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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. Coming up in this week's episode.

Ruth Fox: Almost peerless. Despite having MPs and riding high in the polls, Reform UK doesn't get a share of the 34 new peers announced this week.

Mark D'Arcy: Oversold. The Lib Dem score a victory in a Commons vote on closer ties to the EU.

But is it quite the triumph they've been claiming?

Ruth Fox: And will Parliament get stronger powers to scrutinise international treaties? The senior Peerage in charge of scrutinising them isn't holding his breath.

Mark D'Arcy: And Ruth, let's [00:01:00] start on that supposed great Lib Dem triumph in the Commons. This was on a vote on a Ten Minute Rule Bill to create a duty on the government to negotiate entry if possible to the EU Customs Union. It was proposed by the Lib Dem MP, Dr. Al Pinkerton, and it was won. And there were a couple of strands to the story.

Of course the first thing to say is it was won on a tied vote where the chair wasn't the speaker, it was the deputy speaker, Caroline Nokes cast her casting vote in favour of the Bill. And so before we get on to the issues behind it, let's have a little look at the substance here. Because the reason that the deputy speaker voted the way she did and allowed the Bill to go on was not because she was personally in favour of it or not in favour. It wasn't to do with her personal politics. It was to do with the established rules about how the chair votes. And this is something called Speaker Denison's Rule, which dates back to the mists of, I think the 1860s.

Ruth Fox: Yes, it's our old friend precedent. [00:02:00]

Mark D'Arcy: A very well established rule on this occasion.

Ruth Fox: So Erskine May says that the speaker is at liberty to vote like any other member, according to his conscience, without assigning a reason.

But in order to avoid any imputation upon his impartiality or her impartiality, it is usual for him or her when practicable to vote in such a manner as not to make the decision of the House final. So basically, there's three principles. The speaker should vote for further discussion where possible, which is essentially what happened here.

If no further discussion is possible, decision should not be taken except by a majority. So the status quo. And if. It were a vote on an amendment to a bill for example, then the chair should vote in a way that leaves the Bill in its existing form. So those are the rules, if you like, around the casting vote.

And because this was a Ten Minute Rule Bill, there's opportunity for further debate. So Caroline Nokes cast her vote in accordance with that precedent to allow more debate later possibly.

Mark D'Arcy: And the [00:03:00] possibly is doing quite a lot of heavy lifting here, because this is a Ten Minute Rule Bill. It's quite a low form of legislative life.

If you like a Ten Minute Rule Bill, a vote like this one is not actually a vote on the Bill per se, it's on whether or not the MP who's proposing it has leave to bring it in as a Bill. So winning the vote doesn't get you the Bill through a stage of its consideration. It simply adds it to the queue of bills waiting for a second reading.

So it'll now be on some sort of list of future business. But unfortunately, there are no private members' bill days ahead for it to be debated on. And even if there were, it would be so far down the agenda, it wouldn't stand very much chance at all of being talked about.

So what's happened here is that the Lib Dems, I suspect possibly slightly to their surprise, actually got this through and are now crowing happily about it. And why not? They've won a vote even by the narrowest possible margins. But it [00:04:00] is not something that now suddenly makes the government do anything. And they've been, I fear, rather overselling what it actually means on social media and lots of tweets about this means the government must.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. And the Bill has passed, I saw in some of the party social media. It's not been passed. No Bill was discussed. I mean, the detail of the bill wasn't there, there was no legislative text that was voted on, as you say, permission from the House, leave to bring in the Bill, it now joins the queue of private members bills.

Technically it's been allocated a second reading on the 16th of January, a Friday, but that's not a sitting Friday in the Commons. At least not yet.

Mark D'Arcy: It's a weird thing, isn't it, that the Commons will actually allocate bills to be read on a day when it isn't sitting and therefore won't be read. So it is all a bit bonkers.

But again, this is one of the funny things that the Commons does that's so completely counterintuitive that no normal mortal understands what they're up to.

Ruth Fox: Apart from the Hansard Society and a few others.

Mark D'Arcy: Yes, anorac wearing nerds like myself,

Ruth Fox: I mean, essentially Ten Minute Rule Bills, Tuesday and Wednesdays in the House of Commons, it's 10 [00:05:00] minutes of prime time for an MP to stand up in the chamber after questions and make their case.

It's a really good opportunity to make an argument, to get attention to an issue, and the Lib Dems have gone into overdrive on this. You can understand why. You know, it was a bit of drama, a casting vote, and they got it through. The interesting question is how they got it through, because, you know, a hundred for, a hundred against. Normally, Labour MPs are told, sit these things out, don't vote on them. But 13 Labour MPs did actually vote for it, including a prominent name, Dame Meg Hillier, the chair of the Treasury Committee, and, chair of the Select Committee of Chairs, the Liaison Committee.

Mark D'Arcy: It's quite interesting that a few Labour MPs heard the siren song of the Lib Dems on the customs union and decided they wanted to go that way.

And it comes on top of David Lammy, the Justice Secretary, former foreign secretary of course, talking about how maybe the UK should indeed move in that direction in much firmer terms than any government minister previously [00:06:00] has been prepared to say. So it does suggest that maybe, what's the phrase, the tectonic plates within the Labour Party are shifting on this issue.

And the other point about it is, this has me thinking back a little bit to the early days of David Cameron's premiership 2010. The Conservative Liberal Democrat Coalition was in office and the Brexiteers, who eventually forced David Cameron into conceding that there should be a membership referendum on the EU, the Brexit referendum, which finally happened in 2016, were beginning their kind of long march through the parliamentary undergrowth holding Westminster Hall debates, bringing Ten Minute Rule Bills, putting down amendments, and they used to meet quite early in the parliamentary week in a whole committee room, and they would plot their strategy. They'd go through the agenda. This is an opportunity for us to push something. This is an opportunity to make that point there. This is an opportunity to get the minister on the record here and on they would go. Chip chipping away, and I do wonder if maybe the Lib Dems are [00:07:00] doing that now and acting rather like the Brexiteers did all those years ago.

I mean, there's a nice irony in that somewhere, but parliamentary procedure works for anybody who's prepared to try and work it.

Ruth Fox: I'm not sure about the tectonic plates in the Labour party shifting. It's well known there's plenty on the Labour benches would like to get back into the European Union in some form.

I think what it does indicate though is, again, the difficulties of parliamentary management of the parliamentary Labour Party, groups splitting off into different directions, Cabinet ministers being willing to talk about these issues, whether or not they've been given permission and to sort of fly a kite or, and see what the reaction is or whether or not they're acting under their own auspices and trying to press the debate forward.

Who knows? But, fundamental to this discussion on the Ten Minute Rule Bill, there was not any discussion about the complexities of what and the implications of returning to a customs union.

