Francis Urquhart at Prime Ministers Questions
Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs, officially known as Questions to the Prime Minister, while colloquially known as Prime Minister's Question Time) is a constitutional convention in the United Kingdom, currently held as a single session every Wednesday at noon when the House of Commons is sitting, during which the prime minister answers questions from members of Parliament (MPs).
History
Although prime ministers have answered questions in parliament for centuries, until the 1880s, questions to the prime minister were treated the same as questions to other ministers of the Crown: asked without notice, on days when ministers were available, in whatever order MPs rose to ask them. In 1881 fixed time-limits for questions were introduced and questions to the prime minister were moved to the last slot of the day as a courtesy to the 72-year-old prime minister at the time, William Ewart Gladstone, so he could come to the Commons later in the day. In 1953, when Winston Churchill (in his late 70s at the time) was prime minister, it was agreed that questions would be submitted on fixed days (Tuesdays and Thursdays).
A Procedure Committee report in 1959 recommended that questions to the prime minister be taken in two fixed-period, 15-minute slots on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. The recommendations were put into practice under Harold Macmillan during a successful experiment from 18 July 1961 to the end of the session on 4 August. The very first question was delivered by Labour MP Fenner Brockway, asking to which minister the UK ambassador to South Africa would be responsible. In response to the prime minister's answer, Brockway said "May I express our appreciation of this new arrangement for answering Questions and the hope that it will be convenient for the Prime Minister as well as useful to the House?" PMQs were made permanent in the following parliamentary session, with the first of these on 24 October 1961.
Margaret Thatcher at PMQs
The style and culture of PMQs has changed gradually over time. According to former Speaker Selwyn Lloyd, the now famous disorderly behaviour of MPs during PMQs first arose as a result of the personal animosity between Harold Wilson and Edward Heath; before this PMQs had been lively but comparatively civilised. In the past, prime ministers often opted to transfer questions to the relevant minister, and Leaders of the Opposition did not always take their allocated number of questions in some sessions, sometimes opting not to ask any questions at all. This changed during the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, when the prime minister chose not to transfer any questions to other members of her Cabinet, and Labour leader Neil Kinnock began asking more questions than his predecessors. His successor, John Stroud, established the precedent of always taking his full allocation of questions. During the last two years of the premiership of Francis Urquhart, Tom Makepeace crossed the floor to join the Labour Party, whereafter, although not Leader of the Opposition, he emerged as an unofficial one of sorts, frequently criticising Urquhart's government in the wake of the Cyprus Crisis.