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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, and this is the latest in our series of special mini pods following the detailed progress of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, the Bill to allow assisted dying in England and Wales.

The headline this week, the Bill has cleared its Second Reading in the Lords, and as we expected it passed without a formal division. But there's been a twist in the story. Peers have agreed to create a special select committee to take evidence from ministers and professional bodies on the Bill's implications.

Because of that move the next stage, the detailed clause-by-clause scrutiny and amendment of the Bill, has been pushed back to November after the special select [00:01:00] committee has reported. So what does all of this mean for the Bill's journey through the House of Lords?

Now, regular listeners will know that, uh, I'm usually joined by my partner in parliamentary podcasting, Mark D'Arcy, but not today. Mark's off. He's soaking up the sun in the south of France. Lucky him!

We weren't actually planning to hit record this week because it was a quiet parliamentary week with both Houses rising for the party conference recess.

But the House of Lords had other ideas. Peers canceled recess today to complete the Second Reading of the assisted dying Bill. And as we've had a special series exploring this Bill, we couldn't really let it pass without getting back into the studio.

So I'm here and, uh, happily for me and for you listeners, I'm not flying solo.

Joining me is Dr. Daniel Gover, Senior Lecturer in British Politics at Queen Mary University of London, and a seasoned expert in Private Members' Bills. And from the Hansard Society team, [00:02:00] Matthew England, whose analysis and insights you'll know if you've read our briefings on the assisted dying Bill, covering everything from procedure to delegated powers.

This isn't their debut. They've both been on the pod before, so it's a pleasure to say "welcome back Daniel and Matthew".

Daniel Gover: Well, thank you for having me back.

Ruth Fox: Great to have you and, uh, welcome Matthew.

Matthew England: Thank you. It's good to be back.

Ruth Fox: Great. Well, we have a lot to cover, so, I thought we should start perhaps with the debate itself.

We've had two days of debate now, and Daniel, what, what speech has stood out to you in, in the debate this week?

Daniel Gover: Well, quite a lot of the, uh, things that were said in the debate were quite similar, I think to, uh, to what was said last week in the first day of Second Reading, and in fact, that was commented on by some of the Peers in the debate. One that really stood out to me though was a speech by Lord Carey of Clifton, George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, and if you didn't know much about his thinking on this issue, you would probably expect [00:03:00] him to be a, an opponent of the Bill. But in fact, he's a supporter and, an outspoken supporter of the Bill and really put this question to the Bishop's bench, to his former colleagues, uh, bishops in the Church of England.

Did they really want to be seen to stand in the way of this Bill? And indeed, did the Lords itself want to, uh, be seen to stand in the way of this Bill? And what might that say about the legitimacy of the Bishops in the Lords and indeed of the, the Chamber itself?

Matthew England: It was actually quite something to see a former Archbishop of Canterbury looking towards the Bishop's bench and, and sort of asking, do you represent your own church?

And it's worth contrasting the speech that Lord Carey gave with the speeches of both the Bishop of London last week and the Archbishop of York this week, both of whom suggested that when the Bill comes to third reading, if no one else in the House were willing to table a motion to oppose the Bill, they would do so themselves.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. So we don't know when that Third Reading will be, but it'll be some months off and in, probably in the Spring of next year. But yeah, they've [00:04:00] been pretty clear that they are going to, uh, to push it to a vote.

Daniel Gover: Yeah. And, and I, I thought that was very interesting as well. And on that same topic, it, it was interesting to hear Lord Wolfson of Tredegar who largely was speaking in his own personal capacity, but in some sense also speaking for the Conservative opposition..

Ruth Fox: Because he's the Shadow Attorney General, is that right?

Daniel Gover: Yeah. And he indicated that, you know, it would be proper for the House of Lords to let this Bill have a Second Reading so that it could be properly scrutinised. But that the fact that the Commons had backed the Bill did not require the Lords to ultimately pass the Bill at the end of the process, which is what some others have been arguing.

So, you know, we'll see exactly what happens on this, but it does potentially provide quite a signal to Conservative members of the House of Lords that it would be appropriate for them to reject the Bill at the end of the process.

Matthew England: On the other hand, I [00:05:00] mean, when Lord Forsyth, who, who was one of the last speakers in the debate when he made his contribution, he sort of suggested to the Bishops that they might want to think again about their indication that they would be willing to oppose the Bill and, and got quite a, an audible "here, here" from the rest of the House.

