← Back to Parliament Matters episode page

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 please first check against the audio version. Timestamps are provided for ease of reference.

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, and welcome to the latest in our special series of podcasts following the progress of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, the Bill that would enable assisted dying in England and Wales. And Ruth, the big news today is that the Bill has now cleared its final stage in the House of Commons. Its Third Reading. It won by a slightly reduced majority, but it won all the same.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, so we had 314 MPs voted for the Bill and 291 against, so it came through with a majority, as you say, a bit a bit of a reduced majority, [00:01:00] 23, compared to that Second Reading vote, uh, back last year, which was 55. Interestingly, same number of MPs voting: 605 plus four tellers for the vote. That is a very big turnout. I mean, we've set that in context with 650 MPs in the House. So where were the other 45? Well, there were some ministers abroad, David Lammy, for example, away, dealing with the Iranian situation. Take out the Speakers, the Deputy Speakers, the MPs who chair the Public Bill Committee stages, who don't vote at Third Reading.

Mark D'Arcy: The Sinn Feiners who, don't take their seats. The SNP who wouldn't vote on an England only, or England or Wales only issue. And actually you've got almost the theoretical maximum number of MPs who could have voted in this division, voting in this division, including such luminaries, of course, as the Prime Minister himself, Sir Keir Starmer

Ruth Fox: Suggestions that he might not be able to because of the international situation, but he was there in the voting lobbies. We understand

Mark D'Arcy: He took time out from stopping the slide to World War III.

Ruth Fox: [00:02:00] So it will now go to the House of Lords for, for further consideration. But it does mean that it will go into law, I suspect, I think it may struggle to get through quickly in the House of Lords. I think it'll be an extended process, but given that there is a solid majority for it in the Commons, I think that it'll go through the House of Lords. The question is how much it will be amended and how much time it will take up being sent back to the Commons.

For them to, to be asked to think again about some of the, the detail of the Bill perhaps. But if it gets through the House of Lords, then it will be probably the most significant piece of social legislation of my lifetime.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, well and significant single Private Members Bill since David Steel's Abortion Act way back in 1967.

Almost ancient parliamentary history now. It is a remarkably significant piece of social legislation going through as these kind of conscience issues tend to as a Private Member's Bill. I think it's probably just worth reviewing though some of the things that have happened during [00:03:00] the passage of the Bill, because it's had an extended Committee stage.

It's had three days of remaining stages consideration on the floor of the House of Commons, which has led to some big changes in the content of the Bill and despite all that, and despite much more extensive consideration than any Private Member's Bill normally gets, there are still voices out there complaining that this Bill has not had enough time devoted to it.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, well, I think we've been over that quite a number of times in various places, various articles we've put out have, have tried to provide the evidence base. It's not a lack of time for scrutiny. You can argue that the process for developing the policy was too constrained and as a consequence, look, there are, for example, too many regulations, uh, delegation of power to ministers to make policy to implement the, the scheme by regulations at a later date. I'd certainly agree with that.

Mark D'Arcy: The official details filled in later on once it's in law.

Ruth Fox: But the lack of, the lack of time for scrutiny for each of these [00:04:00] parliamentary stages, no. Compared to any other Private Members Bill or any other government bill I can think of for a very long time.

It has had that time. So Mark's it's probably a good idea to, uh, once again and perhaps uh, for the last time, for a while at least, until the Bill perhaps comes back to the Commons, introduce our procedural guru, Mr. Paul Evans, former Senior House of Commons Clerk and member of the Hansard Society, who's been with us throughout this process to help explain to listeners and indeed to us what om earths happening and what will happen, and particularly at those really difficult amending stages. And I should say, Paul, I was, at a meeting yesterday with, uh, a number of MPs and a couple of them did come over and say how, how useful they had found the podcast in explaining the Committee and Report stage in particular. So thank you for all the time you've devoted to it.

So what are your thoughts on, on where we've got to today?

