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Intro: [00:00:00] You are listening to Parliament Matters a Hansard Society production supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk/pm.

Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox.

Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark D'Arcy. And welcome to the latest in our special series of mini pods, following the progress of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, the bill to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales.

Ruth Fox: Next month, the House of Lords begins its consideration of the bill with a second reading debate on the 12th of September.

Mark D'Arcy: And while superficially, the Lords process looks very similar to the Commons with Second Reading, Committee, Report and Third Reading stages, the way things operate in the upper house is in fact very different.

Ruth Fox: So, to guide us through their [00:01:00] processes, we've recruited an eminent Lords procedural guru. He's Sir David Beamish, former clerk of the Parliaments, that's the chief clerk to their Lordship's house, and full transparency, he's also a Hansard Society trustee. David, welcome to the pod.

David Beamish: Well, thank you for inviting me and I hope I can live up to that billing.

Mark D'Arcy: So David, set the scene for us. What will be going on in the run up to this debate on September the 12th. What sort of things will be happening? I know there's an accumulating speakers list, for example.

David Beamish: Yes. Well, the House has gone into recess on the 24th of July and is coming back on the 1st of September.

So just 11 days before the scheduled Second Reading on the 12th of September. So in a way, not much at the moment. But as you say, there's a lengthening speakers list. At the time of the House rising, 88 members had put their names down to speak on the Second Reading.

Behind the scenes, I imagine there'll be quite a lot of lobbying. There are strong feelings on both sides of this debate, and [00:02:00] for example, the Bishop of London, who on behalf of the Bishops is clearly against the principle of this bill, at the General Synod in July, was encouraging members to find out who the Peers were and write to them with their views. So I think Peers will be having substantial mailbags, probably email more than postal.

Mark D'Arcy: I mean, 88 speakers is already quite a lot for what's normally a Friday debate in the House of Lords. And there were even more I think when the previous incarnation of an assisted dying bill from Lord Falconer, the former Lord Chancellor was put forward. It was even greater than that.

David Beamish: Yes, he's going to be in charge of the bill in the Lords and he introduced his own bill, more than once, but in 2014 they had a really thorough Second Reading debate and no fewer than 133 members spoke on a Friday, ending well into the evening.

Ruth Fox: Compare that to the House of Commons, where they have essentially five hours of protected time for a Second Reading debate on this bill, so there's no limit in the Lords. It will be for them to decide how long they go.

David Beamish: That's right. There are [00:03:00] conventions about by when the House should rise. So, in principle, they aim to rise by three o'clock on a Friday, 10 o'clock earlier in the week. But that is frequently broken and it's not laid down in Standing Orders. It's just customary.

Ruth Fox: So that's going to affect our podcast recording Mark.

Mark D'Arcy: It could be quite a long night, I suppose. There's no prospect of the Second Reading debate spilling over into a second day?

David Beamish: I think they would make sure that didn't happen. Often when there's a long speakers list, the list indicates a recommended maximum time for back bench speakers based on when they feel they ought to finish by, and I imagine that would be adopted.

And of course, by the end, most of the things that can be said will have been said, and some members at least might take heed of that.

Mark D'Arcy: Now, one of the issues that's already raising its head with this bill is whether it would be possible or proper for their Lordships to simply say at Second Reading, we don't want this bill.

David Beamish: There's no rule against it. On the other hand, throwing bills out at Second [00:04:00] Reading is extremely rare. Private Members' Bills that have started in the Lords are typically allowed a Second Reading, regardless of the views of members on it, because it's thought to be more trouble than its worth to kill them off at that stage.

To do it to a Commons bill would be frankly astonishing. I mean, it has happened. If you go back to 1991, a Government bill on war crimes was thrown out at Second Reading, but that was a very special case. I think, against the background of a fairly substantial majority for the bill when it left the Commons, I imagine that those who oppose it will be looking at how they can make it less objectionable to them rather than trying to throw it out altogether.

