Please note, this transcript is automatically generated. There may consequently be 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.

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 heat is on. The government is now taking difficult decisions on everything from social security to a third runway at Heathrow, which could cause splits in their own ranks.

Mark D'Arcy: The scrutiny gap. Why aren't MPs paying more attention to the mechanisms they've set up to control the social security budget and repeal old EU laws?

Ruth Fox: And the House of Lords provides good news for Paul McCartney, but bad news for posh ticket touts at the Royal Albert Hall.

Mark D'Arcy: But first, Ruth, [00:01:00] let's talk about the very difficult period the Government's currently going through, and the difficulties they're going to have getting some of the big decisions they're trying to take through the House of Commons in due course. I mean, this week, Rachel Reeves was out and about announcing big infrastructure projects all over the country, reservoirs in several different counties and most prominently of all, a third runway at Heathrow Airport.

And this has been something that has been on the agenda of successive governments for decades, has never happened because of the furious resistance to it, particularly in areas either side of the flight path. Now she says it's going to happen and it's going to happen within 10 years, she hopes. So all those fears about long delays, endless judicial reviews, a half century of legal process before spades can hit the ground are being shelved by Rachel Reeves.

She's going to make it happen, or so we're told. And it's just one of the things on which there could be very uncomfortable Commons votes for the government. Not so much on an order to authorize the [00:02:00] construction or anything like that, because it's early days, but I'm sure that there are people in Parliament who would, one way or another, try and force a vote, a backbench debate, an opposition day debate, probably by the Liberal Democrats, I would guess, but who knows who might try and bring an opposition day debate on that one.

But I'm pretty sure that there will be an attempt to register Commons dissent, particularly to the third runway there, maybe to the extra runway at Gatwick Airport as well.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, it's not hard to see how sort of backbenchers with the tools at their disposal, whether it's Westminster Hall debates, adjournment debates, e petitions being got up to generate support and force a debate in the Commons.

Not hard to see how all that happens.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, the e petition process is one I hadn't particularly thought of, but I'm sure you're right. Someone somewhere will be launching a petition as we speak.