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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.

Ruth Fox: Coming up. As the Conservative leadership contest reaches fever pitch, should MPs alone choose their party leader?

Mark D'Arcy: It looks like the Commons will debate a bill on assisted dying on the 29th of November, but will that controversial legislation crowd out all the other private members bills this year?

Ruth Fox: And the row over the Chagos Islands exposes Parliament's weakness when it comes to scrutinising treaties with other countries.

Mark D'Arcy: But first Ruth, let's talk about the Tory leadership [00:01:00] contest. I don't really want to get into the kind of micro politics or whether MPs were too clever by half in the way they voted. And all the rest of it. The Conservative MPs have now had a series of ballots to eliminate candidates until there were just two left to present to the party membership.

And the question just resurfaces. Is it a good idea for the leader of a party, a potential prime minister, to be chosen by someone or somebody other than the MPs who will sustain their majority in the House of Commons. There are a lot of people who think that actually the Conservative Parliamentary Party should take back control, should assert that it should make the choice, not the members, because it knows the individuals better. But here we are again. All the parties now pretty much have a membership driven leadership process behind them. And, uh, it's about to unfold once again. Is it a good idea for this to work this way?

Ruth Fox: Well, on the face of it, when you think that the Conservative Party managed to have a vote in which they've ended up, with three candidates at the end, [00:02:00] roughly a third of the parliamentary party supported each of the three candidates.

So there's no clear steer from MPs to the party members about who they want. On the face of it, you'd say, given the shenanigans that clearly took place in the last two rounds, you know, James Cleverley would seem to be surging ahead after party conference, got many more votes than expected in the round earlier this week.

And then, he lost votes in the next round, having been thought, you know, be assured to be going through to the members, lost votes, and you've ended up with Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch going through. And you have to say, well, if the idea is that the MPs are the people that should be making this choice, then the way they've behaved this week doesn't give you an awful lot of confidence.

Mark D'Arcy: It's not a great advertisement, no.

Ruth Fox: On the other hand, you can make the argument, well, they were only doing this because they were trying to stitch up who would go through to the membership precisely because they haven't got the final choice. And it's all gone horribly wrong. Or an alternative view is it's gone horribly right because this is actually what the parliamentary party did want.

And, you know, [00:03:00] was it shenanigans on James Cleverley's side or was it shenanigans, for example, on Robert Jenrick's side?

Mark D'Arcy: Well, you can find evidence on both sides of this question now, if you look back at recent Conservative leadership contests. Some have gone to the members, some have been stitched up.

Rishi Sunak famously, of course, managed to engineer it so that no one was nominated against him after the implosion of Liz Truss's premiership. And, uh, the Conservative Party may be thinking to itself, that didn't turn out so well. So, you can cherry pick your evidence either way on this one. But there are thoughts that there's a kind of a halfway house here.

That you could have a further ballot of MPs. Now you've got down to two candidates.

Ruth Fox: This is the Graham Brady scenario.

Mark D'Arcy: This is the Graham Brady scenario, the former chair of the 1922 committee, who oversaw more of these leadership elections than any rational human being would ever want to. Good for book sales, though, I gather.

Yeah, good for his book sales, I'm sure. Graham Brady thought that there should be a final ballot so that the two candidates who are presented to the membership would go before the membership with a clear indication of which one of [00:04:00] them the MPs liked because the classic example here is taken of Ian Duncan Smith who didn't have a majority of the Conservative MPs behind him when he was elected in 2001, and whose leadership was never stable because there was constantly a kind of febrile undercurrent of plotting against him the whole time and he eventually fell before he ever got the chance to contest a general election himself. All those articles that you used to read about beware the march of IDS. I see what they did there.

We never really tested his ability to lead his party into a general election, was never tested, MPs lost confidence in him. And Michael Howard was installed without a ballot, and at least didn't implode. You can approach these things from either direction, but the thought of a leader who is not backed by their direct troops in the Commons, it seemed to be something that's pretty dangerous for a party.

Ruth Fox: So under that scenario, for Graham's idea, you would have, before it goes to the members now, you'd have another ballot. Later this week early next week and MPs would have to choose Badenoch or [00:05:00] Jenrick And then those two would still go to the membership but the members would at least know who the preference of the parliamentary party was.

The scenario there, of course, is that the members voting in opposition to what parliamentary party wants and you've still got exactly the same problem.

Mark D'Arcy: Well I suppose that's party democracy in action at that point and you've, you know, the MPs have to grin and bear it but at least they can't complain that the party members didn't actually know who they preferred.

Ruth Fox: I mean I understand the arguments of those who say that we shouldn't hand this over, particularly for a party in government when of course the leader becomes prime minister, but we shouldn't hand this over to the party membership. But I do have the sort of feeling that that ship has sailed a bit and it's quite difficult to take back from party members that power, given that, as a party member, there's not an awful lot else you get out of being a party member.

And, you know, you are treated as a sort of get out the vote machine. You're cannon fodder. Yeah, you're cannon fodder, you're the sort of the ants that are expected to go out and knock on doors and deliver leaflets and so on. It's all a bit [00:06:00] unrelenting. To be then told that the democratic choice of who you want to be led by should be handed over to, well, What are they now?

121 people? Yeah.

Mark D'Arcy: 121 Conservative MPs. Especially if you're in one of those constituencies where a last minute candidate was imposed upon you. Or a very limited choice was granted to you by the party headquarters. You may be thinking, the party wants my money. It wants my activism. It doesn't want my opinions.

What am I there for?

Ruth Fox: And the wider point here is that because political parties have become so much smaller than they used to be, there is a greater divergence between the views of the membership and the parliamentary party. And rather than perhaps focusing so much on how do we take the power off our members, perhaps there needs to be a wider debate in political parties about how do we broaden our membership and how do we bring more people in so that our political parties are more reflective, more representative of average voters across the country, rather than, frankly, sometimes quite factional, extreme right, extreme left, cliques and sometimes cults.

Mark D'Arcy: Absolutely, [00:07:00] because let's face it, at the moment, to be an active member of a political party is a pretty eccentric thing in the eyes of wider society. You tend to be seen as some kind of weirdo or obsessive and sometimes it's even true.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, well, when you look at what the Conservative Parliamentary Party has done in its, in its votes this week. The normal person in the street's probably thinking why don't you just vote for the one person you think would make the best leader rather than the sort of game playing about lending your votes to other candidates and trying to fix a result.

I think most normal people looking at this would just think this is more political game playing at Westminster.

Mark D'Arcy: Absolutely it's too Game of Thrones and not enough the Senate of Ancient Rome. There's not a proper sense of well... Don't go too far. Et tu Brute. And talking of, uh, politicians and their responsibility to their voters.