And whether that's just supporters of the Bill who were making those noises isn't clear, but it might suggest that there's, uh, some opponents who are not willing to go quite the way of actively voting against it.

Ruth Fox: And that's one of the things that, about this Second Reading isn't it, is we've seen the speakers on both sides, but we don't actually know what the balance of support in the House or opposition is because we don't have a formal vote. They didn't divide the House, as we expected, they don't generally do that at Second Reading in the Lords, they don't divide the House. So we don't have the, sort of the lists of names for and against the Bill. We can tell from those who spoke that that's only a proportion of the, the overall membership of the House.

And I note that the campaign groups were already out of the traps pretty quickly after the debate finished claiming victory for their sides, the opponents on the basis that more speakers had been opposed to the Bill than had been in favor of it. But [00:06:00] that's not necessarily a great, uh, signal of, of what the Third Reading vote might be.

Daniel Gover: Yeah, I mean, you can obviously count up the speakers who, who spoke for or against, and in indeed most of those who spoke did indicate a pretty clear position one way or the other. But as you say, I mean, I think there's two issues here actually. The first is that there's no reason to believe really that the minority of Peers that spoke are representative of the balance of opinion in the House, particularly when it could be quite finely balanced. But also there's a difference between being opposed to the Bill and being willing to vote it down in the context where the House of Commons has passed this on a free vote and the House of Commons is the elected house.

Yeah. And the House of Lords obviously traditionally sees its role as being to provide scrutiny, to ask the Commons to think again, but is usually very reluctant indeed to reject proposals outright [00:07:00] that have the support of the Commons.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I think, I think Matthew, in the briefing we produced, we said that constitutionally it's within the Lord's powers to reject the Bill if that's what they want. But they have to reflect as whether it's politically wise or politically prudent to do so given the position in the House of Commons.

And talking of the Commons, one of the speeches, I know Matthew, you, you watched quite a lot of the debate. Baroness Berger, Luciana Berger, former MP, she had some quite interesting reflections from a constituency perspective.

Matthew England: She actually made two speeches, um, to the debate. But the one that, um, I found quite interesting was her initial speech where she spoke about her own opinions on the Bill and she, in, in that case, she was speaking as an opponent of the Bill. And she highlighted some of the experience she had while she was a member of the House of Commons, uh, in her constituency surgeries and some of the accounts she gave of people coming to her constituency surgeries and talking about the perspectives of family members who were, who were being coerced or even in some cases, uh, family members who were indicating that they were willing to coerce one of their own family members, then saying that they wanted them dead.

Ruth Fox: That is quite a striking and stark thing to come across in your, [00:08:00] your advice surgery and that that has been seen throughout the debate. These sort of personal experiences, whether it's members of the House of Lords who've got cancer, who are sort of considering their mortality. Lord Forsyth talked last week about his experience with his father, which caused him to take a different position on assisted dying. So it is, it is one of the threads that runs through this debate. The human experience really comes to the fore. And inevitably in the House of Lords we also gets some, uh, some interesting history. And think Lord Moynihan, he was claiming that, was it his grandfather had...

Matthew England: Yes. Yeah, his, his grandfather was apparently the Peer who introduced the first assisted dying Bill, uh, to the House of Lords all the way back in 1936. I think it was still called the voluntary euthanasia bill.

Ruth Fox: So yeah, so this has a long, long history.

Well, let's come on to the themes of the debate beyond the individual speeches, and of course listeners will know that one of my favorite subjects is delegated powers. And I think Daniel, that came through very powerfully in the debate. There are real concerns about the number of [00:09:00] powers and the breadth of them in in the Bill, and a lot of references to the reports that have been produced by the Delegated Powers Committee and the Constitution Committee in the House of Lords.

And it's fairly clear, I think, even from Lord Falconer, responsible for the Bill himself, that there are gonna be quite a few amendments as a result.

Daniel Gover: Yeah, I mean, this was something that was raised multiple times during the debate, uh, and as you say, there's pretty clear indication from Lord Falconer that he will support amendments to address a lot of those recommendations from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and also actually the Constitution Committee has weighed in behind some of those recommendations as well.

This is not particularly surprising. I mean, this is for those of us who watch parliamentary proceedings quite a lot, this is, this is something that we're used to seeing. Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee is a very influential committee, and its recommendations are usually taken very seriously.

