The knockabout was knocked out of prime minister’s questions today. Perhaps it was because it was Harriet Harman’s last appearance on the front bench.

David Cameron paid handsome tribute to her 28 years of service and her fight for women’s rights. He said that he hoped she would ‘continue to service this house and our country’ as a backbencher.

Harman thanked him for ‘his serious words about me’. It was, she said, ‘an honour and a privilege to play my part in leading this great party’.

There were no jokes. Cameron gave fairly grown-up answers to Harman’s questions about Syrian refugees. Harman wanted some indication of how many people would come in the first year.

Cameron could not say but he said there would be ‘no limit’ on the proportion of that 20,000 he had promised could come.

Harman wanted him to talk to local authorities, voluntary organisations and charities, and come back in a month with a plan. Cameron tried to avoid specifics.

Harman then pushed him on vulnerable children. Cameron is keen only to take people from ‘the camps’ in neighbouring countries, Harman wanted them to be taken from Europe too. And as Harman said: ‘There are thousands of children in Europe that have no home … surely we can play our part to help those children too. He should come back to the house and say many we should take this year.’

She also managed to extract a kind of pledge that children would not be deported when they were 18 – though Cameron did suggest some of them might want to go home.

Finally, Harman made a plea that Britain should not be ‘narrow, inward-looking and afraid of the outside world’ as she urged Cameron to work more closely with the European Union and make sure Britain remained an open country.

It was left to the Scottish National party leader in the commons Angus Robertson to ask about drone strikes, and the oversight of the intelligence and security committee which is yet to meet and be constituted.

Cameron and the Tories gave only a few clues on how they were likely to handle a possible Corbyn leadership today either.

Tristram Hunt, the shadow education minister, who the Tories sometimes try to claim as their own just to annoy the Labour backbenchers, was slapped down by Cameron for his criticism of free schools.

Robertson was told pointedly that he would be trusted with lots of secret information as part of his membership of the intelligence committee.

And there was an odd answer to Conservative David Davis’, from Haltemprice and Howden, question about whether or not the Wilson Doctrine – the ban on tapping MPs’ telephones introduced in 1966 – still applied. Cameron said he would write to the House about it.

Labour members of parliament played it pretty straight too. Debbie Abrahams, Oldham East and Saddleworth, asked whether Iain Duncan Smith should be investigated for breaching the ministerial code for falsifying testimonies on Department of Work and Pension leaflets – and for the high death rates of people judged fit for work.

Nick Smith, for Blaenau Gwent, asked about the electrification of the main line between Paddington and Swansea and whether it was on track. He looked pretty disgusted by the inadequate answer from the Prime Minister. And Daniel Zeichner MP, for Cambridge, wanted to know what Cameron had against sixth forms which had had their funding cut by 20 per cent and in some cases 30 per cent.

All in all a strange and sombre prime minister’s questions. It will be interesting to see how the new Labour leader – whoever he or she is – handles the pressure.

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Sally Gimson is a journalist and councillor in the London borough of Camden. She writes the PMQs on Progress column and tweets @SallyGimson

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