PMQs: Home Office, Home Office, Home Office

David Cameron had an assured style, although it looked like he decided to ask his last two questions straight after his first four out of annoyance at Tony Blair's fourth answer. He used all six questions on Home Office issues:

• Tackling knife crime
• No forced amalgamation on police forces until a review is complete
• Establish a seperate border police force
• Shouldn’t have abolished embarkation controls
• If it’s all going so well why is the home office being reformed so much
• "9 years, 54 pieces of criminal legislation – isn’t it the fact that the prime minister has no-one to blame other than himself"

The loud Labour benches contested DCs assertion that they had abolished embarkation controls, so much so that the Speaker intervened with this statement:

“Being wrong doesn’t deny the right of a Member to speak – it would mean very few Members would be able to speak!”

Tony Blair answered with lots of clenched fists and jabbing fingers – he didn’t seem particularly rattled but he mixed up his words a few times, most notably with this Freudian slip:

"They attack us in public for not being toff enough".

Menzies Campbell asked if TB could recall a time when there was so much acrimony between the Home Office, the police, and the judiciary - TB simply pointed to the LibDem voting record. Perhaps assuming that TB would do this, MC replied that he would be happy to defend his record and asked if TB could defend what he was doing now compared to what he said in opposition. It was another not-awful performance but there were several background cries of “bring back Kennedy”.

Backbench questions generally sang to the tune of the party topics. Some questions of interest included:

• Labour's Dan Norris asked what the Government was doing to promote the role of fathers in the family.
• Vince Cable said a policy of longer prison sentences was incoherent as prisons were full.
• David Heath, another LibDem, asked a better question about review recommendations, such as those after the Dunblane and Kings Cross tragedies, not being implemented.
• Michael Ancram asked if it was time to withdraw troops from Iraq
  
• Bob Wareing, the sole Old Labour warrior today, attacked privatisation in the NHS.
  
• Tory Peter Bone, an infamous Sven Goran-Eriksson look-a-like, asked if TB had anything to learn from Sven's terminal leadership.

Deputy Editor

Comments

[rwdbailey]

David Heath called Martin "Deputy Speaker" for sure, but I don't think the speaker said Labour MPs. He said "Honourable Members".
I agree that Cameron used all his questions on the hoof, but I felt he did so because the PM was really flapping, not because he was annoyed himself.
I have mentioned on my own blog how Mackay undid all Cameron's good work with his final brainless, attention-seeking effort.

[Daniel Vince-Archer]

"It was another not-awful performance but there were several background cries of “bring back Kennedy”."

I disagree. The 'bring back Kennedy' calls got in the way of his question and Blair wiped the floor with him afterwards.