Beyond the chamber

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-parliaments-36055800

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Politicians have a range of tools at their disposal to hold the government's feet to the fire. From the barbed criticisms at Prime Minister's Questions to the humble Early Day Motion, there are hundreds of ways to extract the truth from ministers.

This week, BBC Parliament is looking at a written question.

Away from the main chamber this week, an interesting conversation took place between MPs and government departments over driverless cars.

Two Conservative MPs had separately asked questions addressing the future of vehicle technology, and how a UK with driverless cars might look.

Conservative MP Royston Smith asked a series of written questions about the potential for driverless cars to improve road safety, energy efficiency and reduce traffic management.

Driverless cars already exist. And in February a driverless car project was given the green light in Coventry, following successful trials of self-driving "pods" in Milton Keynes last year.

Fully autonomous cars that take us from A to B through cities and down long motorways are just on the horizon.

Responding to Mr Smith's question, Transport Minister Andrew Jones said that the "autonomous vehicles could potentially have significant impacts", which is why the Department for Transport has committed £20m to researching autonomous vehicles.

While not addressing driverless cars directly, Conservative Mark Pritchard used a written question to strike a cautious tone, asking the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills about "improvements to in-vehicle technology to prevent vehicle hacking".

As more micro-chips and sensors are added to our vehicles, they become increasingly susceptible to cyber attacks.

A restricted FBI report obtained by the Guardian highlighted a risk that criminals may be able to turn autonomous cars into weapons, overriding safety features to ignore traffic lights and speed limits or programme explosive packed cars to become self-driving bombs.

Business Minister Anna Soubry wrote back that the "government is working with industry to ensure" all new cars are built to be "secure by design".

She added that the "recent Strategic Defence Spending Review, and the recently announced National Cyber Security Centre" should consider potential vulnerabilities in the automotive sector.

Much like oral questions, which are asked directly in the House of Commons and so tend to get more coverage, written questions are a way an MP can expose government failings, raise an issue with ministers or put government policy on the record.

Unlike oral questions, there's no need for an MP to sit in the chamber for hours and hours waiting for their turn to speak - and the answers are available online for all to see.

However, they are often not as high profile as oral questions as they are not asked in the televised House of Commons chamber where ministers can be put on the spot.

There's a fully searchable database of written questions for the 2015-16 parliamentary session, and historical written questions can be found in Hansard.