• Is Keir Starmer’s firm approach to disciplining backbench rebels a one-off for the King’s Speech?

• With the Chancellor set to reveal the nation’s financial struggles, will the honeymoon period for Labour soon be over?

• What are the repercussions of the recent rebellion during the King’s Speech?

• How might the Conservative leadership race affect the establishment of these Committees?

• Will the new House of Commons Modernisation Committee get up and running more quickly than other committees?

• Why are the Modernisation Committee members being appointed rather than elected?

• Do smaller parties have a legitimate complaint about their lack of representation on this Committee?

• Has the government truly moved to abolish MPs' second jobs, or is this claim inaccurate?

• What further actions might be taken to reduce MPs' outside work?

• Why is the House of Lords moving to prevent stop by-elections for new hereditary peers?

• How have the first two weeks of parliamentary business gone for the Labour Government?

• What early signs of teething problems and complaints from House of Commons members are emerging?

Hansard Society

• Back to Business guide: State Opening of Parliament and King's Speech

• How does Parliament approve Government spending? A procedural guide to the Estimates process

• Private Members' Bills: a procedural guide

Please note, this transcript is automatically generated. There are consequently 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. Timestamps are provided at the start of each minute.

[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 slash PM.

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

Labour tightens its grip on Parliament.

Sir Keir Starmer stomps on his first set of Commons rebels.

And does the honeymoon end on Monday, when the Chancellor is due to set out the depth of the nation's financial woes?

Ruth, let's start with that because I suspect that what's going to happen on Monday is that Rachel Reeves is going to set the tone for what happens really over the next year or 18 months or beyond. We're [00:01:00] talking here about really underlining the depth of the financial crisis. The British state is running on empty.

Almost everywhere any minister looks in the departments that they're now running, they will see places where a vast injection of money is needed. But the money to do it isn't available. So you're looking at public sector pay settlements. The junior doctors will just be the start on that. Uh, defence spending.

Defence spending. The need for a vast boost in that which may not be able to wait on a all singing, all dancing defence review taking a leisurely 18 months. And almost every other sector. You know, the crisis in the prisons that they were talking about last week. The state of the schools. The state of almost any part of the public realm.

And I suspect that an awful lot of Labour MPs, when they came in, had a very nice couple of weeks. It's marvellous setting up an office. It's marvellous making your maiden speech. But now comes the moment when they're going to have to start saying no to the general public.

Indeed, so that's the sort of tone that has been set on the King's speech, of course, with the decision by Keir Starmer [00:02:00] to discipline his rebels.