Paul Evans: Well, it certainly seems to me an historic achievement. That has been reached today. [00:05:00] Not many people would've put money on the bill getting its Third Reading. There's a lot of valid criticisms of the Private Members Bill process and indeed the broader legislative process.

But in a funny old way, it seems to me to have worked in this particular circumstance. And, um, it's done so because of a lot of goodwill, a lot of compromise and negotiation and dealing and trading off all those informal processes that go on in Parliament that are invisible to the general public for the most part.

But the Bill has had a fair run. It's had a fair decision, and on a very hot Fridayin late June,

Ruth Fox: We're laughing listeners because our studio is like a sauna!

Paul Evans: On, this very hot Friday in June, virtually 100% of the available Members of Parliament have turned up on a Friday. Which is normally their day of, well, not of rest, but of business in their constituencies, to vote for this.

And I think [00:06:00] that's all a fantastic tribute to everybody involved in the process on all sides.

Mark D'Arcy: One thing I'd, I'd like to explore a bit with you, Paul, is the way that this Bill was aided through the traps and pitfalls that normally lurk in wait for Private Members Bills, in particular the way an almost unprecedented amount of space was cleared for it to be considered.

And all the other Private Members Bill promoters seem to have stood back and done a sort of "after you Claude" just to make sure that, um, they didn't get in the way themselves because if some of them have pushed their bills through a bit faster and demanded space, they might actually have been in a position of blocking this Bill from going forward.

Paul Evans: They had every opportunity to block it if they'd chosen to use that opportunity. If someone had put down a Bill that had come out of Committee, and several other Private Members Bills have now been in and out Committee, if any of the members in charge had put down their Bill on one of these last two Fridays, it would've taken precedence over this Bill.

[00:07:00] And they haven't, and they very deliberately have held back until the last two or three PMB Fridays that are coming up in the rest of the Session. Their bills, though, no doubt, important in ways are not epochal bills, they're all fairly detailed, fairly small. Most of them, well indeed, all of them are brought forward with Government support, so they don't necessarily need a lot of examination 'cause they're not doing anything very large.

But they have chosen not to use the power they had to kill this Bill, which was effectively what they could have done. And that's an important part of how this whole process is developed. A very important part.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, because I, I think one of the things that Mark and I flagged right at the beginning of this process was that concern.

I mean, Mark, you've spoken quite often about it, sitting in the press gallery on, on PMB Fridays, Private Members Bill Fridays, watching the procedural shenanigans that go on where MPs do try and talk out, do try and block these bills getting through. And that was one of the fears [00:08:00] that that would happen. And it hasn't.

And I, I do think that's to the credit of, of the opponents of the Bill in particular. Because people like Danny Kruger, people like Sarah Olney, Ben Spencer that we've had on the podcast talking about this have all been clear week in, week out. They wanted the bill, you know, to get a straight vote on its merits and not be subject to that kind of procedural chicanery, and it would've looked terrible... absolutely, absolutely... in the court of public opinion. But that hasn't stopped MPs before. So I do think it is, as you say, Paul, it's to their credit.

Mark D'Arcy: I think it would've been absolutely catastrophic for the reputation of the Commons if this had been killed off by procedural maneuver, rather than having a straight vote yes or no at the end of the process, as indeed we have. And and what's also been noticeable is that on the three Fridays where this Bill has been back for its remaining stages, it's Report Stage, and then it's Third Reading, there's clearly been an agreement that there would be a closure and a move to a vote at appropriate points during the proceedings, and it would all get done in comfortably sized chunks.

So there was clearly negotiation through the [00:09:00] various back channels in the Commons just to make sure the whole thing was done in an orderly way.

Paul Evans: And indeed the Speaker and his deputies have participated in that orchestration. And that's not meant to be, they haven't connived, they have, um, openly, I think as nearly as openly as they're able to, made it clear that there is three chunks of time, they're gonna be divided up fairly equally, and they're going to accept a closure at the appropriate moment so that there can be votes.