Mark D'Arcy: This would be a good thing. Let's do it. As quickly as possible. That's it. And it's interesting to point out as well, that not only did those Labour MPs who voted for it vote for it, but there are also three Labour MPs that came out of the [00:08:00] undergrowth to vote against it. And they were all in very red wall, quite Brexit looking seats, where presumably they would want to make a point to Brexit voters that they're listening to them as well and does rather demonstrate the difficulties this poses for the Labour Party.

A lot of their MPs represent very, very Brexit constituencies and a lot of their MPs represent very, very rejoin constituencies. And it's gonna, I suspect, become progressively more difficult for Sir Keir Starmer to straddle that divide. And maybe that's one of the reasons that the Lib Dems are doing this. This does make his life rather difficult.

Ruth Fox: It does indeed. Well, speaking of the Lib Dems, Mark, they had another bit of good news this week in that they got five new peers appointed in the list published by Number 10 this week. So 34, I think it was, new peers, 25 of them joining the Labour benchers, five of them Lib Dems, three more Conservatives and one crossbencher who's not new because it's the convener of the crossbenches, has been converted to a life Peerage. Rather than a [00:09:00] hereditary peerage. So he will remain in the House regardless of what happens with the hereditary peers bill.

Mark D'Arcy: Listeners who can think back with a bit of a long memory here to an edition of the pod we did in the middle of the general election in 2024 may recall we interviewed him about constitutional issues and we slightly tweaked his nose about the fact that he was a hereditary peer and would face removal by Labour government at some stage. Well he's now done a rather dainty sidestep around that so he can continue in his role as convener.

And I do wonder if all this had taken place a few months earlier. He might possibly have been in the running to be the new Lord speaker.

Ruth Fox: That is the speculation that he may well have wanted to run if that had been possible.

Two of the Lib Dem appointments are in fact hereditaries who are now getting life peerages to stay in the House.

Mark D'Arcy: Earl Russell and Lord Addington.

Ruth Fox: I mean, the interesting question about the hereditaries is when they will leave, because if they do leave at the end of the session, probably May, perhaps early June, you then have this significant number of peers leaving that is gonna have implications for parliamentary [00:10:00] business and not least for committees.

So we're expecting quite a lot of turnover on select committees in the House of Lords in January because of term limits. They'll go through quite a change and then potentially in the summer there'll be a further level of change. So it's gonna be quite disruptive to scrutiny in the House of Lords, in the months ahead.

Mark D'Arcy: And that's always something that people tend not to notice, but the logistical factors in the running of any Parliament can make a huge difference to how effectively they can do their job. And yeah, this is a logistical factor with a capital L.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. But the Lib Dems, they've got five peers. They're already a pretty big group in the House. The Reform Party UK, however, Nigel Farage didn't get any.

Mark D'Arcy: Yes, and I do think that that is probably wrong.

Ruth Fox: Well, I'll go further than that Mark. And I'll say it's indefensible at this point.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, I was thinking back to 2013 when having done reasonably well in various elections to the European Parliament and other things, the Greens were awarded a pair and Jenny Jones, the former London Assembly [00:11:00] member, became the first Green peer to be appointed as a Green Party member.

They had had one peerage before that, who was Tim Beaumont, who started life as a Liberal peer, then switched over to the Green Party later on. Then Jenny Jones years later came along on the strength of a bit of an electoral performance. Now the Greens were doing reasonably well in that era, but nowhere near as well as they're doing now, or B, as the Reform Party is doing now.

But Reform got nothing. And as you say, it is pretty hard to defend that if the general principle is that parties with a bit of a presence in public life, winning electoral contests should get some kind of representation. Why isn't Reform being offered the chance to nominate X number of peers.

If we get a Reform government on the other side of the next general election, you can imagine Reform feeling the urge to create several hundred new peers to have a decent contingent of their own in the upper house, because otherwise they'll be in great difficulty getting their own legislation through.

Ruth Fox: And bear in mind what that's gonna mean. You'd be pushing a House,

Mark D'Arcy: The size of the House [00:12:00] metastasising into vast proportions.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. I mean we're, you know, we're well over 800 now. We'll be pushing into a House of over a thousand. Yeah. I mean we are in the realms of the ridiculous.

Mark D'Arcy: Although, of course, a prominent Reform figures Zia Yusuf has been publicly musing about whether peers who have betrayed the will of the British people should be removed.

Now, I'm not quite sure in what context they're betraying the will of the British people, but he'd doubtless think of something and maybe they might.

Ruth Fox: How would they remove them? Because you'd need legislation and

Mark D'Arcy: Which you have to get through the House of Lords.

So it becomes rather problematic. It's a very interesting question.

I mean, the House of Lords, if we had a Reform government after the next election, which obviously isn't a done deal at the moment, would be a bit of an issue suddenly.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I mean the House is now, I think, a hundred bigger than when Labour was elected last July. So there's currently 821 peers, I think was my calculation based on the numbers on the parliamentary website.

Once you add these new peers to each group and then you take off what it's assumed will be the numbers of hereditary that each group [00:13:00] will lose. My back of the fag packet calculations, last night, I think I ended up with Conservatives on about 240, 241 and Labour on 230. So by the end of the session, assuming the hereditary leave at the end of the session, as is the government's plan, and of course that legislation is a bit stalled at the moment with arguments about when the hereditaries will leave, whether it should be at the end of the Parliament, when they decide they want to retire, or whether it should be the end of this session, which is the government's preferred choice.

But, speaking as we were about Earl Kinnoull and whether he might have gone for the position of Lords Speaker, we have a little bit more detail on that this week.

Mark D'Arcy: We now know who the runners and riders are.

Ruth Fox: We do, we've got two candidates. We've got Baroness Bull and we have Lord Forsyth.

Mark D'Arcy: Oh yes. Michael Forsyth, Scottish Secretary under John Major, lost his seat in the Labour landslide of 1997.

Eventually was translated into the Lords and he was always [00:14:00] seen in Scottish politics as quite a hard line Thatcherite, very much as an ideological outrider in that era. But he's worked very well in the House of Lords. He's got the combination of knowing what he's about and having on the quiet a reasonably genial personality as well.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, he's highly respected, I mean, I've appeared before his committee a number of times when he was on the House of Lords Constitution Committee.

The other candidate, Baroness Bull, probably a little bit less well known in political circles, but has got very long and outstanding record in the arts, former ballerina, so you can imagine the ballerina to Baroness story. That said,

Mark D'Arcy: Well, politicians always need to pirouette, don't they?

Ruth Fox: But Baroness Bull's been in the House quite a long time. She's a deputy speaker, sits on the wool sack, when the Lord Speaker is unavailable. She's got a long record in terms of work with the Royal Opera House, arts and culture, she's done some work with King's College, London and, you know, background in terms [00:15:00] of broadcasting and producing radio programs on some health issues and so on. So a really, I think, a really interesting contrast.