Mark D'Arcy: Thinking back, I can dimly remember when Baroness Young opposed the Blair Labour government's attempts to lower the age of consent for gays. I assume that would've been something like 1998 or so.

And so this bill had been through the Commons, a Government bill indeed, and she tried to chuck it out at Second Reading and [00:05:00] was unsuccessful, but that kind of thing is probably rarer now than it was before. I think the inhibitions against doing that sort of thing have built up.

David Beamish: I think that's right.

You can't guarantee that someone might not try, but I think most people would recognise that it would look very bad if they voted for that, and therefore I can't imagine it being successful or getting anywhere near the number of people who would support the bill at that stage.

Ruth Fox: So, David, let's just talk a little bit through the detail of how the Lords processes are indeed distinct from the Commons.

So one of the issues we've had to grapple with on the podcast in terms of explaining Friday procedures in the House of Commons is this issue of a closure motion, and that doesn't apply in the Lords.

David Beamish: There are some of these motions, but they're very rarely used and there is no time by which business formally has to finish.

It's also the case that there's no selection of amendments by the Speaker. So, in many ways, the Lords procedures are more liberal, which on the one hand [00:06:00] provides an opportunity for people who want to make difficulties to get there oar in. But on the other, provides for those who take the opposite view to just keep proceedings going until they've got to where they want to get to.

Ruth Fox: Can I just ask you about that, the role of the chair in the Lords, because it is different to the role of the Speaker in the House of Commons, so we don't know whether it will be the Lord Speaker or it'll be one of the deputy Speakers who sits in the chair on Friday the 12th. But I mean, how do they go about in the Lords deciding who speaks when, because the Lord Speaker or the chair doesn't have that power of selection.

David Beamish: No. For the Second Reading debate, a list is drawn up by the Government Whips office. After consultation through the parties, typically the chief whip of each party will choose the order in which their own members speak, and then they're amalgamated. So that's very straightforward.

Ruth Fox: But this isn't a Government bill, so will it apply in the same way?

David Beamish: Oh yes. The speakers list apply to any set-piece debate or a Second Reading. Once you get to the amending stages of the bill, Committee, Report and Third Reading, there are certainly no lists [00:07:00] on specific amendments. Obviously, the mover of the amendment goes first. A Minister is expected normally, though perhaps not every time on this bill, given that it's not a matter of Government policy, to come at the end, but in between there's a sort of understanding that you move around among the parties, but obviously this not being a party issue, that may not work.

So you have to hope, that against the background that everybody can get there oar in, people will give way in a polite way, and you'll have a vaguely sensible debate. It's different from question time where the pressure to ask your supplementary is greater because the time for each question is limited, and people know that if they don't get in now, they may not get in at all. That won't be the case here.

Mark D'Arcy: It's quite a test actually for a self-regulating house as the House of Lords is, to maintain an issue-based balance rather than a party-based balance of speakers, isn't it? Because you don't necessarily know where individual Peers are coming from.

David Beamish: Indeed. I think after Second Reading, people will know where most of them come [00:08:00] from, and obviously it would be logical in terms of having a sensible debate if the next speaker after the mover was someone who took a different view. You can't rely on that happening. And indeed, you are allowed to have up to four names against an amendment. And I think sometimes those who've added their names think that it gives them the right to sort of come early in the debate, which I sometimes think isn't a great idea because they should save their powder for responding to the arguments against. But not all members see it that way.

Mark D'Arcy: Let's talk about the next stage, the Committee stage, the first detailed attempt to take the bill apart and look at the moving parts and see what could be done with them. And in that stage, I suppose the length of it is determined by how many Peers propose amendments, propose changes to the legislation.

