Members of parliament could cover more ground in debates if they learned a lesson from broadcasters who keep their monologues to 40 seconds, it has been suggested.

The call came during questions to the President of the Council in the Commons, after the Labour MP Julie Morgan spoke of her "frustration" at having to sit in silence as other members made contributions to debates.

Morgan told colleagues that "10 minutes is a perfectly adequate period of time for honourable members to make all the points that they would wish".

"If a general 10 minute time limit was introduced that would give the opportunity for more honourable members to take part, and thus end the frustration of sitting for many hours in this chamber and not having an opportunity to contribute, except by means of interventions," she said.

Responding, Ben Bradshaw said that Robin Cook was to make further suggestions to the Commons modernisation committee on time limits for speeches.

He agreed that speeches should be shorter, pointing out that the Speaker already had some discretion to set time limits for contributions.

"As a former radio journalist I was always taught that one should always be able to say what one needed in 40 seconds. I'm not expecting honourable members here to do that, but I hope they can be a lot shorter," said Bradshaw.

Conservative MP Douglas Hogg called for MPs to ask shorter questions and for ministers to give shorter answers.Bradshaw replied that "not only speeches in this place are invariably far too long, but so are questions and answers".