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[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.

[00:00:18] Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox.

[00:00:24] Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark D'Arcy. Coming up this week...

[00:00:26] Ruth Fox: Now is the winter fuel allowance of Labour's discontents. Will this be the first big test of Keir Starmer's hold on his parliamentary troops?

[00:00:35] Mark D'Arcy: The legislative lottery's been drawn. 20 MPs have a chance to bring in the law of their choice. So what might they choose, and what are their chances? We talk to Private Members Bill expert Daniel Gover.

[00:00:45] Ruth Fox: And a new generation of select committee chairs is about to be elected. Will they be stringent scrutineers of the government? We look at the runners and riders.

[00:01:04] Mark D'Arcy: But first, Ruth, we've got to talk about, as you say, what may emerge as Keir Starmer's first big parliamentary test. The vote will be coming up next Tuesday on the winter fuel allowance and his attempt to restrict it to the worst off pensioners.

[00:01:17] Ruth Fox: Yes, Mark, so for all our listeners who've been, at the end of August still on their sun loungers and perhaps missed this development, the government at the end of August, when Parliament was still in recess, laid regulations before Parliament to restrict access to the winter fuel allowance for pensioners by essentially means testing it. Now this is part of the government's strategy to tackle what it describes as the £22 billion black hole in the public finances that it talked about just before summer recess when Rachel Reeves made her big statement.

[00:01:46] And, these regulations are obviously controversial because it's going to affect a lot of pensioners who are not receiving pension credit and are going to fall just above the threshold. And so hundreds of thousands of pensioners in constituencies all across the country, are not very happy about this. And it's posing political problems for the government because the opposition, the Conservatives have come out against this measure. And it is one of our favourite topics for discussion on this podcast. This is being done in the form of a statutory instrument, so it's not primary legislation, it's not a bill.

[00:02:15] Mark D'Arcy: And that means that you get a 90 minute debate on this very big decision as a proceeding under an Act of Parliament, in fact in this case three Acts of Parliament social security laws dating from the 1990s.

[00:02:29] So it's quite a short debate, for what's turning into a very big and rather radioactive subject.

[00:02:34] Ruth Fox: Yes, but of course not automatically a debate, because these regulation's under the powers in these 1990s acts, these are subject to what's called the negative scrutiny procedure, which means there's no requirement for MPs to have to proactively debate and approve them.

[00:02:48] So, there is the provision, though, in the Statutory Instruments Act that the House has got 40 sitting days for an MP to lay what's called a prayer motion, table a prayer motion, in order to annul the regulations. So it's a sort of, it's a negative rejection of what the government wants to do. But, the way that these things work, Standing Orders of the House of Commons, of course, put control of the House of Commons timetable in the hands of the government.

[00:03:11] So whether or not a prayer motion, in this case laid by Rishi Sunak as leader of the opposition, is debated is a matter for the government, to make time. And so what we've had in the run up to Parliament returning, since these regulations were laid, is a big debate about whether or not the government was indeed going to allow a debate to happen, because of course that's where all the objections are going to come out, and where it's going to put pressure on Labour backbenchers, whether to support the Conservative motion, or whether they're going to abstain, or whether they're just going to find themselves with something else to do that day.

[00:03:46] Mark D'Arcy: One thing that's on the agenda for that Tuesday is the first opposition day debate of the new parliament. So the Conservatives do have an opportunity to put down their own motion about this. And so if the government doesn't in the end allow an actual 90 minutes of debate on this statutory instrument, the Conservatives can say, well, we're going to debate it anyway.

[00:04:06] Ruth Fox: Well, that was always the challenge, I think, for the government in deciding what to do, is that if the, if the, government hadn't tabled time for the regulations to be considered, then the alternative option for the opposition was to spend time on opposition day. But of course, we didn't know in the last couple of weeks since the regulations were laid, what the opposition day debates times were going to be.

[00:04:27] And the government today, in fact, just before we've come on to record this podcast in the studio, the government's just announced that in fact, it's going to have the debate on the regulations and an opposition day debate all on the same day. So it's getting all its pain out and the opposition's objections all out in the same day, which will be next Tuesday.

[00:04:44] And we understand the House of Lords is going to debate the winter fuel allowance regulations the following day on the Wednesday. Now something I'm going to be looking out for in the next few days - we don't have it yet - so by the time listeners get this in their podcast feed, it may have appeared - but what the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in the House of Lords has got to say about these regulations. Do they get their report out in time for the debate?

[00:05:08] I think they'll be trying, and if so, their report's usually published I think on a Friday. What have they got to say? Because certainly, the government's obviously going to defend their position. But there are some criticisms to be made of the fact that there's no impact assessment. It's hard to believe that regulations which are going to have an impact on hundreds of thousands of pensioners, yes, the government's saying it's going to save a billion plus pounds, but it's also going to have costs in other areas.

[00:05:34] I mean, people saying, for example, that pensioners, if they're not going to turn on the heating, it's going to have an effect on their health. So the NHS is going to be picking up the costs and so on. So it's the kind of thing where you really ought to be seeing, an impact assessment. There isn't one. There's obviously been no prior consultation. Government's just produced this during the summer recess.

[00:05:52] Mark D'Arcy: I imagine that the opponents of, of this statutory instrument are hoping that there will be some nice juicy criticisms that they can quote on the floor of both houses in due course. And don't underestimate the politics of this. I'm sure nobody does.

[00:06:04] This is only the first of what's probably gonna be a repeated phenomenon of a Labour government having to take a lot of decisions that its troops really, really, really don't like, that are going to be really, really, really unpopular with people on the receiving end of them. That's the reason why I suspect the government really feels it can't possibly afford to back down on this, because if it does, it'll have to pay a price and make concessions every time it tries to make savings. And Rachel Reeves keeps informing us we're at the bottom of this enormous financial black hole that the government has to close somehow. So the stakes are really quite high on this.

[00:06:40] If the government is seen to blink at this moment, their agenda of money saving is going to be seriously damaged from now on in.

[00:06:47] Ruth Fox: Yeah. And these regulations come into force in mid September. So in some ways it's to the government's credit that they're doing the debate now, getting it out before the regulations come into force.

[00:06:57] There's no requirement for them to have done so They could have spun it out till the expiry of the 40 sitting day scrutiny period, which actually expires only in November because of the sitting times and recess dates. So it, that's to their credit, but I think it's speaks to the fact that they know there's political pain attached to this.

[00:07:13] They might as well just get it over with

[00:07:15] Mark D'Arcy: rip off the dressing as it were. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:16] Ruth Fox: Don't let it fester. I don't think they'd want it to fester through party conference period, you know, they want to clear the decks for that. But as you say, Labour MPs who are concerned about this, and people like Rachel Maskell have been out in front, you know, she's a longstanding MP, out in front on this saying she can't vote for the regulations.

[00:07:34] Well, she's not going to be asked to vote for the regulations, she's going to be asked to vote against them on a Conservative motion. So, look out not for how many Labour MPs actually vote with the Conservatives, I think that will be few if any. Look out for how many abstentions there are.

[00:07:49] Mark D'Arcy: Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's a guy called Neil Duncan Jordan, who's the new Labour MP for Poole, who's actually put down an Early Day Motion against this change and I suspect he's getting as we speak the knock on the door on the night from the Labour whips Yeah, and I suspect that some form of retribution may be levied upon him in due course. I think the other point to remember about this incidentally is this is a yes or no decision. There isn't the possibility in this kind of proceeding to amend the statutory instrument.

[00:08:16] Statutory instruments are unamendable. You either accept them or you reject them and usually almost inevitably they're accepted. So if the government wants to offer a compromise it has to pull its own statutory instrument and write another one and then debate that later on. So it's quite a clunky process for them to back down.

[00:08:33] Not that I think that in any case they're contemplating that at the moment. But the dynamic of this is an awful lot of Labour MPs who, as candidates, had a great deal of fun attacking the Tory MPs they subsequently replaced for, you know, voting to pour sewage into our rivers or whatever, are going to be on the receiving end of that kind of treatment now.

[00:08:54] Their opponents are going to be saying they voted to freeze old people this winter, and so there is going to be a political price for them to pay. Those MPs who vote for this. And sometimes it's the ones who loyally vote for something they really hate who are actually the most upset and become the most awkward afterwards.

