More than 50 MPs haven’t spoken at all in the House of Commons Chamber in 2024, including Liz Truss, former Prime Minister and MP for South West Norfolk.
The Commons Chamber sits every weekday, at different times throughout the week, offering a chance for MPs to raise issues and debate current topics. It’s a prime opportunity for MPs to voice issues that their constituents want to be heard on.
However, it seems some MPs are not speaking up at all, with over 50 MPs remaining tight-lipped in all sessions this year.
While that figure includes government and opposition whips (who do not speak in debates under parliamentary convention), seven Sinn Fein MPs who do not attend Parliament, and six MPs who haven’t been able to travel to Westminster for health reasons, there are still a significant number of people who are not speaking on behalf of their constituencies.
Analysis of data published by Hansard reveals that more than half of the MPs who have registered zero speeches have also declared that they are not planning to stand at the next General Election.
On average, MPs have spoken 32 times during the Parliamentary session which started on January 8 and ended on March 26. However, the relatively high proportion of those not speaking at all highlights that many will speak much more often than that.
Not everyone is silent, however, with the most vocal backbench MP in the last session of Parliament named as North Durham Labour MP Kevan Jones, with 79 spoken contributions, including six speeches and 11 questions.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak spoke the most times overall in the House of Commons in the last session, but it’s worth noting that 420 of the prime minister’s 431 contributions were answers to questions during the weekly PMQs, skewing the results slightly.
How to see your MP’s speaking history
You can see your own MP’s speaking history through publicly available data, to see if they are taking action on your constituency’s behalf.
Tools like They Work For You allow you to find your MP via your postcode if you don’t already know who it is.
From there, you can click through to see both their speaking and voting history. You can also write to your MP to suggest topics that you care about that you want to see raised.