David Beamish: Yes. And how many amendments they propose and I think on this one, we're likely to get a lot, given the strong feelings and the variety of opinions. And it's quite interesting to note that when Lord Falconer had the [00:09:00] Second Reading debate of his bill in 2014, there were 175 amendments listed for the first day of Committee Stage, and by the second day, another 73 had been added, so we can expect some quite substantial debates. There is a system for grouping amendments that are on the same topic. Obviously the scope for grouping will depend on how far the amendments overlap and the groupings, although they're suggested by the Government Whips office, have to be agreed by the movers of the amendment.

And if I were an opponent of the bill, I might want to minimise the grouping to maximise my impact.

Mark D'Arcy: I suppose also the thought is that if as many amendments as possible have to be taken individually, it takes longer, and here we reach one of the questions about how this bill may play out, which is whether people decide on a go slow, in the hope of stopping the bill procedurally, even if they can't stop it by a vote in the House, if you really string procedures out, if you filibuster like mad, you may get to the point where [00:10:00] the bill still hasn't been completely considered by the time the parliamentary Session ends. Of course, we don't know quite when that is yet but.

Ruth Fox: I can speculate, Mark. I've said before that it could be the Spring. I think, we might be looking at April, May, probably May next year. That would be a very long time to spin things out.

Mark D'Arcy: A whole lot of filibustering would be required.

David Beamish: I mean, that could happen, but my hope is that people would want to maintain the moral high ground and appear to be opposing the bill on grounds of the contents being unacceptable and therefore not be seen to be playing things out just for the sake of making the progress of the bill slower.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Because that I think would be quite a turnaround if we saw the Lords playing procedural games with this bill, the bill having come from the Commons, where we often see procedural games on Private Members' Bill Fridays, but actually didn't this time. So it would be quite a reverse of the normal situation, and I think it would be potentially really detrimental to the reputation of the House of Lords when all eyes will be on it in ways that often is not the [00:11:00] case.

David Beamish: I agree. And sometimes described as a revising chamber, and so, seeing their role as to improve the bill to make it more acceptable in respects where some members don't find it acceptable would be more likely than trying to stop it in its tracks.

Mark D'Arcy: And there are indeed plenty of areas where people might feel that they want to make detailed changes.

I mean, one list that was given to me by an opponent of the bill was scrutiny by coroners, making sure that there was sufficient palliative care that people didn't have to take the option of assisted dying, protections for disabled people, how the bill deals with people who have anorexia. There's a section of the bill that looks at amending the founding purposes of the National Health Service, there's a whole load of issues around Welsh devolution. So there's lots of weeds to get into if you want to dive into the detail of this bill.

David Beamish: Yes, and I'm not sure that I'd call all of those weeds either, because there are some significant issues and there is a Constitution Committee in the House of Lords that among its other roles looks at the constitutional issues raised by bills before the [00:12:00] House. So, the issue of its application outside England will be something they'll want to look at. There's also a Delegated Powers and regulatory Reform Committee.

Ruth Fox: My favorite subject.

Mark D'Arcy: You're talking Ruth's language.

David Beamish: And on the delegated powers side, they look at the delegated powers in a bill, that's to say powers given to ministers to make orders and regulations, to check whether the delegation is appropriate and subject to the appropriate degree of parliamentary scrutiny. And there are a lot of delegated powers in this bill. And so they will want to look at that very thoroughly. And that's something which traditionally, in recent times, the House of Lords has taken seriously.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, and I think David, I mean that there's also the question for amendments of tidying up things that have happened in the Commons. And, our team here, my colleague Matthew England, our researcher on delegated legislation and I think yourself have already spotted some tidying up that needs to be done around the delegated powers with certain clauses. So, we'll see what happens.

David Beamish: Yes. Which does suggest that it would be [00:13:00] unlikely that the bill would go through unamended because it would be hard to resist an amendment that was designed to make the act consistent with itself internally.

Ruth Fox: But that's an important distinction again, between the Commons and the Lords, is that this bill will have two select committees looking at it, reporting to the House. So they'll report after Second Reading, but before Committee Stage, normally.

