Addressing a press conference some time ago, PN MPs David Agius and Robert Cutajar appealed to the prime minister to submit himself to a weekly round of prime minister’s questions.

Agius and Cutajar said the party would be proposing a revamp of the way parliament works, through the creation of an ad hoc committee to analyse parliament’s rules.

Furthermore, Cutajar said the PN wants to win back people’s confidence in parliament, and he appealed to all ministers to show respect by answering parliamentary questions and by being present during question time.

Anyone with political objectivity should deeply reflect on what was proposed at that conference. Till some time ago, politics seemed so much about strategy, posturing, wedging, trolling and the deliberate fostering of mutual antagonism.

Question time typified this negativity because, yes, there has to be a bit of sport in it for all those of us as we watch a gladiatorial circus that features insults, point-scoring (and points-of-order scoring), raucous equivocation, tedious questions by the government for the government, and bad (and occasionally good) jokes. Question time encapsulates and drives this caustic culture.

Question time is one key cause, not merely a symptom, of this parliamentary rot. Question time has been giving us all the comfort of false rigour. Apparently, this false rigour has been echoing through parliament and through our nation.

We should accept that the way the speaker conducts himself, the way he chooses to interpret and enforce standing orders, and the way he influences the behaviour of other parliamentarians, will influence the quality, tone and substance of question time.

But I am unconvinced that a more equitable and equable speaker would magically recalibrate question time into something rigorous and real. Any cartoonish partisanship of the government should not blind us to the everyday partisanship that is question time’s norm or, indeed, its function.

Our ministers and MPs often seem to show no compassion and have no feeling for the thousands of people watching question time week after week, whom they bore and drive to the point of complete frustration with one pointless political claim after another.

Proposing a revamp of the way question time is conducted must not lead us, once more, to putting questions that invite predictable political postures, phrased mainly to further the new narrative of our ministers and MPs which would go on to demonstrate that such revamp represents a change of mere style rather than substance.

It is fundamental in the concept of responsible government that the executive government be accountable to the House.

The capacity of the House of Representatives to call the government to account depends, in large measure, on its knowledge and understanding of the government’s policies and activities. Questions without notice and on notice (questions in writing) play an important part in this quest for information.

The public expects questions to be answered, or for the answers to at least be relevant to the question- Mark Said

If accountability and information-gathering are the core functions of question time, then question time is failing. I personally have little confidence that question time offers the right people the chance to ask the right questions in the right way for the right reasons. The rules of question time do not help its cause. Whatever the necessity of points of order to check out-of-bounds questions or answers, they have become another tedious element in the combative House of Representatives.

If the true point of question time is to test the political skills of politicians and to rub policies to see how brightly they shine, then I suggest we are testing for the wrong qualities, not least, the close but amateur observation of facial expressions and body language.

If the point is instead to elicit information and to ensure accountability, then I suggest that making more of questions with notice, that is, written questions requiring written answers within a defined time, will recalibrate both questions and answers, reducing the extent of partisanship for its own sake.

In the UK, MPs ask ministers oral questions but must table their questions three days before asking them, while the prime minister faces a more spontaneous question time. Can question time help revive the art of political oratory in Malta? Is that a reason to keep it? Decades of tricks-laden questions and ‘get-stuffed’ answers have ossified question time, leaving it carrying the burden of its own history.

In Westminster-style fashion, our question time is meant to be one of the linchpins of democracy, a chance where constituents, through their representatives, can ask the government of the day “what’s going on?”

Yet question time has been frustrating, did not serve the parliament or MPs well, and mostly seemed to turn people off.

We must try and improve question time in an attempt to re-engage the public with the most infamous part of parliamentary sittings.

The public expects questions to be answered, or for the answers to at least be relevant to the question. Anyone who has watched question time knows that is almost impossible. After all, it has never been known as ‘answer time’.

Scrutiny, enquiry, judgment and sanction. This is the language of accountability. A government cannot be responsible if it is not accountable. And it cannot be accountable if it is not answerable for its actions.

Executive accountability is vital to ensuring the government acts responsibly and in the best interests of the people. In our Westminster-hybrid system, the government must account for its actions to parliament and, through parliament, to the country.

Mark Said is a lawyer.