MPs give their views on reforms to the working hours of the House of Commons.

Alan Duncan

Alan Duncan, Conservative MP for Rutland and Melton, told ePolitix.com: "They are a total disaster, and have destroyed the community of politics within parliament. The September 10 day recall is a farce.

"The hours should go back to 2.30pm to 10.00pm, with no morning sessions, sitting roughly as schools do over the year."

Nick Palmer

Nick Palmer, Labour MP for Broxtowe, told ePolitix.com: "They've been a substantial improvement as far as I'm concerned. Having the occasional evening off allows me to intermittently simulate normality - watch TV programmes that everyone is talking about, or even see my wife when we're both awake! I'd hate to see them reversed."

Brian Donohoe

Brian Donohoe, Labour MP for Cunninghame South, told ePolitix.com: "I think the new hours are ill thought out have done nothing but compress the business of the House to two days and are completely useless to me."

Nigel Evans

Nigel Evans, Conservative MP for Ribble Valley, told ePolitix.com: "The new workings of the House are awful, awful, awful. Family friendly hours is an excuse which has denuded parliament of its soul and prevented it from properly working as a parliament.

"Sitting beyond ten was never a good idea, but cutting the hours of the House on Tuesday, and Wednesdays to seven o'clock finishes means that MPs must now concertina themselves into a number of activities which only David Blaine could exceed.

"I cannot do all my office activities, and be in Westminster Hall, the chamber, and have meetings with constituents at the same time - something has to give. Select committees and standing committees are also bidding for your time - and all party groups which are very important in the workings of the House are also suffering as MPs dwindle in number after 7.00pm and are still trying to catch up before.

"The 'mixing together' after 7.00pm and before the final vote has also suffered - it is like the Marie Celeste after the seven o'clock vote.

"I am not saying that this was not done for the best intentions, but it simply does not work. This was done as an experiment for the lifetime of a Parliament - but if something is palpably not working then it is only right to have the guts to admit it and move on. Tuesdays and Wednesdays should revert to 10 o'clock - Thursdays could remain at six o'clock as MPs trying to get back to Scotland and the North are able to do so without fear of missing their planes.

"The House is suffering as no doubt the theatre and cinema are getting a bit of a boost, but I wasn't sent to the Commons to socialise but hold the socialists to account and sending me home early is bad for politics generally. This isn't Tory versus Labour this is commonsense versus an idea that is corroding the very heart of our democratic life."

Graham Allen

Graham Allen, Labour MP for Nottingham North, told ePolitix.com: "Excellent changes and most MPs have adjusted quickly, even the chronically institutionalised are finding they can find productive things to do after 7.30pm in the evening without holding everyone else hostage until 10.30pm and beyond. Lobby groups and ministers have helped MPs make good use of this time too."

Janet Anderson

Janet Anderson, Labour MP for Rossendale and Darwen, told ePolitix.com: "I strongly believe that the new hours of the Commons have actually made our working lives more difficult. Essentially, they only really benefit London MPs with homes near enough to parliament for them to get home in the evening. (Although some of them are now finding it difficult to do things like, eg, take their children to school in the morning because committees often now have to start at 8.55 am).

"It has had little or no benefit for those of us with northern constituencies. Moreover, the earlier finishes (though often they have not been as early as people had thought) have reduced the opportunities for us to nobble ministers in the division lobbies to raise constituency issues.

"Ministers who are out and about or working in their departments during the day used to come in regularly in the evenings for the 10.00pm votes. This was always a good time to grab them. Now that only applies to Mondays.

"It has also reduced the opportunities to show constituents round. Eg for my constituents to get down by 9.30am for a tour (now the latest time on a Tuesday and Wednesday to start a tour) they would have to leave Lancashire at 4.30am. This has made it impossible for schools and others to come down on the day of prime minister's questions, have a tour and also witness PMQs.

"All in all, I think it has been a mess and has destroyed much that was good about the former working schedule. Part of our job is about talking to people and a lot of that was done in the evening. We had our mornings to clear our constituency work, make any phone calls etc, perhaps meet someone for a working lunch, and then go into the chamber at 2.30pm ready to devote ourselves to the proceedings in the Chamber. That is no longer possible and many of my colleagues say they feel they do less work now than they did under the old hours. I agree.

"Being a member of parliament is not a nine to five job and never has been. Everyone who seeks to get elected to parliament knows that. Frankly, if they wanted a nine to five job, they should never have considered becoming an MP - perhaps a day shift on the checkout at Tesco might be more appropriate for them.

