If Andy Burnham becomes PM on 20 July and the House of Commons is in recess, there would be 29 calendar working days before the Commons returns on Tuesday 1 September. Here's how the gap between taking office and speaking in HoC compares with previous PMs taking over between elections since 1945 👇🏻

And the letter 👇🏻

Politico reports that Shadow Leader of the House Jesse Norman has written to the Leader of the House, calling for the current Commons sitting to be extended to Monday 20 July so that Andy Burnham can make a statement & answer questions.

I was on BBC Radio 4’s Today in Parliament yesterday to discuss whether Andy Burnham becoming PM while the House of Commons is in recess would be constitutionally and historically unusual. 🎙️Full clip here from about 1:08: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/... And a preview below 🎧

Today is the first Party Leaders FMQs, with questions not published in the Bulletin in advance. As Labour and Reform have the same number of seats, the Presiding Officer has said the opening question would alternate between them each week, with this week's first slot taken by the Reform leader.

The first Backbench FMQs takes place today. The key issue is the degree to which MSPs will be able to ask their own questions, or whether questions are largely managed by parties. If MSPs are able to be more independent this has potential to develop into a different kind of questioning procedure.

If we look at how often UQs occurred, or how much sitting time passed between UQs, this session there was at least one UQ roughly every 1.5 sitting days, which is in line with the frequency of UQs every session since the beginning of Speaker Hoyle's term.

Earlier today the Romanian government lost a no-confidence vote. The voting procedure is quite unusual. Firstly, it’s bicameral - both deputies and senators vote. Each deputy and senator gets two balls (a white ball and a black ball), and a vote is cast by placing each ball in an urn. 🌑⚪️ 1/4

There was an UQ on 132 sitting days out of 280 this session. Most sitting days when an UQ was allowed had one question, with some sitting days with two UQs. There was one unusual day with four UQs on Monday 19 January 2026. 4/

The average number of UQs per sitting day (out of the total) has increased slightly compared to the last session of the previous parliament, but remains lower than previous peaks. 3/

Have Urgent Questions increased during this session of parliament? Yes, given it was a two-year session, and at least one UQ occurred on 132 of the 280 sitting days. But not to an unusual extent compared to other sessions since Speaker Bercow revived UQs in the 2010-15 Parliament. Short 🧵 1/

📣 We are very excited for this year’s @psa-parliaments.bsky.social annual conference taking place at the University of York! 📝 More details and registration: psaparliaments.org/annual-confe...

My favourite part of our chapter (thanks to Luke Hussey’s expert knowledge of the Lords) is this chart which shows the increase in both UQs in the Commons and PNQs in the Lords - a Bercow and a Fowler effect! 2/

Very excited to see the new edition of Exploring Parliament and our chapter in print 💙 Thank you @ameakin.bsky.social @estrangeirada.bsky.social @louisevthompson.bsky.social for all your fantastic work! 1/

This includes a very interesting explainer on Select Committee statements, which can be followed by questions from MPs!

Spotify Wrapped confirms that the excellent @hansardsociety.bsky.social Parliament Matters podcast has been the soundtrack of all my weekend runs this year!

Did this increase in UQs empower backbench MPs as Speaker Bercow intended? ✅Yes - there are more backbench UQs (N) than ever before. 📊 But backbench UQs are still a lower proportion than those from the opposition frontbench. UQs are a frontbench-dominated procedure.

Excited to be travelling to Cardiff for the @psa-parliaments.bsky.social annual conference! I will be presenting some new research on Urgent Questions with Meg Russell @conunitucl.bsky.social A sneak peek to some of our findings 👀