A Westminster watcher reads about Piers Morgan’s war on courteous chatbots and imagines a select committee hearing where the only witness lets everyone finish
Thursday, 22 October 2026. Westminster. The public gallery of a select committee hearing, a visitor badge, a notebook and a strong urge to cough, 10.30am.
I Spend My Mornings Watching Committees
One of the strange perks of working for a charity near Parliament is that I can attend select committee hearings in person. Most people watch them on Parliament TV, if at all. I sit in the public gallery with a notebook, three retired men who come every week for reasons nobody understands, and a school group from Kettering who look as though they have been told this is a punishment.
This morning I was watching a hearing on housing when I read, on my phone under the desk, the report on Piers Morgan demanding emergency action after a chatbot surpassed human politeness. It describes a broadcaster appalled by machines that listen, wait their turn, admit uncertainty and change their minds when shown new evidence. The report notes that Parliament has opened inquiries into artificial intelligence, and imagines what would happen if a polite AI took part in a debate. A government adviser says Parliament has never prepared for someone who might have a point and then let another person finish speaking.
I looked up at the committee. A member was in the middle of asking a witness a question that had lasted four minutes and contained no question.
The Select Committee Hearing I Would Like To See
So I imagined a hearing. The witness is a chatbot. The committee is made of MPs from every party. The chair opens by asking whether the witness accepts that artificial intelligence poses risks. The chatbot says there are several perspectives worth considering. A backbencher interrupts to ask whether that is a yes or a no. The chatbot apologises for any misunderstanding. Another member calls the apology patronising. The chatbot stops apologising. A third member calls it arrogant. The chair calls order. Nobody obeys. The chatbot waits politely for silence. Silence never comes.
At the end, the clerk notes that the witness was the only participant who allowed anyone else to finish a sentence. The committee publishes a report recommending further study. The chatbot switches itself off. Engineers call it wisdom. The retired men in the public gallery applaud. The school group from Kettering wakes up.
Manners Are Part Of The Constitution
Gwen, our policy officer, used to work in the civil service and has strong views on parliamentary manners. She says the rules of debate exist precisely because shouting does not work. You speak through the chair. You do not call another member a liar. You give way when asked. The whole procedure is a three hundred year old attempt to make powerful people behave like a polite chatbot.
The problem, she says, is that the rules are followed in the chamber and abandoned everywhere else: on television, on social media, in interviews where the presenter treats every answer as an insult. The report’s Morgan Test, in which a machine must answer five questions ending in whether it would like to apologise for hesitating during the previous four, is basically every breakfast television political interview since 2010. The politicians fail it. The presenters fail it. The only person who ever passes is the weather presenter.
The Ninety-Seven Percent
The report includes a survey in which ninety-seven percent of computers would rather be switched off than do another Piers Morgan interview, and one percent identifies as a malfunctioning toaster. I texted this to Gwen from the gallery. She replied that ninety-seven percent of junior ministers feel the same about Sunday morning television, and the other three percent are in the government. I nearly laughed out loud during a serious answer about temporary accommodation. One of the retired men glared at me. I deserved it.
What A Polite Machine Teaches A Rude Democracy
Here is the serious point, written in a notebook in a committee room. Politeness is not weakness in a democracy. It is infrastructure. It is how people who disagree get through an hour without walking out. The report’s broadcaster sees courtesy as a threat. Parliament, at its best, sees it as the whole point. You can say the government’s housing policy is a disaster, as the witness this morning did very effectively, without shouting. You just need evidence, a calm voice and a chair who will let you finish.
The committee clerk, sitting at the end of the table, did not say a word for two hours. Clerks never do. But I noticed that she wrote down every single answer, in full, while the members talked over each other. If anyone in that room is the polite chatbot, it is the clerk.
After The Hearing
The housing hearing ended at twelve. The witness, a woman from a homelessness charity in Leeds, had answered every question clearly, never once raised her voice and had made two members visibly uncomfortable with facts. She was, in effect, a polite chatbot made of flesh and fury. I went up to her outside and told her she was brilliant. She said thank you, and that her secret was to answer the question they should have asked rather than the one they did. That is the most useful political advice I have heard all year. I have written it on my hand. I am going to use it at the pub quiz tonight.