Mark D'Arcy: And Ruth, you've had a chance to observe the two candidates close up because with your Hansard Society director's hat on, you were presiding over the hustings that they've just held for the Lord speakership.

What did you learn from that?

Ruth Fox: Yeah, it was quite nerve wracking, Mark, I should say. So the official hustings were held in the robing room at the House of Lords end of the building.

Mark D'Arcy: Uh, that may sound quite dinky, but it's actually a really quite large hall behind the main chamber of the House of Lords.

In fact, some distance behind that. But it's where, as the name suggests, the sovereign puts on their robes before presiding over a state opening.

Ruth Fox: It is, and, it's where, of course, you've got Queen Victoria's diddly Little Throne at the back because she was quite short. So it's quite a small throne.

So it's quite an intimidating environment, but also quite an intimidating audience. About a hundred plus, probably 120 plus members of the House of Lords to [00:16:00] listen to what the candidates had got to say. And we were invited as we have been for every Lord Speaker election since 2011, to chair them and essentially to select the questions.

Mark D'Arcy: So what did Noble Lords want to know?

Ruth Fox: Yeah, well, it was interesting that we had dozens of questions and in an hour and a half we couldn't possibly get through all of them, but there were some really common themes, some of which wouldn't be a great surprise. We had quite a lot of questions on sitting hours and the procedure of the House of Lords, things like grouping and de grouping of amendments, which of course is a big issue because of the state of the government's legislative program at the moment, and sort of delays as a result of grouping and de grouping. We're seeing that on the assisted dying bill. So that's a contentious issue.

Sitting hours. A big theme, you know, the House has been sitting late into the night dealing with legislation, you know, midnight, 1:00 AM and beyond, whether the House should sit earlier on certain days.

There were questions about participation in the House and how, you know, members can be supported to participate.

Governance and security [00:17:00] was a big issue. Listeners may have heard us talking in the past about the controversy over the security door, the entrance, peers' entrance in the House of Lords. The big security fence that suddenly emerged earlier this year. And nobody quite knowing who approved it, who signed it off, how much it's cost.

Mark D'Arcy: And nobody liking it very much and thinking it was a horrible sight.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, nobody liking it very much. So that was an issue. There were questions about the governance of the House. This is a constant theme at Lord Speaker elections. From my recollection, that, is the House of Lords Commission accountable, is the Clerk of the Parliaments, the most senior clerk accountable to the Commission and to the Lord Speaker.

Whether the governance arrangements are really working in the interest of the House. That was a big theme.

Mark D'Arcy: And those shouldn't be underestimated as issues because I was just saying the logistical issues about how a place runs can impact the substance of what they're trying to do. If it becomes incredibly difficult for peers to get through security and they find themselves late to a vote or something, [00:18:00] that's a problem.

If it becomes difficult for them to get the support they need for committee work, the committee works less effective, that's a problem. And so on and so on.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, and also relations with the House of Commons when it comes to governance. I mean, we know there's sort of some, I wouldn't say conflict, but some differences of view perhaps between the two Houses about, for example, restoration and renewal and what should happen.

There were some questions about how the new Lord Speaker would work collaboratively with the House of Commons in areas of sort of shared interest. Between the two Commissions. How would the new Lord Speaker propose to work with the Speaker of the House of Commons, Lindsay Hoyle?

Mark D'Arcy: I mean, historically, it's always been a slightly wary relationship, partly because the Speaker was not used to having another Speaker in Westminster to deal with.

And suddenly the Lord Speaker was created in a puff of New Labour reforming zeal.

Ruth Fox: And underpinning all of this is that the House sort of wants a Lord speaker to be able to tackle some of these issues and that the Lord Speaker to be the sort of the figurehead. But ultimately, as came out in the discussion, the [00:19:00] powers of the Lord Speaker are quite constrained, much more so than for the Speaker of the house of Commons.

Mark D'Arcy: They never get to shout order, order, at peers or anything like that.

Ruth Fox: And yeah, I mean, in the chamber, you know, they're not selecting questions. They're not selecting and grouping amendments. So there's that side on the procedural side. But they are, they've also got a more difficult role in terms of governance.

Not least because when it comes to bicameral issues, the House of Commons tends to be the chamber that's paying the bigger proportion of the bill and therefore has a stronger voice and calls the shots. And therefore has a stronger voice.

There were questions about the future of the House of Lords. You know, some people want to abolish it, some want to reform it in particular ways, what would you do if you're elected as an advocate for the house?

Mark D'Arcy: And certainly previous Lord Speakers have been very involved in ideas of trying to trim down the size of the House by various mechanisms. So Lord Fowler, I think, was very in involved in the Burns report and pushing forward that idea of gradual ratcheting down of the size of the House of Lords.

And of course, that report has gone the way of all good intentions these days.

Ruth Fox: [00:20:00] Yeah. Well, there were a number of reports, governance reports and reports about the future of the House that were referenced, and this sense that they're not being acted on. There was questions about public engagement, you know, this is a really important issue for the House of Lords.

They feel they do incredibly valuable work and feel that it doesn't quite get the media profile and coverage that it should, that people don't have awareness of what they're doing. They've got some fantastic education programs, but how do they do more when you've got limited resources? One of the questions referred to, you know, the excellent work of select committees and these fantastic reports that select committees produce, but do they get the kind of media coverage that the House wants and that they feel is deserved. Now, as a journalist, you're probably better able to comment on that than me.

Mark D'Arcy: I think that one of the issues with the House of Lords is that their procedures and methods of working are so consensual that sometimes you get something that says, on balance, we think that there might be a bit of scope to doing something positive here, but on the other hand, maybe it might [00:21:00] be not quite the moment and the Earth doesn't move. Sometimes you feel the House of Lords is so busy being nuanced and reasonable that actually it makes itself unnewsworthy and uninteresting in the process.

And no press officer on Earth can get you headline coverage for a report that doesn't actually say very much. And I think they need to be a little bit wary of blaming the press officer when maybe they should be looking in the mirror.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Well, we will see what happens. I mean, the discussion, what came out and certainly one of the questions brought this out is that there is this really stark difference between these two candidates. On the one hand, Lord Forsyth, the question was, is he too political for the role?

Mark D'Arcy: After a lifetime at the top of conservative politics?

Ruth Fox: How would he counter that? In the same vein, Baroness Bull, given the scale of issues facing the house, facing Parliament and facing politics today, does she have sufficient experience?

Mark D'Arcy: Is she political enough?

Ruth Fox: Is she political enough, exactly, to deal with what are essentially political issues? So it was a fascinating discussion. The recording will be available shortly to be [00:22:00] watched. I have to say the visuals are not great. You might be better listening to the audio because it was in the robing room.

We weren't in charge of the recording of it or the lighting of it, or any of that. That was done by the House authorities. And I think it's fair to say the lighting was quite powerful, but quite difficult. So the recording will be out soon, and then, when is a decision made? You've gotta wait till the new year because the voting will take place the first week that they are back in the new year, between 6th and 8th of January. Takes place electronically and the result will be announced week commencing the 12th of January at some point, now that will be subject to the King's approval being given to the

Mark D'Arcy: The royal approbation..

