[Neil Jones]

Could be why as MP's are due to go on recess soon. Hence why BBC Parliament shuts down too and takes the News Channel feed.

I've never quite understood why Parliamentary breaks are called Recess. That's always been to my mind American school break time. Of course if something major happens Parliament will soon get recalled, but that's another discussion.

Re: BBC Parliament, it lost something like 98% of all its funding a couple of years ago so they literally have no budget to run anything on it besides live parliament coverage and recent recorded footage from the houses/committee rooms. In years gone by the whole six week recess period would have been filled with archive recordings, including the odd general election and some other filler. Now they have no money to do any of that so that's why they simulcast the news channel. It's the budget that decided BBC Parliament disappears into thin air when Parliament itself goes into recess, not the fact that they've gone into recess.

Question Time has pretty much always had a summer break, far as I know. If you go back far enough it used to be as wide as June-November. The last summer episode seems to be the first Thursday in July, and has been the case since 2000 from what I can work out.