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[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 Darcy.

Ruth Fox: Coming up, will John Prescott go down as the Commons' last working class hero?

Mark D'Arcy: They're back. Will the select committees host the real action in this Parliament?

Ruth Fox: And Westminster's hidden success story. How the dying art of petitioning Parliament has been revived.

Mark D'Arcy: But first Ruth, we've really got to talk about the late Lord Prescott. John Prescott, deputy leader of the Labour Party under Tony Blair, deputy Prime Minister when Labour got into government in 1997, [00:01:00] right up to the end of Tony Blair's premiership again, and a figure who's significant in all sorts of different ways, not least that he's set a kind of template that could now be followed by Angela Rayner in this current Labour government, as the kind of, I don't know quite what you'd call it, interlocutor to Labour's working class base, perhaps.

Ruth Fox: Yes, I mean, as we say, is he the working class hero and is she the equivalent in this government? And one of the things that, of course, about Parliament increasingly over the years is that representation of working class people, essentially people doing manual jobs, has declined considerably, of course, reflecting the decline in manual labour overall.

But there is that sort of sense that there aren't perhaps that many people around the Cabinet table today who necessarily have the instincts of people like John Prescott in that Blair government. And of course, one of the things he did that was incredibly important was bridging the divide between the Blairite centrists and the left and the trade union [00:02:00] movement in the Labour Party. And again, there is that sense in Keir Starmer's government, does Angela Rayner play that role. You sense possibly that she is not quite as central to Keir Starmer's operation, the way the government works, as perhaps John Prescott was in, in the Blair years.

Mark D'Arcy: You know, the inner workings of the current government are quite widely reported, but you don't know how. Still slightly mysterious.

How reliable they are. It's still slightly mysterious and maybe the full balance of power, the internal balance of power has yet to really establish itself within that government. But if you look back to John Prescott's role, he had a very, very powerful role as the head of a kind of super department, the Department for Environment, Transport and the Regions.

So the Secretary of State for Transport explicitly worked for him within his department. And so he had a very large Brief covering local government and transport, and the English regions, and he worked extremely hard to get an agenda for that going, you know, he tried a referendum on [00:03:00] regional government for example in the North East which, uh, was a fiasco in the end for Labour because it was defeated.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, and of course that's where Dominic Cummings emerged, because he ran the campaign in opposition to that, didn't he, in the North East of England.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, well, that was one of the many interesting factors in that particular saga. But he was responsible for a huge swathe of domestic policy and had quite a power base.

And Angela Rayner has something not quite equivalent to it, because she's got just the conventional communities department, she hasn't got transport as a direct part of her empire in the same way, but she has a, a not dissimilar kind of Whitehall power base.

Ruth Fox: Yes, I mean, I think if you look at her agenda, if she's going to be remembered for anything, I think it will have to be that she really addresses the housing issue.

And if she gets a handle on that, and we start to see changes in terms of housing provision, she'll be remembered for that. And that will be her agenda. But she hasn't got, I think, quite as wide a scope of operation as, as Prescott had in, in the Blair government.

Mark D'Arcy: I think that's certainly [00:04:00] true. And Tony Blair did a, a quite interesting eulogy for John Prescott, where he talked about how thousands and thousands of council houses were renovated under John Prescott's leadership in that department.

And that was one of his big signature achievements. But actually the list of policy achievements, you know, you can directly attribute to John Prescott is not that huge. I don't think his area was ever the major focus of New Labour policy, despite the advance briefing before they came to power, that housing would be fantastically important.

Their housing achievements were modest and the housing crisis that we have today is partly the child of that era not getting to grips with it as it emerged.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I mean he always said of course that when his obituaries were written he would be remembered for that 60 seconds where he thumped the member of the public during the 2001 general election campaign.

Mark D'Arcy: Which was about the only interesting thing that happened during that general election campaign.

Ruth Fox: Yes and it seared in my memory as somebody who was organising the Labour campaign in one of the key seats, the marginal Seats in 2001. But I think if you look at what's been said [00:05:00] today, I mean, it's, it's the early hours after the announcement, that's not the case.

He's being remembered as a much bigger figure. And I should probably say to, to younger listeners, it was quite striking to be reminded on the Today program this morning when I heard it, he was introduced as the deputy prime minister at the turn of the century, which slightly made me take my breath away.

A bit of a gulp. But I mean, he was a very, very big political figure in those Blair years and somebody who was sort of the interlocutor between Gordon Brown as Chancellor and Tony Blair as Prime Minister.

Mark D'Arcy: He used to host in his quarters in Admiralty Arch at one point, he used to host sort of summit meetings to try and get Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to kind of kiss and make up after their latest spat.

And more than that, I go back to the eulogy that Tony Blair delivered for him. He says a very interesting thing in that, which was that there were times when he trusted John Prescott's gut instincts around things like managing the Labour Party more than he trusted his own. Tony Blair once said that, um, he [00:06:00] chose the Labour Party, he wasn't born into it.

And that perhaps meant that he wasn't completely marinated in its ways to the extent that John Prescott was, having come up through the traditional sort of union route. Mm. To become a Member of Parliament. So John Prescott provided a set of instincts that weren't hard wired into Tony Blair.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. And I think the question is, does Angela Rayner provide that role for Keir Starmer?

And I think the judgement is out on that at the moment, and we'll have to see.

Mark D'Arcy: The briefing is, and it's hostile briefing in papers that don't exactly love this Labour government, that she's a bit of an outsider, that she doesn't have direct access to the inner circle. I've no idea whether that's true or not, but stories are circulated to that effect.

This is one of those only time will tell, let's wait until the publications of the ministerial diaries in 10 years time before we find out.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, yeah. But of course this podcast, Mark, is about Parliament, and I don't think we would say I certainly wouldn't say that Prescott was necessarily a great parliamentarian.

I mean, there are some [00:07:00] memorable appearances at the despatch box, for sure. Particularly when he

Mark D'Arcy: Memorable for the wrong reasons.

