there been any significant House of Lords reform? They have varied the length of time, day and frequency of Question Time over the decades but in essence it remains an opportunity for MPs to question the Prime Minister. In it was decided that the 79 year-old Sir Winston Churchill would answer questions only on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Successive prime ministers continued the convention of answering questions on Tuesdays and Thursdays. However, the fact that the Prime Minister only answered a few questions led to the Procedure Committee recommending in that 15 minutes should be allocated to the Prime Minister to answer questions.

The recommendation was not implemented until July On Tuesday 18 July , Harold Macmillan answered questions for 15 minutes between 3. The experiment was made permanent on Tuesday 24 October Prime ministers continued to answer questions on Tuesdays and Thursdays until In PMQs began to be televised alongside other proceedings. The first Prime Minister to face the cameras was Margaret Thatcher but she left office the next year.

It became midday — Hon John Bercow, a champion for backbenchers, often let the session run over, sometimes by 15 minutes if he felt not enough questions got asked due to interruption and heckling. In modern times, PMQs has on occasion been suspended. PMQs is still something journalists, hacks and the Westminster bubble like to pour over but really it has become a sensationalist test of presentation and style. The level of scrutiny, especially if it is your first PMQs as a new leader, is intense.

You will be assessed on your:. Sadly, many of the questions are loaded to make the Government of any party look good. Even sadder, is many of the answers are stock lines, usually blaming their predecessors and point scoring. It is more a test of projecting confidence and a competition, usually won by the Conservatives, over whose backbenchers make the most noise. Regardless, this piece of theatre sees the Chamber of the House of Commons packed week after week.

This happens rarely enough to keep it interesting. It can be a test for these people too. You want to be good, but not better in style and wit. Thatcher, who once scornfully remarked that many of her EU colleagues barely knew where their parliaments were, prided herself in detailed knowledge — "from some local hospital to a great international issue". It was a good test of the alertness and efficiency of the cabinet minister in charge of the department whether information arrived late — or arrived at all; whether it was accurate, wrong, comprehensible or riddled with jargon," she wrote in her memoirs.

Few prime ministers have been as driven or domineering as Thatcher, none since Churchill in his wartime supremacy. Even during a war the pace was more leisurely than the globally wired world of Before the s MPs asked questions of ministers without prior notice before the start of the daily agenda, with the PM treated no differently from any other minister.

As a gesture to Gladstone then 72 his questions were placed at the end of the list in to allow him to arrive late. But that meant they were rarely reached. In they were answered only when questions — ever more were being asked — reached No 51; after , they were addressed at No 45, a procedure that survived until when PMQs were restricted to Tuesdays and Thursdays only to assist the ailing Churchill Even then several cabinet ministers were still expected to be around to answer questions every day as they had been years before: old-fashioned accountability, but time-consuming.

Nowadays each team does up to an hour once a month. In the early days, exchanges were more succint. Back on 6 June the Tory philosopher-PM Arthur Balfour took four questions, mostly about imperial defence Germany was menacing , but usually replied that it would serve "no public object" if he shared his thoughts; or that it would take a whole speech to reply; or that the war minister had already covered the point. By June , not much had changed. Then it was the opposition's deputy leader who asked Labour's prime minister, the famously terse Clement Attlee, for a statement on the London dock strike on five successive days — and got one too in brief exchanges over five or six minutes today such an exchange would last half an hour.

It did not stop Labour's Bessie Braddock accusing Attlee of "complacency" over the strike. Rudeness and rowdiness is nothing new. MPs could be bitchy without the stimulus of TV, which makes for more noise and crafted soundbites but also has an inhibiting effect on more outrageous exhibitionism when MPs remember voters are watching. In another Labour troublemaker, Desmond Donnelly, rudely asked Macmillan if there had ever been another PM "so gorged on his own words".

Backbenchers with a talent for PMQs are invaluable. Labour's Tam Dalyell's supplementary question once consisted of a devastating single word "Why? Leftwinger Dennis Skinner's timing for a witty heckle waiting for a pause before shouting could be brilliant. After Major later acquired lame-duck status Skinner would mutter: "Quack, quack.

Personal grudges have always given an edge to PMQs. Macmillan despised Labour's then leader, Hugh Gaitskell, as a weak, priggish public school socialist. In return, Gaitskell thought him dishonest. For his part, the grudge-minded Ted Heath despised Wilson as devious, just as Foot and Kinnock genuinely disliked Thatcher, who thought neither rival was up to the job. Hague's wit and speed disconcerted him at first, but once he got a line on him Hague had "good jokes, bad policies" Blair reasserted himself until Cameron arrived to tell him: "You were the future once.

By this time, the twice-weekly sessions at 3.