This week in The Week in Westminster

Steve Richards of The New Statesman presents this week's programme on Saturday at 11am on BBC Radio 4.

As MPs go off on their Whitsun break, The Week in Westminster looks at how modern a nation we have become.

In a week when the MPs debated their working conditions and un family friendly hours, three women MPs discuss whether Parliament should modernise.

This place is so bizarre it's another world and you really do have to spend a chunk of your time in the constituency to keep your feet on the ground and in touch with real life

Sandra Gidley

Julie Kirkbride, the Tory MP says Parliamentarians must accept the old rituals and arcane working practices ... one Labour reformer Julia Drown disagrees, particularly on the issue of breastfeeding in Commons' committee rooms.

Sandra Gidley, just elected as the MP for Romsey for the Liberal Democrats says the place is bizarre and needs to catch up with the outside world.

Then that most modern of institutions - the Dome.

It's time the government got rid of this disastrous project

David Liddington on the Dome

As over 50 MPs, mostly Labour, says the last cheque for £29m is enough and the place should be closed immediately.

But one Labour backbencher, Dennis Macshane defends the Dome against its critics.

David Liddington, the Tory frontbencher on Home Affairs says the Dome must go and Lord Falconer should resign.

How modern too, is a government led over the next two holiday weeks by the Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.

Two close Prescott watchers, Phil Woolas Labour MP and the Tory environment spokesman Damien Green analyse his performance at PMQs this week and look at his portfolio at the Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions.

The programme is back after a short break on 10 June with Sheena McDonald.

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The Week in Westminster was first broadcast 70 years ago.

Click here to listen to the 70th birthday special programme.

Initially a weekly broadcast given exclusively by female MPs about parliamentary business, The Week in Westminster was immediately popular with listeners but less so with some politicians who believed it wrong for parliamentary business to be discussed in public.

Such views prompted the BBC's first director general Lord Reith to defend the programme as "chiefly for the benefit of housewives ... shift workers, unemployed, invalids, etc".

In its time, the programme has had a range of presenters and producers - including Guy Burgess, the infamous spy who defected to Moscow.

Lloyd George's daughter Megan and Tony Blair's official spokesman Alastair Campbell have also been presenters over the years.