I think one thing that this does [00:10:00] mean, and you know, we already kind of knew this anyway, but it does mean that this Bill, if it does pass the House of Lords, it's likely to do so with amendments, and therefore it will require additional time in the House of Commons, even though theoretically the, the Commons has run out of Private Members Bill time this session.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Yeah. I was also struck in the debate though, um, in terms of the delegated powers discussion, that quite a number of Peers said that, um, there had never been such a strong report against the powers in a Bill and Baroness Butler Sloss who's a former high court judge, very highly respected member of the House, said, I don't remember ever before reading in such a report, by which she meant the Delegated Powers Committee report words like "the power is inappropriate and should be removed".

Now, Matthew, you're smiling

Matthew England: Because I actually, I can't remember a report that didn't include those words.

Ruth Fox: It's not an unusual thing. I was struck that the Peers who oppose the Bill were trying to sort of convey that somehow that this is a [00:11:00] worse drafting of the Bill than than normal. And actually, you know, anybody who re regularly reads those reports would say, actually that's not really true.

Matthew England: Yeah. I mean to just to take one example, the powers in the Bill that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee drew the most attention to and were most strongly critical of, were three powers that enabled ministers to do anything that an Act of Parliament can do. That's the exact wording of the powers.

The thing about those powers though is that the DPRRC has previously criticised powers in other bills with exactly the same wording. In our own briefing here at the Hansard Society, we highlighted two of those examples, the the EU Withdrawal Bill in 2018 and the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill in 2021, um, both included exactly the same thing. And the DPRRC were in the same way, very, very critical. So a lot of these powers are, have come before. I think that's another theme I've noticed in most of the debates on this Bill, is that a lot of the things that Lords are raising and, and indeed Members of Parliament are raising are things that we would like to see [00:12:00] raised about a lot of other bills, particularly about delegated powers, but also about parliamentary scrutiny and not enough time and not enough high quality scrutiny being given to a Bill.

Ruth Fox: Well, of course, Matthew, you and I have, uh, written for the House Magazine about the degree of scrutiny that the Bill has had, um, in the House of Commons earlier, and that actually it's, it's far greater than what most Government Bills get and certainly what any Private Members Bill in recent history gets.

Daniel, that that's something that sort of struck you about the debate that peers do seem stuck with this idea that it's not getting enough scrutiny or has not had enough scrutiny.

Daniel Gover: Yeah, it was raised many times actually during the debate today, and I mean, I find it extraordinary in, in some sense because, I mean, certainly in terms of the amount of time that has gone into scrutiny in the House of Commons. I mean, I think your article described it as on course to being one of the most scrutinised bills in recent times, and I, I would concur with that. Obviously we can, we can argue about the quality of that scrutiny, but that is always [00:13:00] the case on, on any bill.

Ruth Fox: It's subjective, isn't it?

Daniel Gover: Yeah. And not only has there been a significant amount of time, this is the first Private Member's Bill that's taken evidence and not, didn't just take evidence, it took lots of evidence and now it is gonna have additional evidence in the House of Lords. So, you know, I think by most metrics that this bill has had a very substantial amount of scrutiny.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. The problem comes, it's not the scrutiny that's taking place in the Commons or indeed the Lords. It's the amount of time and, and work that could be done on the preparation of the policy, prior to it being put in legal form, in legal text, in a bill. Um, and that's a problem with the Private Members Bill process we've talked about before, that, you know, once you are pulled out of the private members bill ballot as Kim Leadbeater was, and she's number one, and she therefore got the best chance of getting a bill through. But then there was only a few weeks before she actually had to present her bill. So having chosen to do an assisted dying bill, she then didn't have an awful lot of time to do that kind of preparation.

Now [00:14:00] she's done a huge amount of work and you know, listeners would perhaps look, listen back to a previous episode where we, we talked to Kim about how she'd gone about, uh, this process of developing the bill. But nonetheless, the fact that the government is neutral and you know, isn't sort of taking a, a view on some aspects of how the process of the assisted dying service that will be needed will be operationalised, creates some, some difficulties.

And that's why we've got so many powers in the bills for Ministers to, to decide on that detail at a later date. But it also means that the degree of sort of consultation and policy development work hasn't perhaps been done. But on the other hand, it's drawing on past bills. This is not, as Colin Moynihan pointed out, this is not new. At the end of the day uh, a lot of government bills don't get that kind of consultation work either.