Ruth Fox: Yes, but when he deputized for Tony Blair at Prime Minister's Questions, for example, I mean, he would sometimes, I think perhaps the best interpretation is he would garble his questions and answers.

He wasn't the smoothest communicator. On the other hand, I think part of that was his, what made him an authentic politician. Although you might not always have quite grasped every word, and it might not have been a complete English sentence, a lot of people, members of the public watching, sort of grasped what he meant.

Mark D'Arcy: And he stood out amongst a cabinet that was rather sort of, you know, well tailored PPE graduates were more prevalent than former shop stewards. Some people described him as a kind of token figure amidst all these figures in Tony Blair's much more middle class New Labour project. But I think he was much more than that.

He was one of the people who, behind the scenes, held the thing together. And when he got to front of house in Parliament, well, he wasn't that great a parliamentary [00:08:00] performer. But as you say, he usually knew what he was driving at, even if there was a bit of a word salad in the way of what he was driving at.

Ruth Fox: Yeah.

Mark D'Arcy: To mix my metaphors furiously.

Ruth Fox: And he could deploy humour. you know, and he was quite quick on his feet. So, um, well it's a quick segue perhaps. What do you think of Angela Rayner's performance at Prime Minister's Questions? We're saying that she occupies a similar position in, in this government. She was at PMQs deputising for Keir Starmer this week.

What did you make of it?

Mark D'Arcy: And again, she was up against elegantly tailored Oxbridge educated Alex Burghart for the Conservatives, and she did pretty well. I mean, she had a very well prepared line that he led with his chin straight into, you know, he asked about inflation. She recalled that when he was the Minister for Fighting Inflation, it was 11 percent and it's at 3 percent now.

Badabim.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I mean it was, it felt like a very odd line to lead with in your first question, your opening question, and he, his appearance I thought was quite shouty, he was leaning into the microphone too [00:09:00] much and he came across as quite aggressive, I think, just watching him and it was quite noisy, quite in your face, but aggressive.

Mark D'Arcy: I think this is a generic problem with a number of the people in the new, newly constituted Conservative shadow cabinet, that a lot of them weren't quite at the top table before. And now they're getting their first chance to be really front of house spokespersons for their party and they're learning how to do it.

It's one thing to be sat there next to your Secretary of State on the front bench.

Ruth Fox: Thinking I could do this better than them.

Mark D'Arcy: It's quite another to actually do it.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, yeah, quite, quite in that bear pit. And the indications are that Kemi Badenoch is thinking that rather than having Alex Burghart do it every time there needs to be a deputy to cover for her, that actually she'll rotate it amongst the senior ministers.

Presumably for that purpose, give them all a trial run and see how they do.

Mark D'Arcy: That will be quite an interesting exercise. On the one hand, Angela Rayner will be facing a different set of challenges from a different person each time. On the other [00:10:00] hand, it'll be a newcomer facing what will probably be the biggest parliamentary moment of their career every time they come up against the Deputy Prime Minister.

So, That will be quite a difficult test on both sides and possibly easier for Angela Rayner in some ways because she she'll have been through this any number of times.

Ruth Fox: Yeah well Mark with that shall we take a break and uh when we come back we'll get a bit of an update on what's happening with the assisted dying bill in advance of the debate next week and what's been happening on the select committee corridor.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, see you in a minute.

And we're back. And Ruth, the big looming parliamentary event coming up next week remains the second reading, the first actual Commons debate on the Bill on assisted dying, the Terminally Ill Adults End of life Bill, to give it its full title. We discussed it extensively last week. There are a few little nuances to add.

Not least, we talked a bit about, well, who drafted this? Had there been government assistance? And subsequently it's emerged that actually it was Dame Elizabeth Gardner, [00:11:00] who was a former First Parliamentary Counsel, one of the specialist lawyers who drafts legislation for the government, now retired from her government role, but had helped in the drafting of this bill.

And so that suggests that you've got a fairly watertight text there created by an expert even if it hasn't been through the full grinding of the government machine.

Ruth Fox: Yes until earlier this year, she was the government chief draftsman and as you say, she recently retired. She's obviously doing some private consultancy work, she's been hired to put this text together I mean, I think it provides reassurance that the bill is probably well drafted in a technical sense, but she won't have invented this and according to her own sort of instinct.

She will have taken, as she would in government, drafting instructions from whomever is behind the bill. Now, Kim Leadbeater, but also one presumes that there are campaign groups behind this.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, the Dignity in Dying campaign and probably elements of the bill that Lord Faulconer, the former Lord Chancellor, had produced and put through the House [00:12:00] of Lords a couple of times.

So, yeah, doubtless it didn't just spring for the arm from her forehead.

Ruth Fox: No, so the policy choices won't be hers. Yeah. Um, she will have drafted according to what she was asked to do, what the instruction was. So, the whole question about some of the detail of how you operationalise this whole approach to assisted dying, and in terms of NHS support, in terms of drug provision and so on, ultimately all of that will have to be debated in the second reading, but it doesn't come back to her. I think that's the important point to make that, you know, she's doing a professional technical drafting job under instructions from others and the policy choices belong elsewhere. Another thing that has occurred in. The last week, of course, is quite unlikely. I would not have imagined this, but the Father of the House, Sir Edward Leigh, and the Mother of the House, Diane Abbott, who you can really in this parliament not imagine two diametrically opposed political figures, they have published [00:13:00] a joint letter basically saying they're both going to vote against this bill next week and expressing concern about it being rushed, about the fact that you know, it shouldn't have been brought forward as a Private Member's Bill and so on.

And I just thought it was interesting that those two political figures, the longest serving MPs in Parliament at the moment, decided to act together to make their point.

Mark D'Arcy: It does point to the possibility that there'll be some very interesting political alliances over this. This is an issue that clearly cuts right across party lines.

And all sorts of people who wouldn't normally be, uh, dare I say it, seen dead together, are suddenly finding that they agree.

