"The rôle of the Speaker ... is not working as well as it should"

This was part of the contribution by Conservative Maria Miller to the Commons debate on parliamentary standards last night. She was speaking in the context of Dame Laura Cox's report on the bullying and harassment of parliamentary staff, but she might well have been discussing the conduct of parliamentary business overall. As the deputy speaker Eleanor Laing remonstrated, when she reluctantly had to close the debate:

My decision and my ruling from the Chair this evening has been that my reading of this Chamber was that the vast majority of Members in this Chamber wanted to have a decision on this matter this evening. I agreed with the right hon. Gentleman earlier that it is a great pity that today we had urgent questions lasting for some two hours and eight minutes that were somewhat repetitive, and that we then had statements lasting for three hours and two minutes that were also rather repetitive. As I said to the right hon. Gentleman [Sir Desmond Swayne, who had been prevented from speaking by the closure] in answer to his point of order earlier this evening, these matters are in the hands of Members. If Members insist on having their voice heard again and again, making the same point on the same matter, we will be in a position whereby an important debate such as the one that has just concluded has not had nearly enough time, but these matters are in the hands of Members.

This is more than a procedural quibble. Important debates are truncated or even postponed because of the promiscuous scheduling of Urgent Questions and the reluctance of the usual suspects to forgo a contribution if their point has already been made by another honourable member. The constant banal repetition must put off even those voters interested in current affairs from watching Parliament in action. Thus important matters are missed along with the party political dross.

Speaker Bercow, who has been a reformer in other respects, is alleged to be a bully behind the scenes. A debate on the Cox report could have been expected to produce further criticisms of his personal  conduct, particularly if the debate had started before the evening TV news bulletins and if it had run its natural course. It was therefore helpful to him that two government ministers made lengthy statements (about the "long-term plan" for the English NHS and government policy on drones). But was it necessary to accept an Urgent Question on Brexit which predictably went over well-trodden ground? And, serious though Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's plight is, could the FO usefully say anything new, considering the delicacy of diplomatic negotiations?