In this episode we look at the latest Covid Inquiry report addressing the lack of parliamentary scrutiny during the pandemic and the need for a better system for emergency law-making. With the Budget approaching, we explore how the Commons Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle MP, might discipline ministers who announce policies outside Parliament and why a little-known motion could restrict debate on the Finance Bill. Sir David Beamish assesses whether the flood of amendments to the assisted dying bill risks a filibuster and raises constitutional questions. Finally, we hear from Marsha de Cordova MP and Sandro Gozi MEP on their work to reset UK–EU relations through the Parliamentary Partnership Assembly.
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As the Covid Inquiry highlights how little parliamentary scrutiny many pandemic restrictions received, we look at the problems in the UK’s emergency law-making process and urge parliamentarians to develop a better system for the next crisis.
With the Budget looming, we explore how the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle MP, could discipline ministers who announce major policies outside Parliament (for example, changes to income tax…). We explain why an obscure technical motion might limit debate on the Finance Bill – the legislation that will implement Rachel Reeves’ tax plans – and why leading figures in the Government should steer well clear of using it.
The assisted dying bill is inching through its House of Lords committee stage. Our Lords procedural guru Sir David Beamish joins us to consider whether the huge volume of amendments proposed by Peers could threaten the bill’s progress. When does rigorous scrutiny become filibustering? And would it be unconstitutional for their Lordships to block the Bill?
Finally, we meet Marsha de Cordova MP and Sandro Gozi MEP, the parliamentarians quietly working to de-frost the UK–EU relationship through the Parliamentary Partnership Assembly which monitors and reports on our Trade and Cooperation Agreement with Brussels.
Marsha de Cordova MP
Marsha de Cordova is the Labour Member of Parliament for Battersea in south London, having been first elected in 2017 after being a local councillor in Lambeth. As an Opposition MP, she was appointed Shadow Minister for Disabled People in 2017 then promoted in 2020 to Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities until resigning from the Shadow Cabinet in 2021. Following the 2024 general election, she was chosen by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to be Second Church Estates Commissioner, notionally a Government Minister but unpaid, answering questions in the House of Commons on behalf of the Church Commissioners of the Church of England. In 2022 she was among the Members of the Houses of Parliament chosen to form the first UK delegation to the EU–UK Parliamentary Partnership Assembly. In 2024 she was appointed to be the UK delegation’s Chair.
Sandro Gozi MEP
Sandro Gozi was born in Italy and became a Member of the Italian Parliament in 2006. He joined the Italian Government as Undersecretary of State for European Affairs in 2014 until losing his seat in Parliament in 2018. Then in 2019 he stood in the French elections to the European Parliament as a candidate for Renew Europe. Though not immediately elected, the result gave him a place to become a Member of the European Parliament in 2020 with the reallocation to France and other countries of UK seats that had become vacant after Brexit. In 2021 he was elected Secretary General of the European Democratic Party and in 2023 co-founded the European Liberal Democrats. He has taught at several universities in Europe and the United States.
Sir David Beamish KCB
Sir David Beamish served as the Clerk of the Parliaments, the most senior official in the House of Lords, from 2011 to 2017. During his parliamentary career he held several key roles, including Clerk of the Journals, Clerk of Committees and Clerk of the Overseas Office. From 1983 to 1986, David was seconded to the Cabinet Office, where he served as Private Secretary to the Leader of the House of Lords and Government Chief Whip. He was knighted in 2017 for parliamentary service. He was joint editor, with Donald Shell, of The House of Lords at Work, published by Oxford University Press in 1993. Following his retirement he was appointed as an honorary Senior Research Associate of the Constitution Unit at UCL. He is the Chair of the Southwark Diocesan Board of Finance, an Honorary Steward at Westminster Abbey, and Vice-Chair of the Parochial Church Council of the parish of St Barnabas, Dulwich. David was the winner of BBC Mastermind in 1988, with his specialist subject being the life and times of Nancy Astor.