Ruth Fox: It's a bit near the knuckle.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, bad jokes here we come. But these are people who wouldn't normally cooperate on almost any other subject, find themselves thrown together by this bill.

And the preliminary skirmishing is still going on, even a week to go before the second reading debate. And all sorts of allegations and counter allegations are flying. Labour List [00:14:00] came up, the internal Labour sort of newsfeed, came up with a quite interesting suggestion that there's something like a two to one majority amongst Labour MPs for the bill, which suggests that's almost enough on its own, frankly, to get the bill through second reading.

But there's still plenty of time for things to develop.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, and the other thing that we've seen is more cabinet ministers emerging to give an indication of their position. And Harriet Harman, the former Labour minister who's now in the House of Lords weighing in on her own podcast. Don't listen to it, listeners.

Stick with this one.

Mark D'Arcy: Stay true to us.

Ruth Fox: Stick with this. She weighed in again, quite strongly against Wes Streeting's decision to talk about the financial implications of the bill. And I found myself peculiar position over the weekend of pointing out on social media that, in fact, in terms of the official approach that governments are supposed to take to Private Members' Bills, even when these are bills that they want to take a neutral stance on, there's still a process to be worked through behind the scenes to [00:15:00] reach collective agreement on these bills on that neutrality and one of the things they've got to consider, whether they like it or not, is the financial implications of it, not least because they're going to have to put down what's called a money motion, money resolution after second reading. And that now, interestingly, is appearing on the order paper for next Friday, so we know that that is definitely going to be needed.

And, uh, having weighed in to suggest that Harriet was perhaps not quite entirely accurate in her criticism of Wes, I found myself being used as a community note on Twitter for her tweets about what she'd said, which was a slightly discomforting position over the weekend.

Mark D'Arcy: Well anyway, next week we're going to be recording this podcast a day later so that we can take in the second reading debate on this bill and report on what's happened and just make sure that we're able to offer a view on whatever result comes from the second reading vote and throw forward to, as I say, the detailed scrutiny stage that is yet to come.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, so we normally record on a Thursday and publish the podcast on a Friday. So [00:16:00] next week we'll be recording on the Friday and it'll be in your podcast app, wherever you get your podcasts on the Saturday morning. All being well.

Mark D'Arcy: So don't panic if we're not there for your usual Friday morning encounter.

Ruth Fox: Yes, but you, you can catch us next Tuesday, so Tuesday before the debate, so Tuesday the 26th of November. You can tune in to me, Sir David Natzler, the former Clerk of the House of Commons, and Dr Daniel Gover, who was on this podcast a few weeks ago, going into even more nerdy detail about Private Members' Bills and what may or may not happen on the day.

And details about the event are on our website, so get your tickets soon, quick. That's next Tuesday, 26th of November.

Mark D'Arcy: Meanwhile, Ruth, the missing dimension in the House of Commons since the general election has finally appeared. The select committee system in its full glory is being back in action.

They've all been having hearings, usually with their respective Secretaries of State. They're setting up inquiries, and they're finally really getting moving. The Treasury Committee's been [00:17:00] looking into the Budget. They've already had the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the usual collection of economic savants in front of them.

They've got inquiries into sort of standard things like the performance of HM Revenue and Customs and various other things being launched. So, all across the, the kind of governmental spectrum, the select committees are starting to talk to Ministers and point their inquiries at specific aspects of the policies that they want to get into.

So finally, something is going on in the committee corridor after quite a long hiatus caused by the very elaborate process needed to get select committees in place these days. The election first of chairs, and then of members that the parties have to conduct. And I have a theory that this is where a lot of the real policy action in this Parliament is going to take place. Now Labour's dominance in the Commons chamber is so huge that it's really quite hard to imagine the government losing a vote on pretty much anything.

And if it did, it would suggest a catastrophic split in the Labour Party. But in a [00:18:00] select committee, ministers will face a great deal more challenge. And some of the select committee chairs are somewhat less than robotic Starmer loyalists who may occasionally be willing to come out and say things that maybe individual members standing in the chamber wouldn't.

Ruth Fox: Yes, I think that's certainly true of the Chairs. I think also if you think about the members, because so many of them are new, they're sort of learning on the job about the policy areas, but also about how a select committee operates. And I think one of the things that we have to keep an eye on is particularly the new Labour members.

Are they going to take it easy on government ministers, or are they actually going to go in quite hard? How do they perceive their role and perceive the importance of scrutiny? You know, the media attention is going to be on them. And we saw it, Prime Minister's Questions last week, where quite a lot of journalists were critical of what they defined as sort of patsy questions from some of these new MPs.

I mean, if you get a lot of that on the select committees, that will start to flow through and they'll get criticism for that too. [00:19:00]

Mark D'Arcy: That will be quite corrosive, I think, if the select committees are just reduced to asking easy questions. Tell us, Minister, what's your message to a grateful nation?

Ruth Fox: Yeah.

Mark D'Arcy: Forget it, you might as well not bother. But the word I get from people who've been talking to new select committee members and working with them, there are all sorts of training efforts going on and consultation efforts going on about the new committees as they set up and select their inquiries and so forth, the word I get is that actually people have been favorably impressed, an awful lot of people there want this role, want the scrutiny job, want to be asking the right questions, want to be getting meaningful answers in a way that perhaps hasn't always been true of the select committee system.

And I think this just reflects the growing significance and importance of committee work as opposed to chamber work. And I think that's part of a big cultural change that's taking place in the Commons. Almost term by term now, the action is increasingly switching that way. Now, when you had the hung parliament between 2017 and 2019 and the huge tensions over [00:20:00] Brexit and the vast party splits, the action was definitely on the floor of the House of Commons more than anywhere else. When you've got a huge majority, the House of Commons chamber is a place of almost formalities but the real source I think now of criticism constructive or otherwise will be upstairs on that committee corridor.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, well I increasingly think that we ought to move to a more committee based parliament. I mean, it's something I will probably be putting in our submission to the Modernisation Committee that, you know, in terms of how they consider sitting times and the parliamentary timetable, it's worth thinking about whether in fact you might have dedicated committee weeks where you don't have competing business.

