Come on Cameron – grow a pair!

David Cameron is famous for not answering the question when he does bother to put in an appearance at PMQs – now it seems he’s desperately trying to avoid doing PMQs whenever possible.

This morning it was confirmed that the Autumn Statement is being pushed back to Thursday 5th December because Cameron is away on Wednesday 4th. While the focus is on what he will be doing in China, there is little attention on what he won’t be doing – yet another session of PMQs.

The news today comes as the House of Commons once again rises on the insistence of Cameron’s business managers. Since becoming Prime Minister, Cameron has engineered for the House to rise on a Tuesday, dodging PMQs on a Wednesday, a shocking 60% of the time. This is more than double when either Tony Blair (22%) or Gordon Brown (29%) were in power.

The Prime Minister’s dodgy evasiveness is in part because he wants to avoid any explanation of his record – last March he found himself out of the country when unemployment figures were released – but also because he doesn’t know the answers to the questions. We all remember his recent claim that “all married couples paying basic rate tax will benefit” from the married tax allowance, which proved completely false.

Last week, amidst the bluster, even the Speaker had to remind the Prime Minister that the purpose of the session was for him to answer questions. Outside of the Chamber the Prime Minister doesn’t fare much better, with the the head of the UK Statistics Authority Andrew Dilnot being forced to clarify for him the difference between ‘debt’ and ‘deficit’.

As the Conservatives’ complete disarray over how the handle Labour’s energy freeze has shown, one of the reasons Cameron doesn’t know the answers is because he doesn’t have any. Week after week we saw the Tories refuse to agree to our proposed temporary freeze in bills while the market is reformed in the interests of the consumer without any answers of their own. They know our policy is in line with public sentiment and is supported by the hard-working families they claim to stand up for, but without a policy of their own they propose only inaction.

We know he’s got nothing to say on the cost of living crisis facing ordinary families in Britain, but he can’t keep chickening out of PMQs in the same way he’s running scared of facing Ed Miliband in the TV debates.

The truth is David Cameron simply doesn’t have an argument about how to tackle the cost of living crisis. If he wanted, the Prime Minister could hold PMQs on a Thursday. There’s nothing stopping him, so will he accept our challenge to do just that?

Come on Cameron – grow a pair!

Michael Dugher is the Shadow Cabinet Office Minister