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Liaison Committee sessions with the Prime Minister gain little recognition. This one year research project, funded by the Nuffield Foundation will seek to illuminate this little understood area of parliamentary work.

Whilst public perceptions of prime ministerial accountability centre on Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQ), Liaison Committee sessions have now operated for thirteen years, questioning three successive Prime Ministers. The Committee has undergone a process of significant institutional learning as a result of its early experiences, and has narrowed the number of topics and the number of questioners, increased to three sessions a year, sharpening the scrutiny blade.

This project is funded by the Nuffield Foundation

Primarily, the sessions enable the prime minister to be challenged on the government’s record in a less partisan manner than weekly PMQs. The sessions are generally informative exchanges on broad government strategy and contemporary issues, which provide for far more detailed prime ministerial justification of policy decision making. When canvassed the public found these sessions positive, but knew little about them. These sessions with the Prime Minister therefore constitute important connective tissue between the executive and the legislature, but have thus far attracted little research attention.

The project team will work closely with the parliamentary clerks and MPs involved with these evidence sessions, in order analyse their accountability contribution, and to provide recommendations for how this form of scrutiny might be improved. The project also involves national and international comparative work, to find similar examples of prime ministerial accountability in other political systems and to learn from them.

This is an exciting piece of research, which is positioned to make significant contributions to our understanding of both the limits and the possibilities of democratic accountability mechanisms.