The focus is on it being a committee based agenda for a period of time. Other parliaments do it. For good or ill, I think it's worth trialling and seeing. But I think you're right, I think that the chamber will increasingly become the centrepiece for the big moments, Prime Minister's Questions each week, the King's Speech, the Budget, and you do get the [00:21:00] impression amongst the new members, we've mentioned this previously on the podcast, that there is immense frustration among other new members that the idea that they're going to have to sit there for hours with no food

Mark D'Arcy: to get two minutes

Ruth Fox: In order to get two minutes at the end of the debate and to make their point.

If that frustration continues and they they're not convinced about the value of being in the chamber in that role and they find more job satisfaction, frankly, on the committee corridor, then you will start to see that shift even more.

Mark D'Arcy: I think that's, the, the job satisfaction point is a very important one because that's where you really can make a mark as an ambitious, assiduous, new MP.

I like the idea, incidentally, of plenary and non plenary weeks in Parliament and weeks dedicated to committees, and this may be one of the solutions to the constant Commons irritation of having the short two weeks, two weeks and a bit September sittings between the end of the summer break and the start of the party conference break.

I sometimes wonder whether they could kind of minimize the chamber action, maybe have a couple of question times, [00:22:00] but basically say the select committees can sit in all those weeks. Might take a change in standing orders to do it because at the moment the committees only are only allowed to operate when the full chamber is operating.

I think. But, um, it might be a sensible way to do things and especially when you need to repair the building and keep it closed for months.

Having the committee sitting elsewhere would be quite a useful way of

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I think that's a looming issue, isn't it, they are going to have to face early in the new year, next year, we understand, a decision, again, about what they're going to do about the building.

Now, it's been, it's pretty obvious that given the amount of money we're talking about for a full restoration and renewal, they don't want to go down the route of full decant and paying out billions and billions of pounds. But this is an unavoidable decision, really. They're going to have to confront it.

And if they don't want to leave the building, then they're going to have to come up with some creative ways to create space for the work to go on around them, and that is going to mean that they're going to have to contemplate, I mean [00:23:00] certainly I think Penny Mordaunt in the last Parliament talked about possibly needing to contemplate greater use of hybrid proceedings like we used to see during COVID, so that space could be created where they weren't in Parliament so that the work in certain places could go on.

So they're going to have to confront that. And I think the other thing that will be interesting to keep an eye on is, it's all very well doing the work in committee, sending your reports off to government, getting the reports back. But then the question is, how do you make an impact and push government in terms of its response?

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, how do you make things stick when you've done a critical report on something? We've got to change policy on this issue because it's all going horribly wrong.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, it's all very well getting the, you know, the seven o'clock headlines on the Today Programme, but if you want something more in terms of policy political response from the government, from ministers.

How might the committees more effectively use existing procedures in the House and types of business to force the issues?

Mark D'Arcy: They've got a couple of avenues open to them. One is the annual round of Estimates Day debates, where the [00:24:00] subjects for debate are allocated, now usually around select committee reports on a particular issue.

So if you're dealing with, say, the estimates on Justice, and there's a critical select committee report about the state of the prisons, that might be what's selected for debate, just to take a random example. Also though, there's the Backbench Business Committee, and I think the Backbench Business Committee would find it pretty hard to resist if a phalanx of select committee chairs, cross party spectrum of supporters turned up and said to them, we've got this report, it's very important, the government's stonewalling, we want an answer from ministers on what they're going to do. Let's have a Thursday afternoon in which we can get the minister in front of the House and cross question them there.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Well, Lucy Powell has indicated in terms of her, her thinking about the, the, the, agenda of this new modernisation committee.

She's indicated that how best use is made of backbench business time should be on the agenda, but also she's talked about time for scrutiny for backbenchers of what the [00:25:00] government is doing, of its legislative programme. The interesting question is how these things may stand in tension with each other.

To what extent is she really serious about wanting more scrutiny of the government?

Mark D'Arcy: Oppositions are always in government. Government's not so keen.

Ruth Fox: So, would she be willing to contemplate the idea that actually some of the Thursday time or time carved out elsewhere were used for select committees? The other route, of course, they've got is that they have these types of a select committee statement where the chair of a committee might get 15 minutes to say their piece about what their report has said, and what the recommendations are. But it hasn't really made much of an impact.

Mark D'Arcy: Those have been quite sterile occasions, usually. The select committee chair gets up, delivers a carefully crafted soundbite, and maybe a couple of other people chime in with quick questions.

But they're, they're not wildly effective, not least because I don't think ministers have to take part, so they can just get up and spout a bit. And it is in the chamber, so it does get a little bit of reportage, but it's not a wildly effective instrument. No. [00:26:00] The other issue that has constantly dogged select committees is, is getting their witnesses in front of them.

The powers that they have to summon witnesses are pretty obsolete, really. Once upon a time, the Sergeant at Arms could come and get you if you refused to appear before a select committee. But that hasn't happened probably for centuries. And it probably couldn't happen now, because the Sergeant at Arms doesn't have kind of policing powers and a right of entry and can't put someone in a half Nelson and march them through the streets back to Parliament.

So that power's obsolete. And there have been a couple of embarrassing occasions where select committees have wanted to get someone in front of them and that person has decided they're not going to come out to play. Dominic Cummings was a classic example. For years the Culture, Media and Sport Committee tried to get him to talk about the, the use of social media during the European referendum campaign, and he more or less refused point blank.

He was held in contempt of Parliament for doing so, and then the prime minister made him his chief of staff anyway, Boris Johnson back in 2019 when he came in. So you had a situation where [00:27:00] the Commons had sanctions that really didn't seem to mean anything very much. And it's even worse when you're trying to get foreign citizens, you know, the owners of, or chief executives of, great international conglomerates who've done something in Britain.

