What British Question Time could learn from New Zealand

I love the British Parliament. I love it's institutional organisation, I love the building it is housed in, and I love the way it is run (with Opposition days, snap debates etc). However, there is one area that the New Zealand Parliament could possibly teach the British system something. That is in the field of Prime Ministers Questions (PMQ's) and other Ministerial question times.

People always complain about 'yaa-boo' politics, especially in PMQ's, where the Leader of the Opposition gets up and asks long questions (more like short speeches) in an attempt to embarass the Prime Minister, then the Prime Minister stands up and usually ignores the question or touches on it in the most cursory way, then makes a short address that usually involves the policies of the Opposition parties. The answer to this is not in the personalities of the Members involved. Every Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition have come in pledging to end the 'Punch and Judy' politics (including both David Cameron and Gordon Brown), before reverting to type. The answer lies in the Speaker and the rules of the question times.

In New Zealand, an MP or Shadow Minister is allowed to ask a short question only (although they are allowed supplementary questions), and are usually prevented from overly editorialising in their questions. But in response the Minister must answer the question, and if they fail to do so, the Member who asked the question is fully within his rights to raise and point of order and demand an answer (and this happens more often than one might expect). Speakers are particularly strict (usually) on questions involving numbers: for example "Could the Minister tell the House how many people are currently waiting for operations on the public health waiting lists?" Now, there will be editorialising by the Minister (such as "Health spending has increased by a billion pounds since this government took over" etc), but if they do not provide the numbers then the Speaker will often demand they answer the question a second time, providing the information.

Now, obviously it isn't as rosy as the previous paragraph makes out. The Minister will still often evade the intent of the question without reprimand, and the last two Speakers (prior to the current Speaker) almost destroyed the point of question time through removing the requirement for Ministers to answer the question (they were instead permitted to 'address the question', which meant they could say almost anything). However, giving the Speaker further powers and abilities to compel answers from Ministers may lead to more reasoned questioning sessions, since Opposition members may feel that they can actually gain something from asking policy questions.