[00:09:12] You know, the people who voted against it maybe feel they can go and sleep the sweet sleep of the just. The people who voted for it against their own instincts and better judgement are the ones who sometimes become very difficult to handle for the party whips later on.

[00:09:23] Ruth Fox: Yeah, a bit of your soul dies if you're voting for something you really think's the wrong thing to do.

[00:09:28] The other thing to consider, I think, is, is, we said, look out for the abstentions. I should explain that there is no formal process for abstention in the House of Commons. You either vote yes or no, or you vote in both lobbies, which is counted as a sort of an abstention, or you just don't turn up. And I think that's what, look out for the numbers who are participating in the vote and how does that compare with the first 10 or so divisions we've already had in this session where Labour's been getting out 300 sort of 400 members to vote.

[00:09:56] Mark D'Arcy: Yeah I wonder how many people might turn out to have an unavoidable dental appointment that day.

[00:10:00] Ruth Fox: Yes, constituency duties meant that I couldn't attend the vote.

[00:10:04] Mark D'Arcy: If I were the Labour whips I'm not sure that I would be prepared to wave at people and say okay you can sit this one out if you want. It would set a precedent they really won't want to set when the game gets tough later on.

[00:10:14] Ruth Fox: Or they may look at it and say there's certain MPs who they will allow to sit out simply because they've got very small majorities and they, they sort of pick and choose and those who are sitting on very big hefty majorities are told, you know, you're going to have to bear the pain and, and, and turn up.

[00:10:26] The other thing to consider, I think, is what does Rachel Reeves say, because whilst the government is not going to want to give way, there is still quite heavy political pressure in both houses. I mean, Harriet Harman, for example, former MP now in the House of Lords was suggesting that the government should make some concessions on this or should make some adjustments around the tapering of eligibility and so on.

[00:10:46] If she does want to make any changes precisely because as you said statutory instruments can't be amended it's possible that they may try and do something through the finance bill that follows the budget and she may give some indication that there'll be a change.

[00:10:59] Mark D'Arcy: And as we were saying earlier this is not going to be the last instance of this government having to do very painful things to, as it sees it, stabilize the national finances.

[00:11:11] This is going to surface, for example, in the budget, which is due at the end of October, and in the Comprehensive Spending Review, a little bit after that, at a slightly less certain date, I think, because it's such a big exercise. And these are going to be the decisions that the government takes about the future pattern of spending.

[00:11:27] And already we can see lots and lots of lobbying from lots and lots of different lobbies. Defence being particularly notable at the moment with lots of blood curdling warnings about how defence budgets and big weapons projects really can't be cut, and all these stories about soldiers having to shout bang in military exercises because they haven't got live ammunition to play with.

[00:11:47] So there's a whole load of issues around that. The government, as we were saying, can't afford to back down on this first instance because it's going to have a lot more painful cuts to implement further down the line. And that sets the pattern for the rest of this political year.

[00:12:01] Ruth Fox: Yeah. Which is why I find it surprising that the Conservatives didn't want to get their leadership sorted out before the budget.

[00:12:07] Because to go into that budget debate with Rishi Sunak essentially responding and a front bench that's uncertain seems a slightly odd, odd arrangement. But anyway, there we are. The other thing to bear in mind, of course, linked to the budget, is that this week the government's got its budget responsibility bill, otherwise known as the Stop Liz Trust Bill, through all its Commons stages.

[00:12:29] So it had second reading, I think, just before recess, but it's now gone through all its Commons stages this week and it'll be off to the House of Lords. The Budget Responsibility Bill, I presume they're trying to hopefully get it onto the statute before the budget.

[00:12:42] Mark D'Arcy: This is a bill that essentially says the budget has to be vetted in advance by the Office for Budget Responsibility.

[00:12:48] The fiscal rules have to be obeyed and all the rest of it.

[00:12:51] Ruth Fox: I don't know what you think about this. I mean, I, I do find this, legislating to put essentially a legislative straitjacket on yourself and your freedom of action in terms of finances is a bit odd, but I mean I understand the politics of it and the

[00:13:04] Mark D'Arcy: I'm not sure it impresses anybody.

[00:13:06] No. Because it's perfectly easy to get out of if you have to. Either you're going to act responsibly or you're not. Having a law that says I must act responsibly kind of implies that your instincts are not to.

[00:13:15] Yes. It seems to me a little bit silly.

[00:13:17] Ruth Fox: You can't be trusted so you have to legislate to trust yourself.

[00:13:19] Mark D'Arcy: I have to tie myself up otherwise I'll do something silly. Seems to be an odd thing for ministers, especially in an incoming shiny new government, to do. But, there's the other question here. I've actually figured out what's behind a lot of this stuff. Really? Which is that Keir Starmer, in fact, has an evil twin.

[00:13:35] So there's Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister in waiting who campaigned at the last election, kind of implying that everything would be fine. And then there's his evil twin. Let's call him Ramsay. Mac. Ramsay Mac. Who's suddenly taken over and who is in fact implementing all these cuts. And I think that that's possibly one of the reasons why the government's standing in the opinion polls, which doesn't matter very much at this stage of parliament, is perhaps going down because, I mean, basically.

[00:14:02] Ruth Fox: I don't think there's any perhaps about it, I think it's....

[00:14:03] Mark D'Arcy: They're not singing Land of Hope and Glory, they're singing Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now, you know, and it's extraordinary, the kind of miserable ism. There's no glimpse of bright sunlit uplands in the distance here at the moment. And so, Ramsay is in charge.

[00:14:17] And this all feels very uncomfortable. Uh, to a lot of people who've just voted for this government. Because they didn't realise it was going to be quite this bad. It was a point we were making endlessly during the election. There was no doctor's mandate here.

[00:14:28] No.

[00:14:29] No point was anybody in any of the parties saying this is going to hurt.

[00:14:32] When they all knew it was going to hurt.

[00:14:34] Ruth Fox: Well, I think they were saying it was going to hurt, but they wouldn't indicate what the solutions were to, who was going to be hurt, and how it was, the burden was going to be shouldered, and who was going to take the hit, and what's the end game, what's the benefit in three, four, five years time, what's the vision look like, and I think that's, that's where Labour's probably missing something in terms of their political communications at the moment.

[00:14:55] I don't think it's helped that over the summer when things have been both quiet because Parliament's not been sitting, but also difficult because of the riots in early August, not been helped by the fact that, particularly for those whose politics are on the left, you look across the Atlantic, as so many of them do, and you've got the sort of joy and hope and expectation of the Kamala Harris campaign and there putting the joy back into politics seems to be part of the theme. Whereas there isn't much joy to be seen at this side...

[00:15:23] Mark D'Arcy: Well, absolutely draining the joy from politics. I mean, and also we're still waiting. You know, this government is rapidly approaching the end of its sort of Kennedy-esque hundred days in office.

[00:15:34] And we still haven't seen a lot of the legislation that was promised for that first hundred days. We haven't, for example, yet seen the big all singing all dancing planning reform package to boost growth that, Angela Rayner has been promising for quite a while. It may well be in the pipeline. We may well get it before the end of that magical 100 days.

[00:15:52] But it hasn't popped up yet. And there isn't, as I say, much in the legislative program that inspires vast amounts of joy. We've had the railways bill, we've had the GB energy bill, all of which have sailed through the Commons almost unmolested. And another point to make about this is, is, is, you know, where's the opposition in all this?

[00:16:10] Ruth Fox: Yes, well, the government put through, so it had second reading on the budget responsibility and the railways bill, and then it put through all the remaining stages in a single day. But there were no amendments accepted. Government didn't table its own amendments, there were no amendments from the opposition or Labour backbenchers accepted.

[00:16:26] So what we saw on both bills was committee stage wrapped up, no amendments meant there was no report stage and therefore third reading next and that's always a formality anyway so off it sailed unmolested as you say to the House of Lords.

[00:16:40] Mark D'Arcy: Where peers might I suppose feel that they have a bit of a duty now to do a bit of the scrutiny that didn't seem to happen in the Commons.

[00:16:46] I mean when you turn Commons scrutiny of bills into an empty ritual you really are asking for trouble in the House of Lords.

[00:16:51] Ruth Fox: On the other hand, I mean the government could make the argument, look, we said when we came in that we wanted to turn the page on the way that legislation had been treated by the previous government.

