David Cameron finds a use for Prime Minister's Questions

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33361751

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He famously said he hated the "Punch and Judy" aspect of Prime Minister's Questions - but David Cameron now says he sees the value of the weekly Commons shouting matches.

Not least because it's a good chance for him to find out what his government is up to.

Asked on Wednesday by Labour MP Graham Allen to defend PMQs, Mr Cameron said there was plenty that was wrong with it, but "it puts the prime minister on the spot to the public".

So far so predictable. But then he went further: "It also puts the government on the spot to the prime minister, needing to know issues right across every department before coming to the House at 12 o'clock on a Wednesday is an important mechanism of accountability".

So without PMQs, the prime minister wouldn't know what was going on?

It's not such a shocking admission when you consider that there are 24 separate ministerial departments. But it still feels like Mr Cameron is letting daylight in on magic. We expect prime ministers to know everything about everything at all times.

They have Margaret Thatcher to thank for that.

Cat and mouse

Before she came to power in 1979, prime ministers would routinely hand difficult questions over to cabinet colleagues or admit their ignorance by promising a further statement.

But Thatcher prided herself on her mastery of detail "from some local hospital to a great international issue".

"Each department was naturally expected to provide the facts and a possible reply on points that might arise. 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.

In the pre-Thatcher era, MPs would play a game of cat and mouse with the prime minister, asking him a bland question about what his engagements were for the day or whether he could find time in his busy schedule to visit their constituency.

They would then get a supplementary question in which to put the prime minister on the spot about something important. Which he would then palm off on a cabinet colleague.

'Plastic fantastic'

This went on for decades - from the start of Prime Minister's Questions in 1961 - until Labour PM James Callaghan put a stop to it in May 1977, declaring in a response to an official report, that: "I should retain for answer by myself more Oral Questions on important matters, even if they fall within the responsibilities of another Minister."

After enduring another session of banal enquiries from MPs, Callaghan urged them to "table fewer Questions of an 'indirect' kind - think of what I might have been spared this afternoon - such as official visit and engagement questions".

Margaret Thatcher embraced this new era of accountability and set about turning PMQs into a weekly test of her command of detail, almost daring MPs and her Labour opposite number to catch her out.

Questions about official engagements continued, until finally, in 1995, MPs were told just to ask their supplementary question (although the first question each week is still about the PM's engagements - old habits die hard in the Commons).

And that's how we got to where we are today. With the prime minister walking into the Commons bear pit at mid-day on a Wednesday, clutching a thick file of information - dubbed the "plastic fantastic" by Downing Street insiders - to cover any question that might come up.

Prime ministers still dodge questions at PMQs and Mr Cameron is no exception. But at least they have done their homework.