>> my family was my anchor. i knew instinctively that i got out of there, that they would see me through my recovery. >> we began a week-long series examining energy issues. he will outline ways to construct energy savings homes and buildings.

washington journal, live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> tomorrow, the center for american progress holds a discussion on the will the community health centers play in job creation and economic development. that is at 10:00 a.m. eastern tomorrow on c-span. >> we cannot go around suspecting and expecting crockery. you cannot run a democracy like this. an absence of that base of honor and justice. >> watch this 1982 interview with rep millicent often with, the outspoken congressman and inspiration for a doonesbury character is part of a treasure trove of people and events from the past 30 years. it is all free, on-line, and the c-span video library. this washington, your way.

>> the british house of commons is in summer recess until summer. prime minister's questions returns on september 8. we will look at a speech by john turturro -- he argues that the 30 minute sessions are planted questions. he was elected speaker last year and says that question time should be lengthened to 45 or 60 minutes and suggests the british parliament consider adopting a confirmation protest similar to the u.s.. he took questions to from -- from the audience.

whether you will feel the same way, this is a matter of conjecture and speculation. thank you for that introduction and the invitation to speak to this audience this evening. i know that sir george young, the leader of the house, spoke to you last month and extolled all that you do to promote a better understanding of parliament in whitehall and beyond. i am very happy indeed to echo those sentiments. indeed, sir george and i appear to be involved in an accidental double-act on the house of commons circuit as i addressed

the hansard society in early june, with him doing the same gig a week later, and it is now my turn to follow in his not inconsiderable footsteps. i hope to live up to the standard that he set. the title of my speech tonight is "new parliament, new opportunity". in a sense, i suppose every new parliament represents a new opportunity of sorts but there are compelling reasons to believe that this house of commons provides us with an opportunity that comes perhaps two or three times in a century. there is an overwhelming consensus within the government and the opposition that political reform, including parliamentary reform, is a manifest necessity. the aftermath of the expenses explosion has created an enormous incentive to demonstrate by change that the house will never again find itself lampooned as one enormous duckhouse surrounded by a moat which had cut it off from

the rest of the country. and we have the added advantage of fresh blood some 227 new mps whose arrival has already changed the culture of the house and who will clearly be champions of change. if this new parliament is truly to realise this new opportunity, however, it needs to understand the character of the challenge that confronts it. what is it that the public does not care for about the house of commons as it stands and what can be done to change this? although i have hinted at my working assumptions in this regard in the past, i would like to take the occasion of this speech to render that thinking absolutely explicit to you. for it is at the heart of why i initially wanted to be elected

speaker and all that i have done in the year that has now passed since i had the extraordinary honour to be elected to the chair. i am not a professional pollster and i do not conduct focus groups for a living. yet the doorstep, the parliamentary postbag and conversations with, to use that dreadful phrase, "ordinary people" beyond the palace of westminster have convinced me that were a focus group to be conducted about the house of commons it would reach five conclusions. there only ever seem to be a large number of mps in the chamber once a week for prime minister's questions at which they yell and heckle in a thoroughly unbecoming manner. most of the rest of the time

the chamber appears to be empty. in any case they are rarely there because of their inordinately long "holidays". the house of commons is just a rubberstamp for the government anyway and, finally, in the aftermath of the expenses debacle they are all the same and all on the take. now when you put that set of negative impressions together it constitutes a very damning indictment of an institution. if we are unable to change not

merely the image of the house but the substance which has created the image then our prospects for reputational recovery will be disturbingly modest. in fact, i think we are taking serious steps in the right direction in four of these five areas, which i will briefly highlight here, but reform in one area is missing and i want to try to start a debate about that component through this platform tonight. let me deal with these five hostile conclusions about the house in reverse order. in terms of arrangements surrounding allowances and expenses we have already witnessed something close to a revolution. it has not been comfortable or easy but through the work of sir thomas legg and then sir paul kennedy in terms of past claims and sir christopher kelly and then sir ian kennedy in terms of future regulation we have achieved a settlement in which expenses have to be submitted openly for independent assessment. this is a very important outcome indeed. i am well aware that there have been difficulties in the first