David Beamish: The, that is the norm. And under the rules there's normally two weeks at least between Second Reading and Committee. So that should be practical.

Mark D'Arcy: Another interesting point here is the time factor. The House of Lords is already, not quite log jammed, but not going as rapidly as the Government would like in dealing with the various bills in the Government's programme.

And to that, we are now adding assisted dying legislation that is going to need to be considered at some length. So crowbarring consideration of the assisted dying legislation into an already crowded Lords programme is gonna be quite an exercise.

David Beamish: I think the answer to [00:14:00] that may be that in recent times, Friday sittings - and the House doesn't sit every Friday, up to the Summer recess in the current Session I think they've had 41 sitting weeks and 20 sitting Fridays - have not been used for Government business. A lot of them for Private Members Bills, a few for debate on Committee reports or more general debates. So if it's a question of extra Friday sittings, it shouldn't have too much of an impact on the Government's own legislative programme.

And my guess is that that's what they would arrange. Another option would be to send the Committee Stage into Grand Committee, which meets in parallel with the House. Anybody can take part. It happens in the Moses Room.

Ruth Fox: So, is this like a mini chamber?

David Beamish: Yes, exactly.

Mark D'Arcy: So the Lords answer to Westminster Hall.

David Beamish: That's fair analogy indeed, but I think that's unlikely because there would doubtless be a lot of resistance from those who consider the bill too important for that treatment and regard it as belittling the issue. And [00:15:00] also the understanding is that you can't have divisions in a Grand Committee. And people might feel that that's a reduction in scope of the Committee Stage that they couldn't stomach.

Mark D'Arcy: I suppose one thing just to point out to listeners is that when we're talking about Committee Stage in the Commons, the Committee Stage was a committee of MPs sitting in a committee room upstairs. In the Lords, committee stages are on the floor of the Chamber, you would have any Peer being able to take part in it.

So it's again a completely different process.

David Beamish: Indeed.

Mark D'Arcy: And much more open if you like.

David Beamish: There have occasionally been committees of selected membership looking at bills, but not often. And this wouldn't be one of them.

Ruth Fox: And of course, one consequence of that Mark is that, Committee Stage in the House of Lords, they don't have witness evidence sessions, you know, they don't invite evidence to be submitted.

So that has been dealt with in the Commons. We won't see that in the Lords stages.

David Beamish: Indeed, I mean that's a relatively recent innovation, but perhaps not that recent to people who don't go back as far as I do. But when I was [00:16:00] young, in both Houses, you simply discussed the amendments that had been tabled and, in the House of Commons, selected. Though as I've mentioned in the Lords, there's no selection. So anything tabled can be debated if the person who tabled it so chooses.

Mark D'Arcy: And by and large in Committee Stage proceedings in the House of Lords, there wouldn't be divisions. There might be a completely uncontroversial amendment put through on some sort of tidying up issue, but it's quite unusual for an actual division.

David Beamish: That has become very much the case, I think, on Government bills.

It's understandable that the opposition want to keep their powder dry. And they usually say, they'll go away and read what the minister has said, whether or not they've found it persuasive. And tactically it means that in terms of voting power, the government may need to keep in the House enough people to vote down any amendments At Committee Stage, but the opposition could choose when to bring in their forces.

So yes, on a Government bill, it's almost unheard of for there to be [00:17:00] a division on an amendment at Committee Stage. On this one, I can imagine that if there was an amendment that say the proponents of the bill thought was tearing the heart out of the bill, they might want to demonstrate that, you know, if it was pressed, by dividing on it. Typically, people withdraw. So it would be sort of up to the mover of the amendment to decide whether to withdraw. Though it is possible for the House to refuse leave to withdraw. And that could happen, as I say, if it's felt to be a particularly fundamental amendment.

Mark D'Arcy: But that would be in the nature of an ambush.

David Beamish: I wasn't thinking in those terms, because I think there'll be a lot of people there because of the interest in the bill. So unlikely I think we can safely say.

