Jon Walker: Focus on PM as MPs find some easy prey

Nov 5 2010 By Jon Walker

Prime Minister’s questions can be a chance for MPs to shine.

This week Steve McCabe (Lab Selly Oak) asked David Cameron how he squared plans to allow prisoners to vote with plans to introduce directly elected police commissioners.

Didn’t this mean that convicted criminals would be helping to pick the head of the police force, he asked?

It’s possible to have some sympathy with the Government on this issue.

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the UK is wrong to impose a blanket ban on prisoners voting.

Any government would be faced with a choice between accepting the court’s demand or, ultimately, pulling out of the European Convention on Human Rights, which nobody wants to do (although Mr Cameron may have given the impression in opposition that he was ready to do this).

But Mr McCabe’s question went down well in the chamber, and may resonate with voters who believe giving prisoners the vote is ridiculous.

Ed Miliband also chose a strong topic to attack Mr Cameron on.

The Labour leader demanded an explanation as to why the Prime Minister had appointed a photographer to follow him around at the taxpayer’s expense.

The official answer is that this photographer, Andrew Parsons, will take photos of the entire cabinet and having someone on the payroll is cheaper than paying a freelancer for each event.

Perhaps it makes sense for the Government to have some sort of official photographer, but Downing Street doesn’t seem to have realised that employing the person who also took pictures of Mr Cameron in opposition – when he was a Conservative Party employee paid specifically to make Mr Cameron look good – would go down badly.

Black Country MP Tom Watson (Lab West Bromwich East) then learned that the web guru behind the Tory leader’s “webcameron” videos had also got a Downing Street job, paid for by us.

At a time when public services are being cut to the bone, it doesn’t look good.