George Osborne's lips betray concentration not conspiracy

I noticed on a couple of blogposts yesterday (Lib Con and Hadleigh Roberts) that they were drawing attention to the fact that when Nick Clegg made his now infamous statement about how Jack Straw had supported "the illegal invasion of Iraq", George Osborne appeared to know what he was saying before he said it as he was lip-syncing along with him.

Here is the relevant clip so you can judge for yourself:

Having watched it several times now I have come to a different conclusion. I think Osborne is engaging in a form of unconscious mimicry. I have noticed this amongst some people I know. It seems to often manifest itself in repeating the last word of somebody's sentence just after they have said it but I have also seen it where someone appears to be half-heartedly lip-syncing with the speaker too. This is what appears to be happening here. Osborne is sort of making the same mouth movements as Clegg but if you watch closely it is a split second after he has said each word. He is also nodding along with the rhythm of Clegg's speech pattern. The look on his face is one of intense concentration, I suspect as he is taking in what Clegg is saying rather than knowing what it will be before he has said it.

This actually makes more sense than Clegg and Osborne having colluded on this. Osborne voted for the Iraq war and also does not consider it illegal. Why would he want Clegg to say that? It just puts him and his colleagues in an embarrassing position. And if there was collusion you would expect Osborne to do everything in his power to suppress any urge to mouth the words as Clegg said them. As for the pointing at Straw and laughing as soon as Clegg sat down, well that's what happens at PMQs. I do not think we need read anything much into it.

So in this case I think that all Osborne's lips betrayed were intense concentration and a slight nervous tic rather than some conspiracy.

Can Clegg answer some PMQs "in a personal capacity"?

I am seeing reports on Twitter (e.g. here) that a Number 10 spokesperson has claimed that Nick Clegg was speaking "in a personal capacity" during PMQs today, I think regarding the legality of the Iraq war.

Here is exactly what he said taken from Hansard:

The Deputy Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman may bellow as much as he likes. I am happy to account for everything that we are doing in this coalition Government—a coalition Government who have brought together two parties, working in the national interest, to sort out the mess that he left behind. We may have to wait for his memoirs, but perhaps one day he will account for his role in the most disastrous decision of all: the illegal invasion of Iraq.

He makes reference to various things that the government is doing using the term "we". He then concludes by accusing Jack Straw of having been involved in the "illegal invasion of Iraq".

Some people on the Live Chat I was running at the time commented that it was amusing to see Hague and Osborne sitting alongside Clegg as he said those words knowing that they had both voted for the invasion.

Is it feasible though to have a government minister standing at the dispatch box, answering questions on behalf of the Prime Minister/government and then a few hours later have those words "clarified" as a personal statement?

Perhaps we are coming up against a problem of having a coalition government formed of two parties which in some areas have very different views about issues, Iraq being one of them. Clegg's parliamentary colleagues of the party he leads would overwhelmingly have supported this statement but of course the massed Tory ranks behind him will not have done. In fact I think it is more accurate to say that Clegg was speaking in a "Lib Dem capacity".

Perhaps it is OK for ministers to say things that are not directly aligned with government policy. Maybe that is something that will have to be accommodated as part of the "new politics". It would certainly be a novel approach but would appear to sit uncomfortably with our existing procedures and structures. However, as I have argued before collective responsibility can be ridiculously constraining sometimes even when the government is formed of only one party.

Of course this is now being interpreted as a "gaffe" and Labour activists are having a field day with it. I do think the government needs to be clearer about what it is doing with respect to this.

It has unfortunately overshadowed what was otherwise a very good performance by Nick Clegg.

Nick Clegg's first PMQs Live Chat - 21st July 2010 - #PMQs

To mark Nick Clegg's first PMQs I thought I would host a Live Chat on here whilst it is in progress.

PMQs starts at 12:00noon with coverage on BBC Two and the chat will start a few minutes before. Join us below:

Keep it up Mr Speaker

I have noticed recently that the Speaker, John Bercow has been going further and further in trying to control the baying mob at PMQs. There is still barracking and heckling but when it gets too much he is more frequently stepping in and embarrassing individual members who are behaving badly even threatening to sin-bin them. He also keeps pointing out how most people watching outside the chamber find this sort of behaviour very off-putting.

