By Sam Macrory - 19th November 2010
He’s done prime minister’s questions, party conference speeches, and televised leader’s debates.
But yesterday, David Cameron faced a whole new challenge: the monumental feat of endurance that is the liaison select committee, two-and-a-half hours of exchanges with Parliament’s select committee chairs.
Housing benefit, forests, aircraft carriers, Irish bailouts, even royal weddings: with the help of a few helpful factsheets, slipped in his direction by the three eager minions who sat behind him, Cameron skated over the surface of all of them.
The two previous prime ministerial committee witnesses displayed very contrasting styles.
Tony Blair went for easy charm and light-footed evasiveness.
Gordon Brown’s settled on fact-heavy wooden monologues, a useful method of crushing his audience into desperate submission.
Cameron went for a little bit of both.
It began very Blairishly. The jacket was discarded and Cameron opened with a lame gag for the committee: “That’s a relief!” replied the prime minister after chairman Sir Alan Beith reminded the PM that liaison committee was “not for political jousting” like PMQs.
Worse still, the committee, Beith promised, was going to explore “the inner workings of government”.
Luckily, Cameron soon showed a Gordon-esque shortness of temper to keep the committee awake, after a series of deference-free attacks from Conservative committee chairs left him looking far from amused.
The never easily impressed Treasury select committee chair Andrew Tyrie began the pattern, dismissing the Comprehensive Spending Review as "semi-comprehensive at best".
James Arbuthnot, the defence select committee chair, followed with a question on the infamous leaked letter from Liam Fox, the defence secretary, to Cameron.
What effect did the leak have on the defence budget, Arbuthnot asked. Not much, Cameron insisted, before revealing that "that department [the MOD] does seem to have a problem with leaks – which is worrying when it's in charge of security."
His support team looked worried; that sounds like ground for another angry – and leaked? - scribbling from Disgusted of Whitehall.
Letter-writing continued to be the theme of the day.
Bernard Jenkin, chairman of the public administration select committee, asked Cameron whether Downing Street had prodded a number of defence chiefs to write dismissive letters in response to Lord West's criticism of the defence spending review.
"I don't know. I wouldn’t be remotely surprised", came the decidedly impolite and un-Blairish response.
It prompted Andrew Tyrie, eyebrows arched, to tell the PM that "many of us would find it unacceptable for Number 10 to encourage chief of staffs to write."
A very public ticking off left the prime minister speechless; if only someone had come up with such a ploy for Ed Miliband’s infamous 'PMQS for dummies' guide.
But this wasn’t, of course, like PMQs. Sir Alan Beith hates that.
So when Margaret Hodge, the public accounts committee chairman, and Cameron started talking over each other in a row on housing benefit, Sir Alan reprimanded them both.
“Order! I don’t think this is Wednesday afternoon. Order!” Red faces all round, but Beith had selfishly shut down the most exciting moment of the afternoon.
The second hour began to drag as the inner-workings were pored over.
Everyone asked “good questions”, flattered Cameron, but not exactly trying questions.
Tim Yeo, environmental audit committee chairman, wondered what criteria he could use to judge Cameron’s promise of “the greenest government ever”.
Cameron promised that he would provide Yeo with a “weapon with which to beat us with” in 2015.
“It’s not targets – we’re setting the actual act we have to take.”
Which sounds a bit like a target; not to matter, Yeo liked the sound of the weaponry.
As the two hour target approached an unidentified committee member appeared to close his eyes for a very long bout of deep-thinking.
Cameron himself seemed to lose his thread for a few answers.
It’s understandable.
Liaison committees make for a long, long afternoon, and for most of the time at least 32 people aren’t really doing very much.
Is it disrespectful to suggest that there may be a better way for them to spend their time? Apparently so.
Sir Alan Beith wants the team to assemble more frequently. The prime minister won’t be alarmed.
His most newsworthy suggestion was to propose a bank holiday for next summer’s Royal Wedding.
With 33 eager questioners taking their turn, there’s always a softer question to tackle if the going gets nasty.
Sam Macrory is political editor of The House Magazine.
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