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

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

Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark D'Arcy. Coming up this week.

Ruth Fox: The Musk Factor. How tweets from the world's richest man are driving Parliament's agenda.

Mark D'Arcy: And what precisely did Parliament vote against this week, amidst calls for a national inquiry into historical child exploitation focused on grooming gangs?

Ruth Fox: And we've got questions in the House about, well, questions in the House.

Mark D'Arcy: But first Ruth, this was definitely the week in which the world's richest man drove the agenda of the House of Commons. There are at least three [00:01:00] substantial Commons events this week that basically were rocket boosted by tweets from Elon musk.

Ruth Fox: See what you did there Mark.

Mark D'Arcy: Couldn't resist it.

But it's extraordinary how the megaphone given to Elon Musk by his ownership of Twitter, which clearly amplifies his personal tweets that everybody gets them. I don't follow him, but I get his tweets anyway.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I think we call it X now, don't we? But he's always at the top of the list.

Mark D'Arcy: I refuse to call it X.

I'm going to continue calling it Twitter because I'm a stubborn git.

Ruth Fox: Yes, I mean, no matter when you, uh, you turn on X Twitter, whatever we call it, his tweets are always at the top. The algorithm obviously favours him. But as you say, I mean, three interventions this week. So we had the ministerial statement by Yvette Cooper on child sexual exploitation and abuse.

We've had a reasoned amendment from the Conservatives to the Children and Schools Bill to try and force a national inquiry into the grooming gangs, which is at the [00:02:00] heart of the discussion over the last few days on X and in the media that Elon Musk is forcing, and we had an e petition calling for another general election signed by three million people that, again, to use your phrase, was basically put on rocket boosters before Christmas by it being posted about by Elon Musk.