Mike Smithson now thinks that Bercow is being high-handed and that PMQs is in danger of becoming a bore.

I'm afraid I totally disagree. If anything he has not yet gone far enough. He should start to exclude MPs from the chamber if they persist with this sort of infantile behaviour. I would much prefer there to be little or no barracking and heckling at all.

What Mike is failing to appreciate is that there are only a few thousand political junkies in this country (in which I include myself) who largely view PMQs as theatre and a sort of verbal jousting with the opposing sides cheering for their leader and heckling their opponents. They perceive it as good sport and sit on the sidelines "scoring" it often based on how up or down the "troops" seems to be in response. For most of the rest of the population, the highlights that they see on the evening news of those who we have elected to represent us in our primary political chamber consist of grown adults baying at each other like schoolchildren. It is one of the things that drives a wedge between the political classes and the rest.

Of course our Prime Minister should be held to account and the fact that we have this weekly session is admired around the world. But there is no need for the sideshow stuff and it regularly spoils what should showcase the best of our political system.

Keep it up Mr Speaker. Who knows, eventually maybe even I will be proud of the weekly sessions.

Harriet's boundary objections are objectionable

At PMQs today Harriet Harman asked about the government's plans for redrawing the constituency boundaries to even up the sizes. She particularly focused on the fact that there are lots of people (3.5 million according to her figures) who are not registered and implied that the redrawing of the boundaries would not be valid unless this was resolved. The crux of her point is here taken from Hansard:

The danger is that if the Prime Minister presses on in the way he has indicated, he will be making the system less fair, not more fair. As he said, the Deputy Prime Minister acknowledged to the House this week that there is a problem with the register. The Electoral Commission study found not just the number of people who are not on the register, but who they are: a third of all black people, half of all young people, and half of all private sector tenants are not on the register, despite the work that has been undertaken by electoral registration officers. Those people will not be counted if the Prime Minister redraws constituency boundaries now. He says he wants equal constituencies, but does he accept that he cannot have equal constituencies based on an unequal register?

Paul Walter has already suggested that this is an attempt to throw the political equivalent of a "police stinger" in front of voting reform.

The first point to make in response to Harman's question is the one that David Cameron did which is to point out that Labour had 13 years to sort this out if they consider it to be so vital. A related point is that the constituency boundaries were redrawn near the start of the last decade when presumably the imbalance was as bad as it is now, perhaps even worse. It didn't stop them then and nor should it have.

But perhaps a more fundamental objection to this approach is that if we were to accept Harman's principle that there should be no redrawing of boundaries until voter registration figures improve, what criteria would be used to determine success? A 5% improvement in each of the categories she states. 10%? Parity with the average? Parity with the highest rates of registration? Who would decide? What other minorities are also disadvantaged that would also have to be considered? How long does she think that will take to achieve? And what would happen in the meantime? Would we keep the existing (in some cases already woefully outdated) boundaries?

Don't get me wrong, I think Cameron's plans to redraw the boundaries are largely designed to improve things for the Tories and if I was Prime Minister there would be other reforms I would put before this one. However it is not easy to argue against the idea that the sizes should be more even in principle and they have conceded a referendum on AV as part of the coalition agreement which shows they are willing to compromise.

What we cannot have are spurious arguments that held no water when Labour were in power being used to scupper any change at all which would effectively be the result if we were to follow Harman's logic to its conclusion.

Oh and in case anyone is in any doubt of course I think we should do our best to improve voter registration. It just cannot be used as a way of holding all other reforms to ransom.

Cameron's first PMQs as PM - Review

I thought David Cameron did pretty well at PMQs today. The whole affair began in a fairly understated way largely due to the deaths this morning in Cumbria.

Harman asked some difficult questions about anonymity for rape suspects and deliberately chose a good wedge issue between Tories and Lib Dems on married tax allowance. Cameron handled all of this OK though in my view.

