Hansard Society

• Brigid Fowler, Trump, State Visits and Parliament: precedent and process, 31 January 2017

• Addresses to both Houses of Parliament (last updated 3 December 2024)

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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: Should Westminster roll out the red carpet when Donald Trump arrives on a state visit later this year?

Mark D'Arcy: Light touch chairing or favoritism towards the government. Sir Lindsay Hoyle's conduct at PMQs comes under the microscope.

Ruth Fox: And total recall. MPs and Peers were wrenched away for the Easter holidays for a rare Saturday sitting to rush emergency legislation through Parliament.

Mark D'Arcy: But before we get onto that, Ruth, a little community note. Before [00:01:00] Easter in our last podcast, before the holiday break, we announced that we were going to have two podcasts. One, an interview with Simon Hart, the former Conservative Chief Whip which did indeed appear, and another looking at the intricacies of Report Stage as a kind of preview towards the Report Stage of the legislation to enable assisted dying in England and Wales. And, and that one we didn't deliver. And the reason was that although we recorded it, the facts kind of changed under us. Kim Leadbeater, the promoter of the bill, decided to postpone the Report Stage day.

It's now going to be on May the 16th. Uh, it was going to be today, Friday the 25th, as we are recording today, and we had our recording for today set in stone so we couldn't easily change the date by this stage. So we're coming out a day late for our regular podcast this week, but we will also be releasing an additional podcast updated and looking at the, uh, procedure for Report Stage so that we can get ahead of the assisted dying bill and the procedural intricacies that lie in wait for it.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. So look out, uh, listeners for that updated revised [00:02:00] podcast on report stage,

Mark D'Arcy: The revised standard version you might say.

Ruth Fox: Which will be coming out in a few days with our procedural guru, Paul Evans, as our guest.

Mark D'Arcy: But first, Ruth, while we were away, there was a pretty rare event, a recall of Parliament, not just to discuss some great and unexpected event, but also to rush through what wasn't quite emergency legislation, but was certainly extremely fast track, uh, legislation to semi nationalize what's left of Britain steel industry.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, well, I'm not sure. If it wasn't emergency legislation, what would be? Because, uh, the Government recalled parliament to consider the Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill. The bill was only published 90 minutes before the debate started. They had three hours of debate, and this was a rare Saturday sitting.

It was only the fifth Saturday, uh, sitting, I think since the war. The last time Parliament was recalled to sit on a Saturday was during the Falklands War 1982. So there had been a Saturday sitting during the Brexit period, but that wasn't [00:03:00] around, uh, an actual recall. It's actually rarer to recall Parliament to consider legislation.

Yeah. You know, it's only happened a few times. We can only find two other examples when both Houses have been recalled to consider all stages of legislation in a day.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah.

Ruth Fox: Not unusual for the Commons to do it. Rather rarer for the Lords to do it.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah. So sometimes the, the Commons will zap through a piece of legislation in a day and then their Lordships will be a bit more discursive and take a couple of days and won't quite suspend their standing orders to the extent that the Commons does and their Lordships have a, a rather more deliberative approach to legislation pretty much any time.

Yeah. Even when it's supposedly emergency legislation. So to whack a whole bill through both Houses in a single day and get it to Royal Assent before the Houses then rise. Yeah, right. King Charles signs on the dotted line.

Ruth Fox: A hotline to wherever he was, Balmoral or Windsor, I'm not sure. I'm not sure where he was. I mean the last two times were the EU Future Relationship Bill back in 2020. That was New Year's Eve in anticipation of our exit from the EU. So that was, it was getting that deal through. [00:04:00] And then 1998, when they passed anti-terrorism legislation in response to the Omagh bombing.