Ruth Fox: Yeah, so we'll have to wait for that. And then the new Lord Speaker, whoever it is, will take office on the 2nd of February.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, Ruth, let's take a quick break, but before we go, just a fore warning that when we come back, we'll be talking about an area when the House of Lords reaches the parts that the House of Commons [00:23:00] doesn't seem to be able to, scrutinising international treaties. They're increasingly important. They're increasingly pervasive in our national life in a way that they just weren't a few decades ago.

And there's a special dedicated Lords committee that scrutinises those treaties. It's chaired by the former Labour Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, and we'll be talking to him about why Parliament should be doing a bit better in this area.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, so Mark, we'll just take a short ad break, helps pay the bills after all.

And listeners, while you're listening or fast forwarding through these ad breaks, why not help us out with the podcast, rate or review us on your podcast app if you haven't already done it, it'll really help us to grow the podcast to new audiences, new listeners, so that's one important way you can help us with the podcast if you're enjoying it.

See you in a minute.

Mark D'Arcy: See you in a minute. And Ruth, we are back and it's been a consistent theme on this pod almost since we started, really, that Parliament needs a better system for examining international treaties, both before the negotiators are sent out to [00:24:00] negotiate them in the first place and after they've been signed by British Ministers.

And at the moment, the system really looks pretty perfunctory. That's a problem because increasingly international treaties can reach into domestic life. They can cover trade, they can cover the environment, they can cover human rights, they can cover agriculture, and Parliament doesn't look at them in the kind of detail that other national parliaments do.

Other national parliaments have a sort of pre mandating process where they set out. The parameters for their negotiators as they go into those negotiating chambers. Other parliaments can veto treaties. Our Parliament theoretically can, but it's actually very difficult because the procedures are so complicated.

So we went into the House of Lords and talked to Lord Goldsmith, who chairs the Lords International Agreements Committee. He's of course a former Labour Attorney General. You may remember under the Tony Blair's premiership, he was the one who had to rule on the legality of the invasion of Iraq, and we began by asking him what's wrong with the current system.

Lord Goldsmith: I think what we [00:25:00] have now under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act is better than it was before. It's good to have something. It's good to have a statutory process for a degree of scrutiny, but there are big deficiencies with it. Inadequate time to scrutinise. Inadequate process so far as government is concerned to allow us to scrutinise.

And at the end of the day, the biggest question is really whether or not Parliament should have a role in approving treaties and not just nodding them through after they have been made by the government.

Mark D'Arcy: And one of the points here is that when these rules were devised back in the midst of time, am I right in thinking it's the ponsonby rules?

Lord Goldsmith: Yes. That's what starts.

Mark D'Arcy: They were sort formalised in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act. Treaties did not reach into daily domestic life and the conduct of trade in the UK in the way that they can do now. So treaties were much more often matters of foreign affairs, arms limitation, that kind of thing, in the era when these rules fully emerged, and now something much more extensive.

Lord Goldsmith: That's absolutely right. I think that's the big point, is that treaties are [00:26:00] now much more connected with what we do every day than they ever were before. So human rights obviously is a big one, but lots of other stuff. Environment, farming, agriculture, health, and safety. These are things which we come across all the time, and they can be fixed and set out by a treaty in a way, which once upon a time would only be for domestic legislation and that's no longer the case. So I think Parliament as the democratic body, which is concerned with looking after the people of this country, should have a greater role in what those treaties say because they are affecting everyday life.

Ruth Fox: Effectively, we've got a conflict here, haven't we, between the historic constitutional tradition that the executive and the executive only negotiates treaties. And then this, not entirely recent, but certainly in recent decades, development where treaties are biting into considerable areas of domestic policymaking, which wouldn't naturally be the preserve solely of the executive, where Parliament would hold them [00:27:00] to account.

So we've got this conflict, and at the moment, it seems to me that all the cards really are largely stacked in the government's favour.

Lord Goldsmith: You know, that's right. And the cards are not just as it were, that government reaches the agreement, and at the end of the day, what Parliament is asked to do is look at the agreement which has been reached, rather, generally, than having any role in what should be contained in the agreement in the treaty, but also because government also controls parliamentary time.

So, although under the Act, both Commons and the Lords have the right to say, a treaty should not be ratified. If the Lords says it, it has no effect. If the Commons says it, it could have effect. But the Commons needs the time to have a debate and government controls time. They control what can be debated in the Commons.

And there've been a couple of examples where important treaties, which the Commons ought to have debated, they couldn't get time to do it, so they just went through.

Mark D'Arcy: So talk us through, if you like, how the process unfolds. Let's suppose that a treaty of some kind comes down the track. Talk us through the route mechanicals of [00:28:00] how that would work as far as your committee's concerned.

When would you be told it was coming? How much time would you have to scrutinise it and why is that sometimes problematic?

Lord Goldsmith: We would get to know probably really because of intelligence, because the foreign office will contain information about what treaties are currently upcoming, but we don't necessarily get it until the treaties actually been signed.

That's the moment which we will know. And if the government are playing things close to their chest, they will tell us and we will then have 21 days, 21 working days, sitting days, in order to reach a view and recommend ratification or not ratification during that period, and this is critically important because we are an evidence-based committee.

What we will want to do is get views from stakeholders, from experts, from people who know the particular thing in order to reach a view. We've got a wonderful secretariat, but they're very small and they can't cover every single area of aeronautics, nuclear power, and defence, all of that. So we will need to look to the outside to get that and during that period, [00:29:00] our committee will gather evidence. We'll then discuss it. We may have an evidence session. We'll probably have an evidence session with the relevant minister, putting questions to him or her getting a view on it, and then write a report. All that's gotta be done in 21 sitting days. Otherwise, time runs out and the treaty gets ratified anyway.

Ruth Fox: Now the Hansard Society submitted evidence to your committee's inquiry, which you very generously quoted a number of times, thank you, but one of the things that we were very clear about and have thought for years, particularly, you know, when there was a lot of focus on this in the post Brexit process, is that the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act process, this 21 sitting days to scrutinise an agreement is just not long enough.

It's both weak but also inadequate. And you made that point forcefully to the government. The government's response is, not really, we're quite happy with it, perhaps unsurprisingly from their perspective. But of course when they were in opposition and on the end of this, under the previous government with things like the Australian Free Trade [00:30:00] Agreement and the New Zealand Agreement and couldn't get debates, they didn't like it.

Now they're in government, they do.

Lord Goldsmith: Well, isn't that a surprise? I mean this is of course what happens, but you're right, I mean, governments, once they get into power, they find it perhaps inconvenient to have to, having negotiated, and it may have been a difficult negotiation, both external and indeed, perhaps internally in cabinet as well. So for someone to come in and then say, oh, you haven't got this right, I can understand that's inconvenient, but that's not really the point. The point is the democratic process requires that that should be done.