Daniel Gover: Yeah. And, and there was a select committee report by the Health and Social Care Committee, which admittedly was not about the Bill, it was about the policy area, but it was nonetheless, something.

It was, it was a substantial piece of work. [00:15:00] And as you indicated, I fully, uh, agree with what you, I think we're hinting at, which is that the Private Members Bill system has some weaknesses that should be reformed. And you know, indeed we could look at, for example, Scotland and Wales, where, particularly in Scotland, there is an expectation of consultation. And there is, there are the resources that are, they're put into bills, um, before, uh, they're put before the chamber.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. So something to look to, I think in terms of reform in the future. The other thing that struck me about the debate, and it, it happened quite early on in the discussion this week, was, um, a degree of policing of language by Peers.

Um, so. Uh, a number of peers said that they regretted particularly Theresa May's speech last week, uh, where she'd referred to it as not an assisted dying bill, but but an assisted suicide bill. Some Peers said they regretted the use of the, the term the "killing bill". Theresa May had talked about the Bill effectively saying "suicide is okay", and those [00:16:00] who support the Bill were very annoyed about this. And there's been a lot of sort of effort by campaigners to get the message out that, that people who are, you know, support this bill, people who are, you know, facing terminal illness, that is not how they think about assisted dying. And Baroness Royal said she was "dismayed at the conflation of suicide and, and assisted dying. It's actively damaging to those who are already suffering. Those who choose assisted dying are not suicidal. They're dying. They want to regain some choice, control, and dignity where it's otherwise been stripped away." So those were sort of moments of quite powerful sort of emotional aspect to the, to the discussion.

Matthew England: Yes. I, I, I think there are a lot of Peers who were making the point that people who are terminally ill want nothing more than to to live. They're not people who, who want to die, but they don't have a choice about that. All they have a choice about is, is how and if the Bill passes, when.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, of course the, the alternative views were put by some other Peers who basically say, well, you know, suicide is intentionally bringing about your own [00:17:00] death and this Bill actually requires an amendment to the Suicide Act.

The other aspect that comes through is the role of the Government in all of this. So, um, a number of Peers expressed unhappiness that what they, they'd expected to be on holiday on recess, and in fact the recess had been cancelled and they were sitting again for a second consecutive Friday, and some feeling that this was the Government Whips putting their finger on the, uh, the scales as it were, deciding to sit, uh, when Peers had expected to be, to be away. And as a consequence, some Peers who would have liked to participate in the debate couldn't. And there's also a sort of an undercurrent of, uh, this idea that the Government should play more of a formal role. Some Peers, I mean, clearly actively want the, the government to take it over.

Um, there was quite a lot of pushback on that and people say, no, this is a conscience vote. It's a Private Member's bill. But, um, is it the responsibility of the government? Is it, you know, the government behaving unfairly by canceling recess?

Matthew England: I mean, I, I I've detected sort of two different strands of [00:18:00] thought, especially among opponents of the bill on this, as you rightly point out.

One is opponents who believe that using the Private members bill process to pass this Bill was inappropriate and that doing it as a Government bill would've afforded more flexibility in having government, more government time available, and as the policy preparation process before presenting the bill.

On the other hand, you've got to take the example of Miriam Cate's article in the Spectator this week.

Ruth Fox: That's the former Conservative MP.

Matthew England: Former Conservative MP who has argued that, as you say, granting as extra day this Friday for the Bill is the government sort of manipulating the parliamentary timetable in support of the Bill and thereby violating its neutrality. And I imagine the reason why the Government is trying to stay out of the process is because it doesn't want to look like it isn't neutral on the Bill.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. So Miriam Cates has this article saying the Government's decision will silence voices that have every right to be heard and that, um, the Government's basically not, um, acted with scrupulous [00:19:00] impartiality, that it's interfered in the scheduling.

I suspect Miriam Cates doesn't quite understand how the House of Lords works because, uh, inevitably the Government Whips in the House of Lords in negotiation with the opposition whips organise business.

Daniel Gover: Yeah. And also, I mean, this is a piece of legislation that has at this point been passed by the House of Commons.