And that's all happened and they signalled that quite clearly. I, I feel as clearly as they're able to do so that everybody knows where they stand as it were, you know, um, and that, and quite often they don't. On a typical Friday, Private Member's Friday, um, waiting for the closure and waiting to see whether it's going to be allowed is one of the nail biting tensions of the occasion.

Whereas I think that particular tension has been largely removed from these debates, and again, rightly so, so that everybody knows where they stand.

Mark D'Arcy: Well on previous, uh, editions of this pod you've described what happens next. The [00:10:00] formal process in which, uh, the Clerk of the Commons inscribes the bill in Norman French.

It's done up in a red ribbon called a ferret for reasons that surpass understanding and taken over to the House of Lords.

Paul Evans: Can I just correct you there a moment, Mark?

Ruth Fox: Green ferret.

Mark D'Arcy: Green ferret. Alright.

Ruth Fox: Red ferret is for the Lords.

Mark D'Arcy: Ah, sorry, I'm, I'm forgetting the color coding. Okay. I, I, I, I, I stand corrected a green ferret.

It's taken over to the House of Lords. Do their Lordships take any notice of the size of the majority? If this had been a majority of one or two, would that have made a difference?

Paul Evans: It's difficult to tell because so few seriously controversial Private Members Bills make it to the House of Lords. Very rare.

Most of the ones that do are, as I say, of this slightly, uh, bland kind of handout quality, not - and I must stop criticising them - useful, but, but uncontroversial small-ish subjects. So it is difficult to know that. I don't think the Lords have a tradition [00:11:00] about how they deal with this. They do, of course, have a tradition of deference to the democratic House, not always sustained, but to a large degree, and do not regard it as normally their job to kill a bill, which has been agreed by the democratically elected House.

So one can assume they will be trying to give it a fair wind and, and to let it through. Nobody's in control of that process. Nobody's in overall control of that.

Mark D'Arcy: I suppose it's possible you could have some ultras who might take a different view. Lord Falconer, who may well be the Bill's promoter in the House of Lords, he's previously brought in a couple of Private Members Bills and got them through the Lords on assisted dying, fired a bit of a warning shot on this issue. He was saying that, uh, the Lords should leave the decision in principle. on whether this Bill should pass to the House of Commons and simply look at the detail.

It seems to me that he wouldn't have said that unless he thought it needed to be said, which in turn suggests that there are Peers out there who are getting ready to try and block this.

Paul Evans: Well, there'll certainly be Peers out there who are [00:12:00] opposed to it, in principle, of course. But I think what you've set out is generally right.

I note with interest that in the polling on opinion on assisted dying, which seems to be fairly consistently, for what it's worth, delivering a sort of 70 ish percent majority in favour of it. Across the whole population, there is a big skew. The nearer you are to joining the 'choir invisible' the more likely you are to be in favor of assisted dying.

So in the Lords where the average age is significantly higher than the Commons one would anticipate if they are the same as the world outside, which is a big if, that they, they're more inclined to support assisted dying than the Commons.

Mark D'Arcy: They certainly have passed Private Members Bills on it in the past, despite some pretty, uh, last ditch resistance from other back bench Peers.

So. The balance of opinion in the House of Lords has been established. Yeah. I think by Lord Falconer's earlier efforts on this. The other point that is worth highlighting [00:13:00] is that it may be a while before the House of Lords come to debate this. There are two Private Members Bill Fridays in July. The first of them is probably too early to debate this Bill 'cause you normally wait a, a couple of weeks after a Bill has been delivered to the House of Lords before it's debated.

The second, I think there's already other business likely to be scheduled then, so it may not be until they sit again in September that their Lordships get round to this legislation.

Paul Evans: Well, September will be pushing it into the distance. It all depends, much depends on the date of the next King's Speech. The next State Opening, the end of this session, which has not as far as I'm aware, been announced yet. No. The two dates that are possible really are either Autumn, roughly around the middle to end of October or April, May. They would be the typical break points for the end of this Session.