Ruth Fox: And if Peers did want to go on a go slow at Committee and sort of try and extend the number of days that the bill takes up, and we've seen this on Government bills where, you know, the Government is very unhappy with the Conservative opposition, saying that they have been extending scrutiny on a go slow, [00:18:00] in some cases, almost doubling the number of days in Committee compared to what was originally planned, there's been a lot of criticism of that, and the opposition saying, no, no, we are doing the responsible scrutiny role. If we see some of that attempt to go slow on it in the Lords, how would that work?

What could they do with, you talked about grouping of amendments. We're seeing de-grouping of amendments on Government bills. Is that possible?

David Beamish: Well, grouping has to be by agreement with the person moving it, so I think the main response to that would be to be prepared to sit later. So that you can make more progress.

But, looking at what happened with Lord Falconer's bill in 2014, I can see this one being very slow. They had two days in Committee. At the end of the first day, they'd got to the end of clause one, and this was a bill of 12 or 13 clauses. The end of day two, they'd dealt with about four more amendments and then it didn't have any more Committee Stage.

So with a lot of people wanting to speak on controversial amendments, it will be quite interesting to see. [00:19:00]

Mark D'Arcy: And this is a bigger bill than Lord Falconer's bill. There's just more clauses in it.

David Beamish: So I think about four times as many and lots of delegated powers too.

Mark D'Arcy: So there's the potential for a great deal more Committee Stage time anyway, and the potential for a great deal of very long sessions by the sound of it.

David Beamish: I think that may be right.

Ruth Fox: What happens if an opponent of the bill decides actually they want to blow through any concept of a speech limit and just take up a lot of time making their arguments, filibustering in essence. So we've talked in the Commons about how filibustering the Speaker can intervene and try to stop that. Does that apply in the Lords in the same way?

David Beamish: There is a Lords procedure. Moving a motion "that the noble Lord be no longer heard". And that can be used in extremis, but it's a pretty blunt weapon because in theory at least it can be debated. And I think the answer is that peer pressure is the main motivator.

Mark D'Arcy: No pun intended.

David Beamish: There have been cases in the Commons of people going on for hours. I think Ivan Lawrence, a few decades [00:20:00] ago, managed a four hour speech. That just doesn't happen in the Lords. And I think because members will want it to be seen that they are giving this bill serious scrutiny, they will want to keep the moral high ground and not play it that way.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I remember seeing Andrew Adonis subject to that during Brexit, and they had to have the debate on the motion and then they had to vote on it, and it was all, he just wasn't gonna give way, and he really annoyed his colleagues in the House.

David Beamish: Well quite, and you could get a maverick who tries to do that.

But I think, again, others on the same side would probably try and prevail on them not to undermine the respectability of their case by playing silly games.

Mark D'Arcy: So eventually the bill reaches the end of Committee Stage after perhaps several days of Committee Stage debate.

David Beamish: Certainly several days I would expect.

Mark D'Arcy: And then we're on to the magic realm of Report Stage in the House of Lords, which as we've been discussing is where it is most likely we will see contested votes, divisions with Peers lining up to vote, aye or nay or content or not content, I should say, in the House of Lords. [00:21:00]

David Beamish: Yeah, typically that's where the key decisions are made, and typically it lasts about half as long as the Committee Stage. The rules are a bit tighter in Committee Stage. In theory, at least each member can speak as often as they wish on each amendment. Fortunately, they don't on the whole do that, so that's gonna be an interesting one as well. But if they've got that far, they'll at least have some idea of what they're contending with. And we'll know how long they've got to allow for that.

Ruth Fox: That's an interesting scheduling point, isn't it? That every day you add at Committee Stage, you're effectively adding half a day at Report Stage.

David Beamish: If the normal pattern is followed, that's about right.

