Departmental questions have, by this stage of the parliament, all developed their own characters. There is the colourful combat of Treasury questions, often involving one Tory minister deploying a lengthy analogy involving handing over the keys to a car or arson to describe Ed Balls. Then there’s Michael Gove and Tristram Hunt’s lesson in rhetoric at Education questions. And then there’s the hour-long grudge match that enlightens no-one at Work and Pensions questions.
Today’s session was a typical example. Labour had plenty to attack on, from the implementation of universal credit to the cost of the employment and support allowance. And the party did attack. But the questions and the answers revealed very little about whether the government’s welfare reforms are under control or not, save that Mike Penning seems to think that the BBC cooked up its leak about ESA for ‘their own benefit’, without being fully clear what benefit there might be to a news organisation of a leaked document, other than that it is, er, news.
The session grew more heated as it progressed.
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