You don't get the Mark Zuckerbergs coming in.

Ruth Fox: Well, in fact, Mark Zuckerberg refused to appear before what was, a few years ago, what was an international committee. So I think it was the Culture, Media and Sport Committee equivalents across a range of parliaments, who clubbed together to do a joint international inquiry and wanted him and others to appear before them.

And certainly he refused personally and they sent more junior representatives. I think it may have been Lord Allen of Hallam.

Mark D'Arcy: Oh yes, Richard Allen, the former Lib Dem MP who then went off to work for Facebook and was followed later by his successor in his then Sheffield seat, Nick Clegg, when he lost his seat.

So, um, the kind of apostolic succession of Lib Dem grandees going to work for Facebook.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, but the other, the other thing is, is where you get a situation where you have a foreign owned company, for example, whose business activities in [00:28:00] Britain have a direct impact on British citizens. What's the line of accountability?

So a few years ago, when Cadbury's was bought out by, I think it was the Kraft Food Group, there were real concerns about jobs at Cadbury's manufacturing bases in various constituencies across the country. And whilst this buyout was going on, the committees were trying to get the CEO of Kraft Foods. Her name was Irene Rosenfeld, I think.

Mark D'Arcy: That rings a bell.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, and she, uh, she point blank refused and they again sent more junior representatives. But I think there is this, uh, question in terms of an age of multi national business, of these huge businessmen with enormous power, and particularly social media and these sort of, you know, technology companies.

Mark D'Arcy: Naming no particular owners of Twitter.

Ruth Fox: No, and how do you hold them accountable? So this week we're hearing that, I think it may be the Science and Technology Committee, possibly doubling up with the the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, I'm not sure, at this stage, trying to get Elon Musk, as well as [00:29:00] executives of Meta, the company that owns Facebook and TikTok, to come to give evidence about disinformation.

Of course, in the context of what happened in Southport and the summer riots and the implications there around how disinformation online drove what was happening on the ground in those communities.

Mark D'Arcy: Can anybody see Elon musk crossing the Atlantic to come and talk?

Ruth Fox: Perhaps, I don't know, Nigel Farage might be able to persuade him to come over.

I strongly doubt.

Mark D'Arcy: No. I would be amazed if Elon Musk came down from Mount Olympus and appeared before a titchie Commons committee. I'm not sure that a Congressional committee could get him now.

Ruth Fox: No. Unless he takes a job, in which case he will need a, uh, a hearing for appointment. But that is a challenge for select committees, that accountability of government is one thing, but they also want to address accountabilities of power elsewhere, and that is much more difficult for them to get a handle on.

Mark D'Arcy: Absolutely. Well, Ruth, let's take [00:30:00] another break there, and when we come back, we'll talk about one of the committee's hidden success stories, the rebirth, the renaissance of petitioning the Commons.

Ruth Fox: See you in a minute. 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.

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Again, that's hansardsociety.org.uk. [00:31:00] Well, we're back and Mark and I are now joined by two experts on parliamentary petitioning. Richard Huzzey who's the Professor of Modern British History at the University of Durham, and Cristina Leston Bandera, who is Professor of Politics at the University of Leeds, and also Chair of the IPEN Network, the International Parliament Engagement Network.

Cristina and Richard, welcome to the pod. You've both written an excellent briefing on petitions, what's the point of petitions, which, uh, the Hansard Society published recently. And, uh, as it's Parliament Week this week, we thought we'd have a chat with you about petitions, what's happening with them, the long history of petitioning the British Parliament.

So what comes through in, in the briefing, we'll put it in our show notes, what comes through is that petitioning was incredibly popular. in the 18th and 19th centuries, but then drops off in the 20th, and has now had a resurgence of interest as a result [00:32:00] of technology in the e petition system. Richard, what explains that historical change?

Richard Huzzey: Well, I think that's a really good question because the point is that petitionings existed throughout Parliament's existence. Parliament actually started in many ways as a way of gathering together different petitions to consider them in terms of passing general legislation. And it continued obviously over the centuries since, using the same sort of vellum and quill pens that Mark uses to write his scripts and algorithms.

And um, although the form in a sense seems like it's constant, paper and pen emerging over centuries out of voiced vocal petitions, the relationship to parliament has changed and so that's why I think in the 18th century between the campaign to abolish the slave trade, to expand the right to vote from chartism, to women's suffrage and others, petitioning was at the heart of the ways that people interacted with parliament even for non voters.

And so in the 20th century, you might think that [00:33:00] it's simply the extension of the right to vote in 1918 and equality in 1928 that means people stop petitioning, but actually we saw petitions increasing when the vote had been increased in previous generations. So actually we think it's more about how people think Parliament relates to having the power, particularly, um, whether or not backbenchers can change things from accepting and being persuaded by petitions.

And instead, there's lots of petitioning going on in the 20th century. It's just that for most of it, it's going to local councils or private businesses, or even just being presented to your local MP rather than presented to Parliament. So in a sense, it goes beneath the surface, notwithstanding a few massive petitions at different points to Parliament.

Mark D'Arcy: And the difference, I suppose, between what operates now and what operated then was that when you petitioned Parliament in the old days the petitions were presented in the chamber and often you'd get queues of MPs presenting local versions of the same petition and that could go on for quite some time.

But that was it. They all went into a bag at the back [00:34:00] of the Speaker's chair, I think, and were basically never seen again. And now there's actually a formal process. To debate those petitions rather than just perhaps them exercising some kind of background influence. How did that arise? How did that come to pass?

Richard Huzzey: Well, there's this gradual compression as you say of the amount of time that was allowed when a petition was getting presented and one of the things that's interesting is there've been sort of, in a sense, missed opportunities by Parliament throughout the 20th century There was actually consideration when they abolished the committee that even considered the petitions, the select committee on public petitions, where apparently a lot of junior members of parliamentary staff earned good overtime from counting the signature numbers on petition.

