APPENDIX 1
Letter from Mr Graham Allen MP to the
Chairman of the Committee
Would you ask the Procedure Committee to look
at the question of the notice period for oral questions? It is
a nonsense in this age of communication that 14 days' notice is
required by Government. If it were reduced to, say, two working
days, questions could be far more topical and Parliament a little
more relevant.
The Committee may wish to consider allowing
open questions with two days' notice or abolishing notice entirely.
This would make questions far more political. Colleagues with
detailed or specific questions could ask written questions or
write to Ministers. The valuable hour for questions would then
focus on the vital issues of the day; Ministers instead of pretending
to know each microscopic detail would be held to account for their
policies. Colleagues could draw a ballot as now and have two questions
or alternatively notify the Speaker that they wanted to ask a
question. If colleagues had a technical or detailed point, they
could of course give notice to a Minister that they intended to
raise an issue so that he or she could get briefed and give a
full detailed answer.
This is Parliament's Question Time (and not
Government's) and we need to make it more topical and timely otherwise
we will continue to abdicate our responsibilities to the Today
Programme or Newsnight.
10 September 2001
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