In fact (whisper it) but he seemed very statesmanlike at the dispatch box. Someone commenting on my live chat mentioned that he seemed to be following some pretty specific body language routine to appear so. That's probably the public school education coming through!

What most impressed me though was his willingness to actually try to answer the questions. Where Gordon Brown would have just reeled off a list of tractor statistics and then insulted his questioner I got the feeling that Cameron was trying to engage properly. He was a bit evasive in some places but if we are to be fair PMs cannot know the answer to everything. Cameron himself made this point when he said he would write to a member about an answer to which there was some heckling. His response then was that at least he was trying to give correct answers rather than making them up on the spot. This would be fair enough except that when Brown use to try that Cameron used to accuse him of dithering! Some level of hypocrisy would seem to be par for the course even in the "new politics".

The overall level of jeering and heckling seemed less than normal (although not totally absent). This can probably be partly ascribed to the fact that the Lib Dems (whose leaders always used to get way more than their fair share) are now in government. It is probably also due to the sheer number of new MPs who are still finding their feet. However it is welcome and I hope it continues and maybe even improves further.

An impressive outing for the new Prime Minister. It will be interesting to see if this sort of standard can be maintained as he it battered by events in the coming months and years.

PMQs Live Chat - 2nd June 2010 - #PMQs

To mark the first PMQs of the coalition government I thought I would host a Live Chat on here whilst it is in progress.

PMQs starts at 3:00pm and the chat will start a few minutes before. Join us below:

Cameron should start PMQs as he means to go on

Today will be David Cameron's first Prime Minister's Questions.

I am sure there will be much excitement among political watchers. Will he acquit himself well? Will he best the opposition? Can Harriet land a couple of blows? Will anyone trip him up?

I am hopeful for something else though. The last Prime Minister allowed PMQs to degrade to the point where I cannot remember him often answering the question. It was merely an opportunity to list the latest set of tractor statistics and make spurious points about the opposition. Also, he had a dreadful tendency to ask the leader of the opposition questions. It's not LOTOQs!

I hope that Cameron does a few things differently to his predecessor:

1) Answer the question! This might sound obvious and I am not so naive as to expect him not to try and make political points as he responds but in doing so he should try his best to answer whatever has been asked of him.

2) Stop with the planted questions. It gets so tedious hearing backbenchers invite the PM to agree with them how wonderful the government is. Cameron should have no truck with any of this.

3) It is a new parliament with well over 200 new MPs. There has not been a better opportunity in the last few decades to try and change the culture so Cameron should lead by example and discourage jeering and heckling. He did this a bit when he first became leader of the opposition but soon abandoned his attempts. He now has the chance to do this again from the position of PM. If he really wants a new politics, this is one way of trying to get it and to communicate to voters that the awful barracking that so turns them off in the chamber will not be tolerated.

Once he has a couple of PMQs under his belt the tone will be set and it will be too late. Today is the best opportunity to show that he really means to do things differently.

I was this week's guest on John Pienaar's podcast

I was this week's guest on John Pienaar's Radio 5 Live political review podcast this week. We covered PMQs and focused on the legacy of Gordon Brown's time as Chancellor with respect to the defence budget, the Lib Dems questions on Trident and what may have caused Gordon's Damascene conversion to being a staunch advocate of the (non-proportional) Alternative Vote system for Westminster and how it might relate to the MPs' expenses scandal.

You can download the podcast from here. You can also subscribe to it on iTunes via this link here.

Brown's ignorance shows why we need Commons reform

Watching the debate in the House of Commons yesterday about the Queen's Speech I found my jaw dropping at the rudeness of Gordon Brown. Watch this clip where David Cameron is trying to get Brown to respond to the question of why there was nothing about MPs' expenses in the Queen's Speech:

Twice Cameron offers to give way so that Brown can clarify the position and twice he declines. My problem however is not so much with him declining (although that does show that Cameron had him on the rack in my view) - it is in the way that he declined. He spent virtually the entire time Cameron was raising this issue talking to Harriet Harman. He seemed to be doing his best to be as rude as possible to Cameron by treating his point with such disdain that he made out he wasn't even listening.