Um, they actually gave up on that in the 70s because they were now getting the petitions so irregularly. And at that moment, actually, they might have thought, well, why is that? Why is this not a way of engaging with voters? But instead, they just sort of gave up on it. And so it's kind of left until the late 20th century and actually [00:35:00] a lot of innovations happening in the devolved legislatures before there's some new thought on the ways that petitioning could enhance rather than distract from the representative role of elected members.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, because one of the things that the Scottish Parliament did quite early on in its history was create a petitions committee and that seems to have been a bit of a shock to the Westminster system and that they saw that that actually worked quite well and had quite a lot of use to it.

Richard Huzzey: Yeah, when we interviewed Paul Grice, who was the founding Chief Executive of the Scottish Parliament, he was actually a former Westminster clerk, and he designed, he encouraged the Scottish Parliament to think about a petition system that was a direct reaction to the rather torpid state of Westminster.

So in a sense, the birth then of e petitioning, the birth of a more open petition system, in which there would at least be some sort of official response to the petition, in most cases, goes back to that devolved legislature and to the Scottish Parliament. So in a sense, the birth of e petitioning at Westminster, which Cristina studied so carefully, in some [00:36:00] ways is a re evangelisation of public participation in Parliament by the Scottish Parliament of Westminster.

Westminster created something in reaction against it and then has learned from that Scottish parliamentary practice.

Mark D'Arcy: And Cristina, the word e petitioning was mentioned there. The e petition system that came to Westminster didn't actually start with Westminster, didn't actually start with Parliament, I should say.

Cristina Leston-Bandeira: No, it started actually in Downing Street. There were two systems that were brought in by, by the Government. And when the Coalition Government came in, so in 2010, they made it much bigger and tried to give it more visibility. At the time, lots of other systems were brought in. Governments around the world were trying to do the same thing and bringing in their online petition system.

And the coalition government at the time then curated its site and introduced this rule that if you had 100, 000 signatures, then Parliament would discuss it, but without actually consulting with Parliament thinking how we're going to do this. Sort of imposing [00:37:00] on Parliament, right, okay, we've got this amazing petition, so off you go, you discuss it.

And at the time, the way that was found to do that was through the Backbench Business Committee, which wasn't too pleased on having just been created, now having also this responsibility. And that will lead us later on to the 2015 system that we have now.

Mark D'Arcy: So to get this clear, there was a system to petition the Government, and the Government sort of dropped it on Parliament's doorstep and said, you've got to deal with this now.

Ruth Fox: Yes, I mean I have torturous memories of this, Mark, because at the time, you know, newspapers like the Daily Mail were running huge campaigns to petition using this system. And Parliament, of course, was, the Backbench Business Committee was having to make decisions about what should be debated once the petitions reached 100, 000 signatures, but the backbench business committee didn't control the use of time that was granted to them by the government.

And so you had a situation where MPs on the Backbench business committee were inundated, thousands and thousands [00:38:00] of emails criticizing them for not setting up these petition debates, all the while the problem lay with Government. And actually, the Hansard Society was approached privately by the Backbench Business Committee to see if we could broker a meeting behind the scenes with the Leader of the House of Commons and the Government Digital Service to have the discussion about this problem because they hadn't been able to get their heads together on it, and it seemed bizarre at the time. It seems even more bizarre now. But the Leader of the House and the chair of the Backbench Business Committee weren't talking to each other properly about this problem. I mean, I can't remember Cristina whether you were involved in that meeting.

Yeah Yeah. And, um, and we basically got a round table with all the people, the Government Digital Service, the civil servants, the Leader of the House's office, the Backbench Business Committee, the clerks, and then academics who've got expertise in petitioning and basically cracked heads and said, you know, look, this is the problem.

This is why it's affecting everybody. This is affecting the reputation of parliament. We need a solution. And we then wrote a [00:39:00] paper. And not all of it, but the bulk of that paper was then essentially used by the Procedure Committee to set up what we now have, which is the Petitions Committee system, and Parliament's much more in control of it.

But it was a tortuous process.

Cristina Leston-Bandeira: The Procedure Committee did do the inquiry in terms of how to set up the new system, which was, yes, very much following the paper that came out of that meeting that Hansard Society led on. And the two key elements of the new system was obviously having an online petition site where people could submit their petitions and that was not owned by Government.

It was a collaborative effort between Parliament and government and that's actually quite unique. There's no other system in the whole world where you have a collaborative online system between Parliament and government and that's still like that today. And then on the other side, obviously reintroducing the Petitions Committee, because we did have a Petitions Committee, as Richard alluded to earlier, until 1974, which was then dismantled because there was a thinking that there's not much more [00:40:00] purpose for it when, at the time, maybe what they should have thought, and the chair at the time, actually, of that committee did say, well, we could do more public engagement about petitions, but it wasn't really not very well received. So the reintroduction of the Petitions Committee in 2015, that makes a huge difference.

The fact you have a group of members and staff looking after the petitions and making decisions about what to do. not just the debates, but also following up responses from the government, doing any other public engagement activities, etc. And so, yes, 2015 is a key point where Parliament takes ownership of the process, really, with collaboration with the Government in terms of responding to petitions with 10,000 signatures.

Mark D'Arcy: And in a shock development, this has actually proved to be an enormous success for Parliament, in terms, at least, of the kind of gross tonnage of signatures, the number of petitions, and even the number of people watching the subsequent debates on those petitions that are selected for debate. Why has it worked out so well?[00:41:00]

Cristina Leston-Bandeira: Well, in great part, it's incredibly accessible. It's very easy to submit a petition and then to disseminate it. And obviously you are submitting the petitions directly to Parliament and to government. And that's something that you can't do on something like change. org, for instance. And the fact that you can just submit a petition without registering is actually a key difference from the UK Parliament system to other systems out there in the world. And that actually brings in a barrier in terms of usability of the system.