"There were very good reasons why the House used to sit the hours it did. It is now proving very difficult to fit everything in and committees often have to start at 8.55 am. This makes the job of the clerks very difficult indeed. It has also destroyed the refreshment department. Many of the waiters and waitresses say they are losing around £2,000 pa and there is a real question mark over whether all of those jobs can be sustained. And, incidentally, no-one consulted them about the change in hours.

"I rest my case. It is time for all of this to be reviewed as a matter of urgency. I believe that many who supported the changes would not take a different view."

Rosemary McKenna

Rosemary McKenna, Labour MP for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth, told ePolitix.com: "The new hours are working perfectly well. People just have to learn to adjust their working day and week around them. I am on two select committees, culture media and sport as well as procedure and I do not experience any difficulty."

Andrew Dismore

Andrew Dismore, Labour MP for Hendon, said: "The new hours have made it much more difficult to spend time doing visits in my constituency; they have made select committee work less effective, in that questioning of ministers and expert witnesses is now squeezed through lack of time, leading to less scrutiny; and even the general public find it harder to visit the House of Commons because it is open far less for public visits.

"I know from talking to parliamentary colleagues that many who previously supported the change now have changed their minds, and wish to have the hours reviewed.

"We now have one year's experience of working with the new hours, and I believe that if there was another free vote in the House the result would now be very different.

"As this groundswell of opinion develops, I hope the Leader of the House will listen to ordinary MPs and allow a review vote to take place."

Andrew Miller

Andrew Miller, Labour MP for Ellesmere Port and Neston, told ePolitix.com: "The new hours are a little like working split shifts.

"I don't suppose too many colleagues are familiar with this, but the effect is actually to make you even more tired as a result of the unsettled pattern. Family friendly, they are not! They only help families in daily travel distance of the House.

"As my real chief whip (a.k.a. my wife) said, 'It means you are spending more of your free time without me.'

"They must be changed!"

John Redwood

John Redwood, Conservative MP for Wokingham, told ePolitix.com: "I think the new hours of the House are a very bad idea.

"Firstly, there are not enough hours in total to do justice to all the business the government brings to the House. Too many bills are needlessly guillotined, leading to poor legislation without chance of proper scrutiny and amendment.

"Secondly, starting the main chamber earlier produces more clashes with important committees.

"Thirdly, finishing early on Tuesday and Wednesday kills the social side of parliament, which was important to proper debate. It also stops working lunches on those days, which was also important in keeping in touch with many outside groups.

"Fourthly, the new hours are not family friendly - the earlier start to committees in the mornings stops the morning school run, and finishing after 7 doesn't help MPs with younger children.

"Fifthly, the certainty of votes under frequent guillotines removes the main opportunity for opposition to wear a minister down to effect changes wanted outside the House. When I was a minister I liked the fact that I had to sell any legislation I was proposing to colleagues to avoid delay and embarrassment.

"The answer is to put Tuesdays and Wednesdays back onto Monday hours, to allow business after 10.00pm on there nights of the week. Guillotines should be sued on major bills if the Opposition has behaved badly!"

David Kidney

David Kidney, Labour MP for Stafford, told ePolitix.com: "I think that we MPs look more 'normal' for working something like a normal working day. Many people previously said to me that they could not see that the quality of debate and decision-making could be very good when we sat late into the night.

"I think that we have become more civilised in out working practices - now there is more to do to make us more effective in holding the government to account!"

Gwyneth Dunwoody

Gwyneth Dunwoody, Labour MP for Crewe and Nantwich, told ePolitix.com: "Change is only constructive when it makes an improvement. However, the effect of changes made on the pretence of making the House of Commons family friendly has been to positively disadvantage both free speech and the technical arrangements of parliament.

"The move to question time in the morning and the concentration on using only the Tuesday and Wednesday of any week for most activities has produced a very distorting effect. All MPs should have the right to sit in on question time should they so desire, but if they are to do that as well as deal with their very considerable postbags, take part in select committees, they will find the normal trick of having to be in two places expands to become three places at once.

"Select committees are also suffering. The times the committees meet have to constantly change, and it is now quite common with sessions with witnesses to be interrupted because of votes. This inevitably leaves the work of the select committees to be fragmented and less focussed than it should.

"At the present time support staff are losing their jobs because the facilities of the House of Commons are not used to the same extent that they were, MPs find it increasingly difficult to arrange for school parties to visit the House of Commons or to meet their constituents. All party parliamentary groups have virtually ceased to operate because there is no time, and their useful contributions to the work of parliament have been lost.