few weeks of the new ipsa regime but, to be candid, that is to be expected. you may recall that when heathrow airport's new terminal 5 building was opened in 2008 it was immediately beset by high-profile malfunctions which led some to suggest that the entire enterprise was doomed to failure. those problems were, nonetheless, overcome and now few would deny that t5 is one of the finest buildings of its kind on the planet. i believe that ipsa is traversing through the turbulence of its own terminal 5 experience but can emerge from it. as it does, the accusation that mps are "all on the take" will become infinitely less credible. as far as the increasing irrelevance of the house of commons is concerned, i believe the evidence suggests that mps looked into that particular abyss and pulled back from it.

the cross-party support offered to tony wright and his colleagues on the wright committee showed that the house understood how marginalised it had become and was prepared to do something about it. i have tried to contribute to this process myself both by speeding up the conduct of business in the chamber and reviving the urgent question as a means of ensuring ministerial accountability. wider reforms have included the election of the deputy speakers, the election of select committee chairs, the creation of a house backbench business committee with a full house business committee to follow later in this parliament. i am also looking forward to the restoration of private members' motions and a new petitions system. these will all assist the

legislature in its task of holding the executive to account and i am sure that the process of reform has not ended yet. it was not long ago that irrelevance appeared inevitable. that can no longer be asserted with any credibility. then there is westminster's version of the cliff richard question, namely "we're all going on a summer holiday, no more worries for 12 weeks or so". the summer recess, which had been extended so that it lasted more than 80 days had become, let us be totally frank, an embarrassment. the notion that the executive should be spared scrutiny for almost a quarter of a year was indefensible. i said as much in a speech last september and was dismissed as naïve and idealistic for my efforts. yet shortly after the state opening, the leader of the house made it clear that the

house would sit until the end of july and return in september and i enthusiastically applaud him for that initiative. the summer break has been slashed by more than half. it will take time before it is noticed but can only do the house good when it is. finally, there is the matter of attendance in the chamber. this is by no means solved but there are signs of progress. i have been struck by the diligence which the class of 2010 has shown towards its chamber duties and i am confident that this will continue. if we want to entrench this, however, we will probably require some new institutional incentives to be introduced. i floated some thoughts in this regard myself to the hansard society last month and i know that the leader of the house is keen to see earnest discussion on this subject. reviving the chamber will be a long haul but we are taking the first steps on that journey. a process of elimination leads us to the area that has seen

the least, in candour no, reform in the past year or so, namely the character, conduct, content and culture of prime minister's questions. it is this subject to which i want to address the majority of my remarks this evening. i do so with some very considerable trepidation. this is not because it is wildly original for a speaker to opine on this subject. almost all of my recent predecessors have, as i shall point out, expressed similar sentiments to those that i intend to articulate. my caution is instead based on the realisation that almost all of these past pleas have fallen on deaf ears. despite that, i will set out a series of observations about pmqs to this meeting. i will do so for one simple

reason. as far as most of the public is concerned, prime minister's questions is the shop window of the house of commons. the media coverage of that thirty minute slot dominates all other proceedings in parliament during the rest of the week. if the country comes to an adverse conclusion about the house because of what it witnesses in those exchanges, then the noble work of a dozen select committees will pale into insignificance by comparison. if we are serious about enhancing the standing of the house in the eyes of those whom we serve then we cannot ignore the seriously impaired impression which pmqs has been and is leaving on the electorate.

it is the elephant in the green room. there will be some of my colleagues who i expect, very sincerely, to disagree with me. they argue that pmqs is splendid theatre, that it is secretly loved by those watching on television and that it is even therapeutic for parliamentarians to let their lungs loose on a weekly basis. i have to say that i find this argument utterly unconvincing. on the basis of its logic, bear-baiting and cock-fighting would still be legal activities. to my mind, the last nail in the coffin of the case for pmqs as it occurs today was hammered in by the leaders' debates during the general election campaign. the rules for those encounters included, you may recall, a prohibition on cheering or chanting from the audience. does anyone plausibly contend that the cut and thrust of debate between messrs brown, cameron and clegg suffered as a consequence?