There's the interesting question of Rosie Duffield, the Labour MP for Canterbury, who, having been elected in July, like all the other MPs in the Commons, has quite suddenly resigned her party whip and will now sit as an independent MP. And [00:08:00] that seems a pretty short interval in which to go from being an enthusiastic candidate to being totally disillusioned.

She fired off a fairly ferocious broadside at Sir Keir Starmer, accusing him of amongst other things letting her hang out to dry over her views on the trans issue and becoming disconnected from the Labour Party and all sorts of other stuff that was gleefully quoted by Conservative MPs all over the place.

But there is this question, should an MP who's elected under one coloured rosette be allowed to change parties without reference to the electorate? Because the classical position in the British constitution is, yes, you can, you're elected as an individual, not as a, a mere sort of party stooge.

Ruth Fox: Yes, I mean, this has been a long running debate for decades, hasn't it?

If an MP decides to resign their party whip, should they be required to step down and fight a by election? And so the electorate can have a, another opportunity to choose the candidate from the party of their choice. I think it's fair to say Rosie Duffield has been semi detached from the Labour Party for a while, so in some ways it's not [00:09:00] a great surprise.

It was perhaps more a question of when than if, but the fact that it's within less than three months is pretty extraordinary. So you can imagine her local party and her constituents are potentially quite annoyed. It's not clear what her strategy is on this, because she's now going to be even less influential, she wasn't particularly influential before,

Mark D'Arcy: but yeah.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. So, you know, difficult for her to get much in terms of engagement with ministers, I would have thought going forward on issues in affecting her constituency, but we're back to this whole debate about the role of MPs. Are they representatives? Are they delegates? Uh, you know, should they have to step down so that the constituents can have another go at voting for somebody else?

Should it be a sort of a a recall process, so that if, for example, 10 percent of your electorate decide to recall you, then you have to have a by election or should it just be automatic that if you want to change parties or just step down to being independent, [00:10:00] then you've got to resign and fight the by election as they used to, you know, a century or so ago in, um, when MPs used to become ministers, take ministerial posts, they used to have to resign and compete in a by election.

Mark D'Arcy: Sometimes they lost. I think it happened to Winston Churchill.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. He lost in Manchester and then got back in, in Dundee, I think it was.

Mark D'Arcy: Famously would always close the curtains on his railway carriage as it passed through Oldham, I think it was, but, yeah. There is an interesting question here.

First of all, how does this process work? If you were to have an automatic disqualification from sitting in the Commons if you renounced or broke with your party. Could it only be if you did it, or could it also be if the party expelled you? Because that would give party managers an enormous amount of power over their troops if it were to work that way as well.

The threat of expulsion might mean the loss of your seat and off you go. And it does remove one of the safety valves, which is that if MPs are sufficiently unhappy with their party, they can walk. And that helps keep their party going. ready to listen to them.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, well I think you mentioned on a podcast previously, Mark, when this was last [00:11:00] discussed in the Commons, I think it was a private member's bill from Anthony Magnell.

Mark D'Arcy: Anthony Magnell, yes, who was the Conservative MP for Totnes in Devon, who had succeeded Sarah Walliston, who was the Conservative who chaired the Health Select Committee. She had switched, first of all, to the independent group, a short lived attempt to form a new party, and then ultimately ended up in the Liberal Democrats, so she actually changed allegiance twice.

Yeah. And his view was that if you changed your party label, you should go back to the electorate. And he was opposed by Steve Baker, Conservative backbencher, famously rebel commander of the Brexiteers for some years during the sort of high Brexit rebellion period in Parliament, and Steve Baker argued, I thought quite convincingly, that you needed the ability to walk away and take on your own party, and we've actually got a clip here of what he said, which is well worth listening to, because it's a statement of how he thinks the party system should function in the Commons.

Steve Baker: Members of Parliament, for all [00:12:00] we're all elected on a party ticket, for all the duties we owe to the public via our party, it remains absolutely essential to the freedom and health of this nation that we are able to walk away from our party and seek to destroy it. Though I can tell my whip I have no plans to do so.

Ruth Fox: Another point that Steve made in that debate was he quoted one of the other independent MPs, Gavin Shuker, who was a Labour MP who'd stepped down during the Corbyn years and, and joined this new independent party, who argued that this is a sort of form of political hygiene, that if your party leaves you rather than you leaving the party, what choice do you have?

You can continue under a party label that you no longer think fits your, your values or your principles, or you leave that party and either step as an independent as he did or go to another party. But in a period of political volatility and where there's been takeovers almost of political parties, it's an important measure that as you say, the whips [00:13:00] can't effectively just get rid of you.

Mark D'Arcy: This has happened, as you say, quite a lot. There was the discomfort that a lot of, uh, Labour regulars felt in the Corbyn years, which culminated in some of them leaving to form the, as I say, short lived independent group. There was the equal and perhaps even greater discomfort that a lot of pro European conservatives felt under Boris Johnson, which culminated in quite a number of them being expelled and unable to stand.

If you look over the Atlantic, you can see the discomfort of a number of regular Republicans under Donald Trump. Although an awful lot of them seem to be in the process of selling their soul there and who knows where it may come next. You've already seen some Labour MPs being so unhappy with Keir Starmer, and particularly on the Winter Fuel Allowance vote, that they've ended up having the whips suspended from them.

And it's entirely possible that some of those MPs may end up joining Jeremy Corbyn's independent group or something like that, rather than coming back into the Labour fold. So there are plenty of changes afoot. And I think it would be very damaging. to give party managers just, [00:14:00] in effect, some kind of right to expel people not just from the party, but from Parliament itself.

Because that would make party discipline a very onerous thing.

Ruth Fox: I do think we shouldn't underestimate how rare this is. I mean, within three months is pretty extraordinary. So having trawled through the records, I mean, Paul Marsden was a Labour MP who defected to the Liberal Democrats in the early months after the 2001 general election.

Then re-ratted. And, uh, there's been a number of cases in Northern Ireland, but I mean, Northern Ireland politics are another country altogether. Quite complex issues underlying those decisions to step down. Yeah, the great Gerry Fitt, I think, a couple of times. 1979, I think 1970. But, um, yeah, Christopher Mayhew, who was a Labour MP who defected to the Liberals between the two 1974 elections, one in February, one in October, he went in the summer.

But that's about it. I mean, other than that, you're looking sort of some defections 12 months or more into a parliament. So this is pretty [00:15:00] unusual.

Mark D'Arcy: This is quite a rapid running of the four minute mile up the road to Damascus.

Ruth Fox: With that Mark, should we take a short break and come back and talk about private members' bills, the assisted dying bill, we've got a bit of news on that.

Mark D'Arcy: Interesting developments too on the climate and nature bill.