"It is a sad and depressing thing that we rushed into a series of wholly unacceptable changes, which have brought the House into disrepute because of its apparent emptiness for large parts of the week and have contributed to nothing besides the stress levels of MPs."

Joan Ruddock

Joan Ruddock, Labour MP for Lewisham Deptford, told ePolitix.com: "The working hours reforms were part of a whole package of modernisation. As such the reforms need to be implemented comprehensively and they need commitment and goodwill throughout the House to make them work. After so many years of working at night, many people have clearly found it difficult to adjust their working patterns. However, for the vast majority of modernisers the hours work well and a reversal would be completely unacceptable.

"The earlier prime minister's questions has been a great success. The earlier departmental question times and earlier finish times on Tuesdays and Wednesdays have led to better media coverage at times when constituents are most likely to tune in. The September sitting avoided the normal demands for a recall and the whole package appears to meet with public approval.

"There is scope for adjustment in committee times where difficulties have been experienced. It needs to be remembered that the Commons day has simply been moved forward by 3 hours and not truncated."

Tony Colman

Tony Colman, Labour MP for Putney, told ePolitix.com: "They are not helpful to parents who wish to get their children up, breakfasted and off to school."

Peter Pike

Peter Pike, Labour MP for Burnley, told ePolitix.com: "I still basically support the changes in hours - although a few minor changes are needed. Most of the faults may be generated by those who want the changes to fail. We have to give the new system a fair chance before we take a step backwards.

"Those opposed to the new hours and who refer to those occasions on Tuesdays and Wednesdays which have gone beyond 7.00pm as an argument that the new hours do not work should remember that on the old system that Business would have been after 10.00pm.

"When the new hours were accepted they were as part of a total package which included an annual calendar, and that is universally supported - not least for enabling us to plan our time in our constituencies further ahead."

Eric Illsley

Eric Illsley, Labour MP for Barnsley Central, told ePolitix.com: "The working hours are failing badly. The main reason is the same as when this experiment was tried (I believe) back in the seventies and that is the government continue to timetable business to go after the finish time.

"Therefore, assuming a member arrives before 9.00am for a committee, the House then runs until 7.00pm and then continues until 9.00pm or 10.00pm the House is sitting longer hours than before the experiment. In the past the mornings were available for committee work and correspondence and if the House sat an hour or two longer after 10.00pm it didn't really matter - you can't really do anything at that time.

"But at 7.00pm one could go to the theatre or cinema or have time with one's family or attend dinners but if the House overruns that is completely scuppered.

"It is pretty obvious to most people that the early finish time was a carrot dangled but which could not be given and we have all been conned in to giving up our mornings for nothing.

"I will vote to return to the previous system unless we get some meaningful commitment from Government on modernisation but I do not see that coming. The first priority for modernisation should be electronic voting and until we can get that we should abandon the modernisation experiments."

Peter Bottomley

Peter Bottomley, Conservative MP for Worthing West, told ePolitix.com: "The change makes little difference to me personally. Lunch time meetings can be difficult to arrange when the House is sitting, ditto with arranging tours of the Palace for visitors.

"Many will agree with the person who said being an MP is less of a vocation and more like a vacation (even though we meet more often and work harder than members of many parliaments and national assemblies)."

Sandra Gidley

Sandra Gidley, Liberal Democrat MP for Romsey, told ePolitix.com: "The thing that saddens me is that the reformed hours have been lauded as a step forwards for female MPs who have families. The new arrangements may help if you are London based but the reality for most of us is that our families are too far away for it to make much difference. The reality is that being an MP is not a nine to five job and the new hours are a cosmetic exercise.

"The reality of the new hours is that there are too many potential time table clashes. These impact particularly on a small party where the same person may want to be in Westminster Hall and the Chamber at the same time.

"It is also harder to fit in appointments with individuals during 'normal' working hours and I still end up working in my office until late anyway. The only positive is that from time to time I can book something for an evening and know that I won't be interrupted by the division bell!

"I have resisted commenting before now because I was happy to give the new hours a try but the sooner we have a rethink the better."

Tony McWalter

Tony McWalter, Labour MP for Hemel Hempstead, told ePolitix.com: "I voted for the new hours thinking that we would continue to use the hours after 7.00pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for bill and select committees.

