He­len Dray­ton

Dur­ing the sit­ting of the House on Sep­tem­ber 19, 2025, the Speak­er dis­al­lowed sup­ple­men­tary ques­tions to the Prime Min­is­ter on the ba­sis that Stand­ing Or­der 26 does not pro­vide for such ques­tions. In ref­er­enc­ing Sec­tions 27 and 28, which pro­vide for min­is­ters to an­swer sup­ple­men­tal ques­tions, the Speak­er said an “is­sue aris­es in terms of in­ter­pre­ta­tion”.

He asked why the framers of the Stand­ing Or­ders gave mem­bers ex­plic­it pow­er to put sup­ple­men­tary ques­tions to min­is­ters, but not to the PM. He ex­plained that ques­tions to the PM re­late to “cur­rent mat­ters of na­tion­al im­por­tance or the gen­er­al per­for­mance of the Gov­ern­ment and Gov­ern­ment agen­cies”. The rea­son was clear, he said: “Be­cause of the breadth of what is al­lowed to be asked in writ­ten form, the nu­ances that might emerge from an oral an­swer can­not ad­e­quate­ly be rea­son­ably ex­pect­ed to be ad­dressed in sup­ple­men­tal ques­tions.” He urged mem­bers to be ‘prac­ti­cal’ and to adopt ‘a com­mon-sense’ ap­proach.

Now, un­ques­tion­ably, the PM is an in­tel­li­gent, ar­tic­u­late, and shrewd politi­cian who an­swers ques­tions suc­cinct­ly and with clar­i­ty. Like all for­mer PMs, she is quite ca­pa­ble of an­swer­ing im­promp­tu and com­plex ques­tions about her gov­ern­ment and mat­ters of na­tion­al im­por­tance. None of our for­mer PMs need­ed such cu­ri­ous pa­ter­nal­ism. Cer­tain­ly, with the Speak­er’s in­dul­gence, the PM could de­fer an­swer­ing an oral ques­tion if the an­swer is of a na­ture that re­quires a de­tailed and lengthy re­ply. She may al­so de­cline to an­swer if it is not in the pub­lic in­ter­est, such as a sen­si­tive mat­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

Said the Speak­er, “I can­not ar­ro­gate un­to my­self, to bring in­to my ju­ris­dic­tion­al baili­wick, a pow­er which I sim­ply do not have,” cit­ing some Privy Coun­cil de­ci­sion. How­ev­er, Par­lia­ment isn’t a court of law; its rules of pro­ce­dure dif­fer, and the Speak­er isn’t a judge in court.

Mem­ber Stu­art Young cor­rect­ly point­ed out that Stand­ing Or­der 2(2) states that “for any mat­ter not pro­vid­ed for in the Stand­ing Or­ders, re­sort shall be had to the us­age and prac­tice of the House of Com­mons of the UK, pro­vid­ed it is not in­con­sis­tent with our own Stand­ing Or­ders or prac­tice. Sec­tion 2 (3) spec­i­fies, “In cas­es of doubt the Stand­ing Or­ders of this House shall be in­ter­pret­ed in the light of the rel­e­vant us­age and prac­tice of the House of Com­mons of the Unit­ed King­dom, but no re­stric­tions which the House of Com­mons has in­tro­duced by Stand­ing Or­der shall be deemed to ex­tend to this House or its Mem­bers un­til the House has pro­vid­ed by Stand­ing Or­der for such re­stric­tion ...”

Mem­ber Young added that “Stand­ing Or­der 2(4) fol­lows by em­pow­er­ing the Speak­er ‘to reg­u­late the con­duct of busi­ness in all mat­ters not pro­vid­ed for in the Stand­ing Or­ders.’” Sec­tions 2/2 and 2/3 make such pro­vi­sions.

Was there tru­ly any valid rea­son for the Speak­er not to al­low sup­ple­men­tal ques­tions to the PM, cur­tail­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty to the peo­ple? The de­ci­sion was con­trary to the long-stand­ing prac­tice and sec­tion 2/2. The Speak­er said, un­less he was “con­vinced that 26 al­lows sup­ple­men­tal ques­tions”, ... he sug­gests “we con­vene an ur­gent meet­ing of the Stand­ing Or­der Com­mit­tee, and we could cure this la­cu­na in a mat­ter of weeks”.

But what la­cu­na? The Stand­ing Or­ders al­ready set out pro­ce­dures for deal­ing with any such gap and sit­u­a­tions which may evolve over time—and that very is­sue was set­tled in 2014, when un­der the UNC Gov­ern­ment, then speak­er of the House, Wade Mark, is­sued a Prac­tice Note deal­ing with sup­ple­men­tal ques­tions to the PM, bor­row­ing from the prac­tice in the UK and oth­er Com­mon­wealth ju­ris­dic­tions. In any event, since that Note, we have had the un­doubt­ed prac­tice of PMs an­swer­ing sup­ple­men­tal ques­tions.

In­deed, the mat­ter is trou­bling. Isn’t it com­mon ci­vil­i­ty for any in­sti­tu­tion to in­form its mem­bers in ad­vance of any fun­da­men­tal or ma­te­r­i­al de­par­ture from es­tab­lished pro­ce­dure and prac­tice? Pow­er is a neu­tral in­stru­ment un­til it is wield­ed for the ben­e­fit or to the detri­ment of oth­ers and so­ci­ety. Any de­ci­sion to de­ny the peo­ple, through their elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the right to ask the PM rel­e­vant sup­ple­men­tal ques­tions will un­der­mine the con­sti­tu­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment to ac­count for its per­for­mance.

Through­out the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic world, a crit­i­cal role of Par­lia­ment is to hold the Ex­ec­u­tive ac­count­able to the peo­ple. Ques­tion time is one such im­por­tant oc­ca­sion. Though con­tentious at times, it serves the peo­ple’s in­ter­est and an­chors our writ­ten Con­sti­tu­tion. Hope­ful­ly, wis­dom will pre­vail.

The pub­lic space con­tains dis­re­spect­ful la­belling of the for­mer speak­er as a “PNM Speak­er”. It will be equal­ly dis­re­spect­ful, in­ap­pro­pri­ate, and wor­thy of con­dem­na­tion for any­one to brand the cur­rent Speak­er a UNC Speak­er. Suf­fice it to say, non-par­ti­san­ship, re­al and per­ceived, is es­sen­tial for pub­lic con­fi­dence in our pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions, cre­at­ed to serve the pub­lic good.