Mark D'Arcy: So you've got potentially, imagine you had four Committee Stage days, and that's pure speculation at the moment, you then have two Report Stage days. They probably fall on a Friday. The parties are not whipping directly on this. The yes and no camps around the bill will be presumably having their own unofficial whipping operations, but getting Peers to make the supreme sacrifice of [00:22:00] coming in on a Friday is normally quite a difficult exercise. Maybe not on this one though.

David Beamish: I think that may be right because of the degree of interest. It's been a topic that the Lords has looked at quite a lot in the past and something that astonished me when I looked it up is that on the first of two divisions at the Committee Stage, this was of Lord Falconer's bill, which was actually beginning of 2015, an amendment was defeated by 106 for it, and 179 against. Now on a Friday to have 285 members in to vote was quite something.

Ruth Fox: It's also worth saying that Peers are doing very long hours, late into the evening. I mean, frequently the House doesn't adjourn until sort of 11, 12 o'clock at night, sometimes well past midnight. And because of the state of the Government's programme and the amount of progress that's still to be made, we imagine that that's gonna continue for quite some months. So it's a stakhanovite workload that the Peers have got and adding these Fridays to it between now and whenever they get to the end of the process, it's gonna be a very big workload.

David Beamish: Indeed, though they don't [00:23:00] all stay till the end and I find it quite amusing to look at the voting figures in divisions and the later in the day it is the smaller the numbers and actually usually the greater the chances the Government has of averting defeat.

Mark D'Arcy: But we can look forward probably to what in the press bench is sometimes referred to as "drone till they drop" sessions.

David Beamish: Yes, I imagine that there may be one or two of those, though it's unusual to go into a Friday evening and there may be quite a lot of resistance to that. I mean, apart from anything else, lots of members don't live in London and getting home if you rise late on a Friday evening, it's not gonna be much fun.

Mark D'Arcy: Now, there are set intervals between each stage of consideration of a bill. So after we get to the end of Report Stage, there has to be a Third Reading. There can be amendments in the Lords at Third Reading, but that Third Reading stage can't be taken for a couple of weeks after the Report Stage.

David Beamish: Actually, it's only, at that stage, it's only three sitting days, three sitting days that have to be left between the two. [00:24:00] This is incidentally a difference from the Commons where a Third Reading is normally taken immediately at the end of Report Stage, so it's effectively one weekend if you like. So that's less of a constraint than the other ones.

Mark D'Arcy: Is it even possible for Peers at that last stage to suddenly say, no, we are not gonna give this bill a Third Reading?

David Beamish: Technically, yes, there is a motion that the bill be now read a third time, followed by any amendments and if there are amendments, then followed by a motion that the bill do now pass. But the principle in theory has been accepted at Second Reading, and it would be unheard of really to use that opportunity to throw it out.

It might happen with a private bill, that's to say a local bill where the Committee Stage may have thrown up things that weren't known about at Second Reading, but not on a public bill, which includes Private Members' Bills.

Mark D'Arcy: And how can a bill be amended at Third Reading? Is it just tidying up stuff or could someone try and put in something a bit more fundamental at the last gasp?

David Beamish: The [00:25:00] guidance lists the principal purposes of Third Reading, and it's certainly not to introduce new material. It's typically for tidying up, but if an issue hasn't, for whatever reason, been fully resolved earlier, what you can't do is try and withdraw your amendment at Report with a view to bringing it back at Third Reading, a game that people used to try and play if they thought perhaps the numbers were against them in the Chamber that day. But that's now not permitted. And Third Reading is always limited to one day. So I think frankly, that's the least of the worries of those supporting this bill.

Mark D'Arcy: So if you get over the line at the end of Report Stage, it's pretty much a formality that the bill then clears the House of Lords.

David Beamish: If a day could be found for Third Reading, then yes, it wouldn't get stopped at that stage.

Mark D'Arcy: But of course, that's not the end, is it? Because then, if the bill has been changed in any way, it has to bounce back to the Commons for the magical ritual of parliamentary ping-pong, and for the changes to be approved by MPs.