did anybody at home feel short- changed by the absence of cat- calling? what is worse is that, as i hope to illustrate in the next few minutes, prime minister's questions was never intended to have the character which it has since developed. when it was introduced in 1961, as i will outline, it had three distinctive features: questions were directly related to those areas in which the prime minister had personal responsibility rather than treating him as if a president in sole control of the entire british government. questions and answers were short and snappy and dominated by backbenchers. the exercise occurred in an atmosphere of comparative cordiality. a little history courtesy of the wonderful house of commons

library service is instructive. before the 1880s, questions to the prime minister were dealt with no differently from questions to other ministers. they were asked, without notice, on days on which ministers were available (invariably monday, tuesday, thursday and friday) in whatever order members rose to ask them. public business could not commence until questions had been completed. the first change was made in 1881 when as a courtesy to william gladstone, then aged 72, questions to the prime minister were asked last on the list to enable him to come into the house somewhat later in the day than he would have done otherwise.

the introduction of fixed time- limits for questions and the late slot for pmqs meant that while in theory they were posed four days a week, in practice they were often never reached and very rarely completed. in 1953, in deference to winston churchill, then aged 79 and ailing, it was agreed that questions would be submitted on tuesdays and thursdays. an increasing dissatisfaction with the level of scrutiny this involved led to a landmark procedure committee report in 1959 which recommended that questions be taken in two 15- minute slots on tuesday and thursday which, a little reluctantly, the government eventually accepted. the first pmqs was held on an experimental basis in july 1961

and, having been deemed a success by all concerned, the then speaker announced it would continue on a permanent footing in october 1961. pmqs thus marks its 50th anniversary next year. it was a very different event to the one that it has subsequently become. in the early 1960s, it was routine for the prime minister to transfer questions which were not his direct responsibility to the relevant cabinet minister, the number of questions tackled was about double in those thirty minutes a week to that of today and backbenchers did the asking. in 1964, for instance, the norm was that the leader of the opposition, harold wilson, would be called just the once in the thursday session and not at all on tuesdays. while exchanges could be lively, contemporary accounts do not record them being remotely raucous. all of this changed over time but more by accident than design. questions continued to be

transferred by jim callaghan, and indeed it was at this time that the clerks in the table office devised the untransferable question "if he will list his engagements for today". this formulation had the additional advantages that the supplementary could cover any subject, and any development even minutes before the start of pmqs; and it was convenient for members because they did not need to think of a substantive question to table when it was long odds that they would be successful in the ballot anyway. small wonder that "the engagements question" has proved

such a survivor. but even as the engagements question became more widely used, it was clear that the days of transfers were over. margaret thatcher indicated at the start of her premiership that she would not transfer questions; and it was evident that she was as happy to answer on the detail of what a department was doing as it was that the ministers of that department were horrified by the pm's close interest. an informal understanding also emerged that the leader of the opposition would be called on both days if he wished and have the right to ask a supplementary. hence the proportion of all questions asked by party leaders rose from 10 per cent in 1967-1968 to 25% in 1987-1988 to 33.4% by 2007-2008. this was not the result of any deliberate action of the house. indeed, backbenchers would make their irritation known if party leaders were excessive. margaret thatcher, when leader of the opposition, averaged only 1.6 interventions a session. this was partly because if she was due to speak in a

parliamentary debate on a tuesday or thursday she frequently would not participate in pmqs at all but also because her team came to the view that if she had not drawn parliamentary blood in the first two questions then it would be counterproductive to strain the patience of the house with a third one. this self-denying ordinance or simple tactical retreat has since gone out of fashion. even so, there was a sense that pmqs was operating to the exclusion of backbenchers. in 1977, speaker thomas put forward a proposal to achieve the generally well-supported objective of getting through more questions at pmqs, only to encounter resistance from the opposition because it would have restricted the opportunity for its leader to make interventions. by this time, the comparatively