Ruth Fox: I'll give you my tip, Paul. I think it will be, end of the Session, will be next year. Because I, I think it would be madness for a Government to have the two most prominent dates in [00:14:00] its parliamentary calendar, the Budget and the King's Speech within weeks of each other. That's, you know, take that point for what you will, I, I just think it would be very odd.

Paul Evans: So remind us when the Budget is.

Ruth Fox: The Budget, we haven't got an exact date, but it's going to be the Autumn, so it will be October-ish or possibly in November, I guess, at the latest. So I can't see them having a Budget and then a Kings Speech very soon after. I mean, those are big set piece occasions. You want some space for the coverage and the, the media.

Paul Evans: Well as ever there is a risk of ascribing too much common sense to the people who run the country.

Ruth Fox: Possibly, yes.

Paul Evans: These kind of predictions.

Ruth Fox: Yes.

Paul Evans: But it's a plausible scenario. I mean, the other determining factor will be the progress of the Government's own legislation, how much they have got through by September, October.

Ruth Fox: The answer to that, I think, is they are not going to be anywhere near the finish of what they need to get done. And this is where I think the Government's legislative programme is a bit bogged [00:15:00] down in the House of Lords. The Conservative peers are tabling lots and lots and lots of amendments at Committee stage and Report stage.

We are seeing week in, week out, the Whips having to add days to Committee stage. And then, um, the consequence of that is you in the Lords, you roughly have half the time on Report that you have in Committee. So every time they add a day in Committee, that effectively means you're adding an extra half day in Report, roughly speaking, I mean, everything I'm hearing suggests that the communications and the, the, the informal arrangements through the Usual Channels between the business managers have effectively broken down. It is very, very testy in the House of Lords and the hereditary peers, the the bill to, to abolish the hereditary peers is coming back to the Lords and it's expected obviously, that that will be one where it will be really, really heavy going.

Mark D'Arcy: If you think they're bogged down now, just wait till the hereditary peers bill hits. Yeah.

Ruth Fox: That's why I think all the steers we are being given is that it could well be, Second Reading may not happen until [00:16:00] September.

And then Committee stage, I mean, it's worth saying for listeners that the, the proceedings in the in the Lords are somewhat different to the Commons. They don't have to hold everything on a Friday, so it could be done on other days. But they're struggling for time so much that we are seeing debates on select committee reports on Friday sittings now. They're struggling for, for time. They're sitting very, very late into the evenings consistently each week. I think you might see the Government Whips applying some pressure by suggesting that possibly recess dates might be curtailed.

Mark D'Arcy: That's the favorite sabre to be rattled on these occasions.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. But it is a getting all bogged down and, and obviously this is a Private Member's Bill, the Leader of the House of Lord's responsibility is to get the Government programe through and this Bill is gonna have to be given space when and where it can.

Mark D'Arcy: And it will need a of space. Yeah. Bear in mind that this is not your, as you were saying, Paul, most Private Members Bills are fairly humdrum and often quite simple pieces of legislation. This is going to be a very big Bill indeed, with plenty of things to pick at. [00:17:00] It's going to need probably several days in Committee and therefore several days in Report. So it's gonna take up a pretty large chunk of the Lord's timetable.

Paul Evans: I'm sure you're right. But the counterweight is that in this case, funnily enough, the Lords can't say, we are doing what the Commons didn't do.

It's had a a pretty thorough going over in the Commons and that may incline the Peers to, to think, okay, well we don't have to unpick every strand of this. Let's focus on a few key issues.

It might be worth reminding ourselves what actually happens to a bill in the Lords. it goes through the same stages as we've watched it go through in the Commons.

Second Reading, Committee, Report, Third Reading. But the key question is if the Lord's amend it. Now, probably they will. There might be quite considerable pressure on them, internal pressure, not external pressure, not to. If they amend it, those amendments have to come back to the House of Commons for further agreement.