I have blogged before about how I think the behaviour of MPs with all the heckling and jeering etc. needs to be much improved and the above sort of rudeness is exactly the sort of thing that needs to be stamped out (indeed it was one of my submissions to the POWER2010 campaign). The Speaker should insist on better behaviour with proper sanctions for MPs who transgress from the chamber. It would probably only have to happen a few times before the embarrassment it caused would ensure all MPs got the message. I am not trying to make a party political point here. The bad behaviour is endemic within the chamber and I have seen examples in the past from all sides.

Can you imagine attending a business meeting where this sort of thing happened? Imagine if you stood up to give a speech at a business conference and had to do so whilst enduring hecking, barracking and rude comments from those you were speaking to.

Coincidentally, Lynne Featherstone has done a blogpost today where she is talking about how the Commons would be better if it was more representative in terms of women and other currently under-represented groups and she has made a similar point to me in that post:

Certainly there are aspects of the way our political system works which typically appeal more to men or are more off-putting to women, but those are not aspects that are engraved in stone and always have to be that way. Take the bear-pit performances (and I use that word kindly - embarrassing shambles might often be more appropriate) of the PM / Leader of the Opposition exchanges at Prime Minister's Questions, with massed ranks of people sat behind each and shouting at each other. That sort of behaviour would be completely unacceptable in a work place - imagine running a meeting at work where people behaved like that. And there's no essential need for PMQs to be like that - look around at how other walks of life and other countries manage to have question times that are meaningful and dignified.

Lynne is spot on. It doesn't have to be like this and it needs to change.

Zero percent rise!

Gordon Brown has just announced during Prime Minister's Questions that there will be a "Zero percent rise" in spending in 2013. So no increase is apparently a "rise". It's amazing how with Mr Brown words seem to mean whatever he wants them to.

Like Humpty Dumpty.

UPDATE: Now with added embeddage:

Should opponents call Gordon Brown a liar?

There has been various talk in the blogosphere and in newspaper comments recently about how Gordon Brown is not being honest when it comes to Labour's spending plans after the next election. There is a debate going on as to whether it would make sense for David Cameron or other opponents of his to call him a liar directly.

I have even read a suggestion that Cameron should do it at PMQs and then refuse to take it back thus breaking parliamentary procedure to underline how serious the situation is.

I am sure Cameron won't do this and I would be surprised if any senior politician does it in the chamber. They will find forms of words that mean the same thing but fall short of actually doing it. I can understand why as well. It would drag the whole debate down.

That however does not stop the media and bloggers from doing it. As we have already seen recently, Fraser Nelson has put his head above the parapet to widespread acclaim for having the guts to stand up to Ed Balls.

This needs to happen more. Labour will only get away with it if their lies remain unexposed but I think they underestimate the power of the blogosphere and the new media.

Brown is embarking upon a dangerous experiment and it is one that I think he will eventually regret.

John Bercow - First #PMQs review

Well that was the first PMQs of John Bercow's time as speaker. I thought he did OK. Here are my highlights:

• He got in early by cutting short a planted question stating "We got the jist of it!"
• When there was continual barracking during the Cameron/Brown exchanges he interrupted and insisted that the public do not like it "and I do not like it!". Things were a bit quieter after this.
• He chided Michael Fabricant the Tory MP saying that he must calm himself "It's not good for your health!".
• The best bit for me was a slap down to another Labour back-bencher who started trying to tack on slating of opposition policies to his question. Bercow interrupted and said that the PM need not concern himself with opposition policies. If Bercow sticks to this then it could eventually make life difficult for the PM as that's half his question answering strategy out of the window.
• He made a brief statement at the end firstly insisting that ministers must make statements initially to the house not the media, must keep questions and answers relatively short and that those speaking must be able to be heard.