I mean, it would be pretty extraordinary if the Government just shrugged and said, well, you know, we'll just have to kind of see how things go. Being neutral on the policy position, I think is not the same as being neutral on the Bill being able to be considered by Parliament. And, and actually, I mean, as well as that, I mean in terms of the Government's role, the Minister at the end of today's debate also explained that the Government has got an important role in relation to the statute book. So, you know, it is perfectly imaginable that this bill could pass, and if it does pass, then it needs to pass in a way that is [00:20:00] legally workable and that isn't going to create lots of additional problems, and it would be pretty negligent really, for the Government, therefore, not to play a role during the passage, particularly on amendments, tidying up the bill, responding to, to, to questions, and so on.

Matthew England: With regard to granting time this Friday, you kind of have to ask what was the alternative, um, available to the House? One would've been, given the fact that there were 200 people who had put their names down to speak the debate, to have a very late night sitting last Friday, and therefore, possibly a very late night vote until 11, maybe midnight.

Or you wait until after the conference recess for the next Private Members Bill sitting that the Government Whips had originally scheduled, which I think was the 24th of October. But in that case, you'd end up with a six week gap between the debate happening and the decision being taken, and that's not ideal. And the, the final, the third alternative would be for the Government to grant time itself - [00:21:00] so Monday to Thursday - and there's, there's an argument for that. But many Peers in this debate have expressed opposition to that idea. And, and Miriam Cates herself has said that government's manipulating the parliamentary timetable to get this pill passed?

Ruth Fox: Yeah. I mean, my understanding is that the decision to sit this week and to cancel one day of recess, to sit a day longer was precisely that Peers didn't want to sit till midnight last week. They didn't want a six week gap. But it wouldn't have been done solely at the behest of the Government whips, they would've had to negotiate with the opposition party whips and I, my understanding is they would've also had to talk to Lord Falconer and the other Peers who'd got amendments down. So this was done with broader cross party support.

Matthew England: There's an interesting procedural point here that in the House of Commons, what business gets debated and, and when it gets debated is primarily decided by the government. In the House of Lords that is only informally the case and the very first thing that happened at today's debate was that the House voted [00:22:00] on the question that the debate on Second Reading be resumed.

And if Peers preferred a, a different day for the Second Reading debate to continue on they could, in theory, as a self-governing house, voted against that motion, which isn't an option that's available in the Commons. But in the Lords the, the Peers in theory have a, a get out to be able to vote how they spend their own time.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. And so they could have made clear to the Whips, uh, on both sides before today that they did not want to sit today and, and threatened to have had an amendment. They wouldn't have been, um, very popular with their colleagues if everybody had turned up on Friday and then they, they, they'd got an amendment down and said, no, let's not bother.

Um, but they could have indicated that that was the plan and tried to build up support beforehand so that, uh, it could've been, it would've been pulled in advance.

Matthew England: The fact that this has happened through the Usual Channels seems to me to suggest that there was quite widespread support for this happening.

Daniel Gover: Yeah, and I think as well, I mean, during the debate it was said many times that there's lots to scrutinise in this Bill and they want to get on with [00:23:00] scrutinising it. And I think the decision to, to have the debate now is entirely consistent with what appears to be the consensus view across the House.

Ruth Fox: Hmm. Well, let's turn to the decisions then. So there were a couple of amendments down from Lord Forsyth and Lord Carlisle of Berriew. Amendments to the Second Reading motion, still to give the bill a Second Reading, but, um, both Lord Forsyth and Lord Carlisle wanted, um, essentially to have more time for consideration of things like the delegated powers report.

And Lord Forsyth wanted more explicit ministerial support to the sponsor of the Bill, Lord Falconer. In the end, they did not push those, uh, amendments to a decision. They withdrew them with the agreement of the rest of the House. Um, so we had a straight decision on whether or not the Bill should have a Second Reading.

And, the Peers on the voices, essentially on a "content" or "not content", decision supported giving the Bill very clearly a Second Reading. I think I only heard one voice say, "not content" when the [00:24:00] Second Reading motion was called by the, uh, the, the Speaker. So that went through very straightforwardly. And then there was a second tranche of decision making around what should then happen next.

And this is where the interesting, um, sort of development comes in because once a Bill's given a Second Reading, Peers have got to decide what form the next Committee Stage proceedings take. And usually it's, it's one of two forms. Committee of the Whole House, which is in the chamber. All the Peers can participate. You can have votes on, uh, clauses and amendments and so on. Or it can be committed to the Grand Committee, which takes place in a smaller committee room known as the Moses Room. Any Peers can take part, but you can't have have divisions because - unless they are are on a consensus basis - because there's no, there's no room, no scope for them.