[00:17:01] We wanted higher legislative standards. These bills are not big and complicated. I mean, I think one of the bills was only about three and a half pages of legislative text. Another one was six. These are not complicated bills. They've not got huge powers in them and therefore there's not a lot to change.

[00:17:16] We've done the preparation. The bills have been nicely drafted by Office of Parliamentary Counsel, and there isn't much tidying up needed. In terms of the 100 days, that expires on 12th of October, I think. So, if you think about what's left in terms of parliamentary sitting days before that, you've essentially got next week, and then the first week back after conference recess.

[00:17:34] So if they're going to meet that deadline to get some of these bills presented, these bigger meatier bills, which we're expecting to be more like 100 pages and lots of powers, particularly one assumes planning.

[00:17:44] Mark D'Arcy: Well planning is always techy and difficult.

[00:17:46] Ruth Fox: Yeah, the devil will be in the detail with that one.

[00:17:48] They've got a couple of sitting weeks to get them presented and get them going through, but it's not beyond the realms of possibility that if the government isn't going to do what previous governments have done, which is set out lots of its own amendments at committee and report stage in the House of Commons, then essentially report stage in the House of Commons could be a dead duck.

[00:18:06] Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, sometimes these things are necessary because you present a bill to Parliament, then you find a technical problem with it that you have to put down amendments on. There is a promise that this government will try and be a bit better at drafting its legislation so it doesn't hit that sort of self rewriting requirement.

[00:18:22] Ruth Fox: Which is good.

[00:18:23] Mark D'Arcy: Which is good, which is how legislation should be done. I mean, it's a bit of a waste of everybody's time to present faulty legislation that has to be kind of rewritten in mid air. Yeah. But, at the same time, it can happen because it's a complicated world out there, especially the world of planning.

[00:18:37] Yeah. Where you can suddenly trip over some really uncomfortable fact that has to be addressed that you hadn't thought of when you presented the bill. Yeah. That's show business. But, in principle, yeah, you really don't want to be doing that kind of thing, and it was happening rather too much in the previous Parliament. One to watch, incidentally, in forthcoming legislation, and I think it's coming as we're recording pretty much, is the bill to remove the last hereditary peers, the 92 hereditaries, from the House of Lords.

[00:19:01] And, uh, that one I think is going to generate a lot of heat in the benches of the Upper House. Hereditary peers quite understandably feel that they are part of the spectrum and shouldn't be removed. But this is a Labour election commitment. It was in their manifesto. If there was ever a bill that engaged the so called Salisbury Convention, that manifesto bills are not opposed in the House of Lords at second reading, and are not gutted in the House of Lords, surely this is it.

[00:19:26] Ruth Fox: Yeah. If listeners will remember that we've talked about this issue just before the general election with Professor Meg Russell at the Constitution Unit. We talked about it with the convener of the Crossbench Peers just before the election, in fact. So we'll perhaps put those in the show notes, link to those, and then you and I can get our teeth into them once we've had an opportunity to read the actual bill.

[00:19:46] The other thing that has struck me about looking at the legislation this week and also thinking back to some of the debates in those last few days before summer recess is how much time has been taken up by maiden speeches. There's going to have to be 300 and odd maiden speeches. They're about, I think, probably about halfway through now.

[00:20:03] Mark D'Arcy: About halfway through now, yeah, roughly.

[00:20:04] Ruth Fox: MPs are standing up wanting to make their maiden speech, understandably. So they're using second reading and committee stage debates to do that. But we're hearing an awful lot about their constituencies. We're hearing some nice comments about their predecessors. We're hearing a lot about their family background.

[00:20:18] Some of them are fascinating speeches.

[00:20:20] David Pinto-Duschinsky, the new Labour MP who has the smallest majority in the house, had this absolutely terrifying description of how his father escaped being sent to Auschwitz. Essentially through the kindness of strangers who smuggled him away as a child from under the noses of the German occupation authorities.

[00:20:38] An incredible story, but at the same time, it was a story that didn't probably have a great deal to do with this, the subject at hand when he was there. And you're getting more and more of these debates being completely dominated. by those kind of personal tales, completely unrelated to the substance of the bill or other motion that's being, I mean, the motion to set up the new House of Commons Modernisation Committee, I mean, about three quarters of the speeches were maiden speeches and had nothing to do with modernising the House of Commons.

[00:21:04] Yeah, I was tearing my hair out listening to that debate. There were so many questions about how this committee might work, might operate, and none of them answered really because, well, none of the questions were really asked because we've got all these maiden speeches. Incidentally that's something to look out for next week because we're going to talk in a bit later in the pod about select committee chair elections next week.

[00:21:23] It's possible Modernisation committee membership is going to be appointed not elected so it's entirely possible that next week we might, might see the names of the Modernisation committee membership announced.

[00:21:35] Mark D'Arcy: And shortly afterwards presumably the committee will get to work, spring into action. Yeah.

[00:21:40] Ruth Fox: With that, Mark, we take a short break and then we'll be back to discuss the Private Members Bill ballot, the legislative lottery, with Daniel Gover, the PMB, Private Members' Bill, expert.

[00:21:53] Mark D'Arcy: And we're back. And today's been an auspicious day in Parliament because just a few hours before we started recording this podcast, the annual Private Members Bill ballot took place in the House of Commons. This is a kind of lottery and the lucky winners get the chance to bring in the bill of their choice, the draft law of their choice with varying degrees of priority to whether or not they actually get onto the floor of the House of Commons and get their proposal at least debated. It's called the Private Members Bill Ballot. It launches a whole series of parliamentary sagas that then extend through the coming months with MPs deciding what they want to put before Parliament and deciding whether they're going to choose something that might actually become law, or is a big sort of demonstrative bill that makes a point rather than having a serious chance of becoming law.

[00:22:37] And with us to discuss it all is Daniel Gover. He's a Senior Lecturer in British Politics at Queen Mary University of London, and he's someone who's made quite a study of the magical workings, the mystical workings of the Private Members Bill process. And Daniel, the first thing that always strikes me after years of reporting these things is that no rational being would devise a process quite like this.

[00:22:58] It's strange and it's quirky and it's almost impenetrable to outsiders.

[00:23:01] Daniel Gover: Well, thank you firstly for that introduction and thank you for inviting me to be on podcast. I'm really delighted to be able to discuss this. Yeah, I mean, it is an unusual process. I mean, really, it's a way of rationing the limited amount of space that exists in parliamentary time.

[00:23:18] You've got 650 MPs, but most of the time in the Commons is for government business. So there's only a very limited amount of time for backbench proposals and Private Members Bills included within that. And so it's a way of trying to ration some of the best slots. So it might seem like a very unusual and irrational process, but there is a logic to it, as often is the case with Parliament.

[00:23:43] Ruth Fox: And Daniel, the ballot, as Mark said, took place this morning. So we know who has now got the priority places for the best chance of getting a bill at least debated and given an airing. Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP for Spen Valley, has come top of the ballot, so she's got the best chance. The top seven, because they get priority on the first seven of the sitting Fridays for Private Members Bills, they will have time protected for them at the start of every one of those Fridays. But one of the things that strikes me in the, the ballot is no Conservative was pulled out of the, well it's a fishbowl, it's a lottery. MPs sign up in the ballot book, they take a number, those numbers are put on balls in, in a fishbowl and the Deputy Speaker picked those out this morning in, in the ballot.

[00:24:30] No Conservatives were successful.

[00:24:32] Daniel Gover: No, it's extraordinary actually when you look down the list. I mean normally we would expect to see at least some from the official opposition. Now, of course, the Conservatives are a much depleted force, but nonetheless, I mean, it's a random ballot. I mean, one of them on the list actually is from the Traditional Unionist Voice, which has one MP, and that one MP has been 100 percent success.

[00:24:57] I mean, Conservatives did enter the ballot, so it is simply the look of the draw, I mean it is a lottery. As you say, this morning they drew out the numbers from the fishbowl.

[00:25:07] Ruth Fox: It's like legislative bingo, isn't it?

[00:25:08] Daniel Gover: Well it is, it is like legislative bingo, yeah.

[00:25:12] Mark D'Arcy: But what happens a lot of the time with Private Members' Bill ballots, certainly in recent years, is that the phone rings off the hook for all those who've got a decent place in the ballot with all sorts of people and organizations ringing them up saying you ought to do this particular bill but you also get the government knocking on their door with its particular proposals. Every government department has a few bits of legislation they didn't quite get into the queen's speech they'd like to get something through why don't you take through this uncontroversial bill that does a good thing that will get you a bit of publicity mp who's just won they'll say and that happens to an extraordinary degree

[00:25:47] Ruth Fox: I should just say it's the King's Speech, we're still making the errors - after all this time...