Plus of course, uh, the whole vexed question of what Parliament will say about the Chagos Islands.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, so we'll just take a short break because, well, we've got to pay the bills to be blunt. So, uh, take a short break and we'll be back in a minute.

Mark D'Arcy: And we're back, and Ruth, we now know when the first private member's bill is going to be debated in the House of Commons. It's going to be on Friday the 29th of November, and the chances are that the bill that will be debated on that day, because its promoter won the top position in the annual ballot for this, will be a bill on assisted dying.

So, a very dramatic start to the process, because that is, to put it mildly, very controversial.

Ruth Fox: Yes. So, um, one of the things that happened whilst Parliament was in [00:16:00] recess was that the Cabinet Secretary Simon Case issued a letter to Government Ministers on behalf of the Prime Minister saying it would be a free vote for MPs and obviously Ministers on this, so collective Cabinet responsibility would not apply.

But he urged that they should not get involved in the public debate, which I have to say, I think is going to be quite difficult because

Mark D'Arcy: Especially for the health secretary.

Ruth Fox: Especially for the health secretary. I think also for the law officers as well, who are going to be asked their views on some of the legal technicalities I would have thought around the drafting issues and so on.

And of course, at a constituency level, almost impossible because every church group, every health group, every pensioner group, they're all going to want to know the views of their MPs on this issue. So, it is going to be a really huge moment, I think, in this Parliament, in this session, for MPs. And I think it's actually going to be quite an important test of these new MPs.

This is a new House of Commons. We don't actually know what the views of the majority of these MPs are. There's a bit of a gap. Assumptions are being made that they are more likely to [00:17:00] favour this kind of legislation, but we don't know, so this is going to be a test. But I think it's also going to be a test of the civility and culture of the House, um, on this issue, how the debate is conducted.

Mark D'Arcy: It's a very new House of Commons, more than half the MPs are newly elected MPs, and some of them I think might possibly see a test of their understanding of Commons etiquette, uh, coming out right away here.

Ruth Fox: And also commons procedure because one of the things with private members bills is because there's a limited amount of time, bills can get through with very little scrutiny and bills that are popular can also be thwarted because of procedural obstacles.

So it's, it's quite a complex thing that happens with private members bills in terms of, you know, the procedural hurdles and how these play out and the politics of it on, private member's bill Fridays, sitting Fridays. And I think one of the things for this debate is surely that we want MPs to make a decision and the bill to be done on the basis of their opinions rather than the procedural hurdles thwarting it or getting it through.

Mark D'Arcy: This is an issue that an awful lot of people [00:18:00] care a very great deal about. And you must always remember that when there's a debate of this kind of magnitude, an awful lot of people will be watching online, you know, or on BBC Parliament to see the debate and see how MPs handle it and their MP in particular, perhaps.

And so I think it would be quite wrong if this just fell because of some procedural backflip. Make a decision for heaven's sake. That's what you're there for. Have a vote. Either vote this through or kill it in the light of day for good reasons that you've stated, not just drone on talking, telling humorous anecdotes until time runs out.

Let's see if we can take a decision and that will take parliamentary time and probably more parliamentary time than would normally be allocated to a private members bill, which is where the question of whether the government will weigh in and provide a bit more time than would normally be given becomes important.

So let's just have a quick look at the procedural obstacles facing Kim Leadbetter's bill. First of all, she's got to get it [00:19:00] through second reading. Now, opponents of the bill could just talk and talk and use up the time unless she can muster a hundred plus MPs to support a motion that the question be now put, a closure motion as it's known in the trade, to stop the debate.

If you win that, and then win the subsequent second reading vote, then the bill goes through its second reading and can be sent off to to a public bill committee for consideration in detail, so that's the very first hurdle. Then you have the very interesting question of what happens when it gets to a public bill committee because that can be quite tangled as well.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, and I think this is where the government may have to weigh in because there can only be one public bill committee at a time for private members bills. So other ballot bills that are in the queue will be waiting behind it. So a decision will have to be made should another public bill committee be set up to enable that taxi rank of PMBs to sort of drive off for consideration [00:20:00] on the committee corridor.

Mark D'Arcy: Because if they don't do that, you could have a very limited amount of time for Committee proceedings and all the other private members bills to take place, especially if this one is particularly dragged out, will they, for example, as they do for public bill committees on government legislation, be allowed to take witnesses?

I mean, could you imagine the scene where the Archbishop of Canterbury is invited in to give his views? Or you could take religious figures, you could take medical experts, you could take all sorts of campaigners for and against, and that would take probably several sittings right on its own. before you got into the very considerable and tangled detail of this thing.

Ruth Fox: And it's worth saying that that is not the norm for private members bills. So a decision would have to be made that in fact the House wants to do that, and an instruction therefore the committee should, should take evidence. And you say that will then add to the time that's taken up at public bill committee stage.

How long that, Public Bill Committee scrutiny goes on for, I mean, it could go on, you know, lots and lots of amendments could be, could be tabled, it could go on for days. Might there be attempts to [00:21:00] suggest that actually this should be debated not by a committee of, I don't know, 17, 20, 25? potentially even 30 plus members of the house, but should actually be kicked into the committee of the whole house.

So it should go into the chamber to be discussed by all MPs so that they can all participate. Government won't like that because that would take up government time, but you can see that there might be some pressure. for that from some MPs. The other question is who's going to appoint the members of the, of the public bill committee?

How are they going to be made up? So for a government bill, obviously the whips negotiate and nominate the members to the committee of selection, I think it is, isn't it? Who then formally put the motion to the house. to appoint members of public bill committees for private members bills. As we heard on a previous episode, when we talked to Wayne David about his, his strategic litigation, private members bill, he had some input into that.

He was able to suggest names to the whips. There was a sort of a negotiation and a discussion and whilst the whips might formally do the nomination process, he had input from supporters of the bill. [00:22:00] people who were volunteering to serve on the committee. So how's that going to work?

Mark D'Arcy: Well you'd certainly expect voices against the bill to be included on the committee.

Not necessarily 50 percent, but there'd have to be critics.

Background: Yeah.

Mark D'Arcy: And critical voices in there. But there'll have to be that balance. And there'll have to be some level of balance in there. That again could mean that you see the whole thing being spun out for much longer than is normal for a private members bill, public bill committee.

Ruth Fox: Yeah.

Mark D'Arcy: Ponderous title for a start.

Ruth Fox: PMB PBC dare I say.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, I mean it could roll on for several weeks and all the while you've got all the other people who've got private members bills fuming waiting for the moment when they can actually get their bill into committee and that could be quite some time away and they could face a bit of a sort of very rapid sprint to try and get their bills through.