Lord Falconer moved a motion to commit it to the Whole House as expected, so it will be considered in the chamber on future Fridays. But during the course of the last week, a new idea has emerged, pushed by a [00:25:00] number of Peers who are opposed to the Bill. A couple of names that stood out to me on that list of peers supporting the idea were were Baroness Berger, Luciana Berger, and, uh, Thangam Debbonaire, the former Labour MP. They called for the Bill to be delayed, essentially until the New Year so that a select committee could look at the Bill, call professional bodies to give evidence, call Ministers. They'd initially, as I understand it, had proposed that an existing select committee, the Public services Committee should look at it, but I understand that they declined .

Baroness Berger had initially tabled two motions last week to delay the Bill's Committee Stage until a select committee had reported and to set the committee's remit and require it to report by the 31st of December. Now, Matthew, many Peers welcomed this idea of, of drawing on select committee evidence to strengthen the scrutiny of the bill. But I think supporters feared that behind all of this, the real aim was to, to delay things and risk that the Bill would [00:26:00] simply run out of time in the, in the New Year. So negotiations were had behind the scenes between Lord Falconer and Baroness Berger, and they came up with a compromise deal.

Matthew England: Yes. So the original motion that Baroness Berger tabled would've delayed Committee Stage until possibly as late as, as January next year. Given that the government's indicated that the Session is going to end in Spring that would've left only a few months for the remaining stages of the Bill to be concluded, which would would've been far from guaranteed.

So many Peers felt that that would've been fatal to the Bill's passage. So it seems that, uh, Lord Falconer has agreed to compromise and the new motion that's been tabled by and agreed by the House differs from the original motion in, in two respects.

So the first is that there would be a, a shortened deadline for the committee to consider the Bill. So instead of the 31st of December, it would need to report by the 7th of November. So that would mean the committee, when the House comes back from recess on the 13th of October, would have three to four [00:27:00] weeks to consider the Bill.

The second difference is that the usual practice of the House is when it appoints a select committee to consider a bill that the select committee is able to make recommendations for amendments to the bill and crucially, a recommendation as to whether the Bill should proceed or not. The motion that Baroness Berger tabled, the new motion, specified that not withstanding the usual practice of the House, the select committee would only report back the evidence that it receives, it wouldn't make any recommendations, or at least doesn't need to make any recommendations.

Ruth Fox: I think the exact wording was the select committee is not required to recommend changes.

Matthew England: Yes. Which I think is an indication at least that it's not intending to, to make any recommendations.

Ruth Fox: It doesn't need to pronounce on the Bill's future. So yeah, it simply looks like it's going to, uh, it's going to gather evidence. This has been presented by campaigners against the Bill as a big defeat for Lord Falconer.. Do you think that's right, or do you think that's a slightly unfair [00:28:00] characterisation of what's, what's happened this week?

Daniel Gover: I think in his ideal world, probably he wouldn't have had this select committee. It does delay the start of Committee Stage proper. It is, however, not a major setback I think. Luciana Berger made the point during the debate that this would still leave, if you look at the, the available Fridays before Christmas, or at least those that have been announced, it would still leave four, which was always, it seems the plan to have four prior to Christmas. And it is of course, much earlier deadline than what Matthew was uh, describing in terms of the original proposal.

Ruth Fox: So it's 7th of November rather than 31st of December.

That's quite a big difference. So that is a big concession on Luciana Berger and her supporters part.

Daniel Gover: Yeah. And that means that you could potentially begin Committee stage scrutiny on, I think, the 14th of November, so you can still see progress being made on this, [00:29:00] on, on this timescale.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew England: It, it may still be the case that the Bill makes exactly the same amount of progress - ie. having four sittings before Christmas - that it would've made before this motion was agreed. So it may not be much of a concession in terms of the progress of the bill, um, at all for Lord Falconer.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. And what have we learned about the intention for this select committee. So, um, we don't know yet who will be members of it and how it will, who will chair it.

There was no indication in the debate, I think about that. Was there?

Matthew England: No. Like in the House of Commons, there's a Committee of Selection, whose role is to propose members to sit on select committees. They will propose those members in a motion to the wider House. We don't yet know who the Committee of Selection is likely to propose, but, uh, unlike in the House of Commons there's no requirement for any kind of political balance.

