The Budget: Why aren't MPs told first? - Parliament Matters podcast

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The Budget: Why aren't MPs told first? - Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 51

1 Nov 2024

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The Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, has criticised Ministers for leaking the content of the Budget. But Ministers have strong incentives to “pre-leak” plans, making the practice unlikely to stop, especially as the Speaker has limited power to penalise them. We also discuss the sub judice rule, which bars MPs from commenting on ongoing court cases amid controversy about the handling of the Southport murder case. Finally, former Liberal Democrat minister David Laws offers insights into a century of Labour-Lib Dem relations as we explore what the future holds for the Liberal Democrats in Parliament.

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Another Budget, another broadside from Mr Speaker, deploring the advance leaking of its contents by Ministers. After the Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced important changes to the Government’s rules on borrowing for investment, and Sir Keir Starmer signalled a rise in the minimum wage, both in advance of Budget Day, Sir Lindsay Hoyle rebuked them in an angry statement from the Chair. But Ruth and Mark conclude that Ministers have strong incentives to “pre-leak” Budget plans, making it unlikely this trend will change, especially given that the Speaker has no effective powers to punish them.

Meanwhile, as political tensions rise over the handling of the Southport murder case, they explore the reason MPs are not permitted to deliver a running commentary on live court cases – why Parliament operates a sub judice rule – and how this policy is enforced to protect judicial integrity.

And David Laws, a Lib Dem minister in the 2010 Coalition Government, stops by to discuss relations between his party and Labour and their tangled history which has led to a suspicious and conflicted relationship between the two parties, despite their relative ideological closeness. With Labour now in Government, and with the largest-ever contingent of Lib Dem MPs on the Opposition benches, what might the next chapter in this story hold?

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Our guest

David Laws

David Laws was a Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament from 2001 to 2015. He served as a Minister in the Coalition Government, first as Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 2010 and later as both Minister for Schools and Minister Assisting the Deputy Prime Minister from 2012 to 2015. In 2004, he co-edited the Orange Book, authored by a group of prominent Liberal Democrat politicians which generated the term 'Orange Book liberalism'. Between 2016 and 2024, David was the Executive Chairman of the Education Policy Institute and now serves as its Chair of Trustees. His new book is Serpents, Goats and Turkeys: A century of Liberal-Labour relations.

What we talked about on this episode

The Budget: why were policy changes announced to the press before Parliament?
The Budget: how and why did the Government restrict Parliament's power to propose amendments to the Finance Bill?
The Budget: how might the Opposition respond to it?
Conservative leadership: will the new leader change direction during the Budget?
Liberal Democrats: What options does the party have in terms of political strategy and philosophy in this Parliament?

Resources

Hansard Society

A procedural guide to the Budget process

Transcript

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.

[00:00:00] Intro/Outro: You are listening to Parliament Matters, a Hansard Society production, supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety. org. uk.

[00:00:16] Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox.

[00:00:23] Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark Darcy. Coming up

[00:00:25] Ruth Fox: Mr Speaker may be furious. But will government ministers ever stop briefing the press about major policy announcements like the budget before they're made to MPs?

[00:00:34] Mark D'Arcy: How will the opposition parties go about attacking the budget? And how much scope will they have to try and make changes?

[00:00:41] Ruth Fox: And they're the biggest third party group for decades, but who actually are the 72 other MPs? Lib Dem MPs and what will their political strategy be? We talk to former coalition minister David Laws.

[00:00:54] Mark D'Arcy: But first Ruth, the week began rather irritably in the commons chamber with the Speaker Lindsay Hoyle getting up to attack government ministers for releasing details of their budget plans well before the actual budget announcement was due. Rachel Reeves had gone to America to speak to the IMF and announced her plans to change the rules on government borrowing to allow for more investment spending, for example.

[00:01:21] And Keir Starmer talked about pushing up the minimum wage, both outside of the House of Commons, where of course the Ministerial Code specifies that such big announcements are supposed to be made first. Here's what Lindsay Hoyle had to say.

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