Okay, let's assume that the bill finally grinds its way through committee at some point. It then goes back to the floor of the Commons for what's known in the trade as Report Stage, which is where all MPs can move amendments and try and make detailed changes to the bill. And this, for [00:23:00] me, is the moment of maximum danger if people try to stop the bill by procedural means, because this is the point at which you can bury the bill under a great avalanche of amendments that have to be debated, and there just wouldn't be the time to get it through.

Again, you have this facility to allow 100 MPs to vote, to move a question, and get it voted on, and then you can move on to the next one. But if there are enough amendments down that have to be debated, you'd find you're taking up enormous amounts of time voting. People can also string out the process of voting, for example.

Ruth Fox: There aren't the normal steps. Speech, speech time limits in the chamber that for MPs that would normally be the case in debates on, on government bills, for example.

Mark D'Arcy: Like just a minute, the chair will police you if there's a deviation, repetition or irrelevance, but otherwise you can just keep on talking.

So there are all sorts of ways in which that debate can be strung out. So you could imagine a situation where there were five or six different groups of amendments and you'd only managed to get through two of them in the time allocated. And then the bill just runs out of steam in normal times, [00:24:00] and that would be that, it would go to the back of the queue for debating time and never be seen again.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, and there's been a lot of discussion about, is the government going to grant time for this bill to help it get through, sort of putting its finger on the scales. And I think it's at report stage where, if it's going to happen, it's probably going to happen there. Because they could say, well, you know, it goes through on one of the last six sitting Fridays where bills coming through at report stage will have priority.

It's considered there, it runs out of time and the government therefore makes time for its report stage scrutiny to be completed. But again, you know, that's where the government is definitively putting its finger on the scales.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, the government would clearly have to do something that's outside of the normal rules.

Pass some motion saying, notwithstanding what it says in standing orders, we're going to give an extra bit of time and we're going to schedule a debate at this particular moment in in the Commons week, and if necessary, there'd be the implicit threat that they keep on doing this until all the amendments have been done so you get a vote. Now, Sir Keir Starmer's line on this has been that the Commons ought to make a decision on this. He hasn't said [00:25:00] he's in favor of it.

He hasn't said he's against it. He says he thinks there ought to be a decision and that kind of implies a willingness to provide the time. He was directly asked whether he was going to do this at Prime Minister's question time and dodged the question. But there is a kind of implication that the government would be willing to find the time.

And I think in some of the great sort of social reform bills of the 1960s, they organised sittings on a Wednesday morning, outside of what were then the normal sitting hours, in order to provide a bit of time for some legislation.

Ruth Fox: So, um, my colleague Matthew here at the Society, he's been researching this.

And we're going to produce a briefing paper around, uh, this on when Kim Leadbetter's bill emerges. And he's been looking at it, so the death penalty bill in 1967, for example. Now that wasn't a ballot bill, it was a presentation bill. Another form of private member's bill to look up

Mark D'Arcy: Almost the lowest form of legislative life.

You know, an MP produces a bill that's put there to be debated, no time allocated to it, no speeches, no nothing. It just sort of plops onto a pile of paper.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, but that, that managed to get through. And we will, [00:26:00] um, we'll put a link in the show notes to our guide to private members bills, which explains all the sort of procedural, these procedural points and the differences between these different types of private members bill.

But that bill got to report stage and it had that one day on the, the, uh, PMB time, and then the government provided additional time for it to be considered. As you say, they did sort of mark a precedent of setting up special committee arrangements on Wednesday mornings to enable, this was the days and they had different sitting times, so they could do that, but they had, I think, about a dozen or so, Wednesday mornings where they considered it for two and a half hours.

Mark D'Arcy: And that eventually meant that the opponents ran out of steam and the bill got through.

Ruth Fox: The bill got through. Finally approved in the Commons 200 to 98. But that shows you less, you know, about less than half the MPs actually took part in that final vote.

Mark D'Arcy: But it does suggest that the leader of the House, Lucy Powell, may have to be a bit creative in finding ways to get the debate on this actually finished.

Or alternatively decide that they're [00:27:00] going to let the fates and the rules of procedure decide this bill's outcome and possibly allow it to be killed without intervention. An interesting decision looming for the government on that. And incidentally, Ruth, I just wanted to mention another private member's bill that I think is going to produce some quite interesting action in this parliament.

It's being proposed by by the Liberal Democrat MP, Ros Savage, who's third in the ballot. So on day three, sometime in December, I imagine she might get the second reading debate for her bill, which is the Climate and Nature Bill. Now this is the product of a campaigning group called Zero Hour, who've been pressing for a big all singing, all dancing piece of legislation to move this country to net zero carbon emissions as part of the effort to fight climate change.

And it's almost the opposite in the, in the kind of private members bill spectrum. It's at the opposite end to the assisted dying bill, which is a very specific proposal on a matter that goes right across party lines. This is an attempt almost to take complete [00:28:00] control of government policy and dedicate all government policy, practically everywhere, and dedicate it to the aim of securing net zero emissions from the UK in pursuit of climate change. So it's things like, um, setting a concrete plans to get to net zero at a rate consistent with limiting global warming to 1. 5 degrees or thereabouts, reducing the carbon emissions involved in UK imports, which it seems to imply some sort of carbon tariff on carbon heavy products coming into this country, cutting methane emissions, ending the use of fossil fuels as soon as possible.

I mean, the implications of how this would work are massive and permeate almost every aspect of government policy. So it's a fascinating debate to have.

Ruth Fox: But I'm guessing the government's not going to support the bill.

Mark D'Arcy: You got it. It's a fascinating debate to have. But I can't imagine any government of any colour at any time in our history being prepared to have a legislative straitjacket put around all its activities in one fell [00:29:00] swoop by a piece of legislation like this.

Ruth Fox: But this is one of the functions of private members bills. It's not just about getting your bill onto the statute book, you know, getting royal assent and it becoming law.

Of course, MPs would love that, but it's also about enabling you to have the debate about sometimes the issues that both the government and sometimes the opposition would rather you didn't. It's a way of creating that space for backbenchers to have that open debate and discussion. And obviously Ros is, is she third in the ballot?

Mark D'Arcy: Third in the ballot, which means she'd definitely get a second reading debate. And that would give her a chance to have a very good exploration of this issue and press ministers for some kind of response. Because one of the disturbing things, and many disturbing things, about the last election campaign was how little issues like this were really explored.

And there is a climate crisis out there. Look at the pictures coming in as we're recording. From Florida, the latest hurricane raging through. Look at all the issues about over hot summers. Look at all the issues [00:30:00] about the collapse of agriculture in sub Saharan Africa and the movement of refugees from those things.

All that kind of stuff. We hardly ever talked about it. This is a chance at least to look at that. And say that something ought to be done. Now maybe if you, if you, if you don't believe that there is a climate crisis, you can make that argument. But let's have the argument, rather as we were saying, about the um, Assisted Dying Bill.