[00:25:53] Mark D'Arcy: I've really got to get better at that.

[00:25:54] Ruth Fox: Moving on. Sorry, Daniel.

[00:25:56] Daniel Gover: Yeah, I mean, you're right, there are these different sources of Private Members Bills for those that come towards the top of the ballot. In fact, I suspect actually all of those in the top 20 will be contacted by outside interest groups with particular causes because there is the chance that maybe you'll get it onto the statute book. But it is also a campaigning tool so even if it doesn't pass it is a campaigning tool and that is quite valuable to pressure groups.

[00:26:23] Mark D'Arcy: Have your rally in Parliament Square or whatever and get in the press

[00:26:26] Daniel Gover: I mean, it's a way it's certainly it's a way of attracting press coverage.

[00:26:30] It's also maybe a way of mobilising supporters. It can be a way of moving a debate on as well. I mean, MPs can have general debates through various different mechanisms that you've discussed on this podcast. But there is an advantage, I think, to debating a bill because a bill has got all of the details specified within it.

[00:26:51] And so you can then actually have a discussion about, well, do these safeguards meet the concerns that have been raised by people who are opposed to this, etc. So it can be a way of moving a policy debate on. You're right though, lots of these bills also have some involvement from the government. I mean, we talk about handout bills, so the idea there is that these are bills that are sort of handed out by ministers to usually compliant backbenchers and it has not escaped I think any of our notice that 15 of the MPs drawn today are Labour MPs so you know it may well be the case that they will be particularly willing to take bills from the government. But actually any MP who is serious about getting their bill through will want to have a conversation with ministers. And there may well be some negotiation that takes place. And if the outcome of that negotiation is that the government says, fine, we will support this, then that probably will result in the government then getting involved even before the bill is introduced to help draft the bill. So there is a sort of sliding scale, I think, in terms of what counts as a handout bill.

[00:27:57] There are some that are pure handout bills. Even in those cases, actually, I think the MPs get some choice. So they are still having a role in prioritising the causes that matter to them. But yes, lots of them will have had some involvement from the government. And actually, that shouldn't really surprise us that much, because if they're going to get these bills through the Commons, then they are going to need to be bills that the government, at least in principle, is more or less happy with.

[00:28:22] Mark D'Arcy: That's one of the big decisions, of course, that will now loom, is whether you choose a government handout bill and get a chance to have a piece of law with your name on it, or whether, perhaps, you choose some big demonstrative bill on some kind of social or other reform that, uh, maybe the government doesn't quite want.

[00:28:39] There's an outfit out there called Zero Hour, who are campaigning vigorously for something called the Climate and Nature Bill, a big integrated, tackling climate change piece of legislation. And they've got quite a number of MPs signed up to their cause, and I think at least three of the MPs drawn in the ballot have been signed up, in theory at least, to support the Climate and Nature Bill.

[00:29:00] So you have Max Wilkinson, who's the Lib Dem MP, who came second in the ballot. You have Clive Lewis, a quite senior Labour MP, former Shadow Cabinet member, who I think was number four, already being urged on social media that they must take up this bill immediately. That's one of the groups vigorously pressing its cause now, and this is such a big subject and such a big piece of legislation.

[00:29:21] It's not easy to imagine it getting through as a Private Member's Bill, but it would certainly be something that pushed the government quite a lot on a subject that maybe it doesn't really want to be pushed on.

[00:29:30] Daniel Gover: Yeah, exactly, and actually just to say, I mean, on Clive Lewis, I saw on social media, he has invited suggestions from the public, which is also actually one of the things that we have seen sometimes with Private Members Bills.

[00:29:42] Now that it's much easier to engage with the public, this has been something that a number of MPs have done over the years. But you're right, I mean, MPs, particularly when they are high up the ballot, they really have a choice. Do they want to get a bill through onto the statute book, which might not be exactly what they want, but it may well make a difference.

[00:30:02] It may well do something that wouldn't otherwise happen, or that wouldn't happen so quickly. Maybe choosing a handout bill, maybe negotiating with the government, and getting it through to the statute book. Or do they use that slot to have a debate that might not otherwise happen, that will attract publicity, and probably won't get much further than that, but may well still be important.

[00:30:26] I mean, another one that I think is likely to be one of the topics among these 20 is assisted dying. And actually, the truth is, we don't know at the moment what is the opinion of the House of Commons. We've got a newly elected House of Commons. We don't know what the balance of opinion. I mean, we can make educated guesses, but we don't know whether or not there would be majority support for that.

[00:30:49] A Private Member's Bill can actually be a very useful way. of having a debate and then potentially having a vote to test the opinion of the House. And as I've said, rather than just as a general debate, where you're just debating an overall principle, actually doing it on the basis of

[00:31:04] Mark D'Arcy: Having an absolutely solid detailed proposal.

[00:31:06] Daniel Gover: Exactly, on the basis of concrete proposals that are written down and that could be amended. And I think you've kind of hinted at this. Those that are in the top seven, these are really, I think, the most useful ones for those types of bills.

[00:31:20] Ruth Fox: Already one of the ballot winners, Jake Richards from Rother Valley, a newly elected Labour MP, has tweeted, oh look, I'm 11th, if necessary I will pick up the assisted dying issue and bring in a bill on that.

[00:31:31] The difficulty is that because he's number 11 in the batting order, he doesn't have an automatic certainty of a debate. Only the first seven MPs. have the certainty of getting their proposal debated because they get the first slot on the seven days that are allocated for second readings of Private Members Bills.

[00:31:49] There's a kind of legislative Jenga that goes on here where if you have one of the later debates, you get the second or maybe third slot on one of those Fridays. And if the government doesn't doesn't like the proposal you're making a very simple way of stopping it is to pat out the debate on the previous bill so that there isn't much time or maybe no time at all for that bill to be debated. It's a kind of gamesmanship that can lead to yeah absolutely it's filibustering but it can lead to really kind of aimless tail chasing debates that seem to ramble on to no particular purpose but the hidden purpose behind it is to stop the next thing on the agenda. So those kind of games can be played. So he actually said In his tweet saying, look, I've got a place in the Private Member's Bill ballot, if someone else higher up in the batting order doesn't want this, I will pick it up. But with that thought in mind already.

[00:32:39] Daniel Gover: Yeah, and that filibustering, I mean, we saw that actually fairly recently. I seem to remember there was a Friday when there was very in depth discussion of ferrets. Uh, which, which I think was

[00:32:51] Ruth Fox: This was to stop Liz Truss' bill, wasn't it?

[00:32:52] Daniel Gover: Yes, which then never actually reached a debate. And actually there were a few others like that. It was all different sides. In fact, it's not just the government.

[00:32:59] Ruth Fox: Government orchestrating the filibuster.

[00:33:01] Daniel Gover: Yeah, but it could also be backbenchers from another party. The reason this matters, it's maybe worth just saying that there are 13, according to the Common standing orders, there were 13 Fridays per session, so per year for Private Members Bills.

[00:33:15] The first seven of those are for second reading debates. Second reading is the first substantive stage of debate on a bill. When you get beyond that, those that have progressed furthest then have priority. So, so if you're, if you're in the top of the ballot, really, you, you want to go for one of those first seven days and so the first seven drawn out the ballot will typically go for one of those days and then the next seven will line up behind those because you'd rather be second and then those that come out behind that will then line up behind them and the reason that matters for these types of bills as well is if what you want is a debate and a vote then really you do need to be the first bill but you need to have the option to move what's called the closure in order to bring the debate to a close.

[00:34:01] And you're not going to be given that if you are second.

[00:34:04] Mark D'Arcy: The point about it is that to get a closure motion and stop a debate that people are trying to pad out, you have to have 100 supporters available to support a motion that the question be put. Unless you have that, and it's quite a difficult act to get a hundred MPs into the Commons on a Friday.

[00:34:21] I don't think there'd be too much difficulty about it, actually, on a question like assisted dying. But on some other stuff, it can be quite a hard sell to say to MPs that you must sacrifice your constituency Fridays and come in for this. But if you can get that, then you are in with a chance. And I think that the assisted dying, uh, lobby would very much like to get a bill into committee because that redoubles the pressure on the government to respond.