That will almost certainly be long beyond the last scheduled Private Members Bill friday in the [00:18:00] Commons. So time will have to be made available for that.

Mark D'Arcy: And the promise has been made apparently, I mean, nothing in writing, someone said to me, but they're pretty clear that the Government would provide the time, an additional Friday somewhere if necessary.

Paul Evans: Or if the Government was feeling kind, they might not force their members to come down on a Friday again and do it on another day of the week. Programmed government bills, that's timetabled bills are lucky to get an hour on Lord's amendments, however complicated the Lords amendments are. And on a Government bill, there are often literally hundreds of Lord's amendments to be considered. There won't be hundreds of amendments on this bill, but an hour, you know, making a comparison, three hours would potentially be a reasonable amount of time to consider Lord's amendments. They all have to be voted on as well, though, so that's, that's the possible stage.

The alternative scenario is that the Lord's don't amend the Bill and therefore it doesn't come back to the Commons and goes straight to Royal Assent. So there is a chance that the Bill will not reappear in the Commons and will become law in due course.

Third possibility, [00:19:00] the Lord's reject it on either Second or Third Reading or spin it out beyond Prorogation. That is to say the date of the end of the Session and it dies, it expires at the end of the Session. In any of those scenarios, the Bill is dead because the Lord's haven't agreed it. If it were a Government bill, it could then be brought back in the next Session under the Parliament Act, which basically excludes the Lords from having another go at it. They can do what they like, but it still becomes law. Theoretically, the Parliament Act could be applied to this Bill. We're looking at a scenario, which I think is very unlikely, but it would be a very complicated process to do that. It would certainly require the Government's assistance, but I think the Lords are very unlikely, unless something unexpected happens.

Again, like we've just been discussing in the Commons, they will want to give the bill fair chance on a straight up and down vote in due course, and they will be strongly aware of the fact that the democratically elected House has given the Bill a Third [00:20:00] Reading and that it's very, very unusual for the House of Lords to reject that kind of decision by the democratic House.

Ruth Fox: You're going to be in huge constitutional row territory if the, uh, if the Lord's either voted it down or delayed it and spun it out with their own procedural chicanery such that it ran out of time.

Paul Evans: Hmm. I think the last time the Lord's rejected a bill on Second Reading or Third Reading was the equalisation of the age of consent for homosexual and heterosexual sex.

Mark D'Arcy: It didn't succeed, did it?

Paul Evans: No. No, it did succeed. They rejected it first time round, and then it was all back and passed under the Parliament Act in the next Session. So the Lords did reject it. The equalisation of the age of consent. The other bill they famously rejected, but I can't immediately remember at what stage was the Hunting Bill, which again was brought back under the Parliament Act in the subsequent Session.

Ruth Fox: Another feature in the Lords will be that there'll be reports by select committees, the Delegated Powers Committee and the Constitution Committee. And I think that is one [00:21:00] area that, um, if the Lordships are gonna get their teeth into and ask the Commons to think again, that could well be an area, the, the delegated powers in the Bill, partly because there are so many of them.

Now, a constraint would be, well, there have been some amendments on this that have been rejected, both in Committee and on Report Stage. On the other hand, there were a number of amendments that weren't selected by the Speaker and weren't put to a vote. And that's again, there's going to be a difference in the, in the Lords because if a Peer wants to push their amendment to a vote, they can.

So there isn't the selection process. Listeners will be pleased to know that they're not going to have to grapple with the grouping and selection of amendments, uh, once it's going through the House of Lords in quite the same way. There, there is a, a grouping process, but, but if a Peer wants to have the House make a decision on their amendment, they, they can push it to a division, which obviously MPs have not been able to.

So it will be interesting, will we see actually more procedural shenanigans in the House of Lords than in the House of Commons?