There was however no attempt to stop the planted questions. There was no rebuke for Mr Brown given how he trampled all over Harriet Harman's statement to the house yesterday as Paul Waugh commented on. There was also no attempt to get Gordon Brown to actually answer the question as he reeled off tractor statistics and made reference to David Cameron times in the Treasury 17 years ago when he was about 25 and in no position of power at all (I always find this pathetic).

So, there is a lot more he could and should have done. However I suppose if he had tried to do all of this it would have meant all the headlines would have been about him playing to the gallery and trying to personalise the Speakership. One step at a time.

I very much hope he does try to address some of these other points though in the coming weeks. Let's see.

Lib Dem Voice also have a review here and Constantly Furious is not impressed with Bercow at all here.

I could barely hear Nick Clegg yesterday at PMQs

The House of Commons behaves disgracefully sometimes.

I usually watch PMQs on the TV but I had to listen to it on the radio yesterday. It was a bit difficult sometimes to make out what Brown and Cameron were saying due to the barracking and shouting and a couple of times when it got too bad the Speaker intervened to stop it.

However when Nick Clegg was trying to speak there was very loud barracking and also people clearly having very loud conversations which were picked up and transmitted by the microphones. Perhaps it is easier to tune this stuff out when you have the pictures too because today I could barely hear what he was saying.

Now I am not really trying to make a party political point here because this sort of discourteous behaviour is on show in the Commons from all sides and against most people who speak, especially when the House is very busy. At a time when politicians are supposed to be listening to what people want to trying to reform politics do they really think this sort of display is what the public want to see? No wonder people are so turned off by politics in this country.

I have written about this before back in January and I know I am not the only person who feels like this.

Work interfering with my political habit!

I am my own boss and that means I generally work very long hours often including evenings and weekends. However because I am usually largely in control of my own timetable it does mean that I can afford myself the occasional political treat during the day like watching PMQs or the budget speech and also enough time intermittently to blog.

However since the start of last week I have been largely working on customer site and this means that I am now not really in control of my own timetable. I missed PMQs last week and I will probably miss it again today. This is likely to go on until the end of July! I am having to catch up with things in the mornings and evenings.

How do others bloggers/activists juggle their work/family and political stuff?

"Gordon Brown resign" petition - Tory asks him about it at PMQs

A Tory backbencher, Andrew Rosindell asked Gordon Brown about the "Please Go" petition at Prime Minister's Questions today in the House of Commons. He pointed out that the number of signatures on the list are now more than twice the number of votes he got in his constituency at the last general election (which as I have posted about previously when the signatures passed this number is his only democratic mandate at all, as an MP for Kircaldy and Cowdenbeath).

Brown's response was to bat this question away by claiming that Mr Rosindell should be "ashamed" for not asking about policy.

I can assure Mr Brown that people like myself who have signed this petition and want him to go are not ashamed of doing this, or having our representatives in parliament bring it up like this. I am however ashamed that our Prime Minister has no democratic mandate to lead this country, is politcally tone deaf, has completely ballsed up our economy and yet has not accepted any responsibility for this. At all.

If you disagree with Gordon's analysis and think it is time he went then go to the petition and add your name to the 50,000+ people who have already done so in the last 2 weeks.

Labour MPs will regret the groans and jeering

I missed PMQs this week and have only just caught up with watching it this morning. I have to say that what Cameron led on is exactly what I have been saying regarding MPs expenses. I have reproduced the relevant portion from Hansard below (although you really need to watch it to hear the barracking from 33 minutes in for about 4 minutes here):


Mr. David Cameron (Witney) (Con): On behalf of all Conservative Members, I join the Prime Minister in welcoming President Obama and the First Lady, and all the other Presidents and Prime Ministers, to our country this week.

Before turning to the G20, may I ask the Prime Minister about the issue of MPs’ expenses? [ Interruption. ] MPs may groan, but frankly I am fed up with our politics being dragged through the mud. We need a solution that is transparent, costs less than the current arrangements, and restores faith in the political process. Is it not the case that we cannot wait for another review, and that this needs to be agreed now? So instead of another review, will the Prime Minister agree to an urgent meeting between the main party leaders so that we can sort this out once and for all?