David Beamish: Indeed and I would expect that to happen, I think. [00:26:00] And often there's a limit on the time available in the Commons, though I imagine with the interest in this bill, the Government would make sure that time was found at that stage.

And it'd be interesting to see to what extent Lords amendments were accepted. If there was some tidying up amendments, they doubtless would be. But any others, we might have a little ping-pong, as they call it, where the Lords are invited to think again, and normally with a Commons bill eventually they give way, but you could have a couple of stages before that happened if there was a significant difference of principle.

Mark D'Arcy: And I suppose there's always the possibility if we're getting close to the wire for the prorogation of Parliament, the end of the parliamentary Session, that there'd be quite an incentive to string out the ping-pong perhaps a bit longer than usual.

David Beamish: Possibly, but going back to my thought that the opponents will wish to maintain the moral high ground, I don't think they'd want to be seen to be trying to wreck it and require it to be reintroduced. But we must wait and see.

Mark D'Arcy: Who [00:27:00] also controls the decision of whether or not to vote to accept or reject an amendment to a Private Member's Bill that's made in the House of Lords. Is Kim Leadbeater the one who's sort of getting up and recommending that MPs vote for this and don't vote for that?

David Beamish: Uh, that's a bit outside my expertise. And because it very rarely happens. Typically Commons Private Members' Bills that come to the Lords are on relatively limited and relatively uncontroversial topics.

Ruth Fox: So David, as we said, Kim Leadbeater will decide which amendments coming from the Lords she finds acceptable for her bill.

How does it work in the earlier stages in the Lords when the Peers are seeking to amend the bill? Lord Falconer is in charge of it in the House of Lords. And obviously he will be liaising with Kim Leadbeater, but ultimately is the decision about which amendments from Peers to accept and what position he should take, is that entirely a matter for him or is it something he has to liaise with Kim Leadbeater about, or is that sort of discretionary on his part?

David Beamish: As far as the House of Lords rules are concerned, it's [00:28:00] entirely a matter for the House which amendments they accept, regardless of what Kim Leadbeater may think. I imagine that they would've been working closely together and that before each stage Lord Falconer will go through the amendments on the list with Kim Leadbeater and see what ground, if any, might be given.

But formally he can do what he likes and if he hears something convincing during the debate and wants to give way on something, there's no procedure to stop him. He might then fall out with Kim Leadbeater, but it's not something that the House of Lords gets involved in.

Mark D'Arcy: I suppose what really emerges from all that we've been talking about is quite how different the Lords environment is.

This is a self-regulating house. It decides for itself what the rules are to some extent. I mean, there's a framework around them, but you know, if Peers debate an amendment, it is in order. There isn't a Freudian authority figure sitting on the Woolsack saying, no, you can't talk about this. There isn't a Speaker calling people to speak and saying, hang on, you've gone on too long.

Everything is self-regulating and what's unusual about this [00:29:00] is that this is a non-party issue, which cuts right across all the groups in the House of Lords except probably the bishops, and it's all the more unpredictable for that.

David Beamish: As far as this bill's concerned, that's absolutely right. In recent years, the Lord Speaker has gained more authority in certain areas.

For example, at question time, calling on who asks the supplementaries, which wasn't the case when I retired in 2017. But on this one, you're absolutely right. It basically has to be made to work and there's nobody with a special position to decide how things happen.

Mark D'Arcy: No ringmaster.

Ruth Fox: Who do we think the key players are going to be?

So we know about Lord Falconer as the co-sponsor of the bill. As we saw in the Commons, the Ministers have got to have a role and state their position in terms of the Government's stance on both technical, legal matters, but also potentially some policy questions. We assume that the Government will also be working to possibly get amendments submitted to do this tidying up [00:30:00] exercise and further amendments that it's looking for.

So in the Department of Health Mark, I think it, we were expecting that to be Gillian Merron, Baroness Merron and also in the Justice Department, because that's got a role here and we've not got this a hundred percent confirmed, but I assume Lord Ponsonby.