[00:34:45] Ruth Fox: I should just say if we're losing any listeners with these procedural intricacies, the procedures for private members bills are not the same as those for government bills. They are slightly different. And some of these procedural hurdles are what cause the problems reputationally, but I think for the House of Commons and Private Members Bill Fridays.

[00:35:01] Because campaigners are looking on at these debates and are interested in a particular bill in the queue to be considered on the order paper. And it gets filibustered out and they sort of think, what on earth are they doing? We're playing these games of talking these bills out.

[00:35:15] Mark D'Arcy: You get these jocular little speeches and people wondering why they're wittering on pointlessly and that's the reason.

[00:35:21] Ruth Fox: Yeah, and if any listeners are interested in understanding more about this, Hansard Society's got a procedural guide to Private Members Bills, so we'll put that in the show notes.

[00:35:30] Daniel Gover: It's one of the complaints that people have made so the Procedure Committee in the House of Commons has done a number of reviews. It's one of the things they've identified that people outside Parliament observe what's happening. They may be a lobbying their MP about a particular bill. They don't necessarily know that this bill is not likely to be debated. And the upshot is that they're disappointed at the end of the process and of course for the MPs who are promoting those bills, I mean you could say it's their responsibility because they have overinflated the chances, but from their perspective, if they are trying to generate publicity, then actually it's not really in their interest to say this is unlikely to pass.

[00:36:08] They want to maximise chances and occasionally it works out quite well. We remember the case of Vera Hobhouse a few years ago, whose bill, um, was actually relatively far down. This was about upskirting. This was the upskirting bill, yeah. And in that case, the government then conceded and brought forward its own bill that did pretty much what she asked for.

[00:36:26] So in that case, actually, it worked pretty well.

[00:36:30] Ruth Fox: We should explain here that there are certain backbench MPs who devote themselves to trying to block Private Members Bills on Fridays, regardless of the issues often. You know, just have an in principle view that Private Members Bills are not sufficiently scrutinised, shouldn't get through easily, not particularly well drafted, and they're going to stop them.

[00:36:49] And I think Chris Chope stopped the upskirting bill and has a, has a reputation for it. Back in the day, Mark, in your career, you'd have seen people like Eric Forth used to block them en masse,.

[00:37:01] Mark D'Arcy: They simply took the view that most Private Members Bills were sort of flabby, vexatious nonsense that shouldn't be translated into law.

[00:37:07] Ruth Fox: I should say most of them had nice safe seats and could afford to give up their Fridays.

[00:37:12] Daniel Gover: Those MPs that used to do that, I mean, not many of them are still around. Yeah, well that's going to be interesting. Christopher Chope is, and it'll be interesting to see whether or not that practice continues. And in fact, MPs who are trying to get their bills through, they often do think about how do you persuade, uh, some of these people not to object to the bill and prevent it from passing.

[00:37:35] Mark D'Arcy: It is very wise precaution for any MP who wants to get a Private Member's Bill through to go and take Chris Chope out for a cup of tea, and sometimes his objections can be diffused, sometimes they can't, but it's well worth the attempt at least.

[00:37:49] Ruth Fox: Another way that these Bills run into trouble is they require money and therefore they require a money resolution, an agreement that money can be found to support whatever it is that they will implement.

[00:38:02] But in Parliament, only the government can grant the money and therefore the government has to agree to the money resolution. And we've seen in past parliaments that uh, that's a way the government has been able to stymie progress, because they don't agree to a money resolution and as a consequence a bill might get through second reading and into public bill committee but then it can't proceed because the public bill committee can't consider the bill any further until the money resolution is agreed.

[00:38:27] So you've also got to think about is my bill going to cost a lot of money because if it is it's not going to get very far.

[00:38:32] Daniel Gover: Yeah or if it is going to cost money I mean I think they can't have as their main purpose, spending money, but they they can have as a sort of consequence spending money. But in those cases as you say they need the money resolution. But it requires a conversation with the government to make sure that they are willing to lay a money resolution. Because as you say they can only be put forward by the government

[00:38:53] Mark D'Arcy: A few years ago there was Bob Blackman's Homelessness Prevention Act, which was a very wide ranging Bill about helping councils prevent people from becoming homeless and providing advice services and a variety of other things that did require quite a large amount of public spending and he did manage to persuade the government to put down a money resolution for that.

[00:39:13] It was probably the most financially expensive Private Members Bill in decades.

[00:39:17] Daniel Gover: But as you say, I mean, sometimes this has been used by governments in the past. Another one that comes to mind was the daylight saving bill towards the very early part of the coalition period where it took some time to get the money resolution. And it was sort of seen as a tactic for delaying the progress of that bill

[00:39:34] Mark D'Arcy: It's one of the things that you notice is particularly with new MPs when they come in on a Friday with their pet proposal and find themselves being stymied by people talking or resolutions not being moved or whatever it is and they get absolutely furious. Because they just simply hadn't understood or anticipated some of the problems that lay ahead of them.

[00:39:52] Daniel Gover: Yeah, so it really depends what MPs are trying to achieve with their bills. If they're happy with just a second reading debate, then maybe they don't need to worry about all of these things. But if they're serious about getting something onto the statute book, then really I think one of the key things is to have a conversation with the government, see what the government will do. Maybe the government would bring forward a money resolution. Maybe they would be willing to draft the bill, for example. I mean, it's one of the interesting things. Under the previous government, the government whips became, I think, very effective at dealing with MPs from right across the house.

[00:40:31] It was really striking. MPs, Liberal Democrats, Labour, SNP, were getting bills through onto the statute book. In part because of that cooperation with the government. We're yet to see how the current government will deal with this. Obviously, this list of MPs today, 15 of them are Labour in any case. But even those that are not Labour MPs, I think there's probably still quite a lot of value in them having an honest conversation with the government whips about their bill.

[00:40:58] Ruth Fox: And isn't there a dedicated whip to PMBs, a sort of a government whip who has to focus on managing this process, both the kind of the discussions and the debates with the with the members before they present their bills, but also managing the process each sitting Friday?

[00:41:14] Daniel Gover: Yeah, there is.

[00:41:15] And it's always, for researchers like me, it's always quite hard to find out who that person is because they're never called the Private Member's Bill whip. They've always got some other title and indeed their title can change, their official title can change, but they are still the whip that is responsible.

[00:41:30] Mark D'Arcy: In the last parliament it was Rebecca Harris. Huge hit rate of getting bills through that the government wanted. I mean there was a kind of self assembly employment bill in the end with several MPs taking through little bits of employment law. People like Dan Jarvis and Wendy Chamberlain, you know, Labour and Liberal Democrats.

[00:41:45] Daniel Gover: Yeah, maybe there has been an idea for a government bill, which there was never time found in the government agenda for it, and it got dismembered and handed out as little bits to other MPs. I mean, there's all these reviews, government reviews, various other things that are taking place all the time, and sometimes there just isn't the legislative vehicle to bring the outcome of that forward as legislation.

[00:42:09] And so sometimes those sorts of ideas can be handed out as potential Private Members Bills as well.

[00:42:15] Mark D'Arcy: Watch this space and of course MP's own fertile brains may come up with all sorts of proposals. I'm wondering if someone might for example have a go at some extra responsibility on social media platforms to police hateful content or maybe banning under 16s from having smartphones, which has been tried in a couple of American states, I think.

[00:42:32] So all sorts of ideas out there that can bubble up. It makes for quite a fun few weeks watching what emerges.

[00:42:37] Daniel Gover: I mean, I think it's fascinating. And I think it is also actually, I think, a really important part of what Parliament does and what the House of Commons does. You know, Parliament is not just a lawmaking machine, but this is one important way in which individual MPs can make a difference, whether that's through attracting publicity or, in many cases, getting something onto the statute book.

[00:42:59] Ruth Fox: Yeah, we talked about Clive Lewis earlier. If you remember at the start of this Parliament, he made a bit of a protest about taking the oath because he didn't want to swear allegiance to the King. And, uh, we've got a private members bill proposal for him as he has landed quite high in the ballot. We've got a blog post by the former clerk, Paul Evans, who was on this podcast a few months ago, suggesting that perhaps changes to the parliamentary oath might be undertaken and it would be a good option for a Private Members Bill.

