You're listening to Parliament Matters, a Hansard Society production, supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk/pm.
00:00:17:10 - 00:00:43:18
Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox, and I’m Mark D’Arcy. Coming up, the calm before the storm. Westminster braces for the local election results. Will they save Rishi Sunak or will they sink him? Act of conscience or cynical turncoat? As conservative MP Dan Poulter switches to Labour, what does it take to cross the floor of the House of Commons?
00:00:43:20 - 00:01:01:23
And should Parliament simply overturn the convictions of postmasters caught up in the horizon scandal en masse? We talk to chair of the House of Commons Justice Committee, Sir Bob Neill, about this and much more.
00:01:02:00 - 00:01:21:11
But first, Ruth, let's get started on those local elections now. We're speaking in that kind of caesura, that missing of a beat period where the voters are out there voting. The politicians can't really say or do much more than get out their voters to the polling stations. And so all is quiet until the results come. And the results this time are going to be rather dragged out.
00:01:21:12 - 00:01:42:04
The agony is extended, you might say, because with all these big metro mayoralties, they will be counting votes into Saturday afternoon. So quite a long time for the results to unfold. There'll be good news and bad news for all the parties, doubtless, as the results dribble out and Rishi Sunak will then have to handle the political aftermath.
00:01:42:05 - 00:02:02:07
But before we get on to that, both of us, I think, battled through the morning mist this morning to get to our respective polling stations, and the one thing you didn't have to battle was vast crowds of eager voters trying to get in there. We were the only people in our polling station, my other half and I when we went in, glancing at the register it looked like about 20 people had voted at about 8:00 in the morning.
00:02:02:07 - 00:02:19:11
So a pretty derisory turnout in my neck of the woods in Sussex, where the voting was purely on who's going to be the next police and crime commissioner. Well, same for me in an East Hertfordshire. So we just got a vote on the police and crime commissioner as well. And I actually asked the polling station staff, what's the turnout like?
00:02:19:11 - 00:02:34:16
And they said, oh, you’re our sixth voter and this was 8 a.m., so I was the voter that put them over the top. They've officially now had more voters than polling stations staff in the station. So it was slow. I think it's fair to say they were hoping for better as the day wears on.