civilised conduct of pmqs had already been undermined. in his autobiography, speaker selwyn lloyd deplored the decline in behaviour and blamed it on the personal animosity between harold wilson and edward heath which in his view had poisoned the exchanges more broadly. it was certainly at about this moment, when wilson was leader of the opposition for the second time, that a type of question first emerged in which a government backbencher would in effect invite the prime minister to attack his principal opponent and his or her policies. this development was widely deplored but not halted. it was only in the 1980s, though, that pmqs became close to what they are today. neil kinnock came to office as a relatively unknown figure and felt obliged to employ pmqs as a device for enhancing his profile. he asked an average of 2.5 questions per pmqs, a much higher proportion that mrs thatcher had done, and would never let a session pass without

an intervention. the highly polarised nature of politics in the 1980s was reproduced in the decibel level experienced in the chamber. his successor, john smith, was rightly confident in his skills as a parliamentary orator and it was he who established the precedent that he would always take his full allocation of three questions per session, which his successors, margaret beckett and tony blair followed as have all the conservative leaders since then. by the early 1990s, it was important to note, it was universally recognised that pmqs was not what it should be.

as a result, the procedure committee was invited to investigate the event and to recommend sweeping changes. it was widely assumed that substantial reform would be forthcoming. colin brown in the independent of june 15 1994, for example, wrote that: "prime minister's questions in the commons look likely to be reformed after both john major and tony blair gave their blessing to changing the procedure. the move to reform the twice- weekly 15 minute exchanges follows growing criticism that the common's clashes have become so stage-managed and rowdy that they are bringing the house into disrepute." the eventual procedure committee report of 1995 broadly echoed brown's sentiments. it argued that pmqs, i quote, "could no longer be held to pass the test that the purpose of a question is to obtain

information or press for action". the exchanges had, the committee lamented, "developed from being a procedure for the legislature to hold the executive to account into a partisan joust between the noisier supporters of the main political parties". the event was, i quote again, "not seen outside the house to reflect well on the performance of the house". the committee was convinced that a radical overhaul had become overdue. the 1995 report set out a number of bold options. their suggestions included. changing to a procedure of short question and answer debates on substantive subjects.

having backbenchers put questions to the prime minister in a select committee format. making a distinction between the tuesday session (which would continue to consist of open questions) and the thursday one (which would focus on a small number of topics). dispensing with the requirement for notice of a question by having name-only ballots to all questions and extending both sessions to 30 minutes each to allow for more backbench participation. none of the seriously bold elements in this package was adopted. instead the most notable change to occur in its aftermath was that tony blair collapsed the two 15-minute sessions into one 30-minute event in 1997 with the leader of the opposition combining his three questions across two days into six questions on the one wednesday. in recognition of their enhanced parliamentary status, the liberal democrat leader would be allowed two questions. it cannot be said that the

whole house received these changes with rapture. although in fairness to mr blair he had signalled his intentions in evidence to the procedure committee in 1995, there was still a sense that the house had been bounced into new arrangements which suited the prime minister rather more than they did parliament. that instinct was reflected in the very first question which mr blair received as prime minister, asked by the normally mild-mannered ian taylor, then member for esher. mr taylor's inquiry opened with the words: "i warmly welcome the prime minister to his role of answering questions and i am grateful to him for finding the time in his diary to do so. at some point he might consult the house about these changes". mr blair replied, it shoud be recorded, that the procedure committee should feel able to "review the new system as time

progresses" and "look at ways that it can be improved in the light of experience". that offer has never been fully taken up, which is a strange omission. the failure to embrace change in 1995 still haunts us today. a procedure committee report into parliamentary questions as a whole which was published in 2002 really only glanced at pmqs, conceding that the contest "tends to encourage 'tribal behaviour' on both sides which damages the public image of the house, while the hopping from one subject to another which is the consequence of open questions militates against sustained and serious scrutiny" but only one very minor procedural change was recommended and accepted. the only real reform of note in all that time was achieved by the liaison committee. in their report shifting the balance in 2002 they suggested