But Ruth is absolutely right. I mean, it's not long enough for us to do this and there's no point doing it. We can't just receive a treaty and read it through and say, oh, well we don't like this or don't like that. We've actually gotta look at it properly, as I say, on an evidence base and there isn't time to do it and government will occasionally give us additional time. We did suggest that they should make it a standard thing that if we ask for an additional 21 days, we should always get it unless they've got some good reason. They don't like that either. [00:31:00] So we are in this situation. They have said that they're gonna talk to us. And we will do that. But this is one of the major problems, is really the inadequate time for us to do the job, which the public require of us.

Mark D'Arcy: I suppose it's pretty much a law of Parliament, really, that oppositions always want deeper scrutiny, and governments always want to avoid further scrutiny, for the reasons you've just been setting out.

And the government in its response to your report, talks about how it values and respects the work of your committee and then goes on to dismiss most of the substantive suggestions you've made for improving the process. So how do you persuade them?

Lord Goldsmith: Well, this is not a matter just for my committee. I mean, we will obviously state our view, my committee hasn't actually yet formed a formal opinion on the government's response we've only just had, but there are other people who can speak about it and whose voice will be influential. And I have in mind, of course, the Hansard Society is just one of those. And so I would look to see what Ruth and her colleagues have to say about this, but others as well. Because it's not about what the committee likes, it's what [00:32:00] about what's the right thing to do for the public?

Ruth Fox: I like the idea that I might be influential on the government, given that one of the lines in their response to your report is that we disagree with the Hansard Society. I mean, there are people in the House of Commons, for example, senior backbenchers, chairs of committees, Liam Byrne, chair of the Business and Trade Committee, Dame Emily Thornberry, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, who are all concerned and worried about this.

You had an article in the House Magazine in the last month with Dame Emily talking about this issue. And I suppose what, you know, can be done in terms of sort of raising the profile of this issue, particularly in the Commons where there are so many new members grappling with so many issues to ensure that they understand how important it is that they're able to scrutinise these things that are gonna come and hit home at their constituency level.

In terms of the impact on farmers or the impact on regulations or the impact on human rights that emerge from these treaties in agreements.

Lord Goldsmith: Well, that's absolutely right, and I've always thought one of the most striking things is, and I think was Bagehot who initially [00:33:00] drew attention to it. You know, we will spend hours, possibly even days, at least if you're talking about the Lords, days in scrutinising primary legislation, going through it line by line, sentence by sentence, adding phrases, adding new clauses, I mean, really detailed scrutiny. We do all that. We don't do that with treaties. We don't do that with treaties at all. At the end of the day, it may be a most an up or down decision, yes or no. And often your answer will be, it's good to have a treaty. It's better than no treaty. And so the answer's gonna be yes. It's not scrutiny that I think the public deserves and requires.

And how do you get people to change their mind? I think for the Members of Parliament, and as Ruth says, those who've joined relatively recently, I think they should draw a contrast. They should look at some of these treaties, which actually cover areas which their constituents care about and realise, I had nothing to do with this.

I could look at a piece of legislation and realise I had quite a lot to do with that. I mean, I was able to scrutinise it. I was able to put down amendments. I was able to debate it, subject obviously to, you know, questions of parliamentary [00:34:00] time. And in the Lords, that doesn't even apply. So I think it's that sort of pressure.

I hope that will come about. Ultimately, it will only change if Members of Parliament themselves want to do that, which is why I'm so pleased that there are, again, as Ruth says, influential members of Parliament like Liam Byrne and Dame Emily Thornberry, who have been expressing their views about what the scrutiny process should be, even though they are members of the same party as the government.

Mark D'Arcy: Picking up on the point about scrutiny, it's often suggested that the answer to this is okay, you may not get much chance to sink your teeth into the actual treaty, but there's usually implementing legislation that follows on from the treaty, and that's where parliamentary sovereignty will bite. Your report explicitly rejects that, says that that isn't a good enough answer.

Lord Goldsmith: That's right, and it's an answer that's often given and there's no doubt that sometimes there's implementing legislation which touches on some bits of the treaty, which are important, but it doesn't touch on all of it.

Usually implementing legislation only picks up a bit of the treaty, that bit which necessarily requires implementation by [00:35:00] legislation, and that means that it's only that part that's looked at. On top of that, it's never actually a scrutiny of the whole purpose of the treaty. So when you get the treaty, it's already fixed.

The decisions have been made, the main lines have been drawn, and you may just be talking in the margins about something. So no, implementing legislation is not the answer to the accountability gap.

Ruth Fox: Implementing legislation, Mark, of course, can also be secondary or delegated legislation, as listeners know my favorite subject, rather than just primary legislation. And that also then brings a whole set of new scrutiny problems that we've talked about at length on this podcast.

The other thing in all of this is that once you get the text of the deal, in essence, it's almost too late anyway, because things have been set in stone, as you say, the negotiations have gone on. These may have been quite difficult. Often are. There needs to be much more influence upstream in the process so that parliamentarians have a voice in what the mandate is because by the time the government's close to signing it, [00:36:00] it's really sort of set in stone. And there's a risk, I suppose, from the government's perspective, that you become a bad faith negotiator if you're trying to unpick it.

But government doesn't even want that upstream scrutiny either, which is a feature of most other parliaments.

Lord Goldsmith: You know, Mark, you asked me before you started a question by talking about trade treaties, and actually there's a difference there because we did get a deal in relation to trade treaties that we would have more involvement even at an earlier stage.

And I'm pleased, I have to say, let's give credit where it's due, we get to speak to the chief negotiators of trade treaties before they have finalised it. They come and talk to us maybe twice, maybe even three times. They'll come and tell us how the negotiations are going and we get to see quite a lot of that.

So that is the sort of thing that helps because do we influence how it goes? Maybe a little bit, but at least there's the opportunity to know what's happening and to hear about it and to think about it. You can't necessarily bring in the views of experts at that stage because there isn't a treaty text to show them, but I think that's better.

What we do have otherwise in other treaties [00:37:00] is quite the reverse. We have no involvement at an earlier stage. And I think the model that some countries use of actually having negotiating mandates approved by their legislature is actually an interesting one. We do not do that.

I mean, the EU and the US Senate have quite different approach. They are much more involved in the treaty process. Governments say, well, we don't want that, but actually they can use it to their advantage. I could imagine if I was a government negotiator saying, I'm terribly sorry Mr. President, we can't do that, the House of Commons has already said they're not gonna buy that.

And I think that may give them some power in negotiating. So you can argue that a little bit both ways.

Mark D'Arcy: I suppose the historical roots of that are right back to this being the power of the sovereign to reach treaties with other sovereigns. And while other countries have written liberal constitutions, which nail down the powers of their parliaments to intervene in these matters, Britain's always rather sort of bumped along with more or less the same customer practice.