Let's at least have the discussion. Surely that is what Parliament is for. You can be in favour of this bill or you can be against it. But the issue just should not be ignored.

Ruth Fox: Well that's why I think these are going to be important for the reputation of Parliament because the Assisted Dying Bill is going to mean that so much attention is on the process and the procedure.

Certain campaign groups will of course be paying attention to it each, each session on the sitting Fridays but it bypasses a lot of the public. This Assisted Dying Bill will capture public attention in a way that some of the other private members bill issues don't on a big scale. big scale. And I think, you know, it's quite possible that I'm afraid the commons procedures could be found under pressure and [00:31:00] wanting here.

And I'd look to the Modernisation Committee in the new Modernisation Committee in the House of Commons, that actually this could be one of the issues that they need to pick up on their agenda. Hence our Society has a set of proposals for reform dating back to 2010. I kid you not. So I think my proposals that I drafted then with some assistance for some former clerks at that time, uh, started it's still live and um, it's an area interestingly of the legislative process that has not been reformed much at all and this is going to be a test and they could be found wanting and under pressure.

Mark D'Arcy: Well certainly if you were attempting to draw up a set of rules on a blank sheet of parchment for the conduct of private members bills, you'd never come up with a system like the weird and wonderful and counterintuitive, some would say completely illogical system that Parliament is now lumbered with and it is an area ripe for a considerable tidying up and reform exercise.

But also, I mean, just as with assisted dying, I think there will be an awful lot of people watching the debates on the Climate and Nature Bill, very concerned about the issue, who [00:32:00] won't want to see the debates spun out with a lot of sort of jocular time wasting, who will want to see some answers and some genuine thinking being put out there.

And talking about the trade offs that are involved in getting us to net zero, if we can even get there, talking about the state of British nature. All those things deserve to be examined in Parliament a lot more, frankly, than they are being.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. So that's the gauntlet thrown down, Mark, to our MPs. Can they rise to the challenge?

We'll see.

Mark D'Arcy: Absolutely, we'll be back in a moment.

Ruth Fox: Westminster is always buzzing with political drama and rumours. But whatever the daily gossip or the latest crisis, lawmaking and parliamentary scrutiny carries on regardless. So it's crucial to stay informed about what's happening in Parliament each week. That's why we've launched a new Parliament Matters Bulletin. Our weekly analysis of what's coming up in Westminster as a complement to this podcast. Our approach is inspired by the informative articles Mark used to write each week for the BBC, which many of you have told us you miss. [00:33:00] So if you want to know what's coming up in Parliament, sign up to our Hansard Society newsletter to get the bulletin straight to your inbox every weekend.

You go to hansardsociety.org.uk and click on the newsletter button in the menu bar at the top and fill in your email details. It'll only take a minute. Again, that's hansardsociety.org.Uk

Well, we're back, Mark, and, uh, it's Chagos time. So, uh, Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform Party in Parliament, is discovering that parliamentary procedure is not all that it might be, and, uh, he's calling this week for a debate and a vote, no less, on the Government's decision to deal that apparently has been struck with the Mauritian Government in relation to the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean and the related arrangement with the US UK military base there in Diego Garcia, a strategically important location for both militaries.

But he's discovered, as quite a number of opposition MPs are discovering, that actually [00:34:00] the procedures to get agreements, treaties with other countries scrutinised are actually quite difficult for MPs.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, this takes us back to a piece of legislation passed in the dying days of the previous Labour government, the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill, known in the trade as CRAG, which formalised the rules around parliamentary consideration of treaties, which had previously been known as the Ponsonby Rules, dated back to I think the 1920s or 30s.

Ponsonby rules required a treaty to be laid on the table for 21 days to see whether anyone objected to it. I mean, the difficulty governments have with parliamentary involvement in treaties is that they can't just go back and renegotiate them at the drop of a hat if some MP thinks they don't like a particular clause.

So there is a problem about attempting to have an extra party in the negotiations, if you like. But Parliament doesn't usually get any sort of pre consultation and negotiation of these treaties, either. In other countries, there are debates which sort of mandate the country's negotiators [00:35:00] to go forth and here are our red lines and up with this we will not put.

But we don't have that very much in this country. There was a little bit of sort of pre debate before European summits once upon a time, but petered out a long time ago, and nowadays treaties just arrive and there really isn't a great deal that Parliament can do about them unless they're considered so unacceptable that the Parliament wants to repudiate them.

It's like a lot of things. It's either accept it all or reject it all, and there's no shades of gray in the choice available.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I mean it's, treaties are sort of part of that, um, set of decisions and processes that the government has got under what's called prerogative powers, that the ability of the executive to lead on this.

Mark D'Arcy: The Prime Minister in effect wielding the powers that used to belong to the monarch.

Ruth Fox: Yes. And hence, you know, as you say, you know, it's the government that's negotiating it and then informs parliament and essentially under the Crag Act, MPs can raise objections, try and delay the ratification of a treaty and essentially that's at the point at which the government has already signed the treaty but it wants now to [00:36:00] bring it into force.

So the House of Commons trying to delay it but the procedure is incredibly weak. I mean the Government can simply lay a statement before the House and try and proceed. It can, you know, wait another 21 days and see what MPs then do. This has never been tested, so it's not clear what would happen if MPs did try to delay things in this way.

But there's no way to actively prevent the Government doing so, and particularly when it's got the majority it's got, it's really got nothing to fear.

Mark D'Arcy: I mean, the main point of parliamentary traction on these things is if you need legislation to implement the terms of a treaty, which has happened with a number of the post Brexit European treaties that we've had, and it looks as if there's going to have to be legislation to deal with the sovereignty aspects of handing the Chagos Islands over to Mauritius.

So there will need to be a bill at some point, and MPs will get a vote on that bill. Now what happens if MPs were to, for example, vote down that bill or materially change the terms so that they were no longer in line with the treaty? Again, as you say, untested [00:37:00] territory. But all the same, there is some moment of parliamentary leverage there eventually.

It's quite interesting to watch this because, you know, suddenly everyone in the Commons seems to be a world expert on the Chagos Islands and people who last week couldn't tell Diego Garcia from Jerry Garcia are suddenly talking about the vital strategic importance of a base they'd almost certainly never heard of.

Ruth Fox: Well it was just me a minute ago! Yeah, I mean, it's also, it's interesting to see the opposition benches again, we've talked about this on the podcast before, the number of them that are suddenly had a conversion to the merits of parliamentary scrutiny of treaties, when in the last Parliament, the Conservatives, now in opposition, then in Government, didn't want MPs to have time to debate, for example, the Rwanda Treaty, which also, there was a bill, but there was also a treaty, and they did, they didn't want MPs to debate that. They denied MPs the opportunity to debate the Australian Trade Agreement, which is a form of treaty. They said, well, you know, this is subject to availability of parliamentary time, and we haven't got any.

