HOW much I agree with Liz Edge (‘Commons comedy’, Letters, January 31) about the weekly bear-pit known as Prime Minister’s Question Time, which is about the only time that one ever sees bums on all those green leather benches in the House of Commons.

Most of the time, the benches seem to be deserted and one wonders what some of our elected representatives are doing, if they are not sitting in the chamber to which we elected them, listening (and hopefully contributing) to what is going on.

I recall that years ago, the veteran MP for Bolsover, Dennis Skinner, said that when he was a miner, if you didn’t turn up to the pit for work you didn’t get paid. What a sound principle!

Richard M Billinge, Heworth Village, York.