And as we discussed earlier, because there's no division at Second Reading to measure the division of opinion in the House, it's going to be quite difficult to determine how balanced the committee actually [00:30:00] is.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. And it'll be interesting in comparison because that was a real bone of contention in the House of Commons. Opponents of the Bill were really unhappy about, uh, the selection of, of members to the Public Bill Committee and the fact that for, for example, so many members that were on the, opposition side to the, to the bill were new members.

Daniel Gover: Yeah. Although, of course, one big difference is that the Commons committee was making decisions about amendments, whereas this committee is simply going to be holding evidence sessions as far as we are aware.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Yeah. And who do we think they're going to call for evidence? Baroness Berger gave some indications, didn't she, at the, towards the end of the debate?

Matthew England: She suggested that Lord Falconer himself would be called to give evidence. She also suggested that three members of the Government, so the Lord Chancellor - the Justice Secretary - and the Health Secretary and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury who's in charge of, sort of, where and how the governments spends money.

Ruth Fox: The money!

Matthew England: Yes. Who may be asked about, um, where they're going to find the money for funding assisted dying. Because a lot of people have been worried that it'll be taken out [00:31:00] of, um. palliative and, and hospice care. They're also going to call some of the professional bodies, so representing psychiatrists, GPs, physicians, and all sorts of other sort of health professionals, nurses.

They're also going to call lawyers and representatives of the legal profession to ask them about this, uh, this proposed panel that will include a legal representative. And probably some representatives of, uh, the hospice sector as well.

Daniel Gover: And then in terms of how we expect this to, to unfold, certainly during the debate, uh, Barroness Berger suggested that there would be time over three weeks for them to hold, I think six days of evidence taking. So a considerable amount of time to, to quiz experts on this.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. And then the plan is to report that evidence to the House. Now, as we've said, the motion doesn't prevent the committee making recommendations or expressing a view, but it seems unlikely, particularly given the timescale. So the, the view seems to be that the, just the, the bulk of the evidence, all of the evidence will be published, made available to [00:32:00] Peers. And then they will use that in the Committee Stage scrutiny to help them determine what amendments, what changes to the Bill they think are, are required.

Daniel Gover: Yeah, exactly. And, and that's kind of how it worked in the Commons, that evidence that was taken by the Public Bill Committee was used in support of amendments, particularly at Committee Stage, but also actually at Report as well. And one of the arguments made by Barroness Berger about the need for additional evidence beyond what was already taken in the Commons is that the Bill has changed quite a bit and therefore there, there needs to be updated evidence on, on the current situation.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, there's quite a few significant changes in terms of how the assisted dying service would work and the safeguards that have been in put in place.

Well, this is going to run and run. We will be back no doubt in mid-October when the select committee gets up and running to start its scrutiny. Mark and I will no doubt be back with another [00:33:00] special episode to reflect on how it's been set up, how it's working, and what the next steps look like.

Daniel and Matthew, thank you for joining me. This Bill is going to take many, many months yet before it reaches a final decision, so we'll no doubt, get you on the podcast again before that.

But thanks for holding my hand today, getting us through the podcast in Mark's absence, and we'll see you soon.

Matthew England: Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. Thanks.

Ruth Fox: Thanks, Daniel.

Matthew England: And while Mark's away, I'd probably better take his role and remind you to remind the listeners, to tell them what's coming up in the next few weeks.

Yes, I've forgotten all about that. Thank you, Matthew. So, yes, because Parliament's, gone on recess for three weeks for party conference season we've pre-recorded a couple of special episodes for you so that you can get your Parliament Matters hit over the conference period.

One on, on whipping with the author and journalist, Sebastian Whale, who's got a new book out exploring the Usual Channels, which is a term we use a lot on the podcast. Um, but he's gone [00:34:00] and looked at the history of the Usual Channels and got really into the details. We've got a fascinating discussion with him.

And then we've got another episode with the author Peter Just who looks at the afterlife of Prime Ministers and, uh, particularly we've been exploring how much, engagement former Prime Ministers have with Parliament. So that's coming up over the next couple of weeks and otherwise Mark will be back after the conference recess to join me for the next episode of Parliament Matters. We'll see you then. Bye bye.

Intro: 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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