§ Mr. NewensOn a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it possible to give further consideration to the pattern which Prime Minister's Questions seem to take time after time, when hon. Members flit from one subject to another which has nothing whatsoever to do with the subject of the Question? I believe that I am correct in saying that some time ago it was agreed that the Prime Minister would answer a great many more Questions of substance instead of merely dealing with the general Questions which come forward.
Therefore, would it not be timely for us to ask that some further consideration be given to this matter in order to ensure that hon. Members on both sides of the House have a better opportunity to follow through themes which are developed during Question Time? I also believe that many members of the public who listen to what is going on here are completely 244 bemused by the way in which we conduct our affairs and that we ought to do something about it.
§ Mr. SpeakerI am much obliged to the hon. Gentleman for raising that very serious question. I have no doubt that the usual channels will have noted what the hon. Gentleman said.
§ Mr. HefferFurther to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. As regards the last two questions put to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister by the right hon. Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Prior), I should like to ask what exactly is the position. There are many hon. Members on the Government side who are not Members of the Front Bench and who may well have constituency problems, too. Is it not right that right hon. Members should either put down a Private Notice Question or raise the matter with the appropriate Minister and not use their Front-Bench position in the way in which it was used?
§ Mr. SpeakerAs I said to the House, I have tried to help many hon. Members on both sides of the House when I know that they have anxieties about their constituencies.
§ Mr. William HamiltonAbuse.
§ Mr. SpeakerOrder. I must say that both sides of the House benefit from time to time from the efforts on my part to be fair and, above all, that is what I try to be.
§ The Prime MinisterFurther to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. While it may be of benefit to the House, I hope that you will also appreciate in your consideration that it is sometimes an embarrassment to me when I am asked detailed questions on any of the thousands of matters that pass in front of the Government, when it is only by coincidence or good fortune that I may happen to have the information.
I suggest, with all due deference to hon. Members, that it would be better if we reverted in some ways to the earlier practice of addressing far fewer detailed Questions to the Prime Minister, but addressing individual Ministers on the subjects on which hon. Members want replies. This would enable me to give far better consideration to what is addressed to me.
§ Mr. TebbitFurther to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it not a fact that, during the period when the Prime Minister said that he would welcome more Questions on more specific matters to avoid the difficulty of the typical Question about his engagements for the day—a visit to Chingford or something of the sort—he fell into the habit of transferring all those Questions, and that hon. Members who imagined that they had a Question in the first three which were to be reached too often found that that Question had been transferred?
If I may say so, Mr. Speaker, it is not a matter for you and the Chair. It is a matter primarily for the Prime Minister—whose office decides which Questions he will keep and which he will transfer—to sort out the business of how Prime Minister's Question Time proceeds.
§ The Prime MinisterFurther to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. The hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) has touched on a very important matter. I think he will find, when he looks at the Answer which I gave him earlier, that I transferred very few Questions during that period. The truth is—I shall offend the hon. Gentleman by saying this—that Question Time was abused by him and some of his hon. Friends. They were putting down Questions in an attempt to get me to take over ministerial responsibilities, to prove party points in the House, and not genuinely seeking information at Question Time. I know that that statement offends Opposition Members, but I want to try o give reasonable Answers o sensible and well-designed Questions. That was not, however, what the hon. Gentleman tried to do when he put his Questions down.
§ Mr. StoddartFurther to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is not the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) was trying to make that, while we understand your desire to help hon. Members in constituency matters, all hon. Members other than Front Benchers do not have that opportunity, since Front Benchers are called automatically, whereas it is very seldom—and I appreciate that it can only be very seldom—that Back Benchers are called? Was not that the point that my hon. Friend was making?
§ Mr. SpeakerI understand the difficulty, if I may refer to the general problem first. The House knows that I now keep a register of every hon. Member who is called to ask the Prime Minister a supplementary question, because the facts of life are that in recent days far more hon. Members want to be called—and I understand that they want to be called—then it is possible for me to call. In order to ensure justice, I am trying to keep a register.
With regard to the Opposition Front Bench today, it is within the memory of the House that it is a considerable time since I called anyone from that Front Bench other than the Leader of the Opposition during Prime Minister's Questions, as it so happens. That is a fact to be borne in mind.
With regard to the open Question, this has become a problem in this Parliament for the first time. It used not to be. We used to be able to get down Questions to the Prime Minister. We have always had a full Question period to the Prime Minister. But the House itself has to look to that, not me.
§ Mr. TebbitFurther to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate that the Prime Minister is very keen that nobody should make party political points in this House of Commons. He does his best to avoid doing that himself, I am sure. But the point is that if he maintains that Questions about specific matters should be transferred to the Ministers concerned and that we should not ask general Questions of him, it will be difficult to find anything at all that we can ask the Prime Minister. I repeat that it is in his hands to improve the standard in Prime Minister's Question Time if he so wishes, because it is he who has the opportunity to pick the Questions that he wants to answer. That is what he has been doing.
§ Mr. SpeakerI will, of course, call any hon. Member who wishes to raise a point of order, but I suggest that the House would like to move on to the Private Notice Question.
§ Mr. AshtonFurther to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am sorry to prolong these exchanges, but is it not a fact 247 that since the House has been broadcasting Prime Minister's Question Time live, the number of Questions put down has doubled and that this had never occurred before the past few weeks?
§ Mr. SpeakerNot only that, but our own normal Question Time has slowed down by nearly 30 per cent. I understand the reasons, and if I were sitting on the Back Benches, I should probably also want to be heard. But the truth is that we have to adjust to a new dimension in our affairs.
§ Mr. RidleyFurther to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it not the case that the open Question, as you so rightly call it, presents the Prime Minister with extremely great difficulties because he does not know which supplementary questions he will be asked, which is why we have had such an abysmally low level of answers from the Prime Minister? Would it not be for the convenience of the Prime Minister himself if he undertook to accept more specific Questions, because in my own experience, during the period to which he referred, every Question that I put down on a specific topic was transferred, but all the open Questions were kept? He has only himself to blame if he is always being bowled out.