The Prime Minister: I agree and have said on many occasions that this whole system has to be reformed and improved. I think that there is common ground in this House that it brings no repute to MPs if we are continually having to deal with these issues. We have made some changes, by the will of the House, to the way that expenses are documented, to the way that the Green Book is organised, and to the way that people are obliged to account for their expenditures of money. Both the parties agreed that the Committee on Standards in Public Life could do a good job in looking at these
1 Apr 2009 : Column 911
issues. Of course I am happy to meet the leaders of the Opposition parties to discuss this, but to restore public confidence in the matter the Committee will have to complete its review as well, and I have asked it to speed up that review so that it is completed as quickly as possible.

Mr. Cameron: Frankly, the problem is that we do not need another review. Let us be clear: this is exactly what happened last time. The Prime Minister supported a review, he sent it a letter and when it came up with conclusions, he did not vote for them. [Hon. Members: “Nor did you.”] I did vote for them. The public are sick and tired of this situation, and it requires political leadership. That means political leaders making decisions, which means the Prime Minister, the leader of the Liberals and me. I ask the Prime Minister again: will he have that meeting of party leaders so that we can sort this out? May we have it, instead of a review, not in six months’ time, not in a year’s time, but right now?

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman wrote his question before he heard my first answer. I said I was quite happy to meet him and the leader of the Liberal party to discuss these issues, but he has to remember that if we in this House are to command public confidence for what we do, we need to satisfy the Committee on Standards in Public Life as well as ourselves. The whole purpose of the discussions we have had in recent years is to take MPs’ pay out of politics, so that it is not MPs who are held responsible for the original recommendations on pay, or for voting for them. I believe that we have to satisfy more than ourselves on the standards we apply in public life. Yes, I am prepared to talk to the right hon. Gentleman, but he should agree to what was agreed before: that the Committee on Standards in Public Life should continue to review this issue and report as quickly as possible.

Mr. Cameron: The problem is that we can all hear the rustling of the long grass.

It's good to see Cameron following Nick Clegg's lead on this. He was the first party leader to suggest a meeting between the three leaders to try and sort this all out and I welcome the Tory support for this.

Cameron is spot on about the sound of the long grass and the need for urgent reform. The groans and the jeering from Labour MPs when Cameron started his question demonstrate how out of touch they are. If they had any sense of the public feeling about this issue they would shut up and listen hard to the suggestions being made. This should not be a party political football, it is damaging our democracy and needs to be fixed and quickly.

I suspect members of the public will have been disgusted with this sort of response to sensible suggestions about reform of how our money is spent.

It was also heartening to hear Nick Clegg go for Brown on tax havens, the lack of a green stimulus and the wasteful VAT cut, call of which I fully agree with and I did not feel Brown's platitudes addressed his questions. As usual.

I don't care who is leaking this stuff - MPs must change

Guido is spot on with his post today about how the focus of anger of many MPs is on whoever is leaking embarrassing information about MPs expenses to the media.

This is exactly what I thought too when I heard last night that the Labour Party is trying to spin relevations that are coming out as politically motivated and being leaked by a Tory mole.

Frankly, I couldn't give a flying toss who is leaking this information and what their motivations are. I actually shouted at the TV last night (I try and stop myself but sometimes can't help it!) that this is utterly irrelevant. If the information is available in the first place then it is because MPs have been playing the system, even if it is within the rules it is clear that public opinion is massively against them and they have to face this and change their practises.

I was actually thinking about this the other day. When Harriet Harman was being questioned about Shred's pension she said that although his contract may be enforceable by law, it is not enforceable in the "court of public opinion" and hence the government would "step in". I wonder whether she takes a similar view about Jacqui Smith trousering over £100K by claiming that a room in her sister's house is her main residence whilst she has a huge house in Redditch where her husband and children live. It is clear that is also not enforceable in the "court of public opinion. Is she now going to "step in"?

It is a shame nobody asked her this at PMQs last week.

PMQs - how much Q&A is there?

