For the senior MPs on the Liaison Committee, it was an opportunity missed. Apart from one explosive clash that left a shifty-looking Rishi Sunak totally skewered.
Coming six months to the day since the prime minister announced his five priorities for the year, the committee should have put him under pressure on the progress so far.
But it was mostly an unsatisfactory 90 minutes, with the MPs’ questions constantly interrupted by a fussy Sir Bernard Jenkin, the chairman, who was rushing them along in a frantic attempt to finish on time.
At the beginning of the session at 2pm, Mr Sunak haughtily told Sir Bernard he had a “pressing engagement” at 3.30pm, so they must not go over time. To which Sir Bernard should have replied: “Tough!”
The biggest disappointment was his curtailing of the forensic Dame Diana Johnson, who was beginning to get under the PM’s skin with some tough questions on one of his five priorities, stop the boats.
Dame Diana, who chairs the Home Affairs Select Committee, accused him of betting everything on his Rwanda policy being upheld in the Supreme Court. Not fair, he said. The stop the boats pledge was on hold, she claimed. No, he said.
The other important clash on one of Mr Sunak’s five priorities came during some tenacious interrogation on the cost of living crisis by Labour’s Catherine McKinnell, first on soaring food prices and then on spiralling mortgage costs.
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One of the many questions the prime minister dodged during the 90-minute hearing was when Ms McKinnell, one of the stars of these Liaison Committee hearings, asked him what percentage he would put on achieving his target of halving inflation.
Lamely, he replied: “I’m working 100% to deliver it.”
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It was all very bland, full of jargon such as “downstream cost”, whatever that is, and the PM gave the impression he wished he was somewhere else and couldn’t be bothered.
But then he got a shock. The committee exploded into life in a blistering exchange with Sir Chris Bryant, who chairs the Standards Committee and lambasted Mr Sunak for dodging privileges votes, Commons statements and PMQs.
On the Privileges Committee report on seven Tory MPs denouncing the Boris Johnson partygate inquiry as a “whitewash” and “kangaroo court”, Mr Sunak said: “I haven’t read every page of the report.”
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“It’s three pages long!” Sir Chris shot back. It’s also worth pointing out that Mr Sunak quoted the report he said he hadn’t read in his letter to Zac Goldsmith after he resigned last Friday.
At one point during his highly entertaining skewering of Mr Sunak, Sir Chris threw his head back and shouted: “Oh come off it, prime minister.” Many people listening to the whole session will have endorsed that sentiment.
If these sessions are to work and be productive, they need to be longer than 90 minutes, as they used to be. The committee has already cut the number of MPs asking questions, which has helped.
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The whole idea of the hearings is for detailed cross-examination of a PM on his or her policies away from the bearpit atmosphere of Prime Minister’s Questions. Here, to be fair, some members of the committee attempted forensic probing on policy details.
But they were thwarted by a prime minister who clearly had no intention of explaining his approach to the cost of living crisis or migrant crossings in any detail. He’ll no doubt conclude “job done”. But no doubt the MPs will feel they weren’t able to do their job very effectively this time.
