The Professor Will See You Now: Conflict at PMQs
Illustration: Tracy Worrall
4 min read
In an occasional series, Professor Philip Cowley offers a political science lesson for The House’s readers. Here: conflict at PMQs
Prime Minister’s Question Time began as a regular fixed slot in the parliamentary schedule in 1961. It is simultaneously the most high-profile and widely disliked part of parliamentary life.
Periodically, there are pledges to change its culture and make it less adversarial, but this never lasts, and behaviour always reverts. To be upfront about my own biases, I can’t stand it: I only watch when obliged and always feel dirty afterwards.
Yet the evidence that it is harmful to the standing of parliament – as frequently claimed – is remarkably slim. The last Speaker used to complain that he received “bucket loads” of letters complaining about it yet when his correspondence on the subject was released, it became clear it was a fairly small bucket: about six letters per session of PMQs.
It’s Punch and Judy politics, but people did at least want to watch
There is even research showing that parliaments with these sort of adversarial exchanges have higher levels of engagement than others; maybe it’s Punch and Judy politics, but people did at least want to watch Punch and Judy – better that than to be dull.
And another piece of experimental research – in which respondents were shown clips from PMQs to test their reactions – found that while people didn’t especially like what they saw, it did not reduce their satisfaction with politics and could in fact boost “internal efficacy” (that is, people’s levels of confidence in their political comprehension).
A fascinating piece of recent research places PMQs into a comparative context, comparing behaviour in the United Kingdom with that in Australia, Canada, and Ireland, all of which have plenary sessions in which the prime minister can be directly questioned. These have varying procedures and practices, which produce different types of behaviour, but it is striking that whichever measure of conflict is analysed the UK does not come out as the worst.
Take, for example, the extent to which the Speaker has to intervene: to call for order, challenge the nature of questions, or expel members. Out of the four parliaments studied, the Australian one comes out the worst behaved – with an average of 12.8 interventions by the Speaker in every session of questions. Australians play politics rough is perhaps not a novel research discovery, but some of the figures are still remarkable; these interventions included 39 ordering people from the chamber; the other three parliaments totalled zero expulsions. Overall, Ireland came a distant second (3.2 interventions per session), the UK third (2.5).
The research also examined the nature of the questions asked. Slightly to my surprise, Canada – not perhaps known for its adversarial politics – came top, with close on 80 per cent of questions being conflictual in nature, whereas the figures for the UK and Australia were nearer 40 per cent. Ah, you may say, but I bet in those countries parliamentarians focused their attacks on policy rather than the trivia that dominates PMQs. I bring bad news. In all four cases, the vast majority of conflictual questions focused on personalities and parties, not policy.
This piece of research examined one premiership in each country – the UK data drew on 2010-2015 – and over time the precise nature of the figures will differ (different Speakers, different party leaders, different circumstances and so on) but one general conclusion seems clear: if you have an open, plenary session in which the prime minister can be questioned, it will be adversarial and conflictual. It might differ in exactly which bits are conflictual or how – in the UK, for example, most of the Speaker’s interventions were about what the paper terms “contextual conflict” (poor behaviour, heckling and so on), whereas in Ireland most were about the content of the questions being asked. But conflict in some form seems to be ever-present.
Maybe it’s a feature, not a bug.
Your further reading for this week: A Convery et al, Questioning scrutiny: the effect of Prime Minister’s Questions on citizen efficacy and trust in parliament, The Journal of Legislative Studies (2021); R Serban, Conflictual behaviour in legislatures: Exploring and explaining adversarial remarks in oral questions to prime ministers, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations (2023)