Mark D'Arcy: Register. What does register mean in this? You have to prove your name and identity or something.

Cristina Leston-Bandeira: There's a whole variations of it, but you have to register into the system. So you have to give your name, you have to give your email address. In some places you do have to give your ID card, you have to prove that to your citizen of the country, so it will depend from system to system. But in the, on the UK Parliament system, you just go to, on the website, there's a few boxes where you put in what your petition is, you get five more signatures to support it, and that's it.

And then obviously the committee checks [00:42:00] it, and it might not accept it, but you don't need to register, whereas other systems, If you're doing it online, you need to register.

Richard Huzzey: One of the things regarding the kind of anxieties you occasionally hear when MPs get worried there are Russian bots perhaps automatically signing petitions always makes me think of the fact that there had persistently been in the past all sorts of scandals.

Whenever a popular petition would be presented, The other side would immediately say we've heard rumours that small boys have been employed to sit writing made up names on the petition. Well famously indeed the clerks went through the Chartist petition in 1842 and found that people had signed Queen Victoria and the Duke of Wellington and other made up names.

So the point is that the concerns about the security and rubbishing the petitions you don't like and their veracity, the technology changes but the anxieties often stay the same.

Cristina Leston-Bandeira: Coming back to the popularity, online petitions are very, very popular. You know, you see online petitions circulating all the time from all sorts of different sites.

It's just really easy, it's almost like the easiest way to [00:43:00] participate in politics is to do a petition or sign it. So, when you have that actually going to, you know, the Parliament and the government and there might be a debate associated with that. It really rises in terms of the visibility and the importance of it and the potential of what you can do with it.

Mark D'Arcy: And how do you think it influences the MPs themselves when they have these debates? Because what you get with a petition is a debate on a motion that the House has considered such and such a petition or petitions. You don't get a sort of concrete result where they all say, yes, this is wonderful, we should do it immediately, and a motion is passed to that effect.

It's much more neutral than that. But does it have actual influence on the MPs sitting in Westminster Hall holding those debates on a Monday afternoon?

Cristina Leston-Bandeira: Yes, absolutely. It's got a very big impact because what you see in terms of debates is the most visible side to it, but actually petitions submitted can also lead to many other outcomes.

And that's often a more useful way of thinking of success of petitions is not [00:44:00] by has it changed the law in terms of an output, but in terms of what are the different outcomes it might have had. And it might have been that it just raised awareness of an issue that MPs were not aware of. And what we refer to as the fire alarm function, for instance, a petition like the high heels codes.

I don't know if you remember that one dress codes. This was about employees not being forced to use specific items of clothing for, for working. And it got to a hundred thousand signatures like in two days. And then people were really surprised with that. And what that showed was that nationally, it was an issue that was affecting a lot of, particularly women, in vulnerable type of positions like temporary jobs and that sort of thing. But it's something that MPs would not necessarily hear through their constituencies because there would not be enough people within a constituency to talk about that, or would not feel comfortable to talk to, to the MPs.

So it has that role of bringing in issues that MPs might not hear about. And the debates themselves, they're just a way of airing those issues. Quite often constituents [00:45:00] will get in touch with the MPs before the debate. But the debates definitely make a difference.

Richard Huzzey: One of the great things working with Cristina as a historian, working with a political studies expert, is also thinking about the changing role of the staff working for the Commons behind these committees.

Because in the 20th century, and certainly earlier, a lot of the clerks I think saw their jobs almost as gatekeepers to try and stop fraudulent petitions and also to see off any deviations from the proper procedure and the proper formal introduction that had to be written to the petitions. And one of the things we found in our interviews was that clerks and MPs in the 20th century, um, put a very low value on petitions because they saw them as largely irrelevant and unimportant.

And that's because, as Cristina alludes to there, they often would tend to think of them succeeding only if they actually got an immediate victory, as opposed to actually, we found campaigners often thought very strategically or tactically about this building publicity. Our colleague Henry Miller's looked at ways in which, in the [00:46:00] 20th century, the photo shoot of handing your petition in Downing Street or to the local council or in front of Parliament was almost more important to people than their expectation it would actually get a response, that it was the publicity. The other thing I'd also add is that the staff today working behind the scenes on the petition system are really quite inspirational in that their role is as much as ambassadors for Parliament and as an education and outreach group, telling people why that petition might not be admissible and how they might reframe it in ways that would be admissible under the system and explaining in what Parliament does and doesn't consider itself responsible for and we actually owe a particular debt to them because it was after I'd done a little placement with them that they first introduced me to Cristina working on contemporary petitions and from that this AHRC funded project on the long history of petitions in the United Kingdom.

Mark D'Arcy: Just to go back to your point about what is and isn't admissible, you know, a petition to sack the manager of the England football team wouldn't be admissible because it's not something [00:47:00] the government does and not something the Parliament does. A petition to change government policy in some way or change the law in some way would be because that is the business of the state, if you like.

Is that roughly the distinction?

Richard Huzzey: Well, Parliament's sovereign, Mark, so technically Parliament could do whatever it wanted to.

Mark D'Arcy: I wouldn't want to get into that one, though.

Richard Huzzey: But it does create some really interesting edge cases. So, for example, often e petitions asking to change abortion law in Northern Ireland had been rejected on the basis it was a devolved matter.

But of course, it's Parliament's choice what to make a devolved matter. So there are some sort of complexities there, I think, where, you know, there's real questions about what Parliament chooses and doesn't choose to make its responsibility.

Mark D'Arcy: And they did in the end, I think, didn't they? Change the abortion law in Northern Ireland from Westminster.

Richard Huzzey: Yes, MPs in the end did indeed choose to change that.

So in that sense, it was a good example of where it's not always a settled matter what will be left to be devolved matters.

Cristina Leston-Bandeira: One of the actual main reasons why petitions do not get accepted is because they are a [00:48:00] repeat of something already out there as a petition.