Mark D'Arcy: Well, the Lords being a self-regulating House there, there is the scope for that. [00:22:00] And if there's a group of Peers who want to sink their remaining teeth in into this Bill and delay it they do have the ability to do that much more than individual MPs do. There isn't a Speaker out there to rule them out of order, and if Peers debate something it is in order in the House of Lords. It's the joys of a self-regulating house. My fantasy parliamentary reform, by the way, is to give the House of Commons the same standing orders as the House of Lords but it remains a fantasy.

You're basically just going back to 200 years, you know? Yeah.

Paul Evans: Back to the future, I'm going to take slight issue with Ruth here on a point of principle, which is she's very down on the delegated powers in the Bill. I'm not gonna pretend to be completely au fait with all of them, but some of them like defining the medicines and the regulatory regimes for devices and so on and such like seem to me absolutely the kind of thing that should be in delegated powers. Because MPs are not in the business of nit picking their way through fine, detailed regulations. They should agree the principles and leave the rest to delegated legislation and [00:23:00] if necessary for that delegated legislation to require the approval of both Houses.

So I'm, I'm not quite so convinced that it's, it's an outrageous example.

Ruth Fox: I've not said it's an outrageous example. I've just said there are a lot of them, and quite a lot of them are negative procedure rather than affirmative procedure. So there won't be an active requirement for both Houses to debate and, and vote on them.

Now, as you know, Paul, my my views about Delegated Legislation Committees and the, the, the affirmative scrutiny procedure for regulation for Statutory Instruments is that it's a bit of a waste of time anyway. So, you're trying to ameliorate what is already a, a, a very bad process. But I, I think there are specific regulations in the bill where there is a case for increasing the scrutiny from negative to affirmative.

And I think there are some issues about the number of Henry VIII powers and whether anything could be done with some of those. So I think what you're talking about is refinements on some of that. These are not outrageous, uh, powers in the way that we've seen in some other bills, particularly during Brexit.

Paul Evans: Indeed.

Ruth Fox: Possibly Mark, [00:24:00] just as we're talking about, um, possible amendments, just to say that there were actually some votes at the start of today's proceedings before we got onto the Third Reading debate, there was the outstanding votes at Report Stage, so a few changes were made to the Bill.

Mark D'Arcy: One or two of them were really very significant.

Some of them were relatively technical changes that were passed on the nod, but I think it was Naz Shah's amendment to ensure that people who were voluntarily refusing food and water, um, that didn't give them grounds to say that they were terminally ill and therefore could apply for an assisted death under the Bill.

And that was quite a significant change on an issue that had been worrying a lot of MPs.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I mean, this was not the closing of the anorexia loophole that Naz Shah wanted, that was a separate amendment that wasn't put to a vote. But it is, you know, person who deliberately stops eating and drinking to try and sort of hasten things along, wouldn't qualify for an assisted death.

And the second amendment that was accepted, again, as you say on, on the nod, so it wasn't put to a formal [00:25:00] division, was from the Liberal Democrat MP Munira Wilson, about palliative care. So that will require the Government to publish an assessment of palliative and end of life care within one year of the passage of the Act.

Mark D'Arcy: And that was quite a significant connected issue to this debate because one of the effects of this Bill and the debate around it has been to throw a lot of attention onto provision of palliative care, hospice care, pain management for people with terminal illnesses. And a lot of people have been making the point during the debates on this Bill that the choice of assisted death isn't a choice at all if the alternative of palliative care just isn't available in some areas.

And some people were making quite a powerful point about how there would be a Government funded service to provide an assisted death, but a lot of palliative medicine is effectively supported by charity shops.

Ruth Fox: Mm-hmm. The other amendments that interested me, Mark, was um, Kim Leadbeater had got one [00:26:00] to overturn a decision that had been made in the Public Bill Committee against her wishes, and I think against the Government's wishes.