And [00:38:00] they didn't want MPs to have that opportunity for a debate on a positive motion to express their views. So, what goes around comes around, I'm afraid, and they had the power to change these procedures and they didn't. And we are therefore back in, you know, going round in circles.

Mark D'Arcy: This is the thing that always gets me.

Oppositions always want these things to be changed, they become governments and then start doing exactly the things they used to complain about, while governments always resist these things being changed, become oppositions and suddenly want to change it all. I think it just makes you all the more cynical.

Ruth Fox: Yes, and this is the perils, I'm afraid, of parliamentary reform and why it is so difficult to make progress. I'm going to be, I'm afraid, a running theme of this podcast for the next next few months.

Mark D'Arcy: Indeed, until one day we get our full slate of fantasy parliamentary reforms because I'm the sort of person who has fantasy parliamentary reforms.

Anyway, speaking of parliamentary leverage, an interesting proposal seems to be gathering shape in the Commons at the moment to give Parliament a bit more ability to scrutinise when government has to spend large sums of money very [00:39:00] urgently. I think it's partly inspired by some of the things that went on during the Covid crisis, for example.

And this idea comes from Meg Hillier. Dame Meg Hillier was the chair of the Public Accounts Committee in the last Parliament. She's now chairing the Treasury Select. Committee in this one, Labour MP of course. And, um, she's proposing that there should be a kind of urgency committee of senior parliamentarians who when a government suddenly has to rush off and spend enormous sums of money on something can at least take a look at it and perhaps recommend how parliament should deal with it.

Uh, now this is to create an entirely new parliamentary committee with, frankly, an entirely new function. And I don't know whether the government, in the middle of changing its central machinery at the moment, is going to be able to easily get to grips with all this. But it's just quite an interesting idea to make sure that Parliament does its job of monitoring how the taxpayers money is spent, when things are difficult, when the going is tough, rather than just having to wave things through in a moment of urgency.

Ruth Fox: Well, it could be another one of those [00:40:00] topics for the Modernisation Committee. Absolutely. And, um, and talking of Meg, we've just published this week, a briefing, sort of 14 things to look out for in this session across the autumn and winter through to Christmas. And one of the things we've highlighted in that is who's going to be chair of the Liaison Committee of the chairs of select committees.

And I actually thought when we were drafting it, actually Meg's probably a candidate for that, and if she gets that kind of position, then thinking strategically about the structures of committees and subcommittees and other possible committees that might be created would be something that would fall under the purview of liaison, possibly.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, indeed, and of course, there's another chair vacancy waiting to be filled as well, which is the Intelligence and Security Committee. Now, this isn't a standard parliamentary select committee. This is a committee of senior parliamentarians that's appointed by the Prime Minister to monitor the activities of the security service, and it reports to the prime minister rather than to Parliament, although the Prime Minister normally, but not necessarily always publishes their reports.

[00:41:00] So very, very important body. That provides, how can I put it, a quantum of solace to some of those who are worried about the security services running out of control. So, that's another key appointment that still has to be made, and there'll need to be probably a senior Labour backbench figure, ideally an ex minister, someone who's a Privy Counsellor.

Step forward Dame Meg, but doubtless other candidates as well. And this is an appointment that probably needs to be made relatively soon, you'd have thought.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, and one of the criticisms in previous Parliaments has been that the government's delayed setting up the Intelligence and Security Committee, and then has delayed responding to reports.

And when you think about the sort of the international situation, you really need that set up sooner rather than later. I'm kicking myself, that wasn't one of our, one of our our things in our briefing. It could have been 15 things to look out for. Didn't think of that one. So with that Mark, shall we take a break and when we come back we're going to have a look at some questions from listeners that have come in over the recess period.

Quite a number of [00:42:00] questions and people have been really complimentary about the podcast. It's really, really great that you're enjoying it. But just a thought to all our listeners if you are enjoying the podcast, if your organisation or if you know of anybody who might be interested in sponsoring Parliament Matters, get in touch with me here at the Hansard Society, because we'd love to hear from you.

We have to put this podcast on a sustainable footing. So we're looking, as all podcasts are, for sponsors. And if you're able, if you're enjoying it, please do donate to the society so that we can pay those bills. The price of a coffee a month from 500 of our listeners, which would be just a small proportion of the number out there who are enjoying Parliament Matters, would cover the cost for a year.

So think about it, cup of coffee once a month for the next 12 months and we'll keep Parliament Matters on the road. So with that, we'll take a break and we'll be back to answer your questions.

Mark D'Arcy: And we're back. So Ruth, what do our listeners want to know?

Ruth Fox: Well, Mark, we've had a question from Suzanne Bold from Patriotic Millionaires UK. And I think [00:43:00] actually, I'm just mentioning this because I, just for Suzanne, she's actually asked a question before as well. But we're going to hold this over, Suzanne.

Your question's about the budget process and about some of the detailed scrutiny issues. So we're going to come back to that in a couple of weeks time. when the budget happens at the end of this month. But, um, we've had another budget related question from Matthew Collins, who wants to know, as part of Labour's plan to clean up politics, do you think the Chancellor will keep the budget under wraps until presenting it to the House?

Or has the Hugh Dalton shaped ship well and truly sailed now, and will we know all we need to know in the previous day's media? I think we should probably start out, not least for our international listeners, of explaining what the Hugh Dalton shaped ship is. Yes,

Mark D'Arcy: Hugh Dalton was the Chancellor under Clement Attlee and he accidentally mentioned to a journalist as he was on his way to Parliament to present his budget.

He did the traditional photo call where you wave the ministerial box containing your budget in front of 11 Downing Street, the [00:44:00] residence of the Chancellor. And he then foolishly answered a question. And because he had broken the confidentiality of the budget and mentioned market sensitive information to a journalist before mentioning it before Parliament, he had to resign.

And that was his political career at the top table pretty much done after that. Nowadays, the details of what's coming up in a budget are normally telegraphed fairly well in advance. I mean, my standard procedure in the week before a budget was always to read the Sunday Times. And that was usually a fairly reliable guide.

So, if the answer to your question were to be yes, I think a flock of pigs might be majestically flying past the Hansard Society's windows as I said that. No, they're going to telegraph a lot of the proposals in the budget well in advance. That's just how it's done these days. It's always against parliamentary tradition.

There will doubtless be pious complaints. Mr. Speaker will probably have a rant, but it won't make a blind bit of difference because they're trying to make impact with the public through the media rather than expecting people to [00:45:00] watch an entire budget speech live from the floor of the House of Commons.