Lord Goldsmith: Although it changes. I mean, one of the other traditional powers that the Monarch had was that of waging war. [00:38:00] And we've adjusted that to some extent. I mean, that was, not gonna talk about that, but yes, listeners can't see the smiles on certain people's faces around this table, but it's true that we have changed that and we now debate that in a way that we never did before.

So why not in relation to treaty making?

Mark D'Arcy: Most of the things that your report requests in terms of better processes and more time for scrutiny are in the gift of the government. They can accept or refuse them. One thing Parliament could do is set up a higher powered, possibly across both Houses, joint committee to scrutinise treaties.

Do you detect a mood to do that?

Lord Goldsmith: It's interesting in the government's response they say, well, that's a matter for Parliament to decide. Because we do touch on this. You know, looking, for example, at the Australian example where they have such a joint committee. Depends what you mean by a committee. I mean, the suggestion that we'd floated is that you have a joint committee which looks at which treaties really need to be looked at in detail and therefore approved by the legislature themselves.

I'm not sure whether that's what [00:39:00] the government has in mind, but of course the government's right, that if Parliament wants to set up a joint committee, it can do that. And I think it could be helpful. But for the time being where we are at and I don't want to feel like we're just rejecting everything the government has said.

They have said they will talk to us about some of the practical measures that we've identified. So I'm looking forward to having those conversations or officials having them and seeing where we end up after that conversation's taken place.

Ruth Fox: That is one of my other big frustrations with the way government approaches these things, is that they say, well, that is a matter for Parliament.

When those of us who know how the House of Commons works know that the proposal, the motion, can really practically only be brought by the government itself. It tables it.

Mark D'Arcy: It's the butter in their mouth freezing solid as they say it.

Ruth Fox: One of the treaties that is quite controversial at the moment, of course, is the Chagos Island Treaty with Mauritius.

I mean, in the House of Commons, for example, Kemi Badenoch tabled a motion to have a debate, and time was not found for it. In the House of Lords, there was a debate because if the House wants to, it [00:40:00] can schedule time for debates. And you had a motion down in that debate. What's your thoughts on where we are with that?

Because again, I think you wanted more time to look at that. And again, the government didn't agree to that, and yet the implementing legislation is stalled.

Lord Goldsmith: We were frustrated by that. We did ask for more time and we couldn't see that it was so urgent that they should have denied it. They did. We managed to do what we wanted to do.

We had to work very fast. We had to rush, not rush the report, I wouldn't like to suggest that because we got the report that we wanted to get and the committee signed off on it. But it was a bit frustrating because it could have given us more time and they didn't. So I think that's right where we stand otherwise on it.

I mean, it's an important, very important topic. I mean, our report and we looked at evidence, we heard evidence from experts, including on the big question of international law. We had experts including our own former judge on the International Court of Justice, who the committee found I think, the most influential of the witnesses we heard on that question.

And although it's a [00:41:00] controversial, although we can understand the concerns and we can understand the concerns also about the cost of the process, at the end of the day, we accepted that the requirement for having the base on the Diego Garcia is so important to our national security that we had to have that and actually on the legal questions, if the government stood firm against going through with what Mauritius wanted, we would end up with a binding judgment, which would've been against us and we'd have much less leverage to get the sort of deal that we need to get in order to protect national security.

Ruth Fox: Do you think you got clarity about what the cost of this is? Because that certainly in the Commons has been one of the political questions, a sort of sense of confusion about exactly how much this deal is going to cost.

Lord Goldsmith: It's a fair point. I mean, at the end of the day, we accepted that the numbers that we were given did fit in with the government's way of accounting and a perfectly proper way of, well, a proper way of accounting, not some government accounting, which is perhaps a little bit more dubious.[00:42:00]

Sorry, I didn't say that Chancellor, but there we are.

I think we did, but there's no doubt and we made the point in the report, this is expensive. There's no question that that is the case.

Mark D'Arcy: What do you think are the prospects that you're gonna end up with at least an improved, more streamlined, more effective process for treaty scrutiny at the end of all this?

You've called for a dialogue with the government. Do you detect a mood for anything to actually happen?

Lord Goldsmith: The optimist in me says yes. The realist is more doubtful about that, but we'll have this conversation. I think it's important that it happens, and I hope the government will realise it's important that it happens too.

I'm sure there are people there who will, and if we continue to get the support of influential people like Liam Byrne and Dame Emily Thornberry, then I think the government will have to listen and I think we will get some improvement. We'll get some practical improvement. We will not get a shift to the situation in which treaties have to be signed off by Parliament as opposed to after the event signed off.

That would take much more, but who knows? Politics is a very, very interesting, I'm gonna [00:43:00] use that word, place at the moment.

Mark D'Arcy: Lord Goldsmith, thanks very much for joining Ruth and I on the pod today.

Lord Goldsmith: Nice to see you.

Ruth Fox: Well, Mark, I don't know what you made of that, but I thought that was a very interesting discussion with Lord Goldsmith, but I mean, the overall tenor of the government's response, of its report, is really, frankly, weak, disappointing, a bit apathetic.

And again, ministers saying one thing in government, which is the opposite of what they said when they were in opposition, which was ever thus. It's a constant theme of this podcast. So we'll have to wait for the committee's formal response and see what they say and we'll no doubt be returning to this on the podcast again and again because it's gonna be a recurring theme.

Mark D'Arcy: But mind you, Ruth, you do get extra points of being officially disagreed with by His Majesty's government. They disagree with the Hansard Society view.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, it's in black and white now.

Mark D'Arcy: I think you'd have been more worried if they'd actually agreed with you, but there we go.

Ruth Fox: I'd have been more surprised, I think. So, shall we take a break now and when we come back, reflect on where we've got to with the assisted dying bill.

Mark D'Arcy: As it inches its way through their Lordships' [00:44:00] House.

Ruth Fox: See you in a minute, bye.

Mark D'Arcy: And we are back and Ruth, time now for a quick progress check on the assisted dying bill, the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which has been before the House of Lords now for quite a while. It's been inching through its Committee Stage, but this week I'm told they've picked up the pace.

Ruth Fox: Yes, Mark. Well, they've picked up a little bit, so last week they managed to get through three groups of amendments and this week they've got through four. So I think in total that's

Mark D'Arcy: 33% increase!

Ruth Fox: I think they've done 10 in total, I think across four days in committee.

Mark D'Arcy: And for context, they're supposed to get through about 15 groups of amendments per day.

Ruth Fox: They started out at 10 in the first three days. Today, Lord Falconer has set a target of 15. Again, they've got nowhere near it. And for context, there's about 74 groups left. So they are a long, long way off.

