Liaison with the Prime Minister

The Prime Minister appeared for the second time yesterday before the Liaison Committee, made up of the Chairs of the other Select Committees. There had been a change of format. Instead of ranging widely over every subject the Committee Chairs could think of, as in the past, the session was restricted to 90 minutes and covered only two broad subjects: growth in the economy and UK interventions abroad. In this one can detect the hand of Alan Beith, the experienced LibDem Chair of the Committee. He has been keen from the start to question the Prime Minister "in depth" and explicitly drew a distinction between the Liaison Committee and the "political jousting" of Prime Minister's Questions in his introduction to David Cameron's first appearance in November. At that appearance the Liaison Committee failed to rattle Cameron or indeed to dig very deep. Ben Wright of BBC news commented at the time that "David Cameron handled his first liaison committee well and he knew it". Alan Beith presumably hoped that a tighter focus would be more productive.

But it cannot be said that the Committee got much further with the Prime Minister yesterday than they did in November. There was so little to grab the headlines that the hearing did not make the 6 o'clock news. Andrew Tyrie, Chair of the Treasury Committee, pressed David Cameron hard on the meaning of a "balanced economy" but, after a couple of false starts, the Prime Minister came up with a coherent answer that was hard to argue with. The information that there would be 400 troops coming out of Afghanistan over the next year was made less newsworthy by the statement that the "enduring level" of 9,500 would stay the same. And so on.

Possibly the Committee scored an own goal by restricting questioning to two subjects which made it easier for David Cameron to prepare. Possibly Alan Beith's very tight chairmanship, with every member sticking closely to time and to their Committee's interests, constrained rather than enabled the questioning. The only member to go even slightly off-piste was Margaret Hodge of the Public Accounts Committee on bank lending to small businesses, and Cameron has answered plenty of questions on that subject.

The Liaison Committee is due to see the Prime Minister three times a year in this new format. On this showing, he will just become more and more skilful at dealing with them as he gets more practice.