There may be one or two little nuggets that they keep back just to provide a surprise and provide extra talking points on the day, all as part of the kind of news management cycle of these things, but I would be astounded if the whole thing was suddenly unveiled and no one had had an inkling beforehand of what was in it.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. So we've had another question from Quentin Colburn, which came in via Blue Sky on social media. Why during PMQs, Prime Minister's Questions, do MPs bob up and down as if to catch Mr Speaker's eye when those who can ask questions are known in advance because they're on the order paper?

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, well, first thing to say about the process of bobbing up and down is it's hell on the knees.

And an awful lot of MPs find it very uncomfortable after a while. But, um, it's not completely true that the list of people asking questions at Prime Minister's Question Time is the complete list of who gets to ask a question. The Speaker has to balance up the numbers. What you get is a random selection of MPs who put in to ask questions [00:46:00] and a number are chosen.

There's no attempt to balance them up by party. So if you had, for example, a list that was overwhelmingly of Labour members, the Speaker would then have to try and get an equal number of opposition MPs, so they'd have to choose more people from the Conservative, the Liberal Democrat, the SNP, the Reform Party benches, etc.

And make sure there's a bit of balance, as between the government and the opposition benches, in the asking of questions. So there's a considerable incentive for people to bob up and down and try and catch the Speaker's eye, as the phrase has it. So that's why it happens. It seems strange, and it's perhaps not wholly logical, but that's the way it's been done since time immemorial and that's doubtless the way we'll continue doing it.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I remember in the 2010 Parliament, a newly elected MP on the government benches, a Conservative MP. I won't name them because I can't remember quite the status of this story, but this MP said she'd not been selected by the Speaker to ask a question at PMQs in the first six months. And she went to ask the clerks, why not?

And they said, well, it's you're only [00:47:00] standing when it's the turn of a Conservative to ask a question and you need to do it for both sides and then you've got a much better chance and I remember her saying that if you're not doing this you're going to get crossed off the list and this is the sort of thing that new MPs need to be told so that's the explanation.

Mark D'Arcy: And of course the Speaker also has to fit in a selection of minor party leaders so you know in a given week it'll be the turn of the SNP as the fourth party or maybe the Reform Party will get a chance, or maybe it'll be Jeremy Corbyn's independent group, or whoever. And beyond that, sometimes there's some big event that affects a particular constituency.

Maybe there's been extensive flooding or a terrible disaster of some kind, and the MP for that seat will want to get up and ask the Prime Minister, and will put in a note to the Speaker saying, Mr. Speaker, please could you call me so that I can ask this very important live issue.

Ruth Fox: Well, we've had another question from Anonymous, um, but does say loving the podcast, so that's all right.

And Anonymous says, could you provide examples of where statutory consultations have been put in place to good [00:48:00] effect? And additionally, are there other terms or mechanisms that could be used to encourage accountability and scrutiny without the need for full blown statutory consultations? So you don't get technical questions like this on other podcasts, do you?

Mark D'Arcy: Absolutely. This is what we live for.

Ruth Fox: Am I dealing with this one? I think I might be. Give it a go. The look on your face. Well, I think probably the first thing to say is not all consultations are statutory. In fact, most probably aren't. The duty to consult can arise because of, you know, a duty to act fairly, or a result of what the lawyers tell me is called legitimate expectation.

Mark D'Arcy: Yes, well this is a key thing in judicial reviews. There's a legitimate expectation we should have been asked about this and we weren't. We're therefore going to court.

Ruth Fox: Full blown statutory consultation, it kind of depends what you mean by that, because actually, statutory consultations need not be burdensome.

They can actually be less burdensome than non statutory consultations. So it all depends what the Act of Parliament says is required for a consultation, who's to be consulted, and so on. The [00:49:00] principles about consultation essentially are sort of laid out after a court case, actually back in the mid 1980s, and they're known as the Gunning Principles.

The Gunning Principles. So consultations have got to take place when a proposal is still at a formative stage. Sufficient reasons must be put forward for the proposal to allow for intelligent consideration and response. Adequate time's got to be given for consideration and response, and the results of the consultation must be conscientiously taken into account.

Question is, do all consultations follow that model? And the big question is always how much time is given to these things. I mean, the sort of best practice model is it should be 12 weeks, but it often isn't. I don't think we're probably the best people to ask about whether or not statutory consultations have been put in place to good effect.

I mean, it kind of all depends. And these are quite subjective things about whether you think the statutes are valid. The consultation was handled well or, or not in dependence upon what you were hoping from the outcome to some degree.

Mark D'Arcy: I'm quite impressed by the idea of a legal requirement that the consideration should be both intelligent and conscientious.[00:50:00]

Ruth Fox: And I'm pretty sure when you read some of the consultation responses from government they're not. But of course, this does feed through because of course, you then see this in our scrutiny of statutory instruments, for example, you know, you get results of consultations articulated in the explanatory notes to statutory instruments.

And one of the things that the House of Lords committee that looks at these things, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee often raises is, you didn't tell us much information about the consultation, how decisions were reached based on the evidence. And that's one of the reasons that they might draw it to the attention of the House of Lords and urge peers to debate it.

I'm not sure that quite answers Anonymous's question, but we're not experts on consultation processes. Then we've got a question from Matthew Higginson, who is based down under, so apologies for the accent, but he says, G'day from the Antipodes. Love the show. Thank you Matthew. It really delves into the right amount of detail and yet is easy to comprehend.

Well it was until this week's discussion of consultation processes. [00:51:00] It says, have you ever considered doing a series on the other Westminster style parliaments around the world including the ways they differ for better or worse from the mother parliament? I'm often yelling down the pod. Can you do that?

Mark D'Arcy: I'm not sure I think you can yell at the pod.

Ruth Fox: We do that differently in Australia and it works. And personally, how does one end up an expert in parliamentary process? Some people consider it dry. I'm not one of them. So what leads someone to pursue this passion? So Mark, what led you to be a parliamentary expert?

Mark D'Arcy: Well, sucking my teeth dangerously at being called that in the first place. When you watch something happening for long enough you get a bit of an idea of how it works or at least you hope you've got a bit of an idea of how it works. And one of the things that's often struck me about Westminster is that it's entirely possible to be a political reporter in Westminster without ever gaining the faintest idea of how Parliament works because you're too busy looking at who's up, who's down in the cabinet or whatever, rather than the workings of the legislative sausage machine.

So there's that side of it. If [00:52:00] you are, if your job is actually to watch how, for example, private members bills unfold, you kind of get a feeling for the rules and how they operate. And that's certainly how I got into it. And the rules determine the game. I mean, imagine football without the offside rule, imagine cricket without the LBW law.

The whole thing would be done completely differently if the parameters were set in a different way. The Westminster model parliaments is a very interesting exercise. They're all different. I mean, Australia and Canada both have federal constitutions with a Westminster style parliament attached to them.