Mark D'Arcy: And even with the very considerable block of extra debating time that the parliamentary business managers have come [00:45:00] up with for this bill, the Lords are basically gonna be sitting pretty much every Friday in the spring to try and get this through.

The pace is so slow that it still looks like they may not get to the end of the committee stage unless something changes.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I mean either they quicken up and there are certainly peers in the House today urging them to do so, including some peers who are opponents of the bill, not happy with it, but think that there's a bit of foot dragging going on.

And then there's obviously people outside the House, particularly some groups of MPs who are very worried that this, is the Lords dragging things out, effectively trying to block the bill, allow time to run out, who are sort of raising their profile and calling on the unelected House to do the right thing.

But, I mean, at this pace you would eat into almost all the extra 10 days in the new year just for committee stage.

Mark D'Arcy: I mean, you still wouldn't have had report stage. Still less third reading. And third reading on this occasion will probably not be a mere formality, a mere quick rubber stamping that takes place in sort of 25 minutes [00:46:00] or so with everybody congratulating their producer and their director.

This would be a rather more serious occasion where there would probably be one final attempt to stop the bill in its tracks and try and vote it down there. So this is, I was very struck by the speech by Lady Butler Sloss, the former senior judge.

Ruth Fox: So she's one of those peers who's not happy with the bill, doesn't like it, thinks it needs improvement and therefore amendment, but she made a speech today in which she said, we have got to get this bill, we must get it, to third reading. Or she said the reputation of the House will be irreparably eroded.

Mark D'Arcy: I think she used the word filibuster.

Ruth Fox: I am not sure about that. But I mean that was what she was certainly implying. She said that the perception was that the Lords are being unreasonable out there and that peers who are speaking multiple times in groups on amendments and repeating what perhaps another peer has said earlier in the discussion on a particular amendment, they have to consider whether they really need to speak.

If it's already been said, why do you need to say it again?

Mark D'Arcy: Well, that, that's a novel doctrine in House of Lords debates. I've got to say, you [00:47:00] know, the key point about the House of Lords is everything has been said, but not everybody has yet said it.

Ruth Fox: So, they've really gotta reflect, you know, this is the last sitting before Christmas now, so they'll come back in January.

They are gonna have to seriously reflect on how they deal with this because there is now this risk that's been articulated by Baroness Butler Sloss that, you know, the reputation of the House, as the unelected House standing in the way of this legislation, well, I mean, some MPs have been talking about it as a constitutional crisis.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah. And I take threats about the status of the House of Lords with a ton of salt because any attempt to seriously reform the House of Lords requires a government to devote a couple of years of political capital pretty much only to this particular issue. And that's what, the Nick Clegg Lords Reform bill back in the coalition years fell on, that the government simply wasn't prepared to commit the time and effort that was required to do something serious about changing the nature of the House of Lords in the face of a determined filibuster.

Same problem here. So I think that people may [00:48:00] huff and they may puff about the status of the Lords, but I don't expect a serious legislative attempt to change it. What I do expect if the House of Lords does indeed block this bill or filibuster it into the sands at some stage next year, is that there will be an awful lot of people very angry about it.

It will be a considerable reputational hit to the House of Lords. It's one thing to vote a bill down in the clear light of day. It's quite another to play procedural games until the bill is ultimately lost.

Ruth Fox: And that is one of the comparisons, isn't it, with the Commons. Of course, one of the fears, certainly I had at the beginning of this process, was that you might actually see procedural games in the House of Commons because that is often what happens with private members' bills on private members' bill Friday sittings. You get these procedural games and actually we didn't really see that in the House of Commons. There was a determined effort to avoid that. The problem here is, of course, we've ourselves said at the Hansard Society that there are some serious issues with the drafting of the bill around things like the delegated powers.

I think there are some serious questions about the [00:49:00] constitutional implications of some of the drafting arrangements and the operationalization of the bill in relation to Scotland, and cross border issues, in Wales, where the Senedd has previously voted, I think it was last year, to reject a bill on assisted dying.

But this legislation would apply there. So there are some serious, important issues that are being discussed. There are some drafting issues. I mean, Lord Falconer today, apparently, we've, you know, been recording this podcast, so I haven't heard all the debate, but I understand he's apparently acknowledged a few areas where he thinks that there is scope for improvements, things he hadn't thought about and that he's gonna go away and reflect on.

So we may see amendments on those at Report Stage. So the scrutiny is serious and one person's scrutiny is another person's time wasting. We are not seeing very very obvious filibustering. We are not seeing one single peer standing up and droning on for half an hour, or 40 minutes, and refusing to sit down.

What we [00:50:00] are seeing is quite organised opponents of the bill,

Mark D'Arcy: An Olympic level synchronized filibuster, if you like.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I mean you are seeing multiple peers who oppose the bill standing up, making the same points, albeit perhaps relatively short speeches, making the same points when one or two of them making that point would be sufficient.

And there are questions about some of the amendments. I mean, we've got a thousand plus down on the amendment paper. There've been some questions asked about whether some of these are serious. Tanni Grey Thompson's amendment requiring a pregnancy test as part of the application process being one that's been particularly highlighted.

I mean, she's acknowledged that the drafting of it could have been better. There was no intention to require men who are applying for assisted dying to have a pregnancy test. But yeah, even so, this has been given as a sort of an example of effectively amendments that are designed to eat up time, but here we are, time is marching on and they're making very slow progress.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, and I think there's a very interesting question about exactly what does happen, what will the consequences be if peers [00:51:00] carry on with these tactics to the extent that the bill is ultimately lost. If the bill is lost, what then? I suspect one thing that may happen is that in the next Commons private members bill ballot, the people who are behind this bill will see if they can find a sympathetic MP with high enough priority in the ballot to have another go.

And if the Lords are then faced with another bill, that's gone through the House of Commons, that perhaps incorporates some of the changes that they wanted made in the House of Lords, that Lord Falconer acknowledged were necessary, that Kim Leadbeater accepted were necessary, if a bill in that form gets through the House of Commons and the Lords try the same thing again.

Wow, I mean, you genuinely are in a standoff between the two houses.

Ruth Fox: Do you think there's a difference though, or there may be a different political response in the Commons if, for example, it does get to Third Reading and the Lords reject it, albeit potentially quite a large majority or more likely perhaps a narrow majority as opposed to the bill just runs out of time because there are [00:52:00] so many amendments and they're not moving quickly enough, and the government's just not gonna have enough time before the end of the session to give it to them.

So it seems pretty clear they're not gonna give government time over to this. And given the progress of their own legislative program and the difficulties and challenges they've got with that, that in itself is problematic. But if these 10 Fridays are not gonna be enough,

Mark D'Arcy: Well, that's it. 10 Fridays, if 10 days is not enough, how many bills of this size get 10 whole days of debate at this level?

