A count · questions
Oral parliamentary questions in the 13th Parliament, counted
1,025 oral questions across 16 ministries between January 2016 and July 2019, counted from Hansard. The figures, the rule that produced them, and the file.
01 The figures
| Measure | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Oral questions in the period | 1,025 | answered on the floor |
| Ministries answering | 16 | |
| Questions from the busiest member | 62 | Leon Perera, NCMP |
| — of them to Trade and Industry | 12 | |
| Second busiest member | 57 | Er Dr Lee Bee Wah, Nee Soon GRC |
| — of them to Transport | 18 | |
| Third busiest member | 49 | Dennis Tan, NCMP |
| Questions on the train operator | 39 | from 19 members |
| Questions on health data | 28 | about half from non-PAP members |
| Questions on training deaths | 20 | from 17 members |
Counted for the article that first published these figures. One of the counts made from the public record.
Cite as “Oral parliamentary questions, 13th Parliament: the counts”, Our Class Notes, https://ourclassnotes.com/data/parliamentary-questions-13th-parliament — counted from Hansard, the official verbatim record of proceedings, published by the Parliament of Singapore, Sittings from 15 January 2016 to 8 July 2019 — the 13th Parliament; counted on .
Method
Limits
A count is worth something only if the rule that produced it is written down. This page holds the figures, the rule behind them, and the file.
What was counted
Every question asked orally in the chamber and answered on the floor between the opening of the 13th Parliament and its last sitting. Each question is attributed twice: to the member who filed it, and to the ministry that answered it.
That gives the headline figure of 1,025 across 16 ministries, and the distribution underneath it, which is where the meaning sits: a small number of members file a large share, and three subjects take a disproportionate slice of the floor.
What was deliberately left out
Written questions. They are answered on paper, consume no floor time and admit no supplementary. They are also far more numerous. A count that merges the two measures two instruments and reports one number, which is worse than reporting neither.
Questions filed but never reached. The order of oral questions is decided by ballot and a sitting frequently ends before the list does. A question that was filed and never reached produced no exchange, so it is not in the set.
Supplementaries. The unscripted follow-up after the minister answers is where the scrutiny actually happens, but it is not filed, not balloted and not attributable the same way. Counting supplementaries needs a different rule and a different page.
What the numbers support, and what they do not
They support statements about activity — who used the instrument, how often, against which ministry. For that they are reliable.
They do not support statements about effectiveness. A member who files sixty questions is not thereby a better scrutineer than one who files six, and a ministry that answers many is not thereby failing. The count measures how the instrument was used and nothing about the result.
The three-subject figures make this plainest. Thirty-nine questions about the train operator do not show that the trains were the most important issue of the parliament. They show the instrument was pointed there most often, which is a fact about members rather than about trains.
How the extract was taken
Hansard is published per sitting and searchable by member, ministry and date. Each sitting in the window was read for its oral question business, and each question recorded against the member and the answering ministry. The totals are sums of those records.
Anyone can repeat it. That is the point of naming the source and the window instead of publishing a bare number: the count is checkable, and a checkable count is the only kind worth citing.
Where the rule had to choose
Two places, and both are worth stating. Where a question was transferred between ministries before being answered, it is recorded against the ministry that answered, not the one first addressed. Where a member asked on behalf of another, it is recorded against the member who stood.
Both are defensible and both are choices. A different choice would move a small number of rows. That is exactly why the rule is published beside the figure: a count without its rule is an assertion.
The file
The download carries the same rows as the table above, one measure per line, with the note column kept intact. It is a summary file: it holds the figures that were published, not a reconstruction of the underlying question-by-question records, which live in Hansard and are searchable there.
That distinction is deliberate. Publishing a derived row-level set would invite reuse of numbers this site never verified line by line, and a dataset that overstates what it checked is worse than a smaller one that does not.
Checking a single figure
Take the busiest-member row. Open Hansard, filter to the window, search by that member’s name in the oral question business, and count. The figure should come out the same, and if it does not, the difference will be one of the two attribution rules above rather than an arithmetic error.
That check takes a few minutes and is the reason the rule is published. A reader who disagrees with a choice can see exactly which choice they disagree with.
FAQOn this count
Does this include written questions?
No. Written questions are answered on paper, consume no floor time and are far more numerous. Counting the two together would measure two different instruments and report one number.
Why does the period start in January 2016?
That is when the 13th Parliament opened. A count that crosses a dissolution mixes two chambers with different members, so the window is one parliament and stops at its last sitting.
Can these be compared with another parliament?
Only against a count made by the same rule: oral questions, attributed to the answering ministry, one parliament. The comparison is between methods before it is between numbers.
Where is the row-level data?
In Hansard, which is published per sitting and searchable by member, ministry and date. This page carries the totals that were published, not a reconstruction of the underlying rows.