Something I have noticed before about PMQs and it was apparent again today is that a fair proportion of the time is spent not asking or answering questions but in paying tributes or other statements of this nature.

Now, I need to tread carefully here as what I am about to say could easily be misinterpreted. I think it is absolutely right that the House of Commons pays tribute to fallen soldiers. I think they do it well and with heartfelt dignity and it is the least our servicemen deserve. However, the tradition that has become apparent recently of announcing the tributes at the start of PMQs and for the two main leaders to respond with their own tributes has the effect of reducing the amount of time available for questions and answers within the allotted 30 minutes. Perhaps the time for the session should be extended to 35 or 40 minutes to allow the tributes to be paid but for it not to impinge on the 30 minutes for questions.

The much more debateable thing that I have noticed is encapsulated in the following exchange from today's PMQs copied from Hansard:

Q5. [260228] Mr. Andy Reed (Loughborough) (Lab/Co-op): Last week, we laid the first bricks in the £4 million extension to Rainbows children’s hospice, which is in my constituency but serves the whole east midlands. We still need another £1 million, plus £2.5 million each year to keep the hospice running. When are the Government finally going to act to ensure that children’s hospices do not rely for 95 per cent. of their funding on local residents and fundraisers, and finally get them to the level of adult hospices, for which about 40 per cent. of the funding comes from the public purse?

Ms Harman: I would like to take the opportunity to pay tribute to all those in the NHS, both in hospital care and in the community, who help with palliative and end-of-life services, but I would also like to pay a very big tribute to the hospice movement, the voluntary movement that has spearheaded new ways to care for people at the end of their lives. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health has made that a priority, investing £30 million extra for palliative and end-of-life care and announcing additional support for all hospices and hospice home services for children up to the age of five. There is a great deal of progress under way, and it is very important indeed.

Can you spot what happened here? A very important question was asked about children's hospices and the funding for them which predominantly comes from charitable donations. Harman had a stab at answering the question in the end (a bit disingenuously I thought as I have no idea if the 30 million makes any difference in the context of the question) but the first half was taken up with a load of waffle about "paying tribute" to hospices. Now, again I need to tread carefully here. I am not saying that hospices do not deserve tribute being paid to them. However I see this sort of thing happen so often that I feel like it is sometimes being used as a way of burning up the available time so that there are less questions allowed to be asked. It also helps to divert attention from the original question which deserved a direct answer.

Nobody in the country would disagree with the sentiment Harman expressed and therefore it is not necessary for the answer. It is basically platitudinous waffle to pad out the answer. If the government wants to show its commitment to children's hospices it should answer the question properly and act upon it to ensure the scandalous 95% charity figure comes down substantially.

Gordon Brown is on record as claiming that there is no need for a televised debate between the leaders in the run up to a general election because that's what PMQs is for. However, the questions are often not answered (unless they are a plant from their own side and then it is just a way of scoring political points) and there is a lot of sometimes unnecessary padding.

I know that today PMQs went on beyond 12:30 (I suspect because Mr Speaker recognised that some time had been lost) which is a good thing but that does not often happen and as it is the only time of the week that our representatives get to hold the Prime Minister to account directly, I think more thought should be put into how the structure can be adapted to work as it needs to.

Am I becoming one of them?

Watching The Daily Politics earlier today and their coverage of PMQs where the deputies stood in, I thought that Harriet Harman did quite well and managed to skewer Hague a couple of times with well chosen political points (apparently he has taken £30,000 from RBS for public speaking recently and also used some of his own words about deregulation when he was Tory leader against him). Sure, she was a bit stumbly but no worse than many I have seen at the despatch box and even Hague stumbled over his words a couple of times.

But during the discussion afterwards, most of the public who had contacted the show thought she had done really badly and that Hague had won hands down. The consensus among the pundits was that she had done quite well and certainly done her incipient leadership bid now harm. Andrew Neil questioned if that is the Westminster bubble insiders view and people outside see things very differently.

Does this mean I am now thinking as if I am inside the Westminster bubble!?