David Beamish: Well, certainly at Second Reading Baroness Merron is listed as the person who will reply on behalf of the Government.

If you look back at previous examples, like Lord Falconer's bill the Minister said very little except that this was a matter of conscience for members and the Government wouldn't be taking a view. And I imagine on a lot of amendments that will be the case. So I don't think there'll be key players at all.

The bishops will obviously take a close interest against the bill. It's interesting to note that Peers who've been involved in the past have got involved in quite a big way in this sort of thing. So Baroness Meacher, who introduced a bill in 2021 is honorary president and former chair of an organisation called [00:31:00] Dignity in Dying. So they will be supporting the principles of this bill.

On the other hand, Baroness Grey-Thompson, Tanni Grey-Thompson, and Lord Carlisle of Berriew, chair of an organisation called Living and Dying Well, and they are focused on alternatives like better palliative care and so forth. So I think there'll be some groups of members who club together to support those different viewpoints.

Mark D'Arcy: I think we'll also look out maybe for Lady Finlay of Llandaff, one of the deputy Speakers, normally, but she's a professor of palliative medicine at Cardiff University, I think, and she's very, very much against this kind of legislation.

David Beamish: I should have said in 2010, she was one of the founders along with Lord Carlisle of Living and Dying Well. Yes, indeed.

Ruth Fox: And perhaps we'll also see the voice of the lawyers and the judges in the House of Lords who will have a strong voice in this. And, you know, not so much in the Commons, there's a few lawyers in the Commons, not as many as there used to be. But I note on the speaker list that Lord Pannick, David Pannick, the [00:32:00] KC, is down to speak.

Mark D'Arcy: The aptly named super lawyer.

Ruth Fox: So, it'll be interesting to see what they've got to say because of course the whole question of the role of judges in the final stages of this process has been subject to a lot of debate in the Commons. And of course it was a major amendment that Kim Leadbeater made to the bill to take away that from judges only, and instead insert a panel consisting of social workers and psychologists and so on. So that will be interesting to see what they've got to say.

David Beamish: Indeed, a decade or two ago, the Lords was particularly strong on legal eagles because of course the law lords were all members of the House. And although in later years they were, following really the human rights legislation, they were quite cautious about taking part. Once retired, they were much less cautious. Now that Supreme Court judges are no longer put in the Lords, that's not the case as much as it was. But of course, Lord Falconer of Thoroton himself is a former Lord Chancellor. So the legal aspects will doubtless get [00:33:00] careful study and scrutiny.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, David, that's been a fascinating guided tour through the mysteries of Lords procedure. Doubtless we'll be talking to you again as events unfold in their Lordships' House because this bill is going to be keeping them busy for many days by the sound of it.

David Beamish: Indeed, and I shall look with interest to see how things actually play out when the Second Reading and later stages come about.

Ruth Fox: We'll possibly be gathering late on Fridays.

Mark D'Arcy: Yes, indeed. Some very late Friday nights seem to be looming. Well, thanks very much indeed for joining us.

David Beamish: Thank you.

Ruth Fox: Thanks David. So listeners, with that, my usual housekeeping announcement, if you're enjoying the pod, please do rate us on your podcast app, rate and review, five star reviews only for the podcast. And can I ask also, if you wouldn't mind completing our listener survey, it really helps us to get the information about what you're enjoying about the podcast, what you're finding useful, how we can improve, and it also helps us to get the data necessary to attract those advertisers that help us pay [00:34:00] for all this work.

So that's one way you can really help us to build the podcast. So with that, I hope you're enjoying your Summer, and we'll be back in a couple of weeks with another episode.

Mark D'Arcy: Goodbye.

Ruth Fox: Bye.

Outro: Parliament Matters is produced by the Hansard Society and supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. For more information, visit hansardsociety.org.uk/pm or find us on social media @HansardSociety.

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