[00:43:27] So Clive, if you're listening, there's an idea for you. We'll send you the link.

[00:43:32] Also while we're on this Private Members Bill subject, of course Lords Private Members Bills, entirely different process. It's not done by lottery. They have to come up with their subject matter. And we've had a question from a listener about the Lord's Private Members Bills.

[00:43:47] It's a bit self indulgent because it concerns a matter that the Hansel Society has been working on, but um,

[00:43:51] Mark D'Arcy: Self indulgent for us.

[00:43:53] Ruth Fox: Michael Vidal has asked us a question on Twitter. He's a regular listener and he says he's seen a bill in the House of Lords, a draft statutory instrument bill, to empower the Lords to send statutory instruments back to the House of Commons where they have concerns, rather than rejecting the instrument to send it back to the Commons and essentially ask them to think again.

[00:44:14] So this is the bill that's been presented by Lord Thomas of Gresford, Liberal Democrat peer, and Michael says is this a good thing? So I should say in the interests of transparency, I have spoken to Lord Thomas. He approached us about this. He approached us after he'd submitted his bill proposal, so we didn't know about it beforehand.

[00:44:31] And it would implement part of our delegated legislation review proposals to give the House of Lords a sort of think again power to send statutory instruments back to the Commons. In principle, of course, it's a good thing because it's in our delegated legislation review, but I actually don't think it's something that should be in statute.

[00:44:48] So it's not something that we've had any involvement in, we've not been involved in drafting it or anything like that. It's the sort of thing, I think, Michael, that should be in standing orders of both Houses rather than in an Act of Parliament. But Lords bills, completely different procedures, read our guide, but they don't have a very high success rate, so it's probably not going to get very far.

[00:45:06] Daniel Gover: They don't. Since 2010, there have been five Lords starting Private Members Bills that have passed. So some of them clearly do. The reason that they struggle is because by the time it's been through the House of Lords, and then gone to the House of Commons, there's already quite a long queue for each of the Fridays.

[00:45:28] So, it's then quite difficult for them to make progress. The only way that they can, can jump ahead is if at the end of the debate, when the name of the bill is read out, nobody shouts object. So essentially there's a veto of any MP, and we know that there have been plenty of MPs willing to use that opportunity to object to bills.

[00:45:47] Mark D'Arcy: And of course the other point about them is that Lord's Private Members Bills that arrive in the Commons are right at the back of the queue anyway with sort of no mark, Ten Minute Rule Bills and Presentation Bills. They're at the back end of a very long list of proposals, none of which are likely to get even debated, let alone passed.

[00:46:02] Yeah.

[00:46:02] Ruth Fox: Well Mark, I think we probably should leave it there and thank you Daniel for coming into the podcast. I know you're a regular listener so it's a delight to have you on Parliament Matters. We'll take a short break and we'll be back to discuss Jeremy Corbyn's new Alliance group of MPs and the runners and riders for the Select Committee Chairs which are the nominations close next week.

[00:46:23] See you in a minute.

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[00:46:48] Our approach is inspired by the informative articles Mark used to write each week for the BBC, which many of you have told us you miss. So if you want to know what's coming up in Parliament, sign up to our Hansard Society newsletter to get the bulletin straight to your inbox every weekend. You go to hansardsociety.org.uk and click on the newsletter button in the menu bar at the top and fill in your email details. It'll only take a minute. Again, that's hansardsociety. org. uk

[00:47:19] Mark D'Arcy: And we're back. And Ruth, one of the things that's happened this week is the birth of a new parliamentary grouping. Jeremy Corbyn is going to be the leader of a five strong independent alliance - himself, plus four MPs elected on essentially a pro Gaza ticket in places like Blackburn and Dewsbury and Birmingham Perry Bar and Leicester South. And that's going to be an interesting new grouping that's been formed I suppose perhaps with a view to getting a slightly bigger slice of the procedural pie in Parliament. Maybe Jeremy Corbyn as their leader would get some kind of regular gig at Prime Minister's Question time or every few weeks he was definitely going to get called.

[00:47:57] But I suspect it's going to make a fairly marginal difference to their parliamentary visibility if they're a group of five rather than five separate independents.

[00:48:06] Ruth Fox: Yeah, well, Mark, you called it in our earlier podcast episodes that you said there was a possibility that this might happen and indeed it has.

[00:48:12] I agree. I mean, I can't see that really it's going to make that much difference to them. I suppose they can fundraise. There's opportunities for them to fundraise. They can't get formal money, Short Money, as it's known, to fund their opposition activities as a parliamentary grouping because they would have had to have been set up before the election.

[00:48:29] Mark D'Arcy: They didn't run as a party when they ran for election. There were five separate candidacies unconnected to one another, so they weren't at that stage a political party. Yeah,

[00:48:37] Ruth Fox: So they can't benefit from that additional support that is available to for example the Greens, or Reform and so on. They will be now bigger than the Green grouping.

[00:48:46] They're on equal numbers I think with Reform and with the Democratic Unionist Party. It's not going to entitle them to anything formally. I mean, Jeremy Corbyn's a former party leader, so he might get called, you know, one more extra time at PMQs maybe. Three times or four times in the course of a year for parliamentary questions, they're not going to get any further in terms of amendments and so on.

[00:49:09] So I don't think it's going to make any practical difference. But I think the politics is interesting because are they going to become the repository for, the Labour left, disaffected MPs, we talked at the beginning of the podcast about the winter fuel allowance and the fact that lots of Labour MPs are going to find some of these economic decisions very difficult. There is a grouping there now that could try and mop up some of these malcontents if they were to lose the whip.

[00:49:34] Mark D'Arcy: Yeah. And if people find themselves permanently frozen out, and there's a group who are suspended from the whip by Keir Starmer over the two child benefit cap, their suspension will eventually be reviewed, and they might be readmitted to the party on a promise of good behaviour.

[00:49:49] But it's not hard to see them finding further causes to rebel. I mean, the whole winter fuel allowance thing is, is just the first, as we were saying, of probably a number of rather painful motions going directly against the instincts of a lot of Labour MPs, so they could find themselves either having to rebel or grit their teeth.

[00:50:08] And the instinct for rebellion seems to be quite strong. They could end up joining Jezza.

[00:50:12] Ruth Fox: Yeah, so the Labour Party said that they'd review their position in six months time depending upon, uh, behaviour. And you've got some big names in that group. You've got Rebecca Long Bailey, you've got John McDonnell.

[00:50:22] Mark D'Arcy: Former leadership candidate, former shadow chancellor.

[00:50:25] Ruth Fox: Richard Bergen.

[00:50:26] Mark D'Arcy: Zahra Sultana, very, very vocal at the moment on social media attacking the government over a number of the decisions that it's taken, not least again at the Winter Fuel Alliance.

[00:50:35] Ruth Fox: So it's not hard to say that these could move and join this group in the future.

[00:50:40] Mark D'Arcy: Especially since this group has demonstrated an ability to win parliamentary seats.

[00:50:44] Ruth Fox: Yes, again, I don't think it's going to make much practical difference in terms of what they can secure in the House of Commons in terms of time or questions and so on, but it gives them more profile and if they were to run longer term, going into the next election, the possibility is that they might form more of a substantial party rather than an informal group.

[00:51:05] Mark D'Arcy: Well, you can see Labour wanting to shore up its, its flank against a group on the left that might start winning a lot of, you know, very heavily urban seats, particularly heavily Muslim seats at the next election.

[00:51:16] Ruth Fox: Yeah, and we should say that there is one independent MP who is in Northern Ireland who hasn't joined this group.

[00:51:23] This group is marked by the fact that they all ran on a Labour left and pro Palestine platform. But I think he was an MP, previously with the DUP, he's not joined this group.

[00:51:32] Mark D'Arcy: No, this is quite a particular beast. But you can see it has the potential to be the fourth party.

[00:51:37] Ruth Fox: Yes, potentially, fourth grouping in the House, yeah.

[00:51:41] Mark D'Arcy: And meanwhile, the other thing that's going on in the coming week is the deadline for nominations and the elections to the chairs of select committees. And that is going to be a very, very interesting demonstration of, if you like, the mindset. of the new parliament, who's going to be chosen to chair the committees that scrutinise government policy at a sort of departmental level.

