"Questions to the Prime Minister!" (PM). - John Bercow, Speaker (of the House of Commons (HoC))
An opposition Labour (Lab) Member of Parliament (MP) reads out question one of the order paper(?) which opens the session. This is formal but necessary: PM David Cameron responds along the lines of having had meetings so far today with ministerial colleagues and others, and he will have further such meetings today as part of his duties to this House.
Jeremy Corbyn (Lab) then proceeds to suggest to the Conservative (Con) PM in his question that the Government pursue total rent control in private home lettings - a policy that is flawed because it leads to the sector being worse off overall, which has been documented in New York [Taylor, T. 2008]. Cameron responds as expected - with the long-term solution in that we need more home construction and that a lock down on rent control doesn't work.
Early on a great howler in the face of the opposition comes from Stephen Dorrell (Con) when he asks the PM to confirm the official data that every time The Labour Party has left office, the unemployment rate has been higher than when they came into governance, stressing the importance that "what matters is what works". Dorrell makes a very fair and true point; between the lines he is saying what we all know, which is that Labour are prone to kamikaze policies of 'looking after' the country, diving into a course of action that seems good but, upon some scrutiny is regularly revealed to be little more than an experiment where we all have to just see what happens, and as in the example, to our detriment. "My Right Honourable Friend is factually correct" responds the leader of The Conservative Party, going on to remind the House of the accomplishments of the coalition government in this parliament with 1.3 million more people employed used as the key fact and that the work must continue to offer more hope and more security to more of the people.
The joust. Personally, I was interested to see if the Labour 'leader', Ed Miliband could possibly ask a different question after getting a publicly sound answer from Cameron. No, we didn't get a change from the recent weeks' direction - it was the same old Labour smoke and screens trying to give the effect that we, the electorate needs to vote-in the kamikaze squad. In no less than six separate opportunities to ask questions, every one of them was about the sale of Royal Mail (RM).
1, Apparently it is some kind of injustice for a company's share price to have escalated some months after its initial public offering (IPO). Nearly three quarters of a million people now own the RM. One hundred and forty thousand RM employees now have a stake in their employer in which they earn a wage and get paid a dividend. A stake, Mr Miliband, is when a party has a connection to something which affects them in the likeness of the positive or negative performance of that thing. The relationship is symbiotic.
2, So much of what the Lab leader claims is often illuminated by the Conservatives (Tories) and Liberal Democrats, perhaps in equal weighting, and frequently some of Lab's less extremist MP's word-paint their own gross failings or misrepresentations. 3, 4, Cameron exposed snippets of the previous Government's history regarding RM: they wanted, tried to sell the RM for the benefit of the public, their task masters said no and Labour failed. And the PM added that the unions are paying Miliband to stand and talk down the Government's actions. While it is not all in one way to Cameron's favour, struggling to make a debacle of a string of positive achievements seems callow.
5, The PM got on a head of steam, reading out a Labour publication advertising a job vacancy where the applicant needs the ability to manage the different teams across the party, bringing a low roar of guffaw from seats across the chamber as he said that must be the hardest job in Britain, with the tone of a professional's humour in Cameron's voice pleasing the Tories. 6, Finishing with efficiency like that of Mary Poppins, our PM further added that the opposition's top adviser is called Arnie and he's gone to America, but unlike Arnie he said 'I'm not coming back!'
The remaining two thirds of the PMQs consisted of the standard progressive politics with input from all sides of the HoC. Or it was the case until David TC Davies (Con) asked the PM what he will do to ensure that National Health Service 'refugees' seeking the higher standards and lower waiting times for treatment from the English-run NHS delivered by this government are able to benefit from the service. Naturally, Cameron slammed the Welsh NHS, run by the Welsh Assembly Government, labelling the Labour Party who run the Welsh Assembly as frankly scandalous. They (Lab) decided to cut spending by eight per cent, resulting in not meeting a single Accident & Emergency target since 2009, went on the PM, only to become riled and incensed as the leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband started smirking and laughing 'at the state of the NHS in Wales' - the PM almost barked it out when he said "it's not funny".
Announcements included the reduction of corporation tax this week to twenty one per cent. The increase in the Personal Allowance to £10,000 and welcoming comments about the reductions in beer duties.
The whole House sent out their condolences in respect of Keane Wallis-Bennett who died aged 12 when a school wall collapsed on her this week. The PM stated that what can will be learned to avoid this tragedy ever happening again.
And may she forever rest in peace.