Now, to be sure there's a vast amount of concern amongst peers, but if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and tastes good in orange sauce, it's a duck. If a go slow on this scale, so continued, I'm sorry, I start to think it's an organized filibuster. There's nothing unconstitutional about peers wanting to give the bill a thorough examination, but I think it begins to look a bit suspicious if they take such a vast amount of time over it.

In this way, it just gets a little bit less like diligent examination of a very important issue and a bit more like there's absolutely no [00:53:00] way we're gonna let it pass. No improvement is gonna be good enough, but we're gonna have to stop it by procedural means because we're not sure we can win a vote.

Ruth Fox: And that's the interesting thing, isn't it?

Because the opponents of the bill have been making quite a strong point about the fact that, in the debates on the four days to date, there's the predominance of people speaking in the debates who are opponents of it, and that shows the strength of their position. I mean, it really doesn't, because the reality is that anybody who supports this bill is gonna keep quiet.

They don't want to take up time talking about it. I know plenty of peers who've said that, you know, they're not there on the Fridays, they're not taking part in the debates, even if they're attending, they're not speaking because that's just gonna eat up time.

So I think if journalists are listening of this, because I keep seeing this come up, journalists are listening be very wary about campaigners saying that the number of peers that were opposed to the bill speaking in the debate should be an indicator of anything because actually it's just an indicator that they're present and making their opposition felt. And the proponents of the bill, the [00:54:00] supporters of it, are just, you know, sitting on their hands at this moment, waiting until the bill gets through the stages to what they will hope is a final vote.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, the final vote would be the place if you really are against the bill and just want to stop it, vote against it. The third reading, that seems a perfectly reasonable position. If it's a procedural fix that stops this bill, if it's just people talking and talking until time runs out, that's quite another matter.

I think pretty much whatever happens if this bill is stopped, the assisted dying lobby will have another go next year if they can find someone to do it. And that of course, depends on the vagaries of the private members' bill ballot. It is not necessarily guaranteed that they'll find a supporter who's high enough up for them to be able to push a bill through.

But if they can, they'll certainly give it a whirl, I'm sure.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. And of course the other factor in all of this, it comes down to time how much time is available. So, you know, we don't know what the end date is here. There's 10 days through to Easter, we know.

Mark D'Arcy: But we have had a hint.

Ruth Fox: We have had a hint.

And actually reflects what we said on this podcast.

Mark D'Arcy: Chalk another one up on the scoreboard. [00:55:00]

Ruth Fox: Yeah, so how much time there is depends upon when the end of the session comes. And at the moment, the government's official line up till this week has been the spring, no definition of when the spring is. Is that March, is that April, is that May? But that's the line that there is till the spring to basically get the bill through all its stages and to get through parliamentary ping-pong with the Commons and so on.

But this week the Leader of the House of Commons, Alan Campbell, appeared before the procedure committee, his first appearance before that committee in his new role since the cabinet reshuffle earlier this year. And he was asked exactly this question, when will the end of the session be? And he said it is going to look like pretty much a two year session ending in spring 2026, I suspect it will be post the local elections, which is the point we've made.

Mark D'Arcy: Which is what you've been saying for months, now.

Ruth Fox: By the time we get through what we need to and get some of the bills that are not going to be carry over bills [00:56:00] through, I suspect the definition will be more towards May rather than March.

So that might give them a little bit more time. But it's not a lot, particularly if they're just gonna stick to Fridays.

Mark D'Arcy: And that appearance by Alan Campbell was interesting in other ways too because he revealed himself to be a kind of zen master of the enigmatic phrase.

Ruth Fox: Yes. So it seems he's been sort of going around telling his colleagues, we have too many Christmas tree bills and we need more bonsai bills, which I thought was a wonderful way of putting it.

Mark D'Arcy: Christmas tree bills being the jargon for a very general bill with a very wide focus in which anyone can hang a sort of ornament of their choice upon it. So the Home Office is the great mother of Christmas tree bills, if you can have such a thing. Great, wide ranging bills sweeping through huge areas of criminal law with lots of baubles attached to them along the way.

Ruth Fox: I think he actually pointed to the Home Office as the example of the problem.

The other area that he was quite interesting on was restoration and [00:57:00] renewal. He has to sit on the body that's looking at this, part of the Commission and part of the R&R Client Board, as it's called.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah. So this is the board incidentally, for those who are not familiar with the jargon, who are tasked with finding some way to restore and renew the House of Commons, the great Victorian building, which is in a dreadful state, once you cut past the splendor of its exterior, and there's all sorts of things going wrong with it, but it costs a prohibitive amount of money to do much about it, it seems.

Ruth Fox: Billions, yes, and that's ultimately the problem here. Again, you sort of, have this issue about him, the phraseology that he used, he said, I thought it was wonderful, despite the fact I've been here a very long time, I never had a view on restoration and renewal. Begs the question how. I accepted I did not really need one in my previous job, chief whip, I never needed one. I've suddenly discovered in this job that I do need one. So I have got one and it is not exactly what people thought it might be.

Mark D'Arcy: Did he go on to elaborate?

Ruth Fox: Well, a little bit. He says he [00:58:00] wants to have a clear idea of where we're going to get to and to make some progress, and he basically said sometimes the parliamentary state is not a great working environment for MPs or staff.

We need to seize the opportunity of where we are now. It's no secret, I think it's out there that there'll be a report coming out in the new year with a way forward. Well, if it wasn't out there it is now. And then he said, we're spending a lot of money on this place. An eye watering amount. I'm not sure it's made much difference because it's not addressing the central issue, which is do we want to renew it? The building, how do we renew it over a period of time? How do we restore an iconic building for this nation that we can be proud of?

Mark D'Arcy: That's quite splendidly gnomic, isn't it? I still haven't the faintest idea whether he is in favour of moving everybody out and doing the job quickly or continuing the sort of make do and mend approach or some hybrid of the two.

But, we will see. Twas ever thus with leaders of the house, I think. But yeah, we'll see. And if you're listening, why don't you come on the pod and tell us what you're thinking.

Ruth Fox: And the other thing of course that's [00:59:00] come out this week is the first report of the modernisation committee under his auspices, he now chairs it. I have not had time to read it. It does reference our evidence a little bit. In part, my immediate reaction after reading the summary and the recommendations was meh, it was a bit weak, a bit passive, and not many particularly strong recommendations in there. But we will see, we will have a better discussion about that when we've had chance to digest it in more detail. It's quite long.

Mark D'Arcy: Got some bedtime reading..

Ruth Fox: So Mark, with that, I think that's all we've got time for this week. Listeners look out for our recording on our website of the Lord Speaker hustings. We've got resources in the show notes about our interview with Lord Goldsmith and about how scrutiny of international agreements works.

And of course, Mark, we need to remind listeners to rate and review the podcast so that other listeners can find us.

Mark D'Arcy: Let's feed the algorithm.

Ruth Fox: And with that, I'll see you next week.

Mark D'Arcy: Goodbye.

Ruth Fox: Bye.

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