[1andrew1]

Every day is Poets' Day for MPs under Sunak!

MPs clock off early as length of Commons work day hits record low

Rishi Sunak accused of presiding over a ‘zombie parliament’

The working day for MPs in the House of Commons chamber has been shorter on average this parliamentary session than in any other in the past quarter century, according to a Financial Times analysis.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been accused of presiding over a “zombie parliament”, with opposition parties arguing the relative shortness of the average parliamentary day shows an administration running “out of steam”.

The average duration of a Commons sitting day in the current parliamentary session, which began in November, has been 7 hours and 9 minutes, a record low since New Labour came to power in 1997, the FT found.

“There’s very little going on day to day,” conceded one Conservative minister. A Labour insider argued some prime debating slots in the chamber were being dedicated to “niche” issues to fill time.

On Tuesday last week the Commons adjourned at 3.53pm, while on one Monday earlier this month almost five hours were dedicated to an unfocused “general debate on farming”, critics pointed out.

The FT analysis used parliamentary data going back 27 years — the data is available online — as well as Commons Library research.

Between 1997 and 2023 the average was 7 hours and 58 minutes — or 49 minutes longer than in the current session, the analysis showed. The peak was 9 hours and 15 minutes in the 1998-99 session of Tony Blair’s first administration.

https://www.ft.com/content/fef202b8-...6-cbb6db52f0f0