GROWING APPLAUSE IS A SIGN OF THE TIMES

FOR a silent message, Penny Mordaunt’s address to the Commons generated a lot of noise. MPs burst into applause when the International Development Secretary became the first Cabinet minister to use sign language at the Despatch Box.

The reaction to the gesture, made to highlight an international disability conference in London next month, symbolised a littlenoticed yet historic change in Commons protocol that has occurred in recent years.

Until this week Tory MPs have resisted joining in the increasingly frequent breaches of the parliamentary convention against clapping in the Chamber. Many have frowned and heckled when Labour and SNP members flouted the unwritten rule in the past.

Many senior Tories sat with arms folded when Labour MPs clapped at the end of Tony Blair’s cheesy last Prime Minister’s Questions in 2007. After Ms Mordaunt’s signed announcement almost all of the hand-smacking came from the Tory benches.

The fact that MPs from all the main parties no longer observe the Commons taboo against applause suggests the convention is effectively dead.

A report by the Commons Committee on Modernisation of the House published 20 years ago acknowledged many MPs found the convention “incomprehensible” yet recommended it should continue.

“There is a danger that such a practice might be open to abuse,” the report said, adding that it could lead to the “orchestration of what would amount to standing ovations with the success or failure of a speech being judged not by its content but by the ovation”.

The Commons is not a theatre or a sporting arena. Many of its traditions lie in a desire to ensure that reasoned argument prevails at all times.

Even at the most joyous moments in parliamentary history, such as Winston Churchill’s announcement of the unconditional surrender of Germany at the end of the Second World War, applause was restricted to the Central Lobby rather than the chamber itself.

Any move to abandon a custom dating back centuries without a word of debate should not merit applause.