[00:52:03] So the Treasury Committee, the Home Affairs Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee, etc. In the past, what has tended to happen is where a committee seat has been allocated to someone from the government side, you have say four or five candidates vying for it, in effect, the opposition decides which one to throw their weight behind, and usually the opposition is looking for the candidate who's going to be most trouble for the Government. This time around, Labour's majority is so overwhelming that I don't think that factor quite works.

[00:52:31] And it's going to be which, particularly for those seats, and it's most of them frankly, that are allocated to be occupied by a member on the Labour side. 18 out of 26. This time around it's going to be who has the most support across the Labour group. So it'll be much more about the ideological spectrum of this group of overwhelmingly new MPs from the Labour Party.

[00:52:51] So, uh, Watch this space because we will learn a lot about the composition and mindset of this governing party.

[00:52:57] Ruth Fox: Yeah, and I think one of the interesting things to look out for is the extent to which MPs who've been in the House for a number of parliaments, to what extent they pick up support, and particularly those MPs who were on the front bench but didn't get government jobs. People like Emily Thornberry, for example, Florence Eshalomi, you know, people like that. Are they going to be looking to to get select committee chairmanships? And how do the new MPs operate? Are they going to be how many of their number are going to be putting themselves forward?

[00:53:25] And we're hearing suggestions that quite a number of them are interested. Some names have emerged. One we've just mentioned earlier on the podcast, Michael Pinto-Dushinsky apparently is interested in the Department of Work and Pensions Committee. Now he's a, an MP with a majority of 15, so if I were an old timer, I'd be looking at this sort of newbie thinking, what on earth are you doing?

[00:53:44] You've barely got an office and found your way round the house, and you want to be chair of a committee. On the other hand, if I were him, I might also be thinking, I've got four or five years at best, I've got a majority of 15, I may not make it back next time. I've got to go for it.

[00:53:57] Mark D'Arcy: Well, indeed. And he may also be thinking that if people like Hamish Faulkner and Sarah Sackman can be translated straight from newbie MP into a ministerial job, then why can't I go and chair a select committee?

[00:54:10] So he may be thinking to himself, fair enough. I mean, I suspect maybe some people on his constituency committee are raising an eyebrow too, but on the other hand, this does give you profile. I mean, work and pensions may be quite a prominent committee, and actually the prominence of a committee depends a lot on the kind of flair and showmanship quota of its chair, so he may feel he can make something out of this that brings him advantages in his constituency as well as scrutinising the work of government in a very important area.

[00:54:38] Ruth Fox: Well should we go through um, some of the more interesting, well from our perspective the more interesting committees, which from my perspective DWP would not be one, but Public Accounts, that's always I think a really interesting committee, looking at government spending, yeah, and that's the Conservatives have got that.

[00:54:52] Mark D'Arcy: By tradition, in fact by standing order, public accounts is chaired by a member of the opposition, so in the last parliament it was chaired by Dame Meg Hillier. who this time around is going for the chair of the Treasury Select Committee. Public Accounts is always a very good berth because they're constantly looking at the implementation of government policy and this usually means that they're issuing swingeing reports on why vast amounts of taxpayers money was wasted on something or other.

[00:55:18] The chair then does a gig on the Today Programme quite regularly and appears in the press quite a lot. So it's the highest profile single job. Usually. Yeah. On the committee corridor. Yeah. And it's attracted quite an interesting field. David Davis, who chaired the PAC back in the first Blair term. He decided quite consciously that he was going to sit out what he thought would be the first of a series of terms in opposition for the Conservative Party in that job. He returned to the front bench later on and went for the leadership indeed afterwards, but he had several years. being a very, very high profile figure appearing on a lot of media.

[00:55:54] Ruth Fox: Built his reputation through the Public Accounts Committee through those Labour years. We should say that nominations close next Monday.

[00:56:00] Mark D'Arcy: So we haven't got necessarily an exhaustive list yet.

[00:56:03] Ruth Fox: So some of the nominations are confirmed and have been published. Some are speculation, informed speculation, I should say.

[00:56:09] Mark D'Arcy: Another name that's come up for the PAC is John Glen, former Treasury Minister, who was just below cabinet level. And if the Conservatives had won the last election, might be floating up towards the cabinet by now.

[00:56:19] Ruth Fox: And John has always taken quite an interest in financial scrutiny as an issue of importance and how it can be reformed to improve the accountability of ministers and of government decision making and financial matters to Parliament. So I think if he does get it, that would be an interesting appointment.

[00:56:35] Another name is, the Conservative MP who was essentially the most senior Conservative on the Public Accounts Committee in the last Parliament, effectively deputy to Dame Meg Hillier and that's Geoffrey Clifton Brown.

[00:56:45] Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, I mean he's certainly been on that committee for a while and the deputy, particularly on that committee, is always an important figure because that's how you get kind of multi party consent for your reports.

[00:56:56] If you get into the position of, you know, constantly issuing minority reports where, you know, the government MPs say this and the opposition MPs say that. The whole value of the process is much devalued. So his influential role behind the scenes in that committee is something that possibly he feels tees him up to be an effective chair of it this time round.

[00:57:15] Ruth Fox: Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. This is going to be, I think, a big one in this Parliament.

[00:57:21] Mark D'Arcy: PACAC, as it's known in the trade, has a reasonably high nerd quotient, but doesn't necessarily get you vastly into the headlines, except when there is some kind of scandal brewing in the corridors of Westminster.

[00:57:36] PACAC's the committee that scrutinises government structure, ministerial responsibilities. Cabinet office. Cabinet office, things like that. So, all the goings on at the moment around the appointment of, in inverted commas, political civil servants. very much in PACAC's domain, questions over the number of special advisors, questions over the behavior of ministers, questions about patronage.

[00:58:00] That's all PACAC. So the right person in that seat may find themselves in a target rich environment.

[00:58:06] Ruth Fox: I think there's also two other areas that are coming back into its domain because Cabinet Office essentially is taking back control of EU policy. And it's also, according to a recent ministerial statement, I think it was, taking back control of the Union.

[00:58:24] So essentially the relationship with the devolved administrations back from what was Michael Gove's old department, now Angela Rayner's sort of housing communities local government. It was always a slightly odd position for it to be in, but it was there because of Michael Gove's interest in the Union. Well, that's now back into Cabinet Office. So that would come naturally under the domain of PACAC, shared out with the devolved committees of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

[00:58:50] Mark D'Arcy: Well, I mean, yeah, there's two absolutely vast, crucial areas of policy there that are lumped into a committee where they don't, I think, sit entirely comfortably, to be honest.

[00:59:00] No. Given the lack of a dedicated Committee on European Affairs. I suppose European issues and renegotiation of Britain's relationship with the EU has to go somewhere. But it's hard to see how PACAC can constantly be focusing on that if there's so much else going on in its brief and if the government decides to come up with interesting new constitutional arrangements to deal with the devolved assemblies and parliaments, then a lot of stuff is going to get crowded out.

[00:59:26] Ruth Fox: Yeah. Runners and riders for that. I mean, Bernard Jenkin, possibly back as chair of PACAC, he, Sir Bernard is trying again to run for that Committee and also Simon Hoare, who I think was chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in the last parliament, he's also going for it.

[00:59:41] Mark D'Arcy: Yes, Bernard Jenkins was actually term limited out of continuing to chair PACAC during the last Parliament.

[00:59:47] And then he got himself a berth as chair of the Liaison Committee of senior MPs, which is a sort of internal committee of Parliament, and then tried to set up an inquiry into the centre of government by the Liaison Committee, which It didn't go very far. It didn't go very far, but he's very, very interested in machinery of government issues.

[01:00:05] So if he gets that job, you can expect a lot of focus on what's going on inside the Cabinet Office and how mission driven governments, mission committees are going to work on those kind of rather techie issues. He'd be someone who knows his onions on those issues to be sure, but others may feel that perhaps a fresh hand is needed.

[01:00:25] Ruth Fox: Yeah. Well, you mentioned Liaison Committee. I mean, that will be interesting in and of itself, because what approach will this government take? Because in the past, there's been a number of models taken to how that chair is chosen or selected, elected. Will it be elected by the members of that committee? So all the other select committee chairs choose somebody from among their number.

[01:00:45] Will they choose somebody separately? Will the government want to parachute in somebody, much as Bernard was. So that is something to look out for. Foreign Affairs Committee.