"I now find that it is impossible to do the job properly. One cannot do after 7.30pm what one used to do in the mornings because dealing with urgent correspondence involves telephoning chief executives and others, and they are not at their desks after 7.30pm at night (whereas they were there in the mornings)."

Paul Tyler

Paul Tyler, Liberal Democrat MP for North Cornwall and shadow leader of the House, told ePolitix.com: "For some reason commentators - both from within the political Westminster village and from the media - have assumed that changes to the working hours of the House of Commons have been driven by an agenda to make them more 'family friendly' for MPs.

"In fact, this is emphatically not the case. I was (and am) an enthusiastic supporter of reform, inside the Modernisation Select Committee and everywhere else, for three reasons:

• It was a nonsense that those we represent could not hear or see what we had decided, on their behalf, at the end of key debates on the main broadcast news bulletins of the evening. Votes between 10.00pm and 10.30pm went largely unreported, even in the broadsheet newspapers. By adjusting to a more realistic media timetable we have already secured greater awareness of what happens in parliament, throughout the day, and removed some of the agenda-setting ministerial briefings from the mornings, which used to upstage statements to the Commons;
• MPs are not the only people who work in the Palace of Westminster: thousands of others have to be here when we are here. Parliamentary staff and all those who serve the nation here deserve to be considered, and late night sittings did nothing for them.
• Having seen the results of late night - sometimes all night - scrutiny, I am bound to say that the quality of our work at absurd hours of the evening or night never inspired me with confidence. Sensible hours should lead to more sensible legislation, and more effective accountability. It may be less convenient for some MPs, but if collectively we do a better job under these revised arrangements, that is a major bonus.

"The previous hours when the Chamber sat were conditioned by the need of some MPs to earn their living in the morning. That need has disappeared. It may be that some older MPs are finding it difficult to adjust, and some committees have not taken full advantage of their opportunity to respond flexibly. But the larger purposes, to which I have referred, are far too important to let individual special interests undermine these reforms."

Sir George Young

Sir George Young, Conservative MP for Hampshire North West, told ePolitix.com: "I am not in principle opposed to changes which move away from a 10.00pm finishing time in the Chamber. I believe it is sensible to try to nudge MPs working hours towards convergence with most of those whom we represent.

"However, I am not convinced that we have thought through the consequences of these changes on the other commitments that MPs have on standing and select committees. I believe that changes can now be made at the margins that improve how we use our time.

"Although the House may rise at 7.00pm, I often find I am working in my room until 10.00pm - doing the things I would have done in the morning under the old hours. So there has been an element of swings and roundabouts in the changes.

"There have been some unforeseen consequences; Thursdays are now becoming optional days at the House. It has become unusual to have a vote on a Thursday so, unless you want to take part in the debate or are on a Committee, colleagues go back to their constituencies.

"This means that Thursdays are 'no go' days for all party groups, party committees etc and these are now all packed into Tuesdays and Wednesdays, which are now very difficult to manage. Those are the two days into which we have compressed what used to happen in four days, and Outlook Calendar has difficulties in managing these.

"I think the new hours could be made to work if the government exercised more self-discipline with the volume of bills; if select committees were smaller - so members were not so overstretched - and if we reduced some of the non-productive time in the parliamentary week."

Nigel Jones

Nigel Jones, Liberal Democrat MP for Cheltenham, told ePolitix.com: "I think they are a big improvement on what went before and the new arrangements are working well.

"In addition, MPs look less tired and appear almost human instead of spaced-out zombies. A number of constituents have told me that they used to scoff at all-night sittings and thought we were all mad."

Andrew Turner

Andrew Turner, Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight, told ePolitix.com: "Dreadful:

• "there aren't enough hours between 8 a.m. and 11.30 p.m. for all the following activities with the result that they have to clash or clash with sittings of the House:
  • visits by constituents (in particular school visits etc)
  • meetings away from Westminster
  • meetings with colleagues or special interest groups
  • media opportunities, including with local media
  • select committee meetings
  • dealing with mail on the day it arrives
• visits by constituents (in particular school visits etc)
• meetings away from Westminster
• meetings with colleagues or special interest groups
• media opportunities, including with local media
• select committee meetings
• dealing with mail on the day it arrives
• "It is impossible for my constituents from the Isle of Wight to arrive in time for a tour of both Houses except on Mondays and Fridays, and most of these slots are fully booked
• "There are fewer useful things which can be done after seven o'clock than before - most people do not want to undertake the activities in (1) then, and select committees seem unwilling to use this time."