And that was to change the way in which this Bill would commence in, in Wales, because of course the, the Welsh Parliament, the Senedd voted last year against assisted dying, and yet this Bill extends to, uh, not just England, but but also to Wales. So there have been quite a, quite a lot of debate about how the commencement provisions for this Bill should work and whether, you know, it should be applied by UK ministers or whether it should be undertaken, you know, by Welsh ministers, Welsh government and, and, and then the Welsh Senedd and they decide on the timing of it rather than ministers in Whitehall. So Kim Leadbeater tabled this amendment to essentially reverse the decision of the Public Bill Committee, which she had not supported, and she won that.

And I think that's another area, this, this whole interaction of the Bill with the devolution settlement, particularly Wales to some extent also in Scotland, in areas like ban on advertising of [00:27:00] assisted dying services and so on, there are some provisions that would affect Scotland. So I think that's an area where the House of Lords might, uh, take some quite technical detailed interest.

Mark D'Arcy: And that's where, for example, that report you mentioned by the Constitution Committee might weigh in. Yeah. Because the, the complicated evolutionary ramifications of this, I think, uh, can be re-explored by their Lordships. Yeah. And Paul, there have been people drawing quite a sharp contrast between the extensive debate around the assisted dying legislation and the much more rapid vote the Commons took on another conscience issue this week.

Uh, the decision to extend abortion rights, which came as part of the Report Stage of the Policing and Crime Bill.

Paul Evans: Yes. And it is an interesting example. and perhaps an instructive one in the sense that the Report Stage of a Government bill is fairly compressed, and these amendments can go through in short order, and that is what happens on legislation.

Not every aspect of them [00:28:00] can be debated at length or Parliament would never come to any conclusion. So it, it, it does feel unsatisfactory, uh, to some. I think what you have to put your trust in in some ways is that these things are debated. Parliament, I don't want to say it's the icing on the cake, but it's the last word on social change.

Parliament is enacting social change, which it, Parliament thinks is supported in the country in some to, to a large degree. I guess the debate over decriminalising abortion to the extent it has been, has been a, a long, you know, it is, you mentioned the 1967 Act, it's nearly 60 years since that passed. I mean, there's been a lot of debate in that intervening period about abortion and so and so forth.

Whether this is right, that it should happen so quickly, uh, with relatively little debate in the House. It's a difficult question, but it's, it's not out of order as it were. It's not unusual that this has happened in this way.

Ruth Fox: Perhaps I should explain for listeners that two [00:29:00] Labour back bench MPs brought forward amendments to decriminalise abortion.

One by the back bencher, Tonia Antoniazzi and another by Stella Creasy and it actually became quite contentious between the two of them, I think, because they were both fighting to get as much support for their particular amendments. And it's actually Tonia Antoniazzi's that has been accepted by the House and has been approved and that sort of decriminalises abortion in respect of women who bring about abortions up to term, but it doesn't decriminalise it in respect of, for example, doctors and medical practitioners. So abortion beyond the 24 weeks is still illegal for any medical practitioners be involved in.

Paul Evans: Or any other person, apart from the woman herself, the woman who's carrying the fetus. Yeah.

Mark D'Arcy: And, and this was, as you were saying, Ruth, a very rapid debate. I think it was about 45 minutes segment of a Report Stage, and people are making that contrast.

Here is, um, Parliament taking weeks and weeks and weeks [00:30:00] on one right to life issue and disposing of another aspect of the right to life in 45 minutes or so it seems to its critics.

Ruth Fox: Some of the opponents of the assisted dying bill who've made the arguments about the lack of scrutiny were quite content to vote for that amendment after 45 minutes debate and, and not much scrutiny beyond that formally. I mean, there's a lot of, a lot going on in the House of Commons in the, in the couple of weeks in the run up to that debate.

A lot of discussions and debate going on informally. Yes. But the actual proceedings were quite limited.

Paul Evans: And we've as Mark said almost at the beginning, probably the most consequential piece of social legislation since the 1967 Abortion Act. The Third Reading of the 1967 Abortion Act was agreed by a 167 to 83 votes.

That is 250 members.

Ruth Fox: Yeah.

