Being a politician I am – not surprisingly – happy to stick up for politics and politicians in general.

I think politics is essential for our country – imagine what a country where government ruled without elections would be like – and I think most (though not quite all!) politicians are in it for decent reasons. I don’t think they’ve got their snouts in the trough (after all, most could easily earn more and work fewer hours outside politics) nor do I think that MPs get ridiculously long holidays (Parliament being “in recess” isn’t the same as being on holiday – conscientious MPs work through recess, researching policy, meeting constituents and so on and on). And I could go on.

But the point at which I draw the line in defending my profession is Prime Minister’s Questions. What an awful testosterone-fuelled bear pit of badly behaved boys (and it is overwhelmingly boys!) that is!

To be more precise – the flaws with PMQs fall under five headings. First, the Prime Minister only very rarely faces any detailed, forensic questioning – because the format makes it far too easy to avoid the question.

Second, too many questions get eaten up by patsy soft questions from the government’s own side. “Would the Prime Minister confirm how wonderful he is?” is only a slight paraphrase – and is a waste of everyone’s time.

Third, the atmosphere and ethos is far too much about verbal strutting and intimidation. Take for example the Labour Party’s response to Gordon Brown’s dodgy first outing at PMQs. It was to ensure that Labour MPs made lots more noise next time round, heckling and shouting down Tory MPs as they rose to ask questions. Can you imagine running a workplace on that basis? Judge a manager but how loudly his or her staff shout and heckle other managers at the weekly staff meeting? Bizarre. Yet this is meant to pass for normal adult behaviour in the Palace of Westminster.

Fourth, because there are not that many questions asked – and so much time is wasted with points two and three – individual MPs only very rarely get the chance to ask a question. This means lots of names go into the hat each week, and a small lucky number gets pulled out.

Using random draws to choose who gets to ask questions may sound fair – but it means that some MPs (the unlucky ones) almost never get called. Why should their constituents suffer from having an MP who is less able to raise issues at PMQs (in as much as that does some good) than people who live elsewhere, just because of the luck of the draw by Mr Speaker?

And it means you cannot choose when you want to ask a question. You just have to bung in your name time after time hoping it eventually pops up. Hard luck if there’s a major issue that has blown up in a particular constituency. Chances are – the MP won’t get to raise it at PMQs for months.

And fifth, because PMQs only take place when Parliament is sitting, there are large chunks of the year when if something happens – sorry, no questions allowed.

So – PMQs are, to use the phrase of the moment – not fit for purpose. They don’t do a good job at holding Prime Ministers to account, and the awful behaviour of so many MPs leaves a dreadful impression on the public as to what politics and politicians are about. And alas, for all that the media loves to take an instinctive cynical and negative approach to politicians, when it comes to PMQs they are deeply complicit in the establishment game. Atrocious macho posturing? Oh, that’s never newsworthy.

An MP can pretty much do anything except strip naked and hurl themselves across the Chamber and they won’t get a whisper of media criticism for their behaviour at PMQs. It’s just boys having fun, and that’s all ok isn’t it?

Well no – I don’t think it is. It’s time to blow the whistle on the sort of behaviour that – if it took places elsewhere, such as from pupils in a classroom – would have the self-same politicians clamouring for tough action, the smack of firm discipline and probably the introduction of a few new criminal offences too.

In the absence of a few ASBOs being dished out to the serial hecklers and shouters, what then is to be done?

First, the Speaker should take a much, much tougher line, including reviewing the recorded pictures and sounds after each PMQs to catch out those miscreants who think they can get away with it just because the Speaker doesn’t immediately see or hear that it was them personally misbehaving. And each time someone is caught out – let the Parliamentary broadcasting authorities release the relevant clip and transcript, all ready packaged up for the local and regional media for that MP’s constituency. Perhaps when handed an easy story on the plate, we’ll then start seeing some media pressure! Even if we don’t, I am sure many bloggers will take up such information voraciously – and spread the embarrassment and political cost for the offenders more widely.

In other words – let’s not have MPs lecture others on zero tolerance without also holding themselves to standards of decorous behaviour. There has been some welcome move towards a clamp down on bad behaviour by the Speaker recently – with him twice upbraiding Labour MP Ian Austin for – well – just shouting out abuse after abuse. But that doesn’t go nearly far enough.

Second, PMQs need to take place in more weeks of the year and for a longer period of time. This will give more MPs the chance to ask questions and even open up allowing backbench MPs (rather than just opposition party leaders) getting to ask a supplementary question.

Outside of Parliament’s normal sitting weeks, why not take PMQs around the different parts of the UK? Indeed, this would open up all sorts of possibilities for allowing members of the public to ask questions. It would be good to get the public more involved directly.

But also this means there would be a ready supply of people willing to tell the media what they thought of their experience, whether they were happy with how their question was answered and so on – all extra pressures for people to behave and to answer questions in fact.

We know from past general elections how the few questions that have really cut through to politicians have been those where a member of the public has confronted a politician in person. So let’s have more of that.

Third, you may have heard of this new-fangled internet thing. Let’s use it to bring in the public more, even where logistically it is too difficult to get everyone in the same room. Part of what we could do is to have the public being able to ask questions via the internet – such as by submitting video clips and then getting the PM to record his answers. This sort of exchange of clips has worked really well (via YouTube) as part of the Republican and Democrat presidential nomination contests. Having people film themselves asks questions is not only a good protection against faked spam questions, it also gives more passion and humanity to the questions – all of which adds to the pressure on those on the receiving end to answer properly.

Fourth, the Prime Minister should be open to more frequent questioning from MPs outside of PMQs. In particular, his appearances before the massed ranks of all the Select Committee chairs tend to provide a more in-depth and considered line of questioning – so let’s have more of those.

But above all, what we need is a real desire to put an end to the current embarrassing unedifying display of “he who shouts loudest shouts last”. It doesn’t hold those with power to account and it demeans politics. And it only continues that way because no-one has cried foul. It’s time to cry foul.

This article first appeared on Liberal Democrat Voice.

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2008