EU–UK Parliamentary Partnership Assembly
6th EU–UK Parliamentary Partnership Assembly held 17-18 November 2025 in London
The UK–EU Parliamentary Partnership Assembly: A briefing, Hansard Society, November 2022
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill
The assisted dying bill: Is the number of Lord amendments a parliamentary record? Hansard Society, 20 November 2025
Delegated powers in the assisted dying bill: Issues for the attention of the House of Lords, Hansard Society, August 2025
The assisted dying bill: A guide to the legislative process in the House of Lords, Hansard Society, September 2025
Assisted dying bill: How does Committee Stage work in the House of Lords? Hansard Society, November 2025
House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee report on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, September 2025
House of Lords Constitution Committee report on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, September 2025
The Budget
Please note, this transcript is automatically generated. There may consequently be minor errors and the text is not formatted according to our style guide. If you wish to reference or cite the transcript copy below, please first check against the audio version above. 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 coming up in this week's episode,
Ruth Fox: Budgets, bad language and beguilingly good job offers from mysterious Chinese sources - the issues hanging over Parliament this week.
Mark D'Arcy: The assisted dying bill inches forward in the House of Lords as Peers debate a record number of amendments
Ruth Fox: And defrosting the UK-EU relationship. We talk to the Westminster and Strasbourg parliamentarians with their finger on the pulse of our post-Brexit negotiations.
Mark D'Arcy: But first, Ruth, it's only just landed and we haven't had a chance to fully [00:01:00] digest it yet, but the report of the Covid Inquiry is out and it discusses all sorts of things that perhaps aren't going to come as a terrible surprise to the waiting world. That the Downing Street operation under Boris Johnson was a bit chaotic. Dominic Cummings wasn't an entirely nice person to work with, and other shock findings haven't exactly rocked the world of politics. But from the point of view of this podcast, there was quite a lot of interesting discussion about one of your favorite issues. Oh, yes. Statutory Instruments. If you think back to the Covid era, for a time there were some of the biggest restrictions to personal liberty this country has ever seen, and people seemed to be living on top of a kind of decaying, sedimentary layers of Statutory Instruments, about when you had to wear a mask and when you could go out and for what purposes and the circumstances under which you could have socially distanced meetings with various members of your family.
All sorts of very, very important issues where the law seemed to be being updated almost in real time. Every time you blinked there was another Statutory [00:02:00] Instrument out there and even the police in the end were not able to keep up with this. Government ministers were on the radio getting into terrible trouble trying to explain the rules and then discovering they got it wrong when they came off air.
Spokespersons having to quickly rush out corrections. You know "what the minister meant to say was", it just seemed to go on and on for a very long time and the whole thing really did highlight the limitations, the problems with emergency lawmaking in these admittedly incredibly difficult circumstances.
Ruth Fox: It did. I mean it's, it's brought back some bad memories, mark, not just of Covid itself, but also those many hours that my colleagues and I spent monitoring the Statutory Instruments that were being put out by the Government, day by day, hundreds and hundreds of them. I should say thank you to the Covid Inquiry because they've used our data for their reports. That's very good of them and footnoted it. Thank you. Full transcript →
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The assisted dying bill has attracted an extraordinary number of amendments in the House of Lords, prompting questions about whether the volume is unprecedented. This blog examines how its amendment count compares with other bills in the current Session, and what the historical data shows about previous amendment-heavy legislation.
Over 1,000 amendments have been tabled to the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill in the House of Lords. This blog examines the progress of the Bill at Committee Stage in the House of Lords so far, explores the likelihood of a procedural impasse and what options exist if more parliamentary time is needed.
In this episode, we are joined by Lord Falconer, the Labour Peer steering the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill through the House of Lords. Although he has attempted to legislate for assisted dying several times before, this is the first occasion he is working with a bill that has already cleared the House of Commons. In a wide-ranging conversation, he explains why this issue has driven him for more than a decade and assesses the Bill’s prospects of becoming law. Please help us by completing our Listener Survey. It will only take a few minutes.
Stay informed with updates and analysis on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill as it moves through Parliament. Learn about the debates, procedures, decisions, and key milestones shaping the assisted dying legislation.
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill – the Bill to legalise assisted dying – will begin its Committee Stage in the House of Lords on Friday 14 November. In this blog, we explain how Committee Stage works in the House of Lords, including how the House debates and decides on amendments, and how long this stage is likely to take.
