... accountability which becomes more entrenched with the fact that part of the executive resides in the House of Lords. The Commons retrospective powers of scrutiny can be divided into two areas, those on the floor of the house and those not. On the floor of the house the most famous is that of parliamentary question time. The Prime Minister takes questions twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 3pm for 15 minutes, other Ministers do so on a rota basis. M.P.s give notice to the Speaker of their main question and are then allowed to ask a subsidiary question. This area of scrutiny is becoming more and more impotent with the introduction of the Next Steps executive agencies as Ministers become less involved in the day to day running of their department, a trend which is set to continue with the Next Steps revolution. Opposition M.P.s try and wrong foot the ...

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