Paul Evans: Significantly smaller house than the one that we saw today and a significantly smaller vote, although a larger majority. So these contrasts are helpful, but not [00:31:00] necessarily instructive.

Ruth Fox: Um, I think you said on the podcast before, um, Paul, when you read through the debates and reflect on what happened with that Private Members Bill, the David Steel Private Members Bill, if that was going on in the full glare of media coverage that exists today and social media and so on, there would've been public outrage. But Parliament wasn't televised. What was going on in the chamber and then in committees, it just, it wasn't seen by the public unless you were a member, somebody like Mark, a journalist going along and, and reporting it.

Mark D'Arcy: No live tweeting. Uh, yeah. And I think that one of the big changes in the Private Members Bill process that's perhaps been unremarked is that the public are watching now.

Paul Evans: I mean, just to take another example from history, the 1961 Suicide Act decriminalised suicide, which had previously been a common law crime for which you could be jailed for attempted suicide. Obviously you couldn't be jailed for successful suicide. But it also, at the same time, criminalised assisting suicide, which is what exactly all this debate has been about [00:32:00] for the last few months, and that Bill went through almost without debate, nobody opposed, it seemed like a very sensible idea to decriminalise suicide obviously. It was the end of a long campaign and, um, uh, a slightly surprisingly sort of conservative, Conservative MP who brought the bill forward. Um, but I think saying, you know, he was a, an old guard Conservative, but he brought this bill forward 'cause he regarded it as a, an abomination to prosecute people who'd assist, who'd attempted suicide.

Um, and it passed, and it has kind of parallels. Parliament is, as the social wave hits the shore and a decision is made, but there's a long buildup of things going on behind in these things. And it's true of abortion. It's true of suicide, it's true of assisted suicide or assisted death. I mean, there are huge amounts of debate going on in the country, and Parliament has to capture it and make a choice.

Mark D'Arcy: In the 1960s, there was actually a great [00:33:00] wave of social legislation. So you've got the decriminalisation of suicide, you've got the decriminalisation of homosexual acts between consenting adults over 21 as it was at the time, there was the legalisation of abortion. There was the end of flogging in prisons, there was the abolition of the death penalty, the Lord Chamberlain's right to censor the London theatre was always my favorite, which was also abolished. And I find myself wondering, taking your point, uh, is this perhaps the first of a new wave of social legislation coming? I'm not quite sure what the next iteration of it would be, but sometimes doing one thing unleashes the will to do a whole load of other things.

And I, I, I wonder if the Kim Leadbeater Bill might be a harbinger of other changes as well.

Paul Evans: You never know. And I suppose we have a more progressive minded House of Commons at the moment than we've had for a while in terms of, of its makeup. And I think that applies actually across the parties as much as within them.

Maybe it's the sixties all over again. I'm tempted to quote [00:34:00] Philip Larkin at this point. When did the sixties begin?

Mark D'Arcy: With the Beatles first LP or something?

Paul Evans: Between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP. Um. It was zeitgeist, wasn't it? So maybe, you know, I obviously we've got no way of telling, but maybe there is a change in the zeitgeist that this could be a harbinger of.

Mark D'Arcy: We'll see whether Parliament expresses it. Well, Paul, thanks very much indeed for joining us. We'll be obviously looking forward in due course to the next moves in the passage of this piece of legislation, taking a look at what will happen in detail in the House of Lords.

And incidentally, apologies, uh, listeners for a slightly lesser technical quality for this programme. For various reasons we're recording it in a slightly different way this week, but Ruth and I will be back to track the process of the Bill and of course to report on all the other goings on in Parliament in our next podcast next week.

Ruth Fox: See you then, Mark.

Mark D'Arcy: Goodbye.

Outro: Parliament Matters is produced by the Hansard Society and supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. For more information, [00:35:00] visit hansardsociety.org.uk/PM or find us on social media at Hansard Society.

← Back to Parliament Matters episode page