[01:00:56] Mark D'Arcy: Ah, now this is a very, very interesting one. Because the most spectacular casualty of Keir Starmer's rearrangement of who was doing what ministerial job was Emily Thornberry, who had doubtless gone into the general election expecting to emerge as Attorney General, the government's chief legal advisor.

[01:01:12] That was the shadow job she'd had before the election, and she got nothing. And so her trying to become chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee would give her a very high profile role at a time when there are any number of world crises out there to sink her teeth into.

[01:01:26] Ruth Fox: The suggestion is that she may face some opposition.

[01:01:29] Nominations aren't confirmed for this, but the suggestion I think that it would be Dan Carden, the MP for Liverpool, Walton was perhaps interested in it. And he was somebody who people had high hopes for, but he had some personal problems and, a bit of a setback in terms of his career trajectory, but, um, interesting to see whether he runs against Emily or whether, in fact, people's, frankly, sympathy for the way she was treated leads them to back Emily.

[01:01:53] Mark D'Arcy: It could be a very, very interesting race indeed, that one. I suppose a lot depends on how much sympathy there is out there for Emily Thornberry, who's one of a number of people who are feeling a bit dispossessed, having done, if you like, the hard yards as shadow cabinet members and shadow ministers and have found themselves dispossessed, often in favour, of people who weren't even in the last parliament and have been catapulted straight into ministerial office because they, uh, have found favour with Keir Starmer.

[01:02:18] Ruth Fox: Yeah. Health? That's going to be a big

[01:02:21] Mark D'Arcy: Absolutely enormous committee, uh, at any time, but Particularly important with all the backwash of the pandemic still going on. And, uh, this is a committee that's gone to the Liberal Democrats in the sort of share out of committee seats. And as far as I know, the only contender so far for it is Layla Moran, who chaired an all party group on long COVID and made quite a splash during the pandemic and has emerged as a pretty effective operator.

[01:02:47] There is a little bit of an attempt to push back on her and, um, positions she's taken on transgender issues, but if she's the only candidate put forward by the Liberal Democrats, I think what happens is that you're just elected unopposed if there's no other nomination. So in you go.

[01:03:01] Ruth Fox: And I think that's interesting for the Liberal Democrats to what extent on their committees that they've been assigned chairmanships, to what extent there is a competition. And indeed on the Conservative side, we should say on the Conservatives, it's tricky timing for them because this all links into the timetable of the leadership race. If you're not successful in the leadership race - Priti Patel, step forward - if you think that that you're perhaps not going to get a front bench role under the new leader.

[01:03:26] Mark D'Arcy: Does her hat fly into the ring for Home Affairs?

[01:03:28] Ruth Fox: Yeah, you know, Home Affairs. Yeah, there may be people on the front bench already for the Conservatives who are thinking, either actually, I'm only doing this because out of a sense of duty and I don't really want to be on the front bench long term, but they might not be able to put their hat in the ring for a chairmanship because of the timing of this election, so it's a bit awkward for them and there might be a bit of fallout as a result of that in the wash up after the leadership election.

[01:03:51] I think the last one I was interested in looking at, Mark, was the Procedure Committee. Because that's obviously a committee we have at the Hansard Society, an awful lot of engagement with each parliament. And there's a couple of runners and riders for that that are emerging. Stella Creasy, Labour MP for Walthamstow, very interested in procedure, very adept at crafting amendments to legislation, very keen on parliamentary reforms to support mothers, young mothers like herself. And the other candidate that we're hearing as a possibility, Cat Smith, who was a front bencher under Jeremy Corbyn, had the democratic engagement brief, I think, was chair of the Petitions Committee towards the end of the last parliament.

[01:04:30] And another name that's, being floated, but it's, it's, it's not definite yet, is Gareth Snell, who's a returning MP. He got in in Stoke.

[01:04:38] MPs, wasn't he? Yeah. And then lost and now he's back again.

[01:04:41] Yeah. And if you were Labour front bench, I'm not sure you'd be keen on any of them, frankly.

[01:04:46] Mark D'Arcy: Well, it's an interesting one. I think this is a, an issue that Labour are going to have, is that some of the people most likely to get a lot of select committees are not people who are, the leadership will be all that comfortable with. Stella Creasy is a very interesting case because she's someone who has been very effective at using parliamentary procedure to push her objectives and finding ways to get amendments debated at report stage of bills and things.

[01:05:12] And if she got in, you could imagine her, for example, wanting to have a look at the incredibly opaque procedure for report stage of bills. This is where the whole House of Commons can look at the detail of a bill and amendments from any MP can potentially. be considered. So it's quite an important part of the whole process of dealing with new legislation.

[01:05:33] She's someone who's made it work, but also has hit the barriers by which a government can stop unwelcome amendments from even being debated or considered in any way. So maybe that's something she might like to have a go at. And the other point

So maybe that's something she might like to have a go at. And the other point about the Procedure Committee is it's one of the few checks on the House of Commons Modernisation Committee, one of the few places where you can have a detailed following of what may be going on in that Committee about changing Commons procedures, maybe sitting hours, maybe all sorts of issues about how the House of Commons works and it could be quite high powered stuff.

[01:06:07] So that's one of the few other places outside the floor of the House where where that kind of thing can be looked at and an independent voice can be raised within the machine about what they think of whatever proposals eventually sort of emanate from the Modernisation Committee. So that's one to watch.

[01:06:24] It's more sensitive than it looks.

[01:06:25] Ruth Fox: Yeah, and I think somebody like Stella, if she were to get it, she'd be looking at areas like, for example, how the House of Commons scrutinises EU matters. She's a passionate pro European, not very happy with the way that EU matters are being considered. She was not happy with the decision just before Parliament went into recess to abolish the European Scrutiny Committee without any discussion.

[01:06:46] And you had this extraordinary situation of her agreeing with, I think it was Richard Tice of the Reform Party.

[01:06:51] Mark D'Arcy: An unlikely alliance you've got to say.

[01:06:52] Ruth Fox: Yeah, in the interest of parliamentary scrutiny, shouldn't we at least have some debate about how this committee is going to be replaced or, you know, where European matters are going to be scrutinised?

[01:07:01] Mark D'Arcy: So can you imagine them immediately setting up a whole inquiry into the scrutiny of European business and possibly recommending some kind of European Affairs Committee for the future. That would be awkward.

[01:07:12] Ruth Fox: Yeah, but as you say, you know, the Procedure Committee is, it's both its past reports and anything it might want to prioritise in the future are going to be part of the agenda for the new Modernisation Committee.

[01:07:23] So there is this pipeline of recommendations that the Modernisation Committee presumably is going to have to look at. So it is going to be, I think, an important committee.

[01:07:32] Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, absolutely, for the future of the working of the system, which, let's face it, doesn't work all that well all the time.

[01:07:38] Ruth Fox: Yeah. Well, we will find out next week who these committee chairs are, who's been successful, did you and I get any of these right or not, or were we completely off beam, is our intelligence faulty?

[01:07:49] Mark D'Arcy: It's the thing about punditry, isn't it? You write a column explaining what's going to happen and then you write a column explaining why what you predicted didn't happen but you were basically right anyway.

[01:07:57] Ruth Fox: Yes, or podcasting where you record on a Thursday and it's all out of date by Friday.

[01:08:02] Mark D'Arcy: That's show business.

[01:08:03] Ruth Fox: But anyway, we will see next week when we will be back for a further discussion. Catch up in wherever you get your podcast feeds and we look forward to our discussion next week.

[01:08:13] Mark D'Arcy: Join us then.

[01:08:14] Bye.

[01:08:20] Well that's all from us for this week's episode of Parliament Matters. Please hit the follow or subscribe button in your podcast app to get the next episode as soon as it lands.

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[01:08:38] Ruth Fox: Oh Mark, tell us more about the algorithm.

[01:08:40] Mark D'Arcy: What do I know about algorithms? You know, I write my scripts with a quill pen on vellum and then send it in by carrier pigeon.

[01:08:47] Ruth Fox: Well, before we go, a quick reminder also that you can send us your questions on all things Parliament by visiting hansardsociety.org.uk/PMUQ.

[01:08:56] Mark D'Arcy: We'll be discussing them in future episodes, including our special Urgent Questions editions dedicated to what you want to know about Parliament.

[01:09:03] Ruth Fox: And you can find us across social media @Hansard Society to get more content related to the show and the wider work of the Hansard Society.

[01:09:23] Promo: 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 at Hansard Society.