And I'm really not sure how that works. It's hard enough work keeping abreast of the workings of one parliament and it's a very dangerous business to assume that other parliaments work in the same way because the subcultures will change. Obviously vary in all sorts of different ways, depending on where you are.

I mean, the New Zealand's parliament, I think, is unicameral. They don't have an upper house, for example. So that means that they operate in a rather different way to start with. And so [00:53:00] we go on. So that there are all sorts of different subcultures around each individual parliament. terribly, terribly dangerous to try and imagine there are general rules between them.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. What I would say though is if any of our listeners overseas who are, you know, experts on their parliaments want to send us any information about what's happening or where they think the rules are, you know, are better than here at Westminster, then do get in touch. As Mark says, you it's pretty difficult to keep track of all these, uh, these changes across so many parliaments.

And of course, if anybody would like to sponsor us to go to visit Australia or Canada or the Seychelles for an in depth study of other parliaments, I would be delighted to consider such a...

um, right. I think probably our last question is also from Anonymous, who says, what role will All Party Parliamentary Groups play in the new parliament?

To what extent are these a problem?

Mark D'Arcy: Well, there was a bit of a suspicion around the workings of quite a lot of All Party Parliamentary Groups in the past. Now, All Party Parliamentary Groups, to explain, first of all, [00:54:00] are not official parliamentary bodies in the same way as, for example, a select committee is.

They are associations of parliamentarians who are interested in a given subject. It might be a disease. And there were all party parliamentary groups on all kinds of cancers, for example. It might be a specific country. There are all party parliamentary groups attached to quite a lot of them. It might be an industry or a cause or even a sport.

You know, there was an All Party Parliamentary Group on rugby league that was very active for many years. So there's an enormous spectrum of them. But there's been quite a cull since the rules were tightened up because there was a concern that that you had bodies that had some kind of attached implied parliamentary status that were perhaps overreaching.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Well, we've actually had a look at the latest register that was published this week. So at this stage of this new parliament, there are currently 26 country or parliamentary groups and [00:55:00] 95 subject groups. Now that sounds quite a lot, but then you've got to compare it with the end of the last parliament just before the general elections.

There were 74 country groups, compared to 26 now, and 370 subject groups, compared to 95 now. And then, if we've looked back at the equivalent stage of the last parliament, so early in 2020, I mean, pretty astonishing. In the very early days of that parliament, they had 130 country groups and 547 subject groups.

And I think that just demonstrates that, the way the changes in the rules have led to a bit of a crackdown and a sort of filtering out of these groups.

Mark D'Arcy: There have been kind of restrictions like you can only chair as a member of parliament or serve on the committee of APPGs and that has kind of culled them down right there.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. I think in terms of the risk, dare I say it, the current Freebiegate scandal will perhaps have a chilling effect on some of this because that is one of the issues around these groups, the perception that. particularly some of these country groups, [00:56:00] you know, going off on jollies to British Indian Ocean territories.

Mark D'Arcy: Come and see our chief minister for 15 minutes, then sit on the beach for three days.

Ruth Fox: I mean, we're exaggerating sometimes, but not much. So there is an element of that, I think. And of course, one of the big issues is, is access and influence. Who are funding these groups? Because as you say, they're not formal parliamentary bodies. And they can often be presented as if they are, particularly in the media. But the question is, who's behind the scenes funding them.

Mark D'Arcy: Yes, well, often you'll look at who's funding the Secretariat, and I think one of the things they've also banned is foreign embassies providing the Secretariat for country related

Ruth Fox: And who's got parliamentary passes as a result of this?

Because obviously a parliamentary pass will get you into the building to go to the meetings, but it also enables you to access other parts of the estate, including the cafes and the coffee bars and so on. That is also a risk.

Mark D'Arcy: But at the same time, it's worth saying that All Party Parliamentary Groups can do important work in highlighting causes. A few years ago, there was an All Party Parliamentary Group on stalking led by the Plaid Cymru MP at the time, Elfyn Lloyd, who was [00:57:00] very effective in getting changes to the law and got some amendments to various criminal justice legislation. I remember him asking David Cameron to back them at a prime minister's question time some years ago and David Cameron saying, yes, I remember thinking, wow, that is, that is how to exercise influence within Parliament from, you know, a quite lowly backbench position, if you like, and they were very effective in so doing.

Ruth Fox: And of course, Mark, on a previous episode, we talked to the Conservative MP Theo Clarke, who was co chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on birth trauma, which was taking an important issue that had been under discussed and trying to raise it up the political agenda and with some success.

Unfortunately, she's now outside Parliament, she lost her seat, but I'm sure that's an area of work that the other MPs might be trying to take forward.

Mark D'Arcy: Plenty of MPs who are very interested in that area. So I would be surprised if that was a cause that was, uh, allowed to wither away.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. So with that, Mark, I think we'll leave it there for this week.

We'll be back next week, the same time to catch up on the [00:58:00] latest events. Thank you to everybody who's sent us your questions and particularly for your very kind words about the podcast. It really is incredibly gratifying to hear that you are enjoying it and finding it interesting and it's helping and I know there's quite a lot of students listening in particular.

I hope this is helping with your politics and legal studies and can I just ask if you are enjoying the podcast, do please review it on your podcast app, whether that's Apple, uh, or whether that's Spotify or whichever podcast app you prefer. It really does help and one of the things that, uh, we have to battle against is the algorithms of these systems that push it up the charts and it is the way that, uh, people find us, and find out about Parliament Matters.

So please do review it and we'll see you next week.

Mark D'Arcy: Bye for now.

Ruth Fox: Bye for now.

Well that's all from us for this week's episode of Parliament Matters. Please hit the follow or subscribe button in your podcast app to get the next episode as soon as it lands.

Mark D'Arcy: And help us to make the podcast better by leaving a [00:59:00] rating or review on Apple or Spotify and sharing your feedback. Our producer tells us it's important for the algorithm to give the show a boost.

Ruth Fox: And Mark, tell us more about the algorithm.

Mark D'Arcy: What do I know about algorithms? You know, I write my scripts with a quill pen on vellum and then send it in by carrier pigeon.

Ruth Fox: Well, before we go, a quick reminder also that you can send us your questions on all things Parliament by visiting hansardsociety.org.uk/pmuq.

Mark D'Arcy: We'll be discussing them in future episodes, including our special Urgent Questions editions dedicated to what you want to know about Parliament.

Ruth Fox: And you can find us across social media at Hansard Society to get more content related to the show and the wider work of the Hansard Society.

Intro: Parliament Matters is produced by the Hansard Society and supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. For more information visit [01:00:00] hansardsociety.org.uk/pm or find us on social media at Hansard Society.