And that sort of issue is something that, if we think about the future, what might improve even more the system, is something that artificial intelligence could help in terms of identifying petitions that are already open, because that is actually the main reason why petitions do not get accepted, is the fact that it's a repetition of one.

And the Petitions Committee is very good in terms of saying we haven't accepted yours. They always explain why it hasn't accepted, so that's really important. But also, if it is a repetition, then they will give the link to the petition that is a repeat of for those people, for those campaigners to go and sign that petition that is already live.

Richard Huzzey: I think one of the curiosities is obviously in the past the staff would be concerned about the form of the petition but they didn't actually care too much what it was asking for unless it was openly treasonous or rebellious because they were simply accepting it. It was getting dumped in the speaker's bag.

Whereas actually now, because Parliament is actually hosting the petitions on a [00:49:00] parliamentary website, they are actually a lot more cautious and have to be a bit more careful reputationally that they're not, you know, hosting hate speech or not hosting things that are clearly trivial and ridiculous. I think famously one of the rejected petitions asking to give a knighthood to Chuck Norris, I think that's the sort of reason they don't accept petitions for honours or other requests on positions.

Mark D'Arcy: You never see the end of it. One of the things that's really striking when you look at the website is the level of data they have about where signatures for an individual petition are coming from. You know, it's always struck me that, for example, petitions on green issues, there'll be a big cluster of signatures emanating from Brighton and North London on sort of pro green issue.

Almost living the cliche. But there's quite a lot of good granular data about where people think what that comes out of this.

Cristina Leston-Bandeira: Yes, definitely. And Brighton and Bristol is where you always find the highest levels of signatures, and it's just a reflection of people's voting, people's habits of political participation.

And actually, if we think [00:50:00] about, again, what the petition system could do in terms of development would be to maybe to reach out to those areas that might not be reaching out so much, for instance, Wolverhampton, I remember being an area where there's not many signatures. And if we link this to obviously it's a very successful system in terms of raising awareness and actually seeing some petitions have led to change the law, et cetera, and there's a lot to it. But one of the issues with the system is that it tends to be used by what is often referred to as the usual suspects, which tend to be people from, you know, middle upper class, higher levels of education. tend to be white, tend to be men, etc.

And so it means that in terms of the volume of the problems being brought in, of the petitions being brought in, it might not necessarily be as diverse in terms of the views that the country shares as it could be. But I mean the committee is very aware of that and done some work with them on that project, reaching out to more seldom heard voices, but is something that [00:51:00] is difficult to do, but there's no reason not to address it.

Richard Huzzey: Although it's not on a mass scale in many cases, our colleague Anna Bocking Welch on the project actually looked at the ways in which there have been opportunities for recent immigrant communities, people perhaps without actually UK citizenship, to use petitioning as a way to interact with parliament despite not necessarily having the vote yet.

So for example, it was actually quite an important way in the 70s and 80s that people would raise particularly unjust deportation cases that often split up families. Or for example, it really contributed I think in raising the profile of how Sikhs had been excluded from the race relations legislation and all of the demands about turbans being permitted as part of uniforms or to do motorcycling helmets and things like that.

So there have been ways that petitioning has been used by seldom heard from ethnic minority groups, but not necessarily on a mass scale. And I think it's also important to remember, yeah, petitioning is a kind of technology, it's a [00:52:00] form of participation, but we shouldn't just assume that it's all being used in a certain direction towards a pluralistic multiplicity of voices or an embrace of some sort of, you know, expansion of inclusion, because it's also been used in many cases, particularly in local levels in council areas and so forth, actually for exclusionary means.

So you get petitions, for example, demanding that an estate or a road should be kept white. In 1985, the Commission for Racial Equality actually, um, won an injunction against 53 tenants of the Exmouth estate in Tower Hamlets who'd organized a petition opposing any Asian family moving into their block. So there's a sort of sense to which, you know, this is a technology that's used by all sorts of campaigns, often those that aren't being so much debated in parliament by the big parties.

It's not sort of a progressive or liberal or conservative technology innately.

Cristina Leston-Bandeira: Coming back to those groups, to the seldom heard groups, obviously the vast majority are not the usual suspects. But there are some really good [00:53:00] examples, as Richard was saying, of petitions that come from those specific groups.

And I wanted to mention the petition on improving mortality rates. and healthcare for black women. And that's a really good example of a petition raising awareness amongst MPs of problems that exist out there. And this petition got nearly 200, 000 signatures. And the committee linked the actual petitioner with another inquiry taking place in parliament.

So at the time, the Health and Social Care Committee had an inquiry about safety maternity care services. And so the petitioners were invited to come and give evidence. And that was a really powerful piece of evidence to demonstrate how maternity care services are particularly letting black women down in terms of the care that they receive. And there are lots of really good examples like that. And when people talk about the success of the petition system in the UK parliament, to me, actually more than the high volume of numbers and, and all the [00:54:00] debates and all of that, it's those stories that demonstrate the value of it.

And for that, it's absolutely crucial. The fact it's got committee of MPs and staff who look at each petition and think, where can we add value to this? How can we link it to other parts of parliament?

Ruth Fox: So, Cristina, we know it's popular, we know it's got this good structure in terms of the petitions committee and so on, but where do you see it heading?

I mean, technology is changing, people's sort of approach to politics is changing. What do you think are the challenges facing the system?

Cristina Leston-Bandeira: So, I think actually one of the key challenges is also one of its key successes is the volumes. They receive a lot of petitions. In the last parliament, I think they received over 50, 000 petitions.

Of these, only 14, 000 were accepted on the site. All the others were not accepted. That's straight away, it's part of a problem. So you have volumes of 70, 75 percent of petitions are not accepted because it's not something that [00:55:00] Parliament can do anything about it, because it's a repeat or whatever reasons, and that's something where technology could play a big part to guide better petitions when submitting to make sure that they submit something that can be considered by Parliament.

But on the other hand, if you've got huge volumes of petitions to consider, you need staff and resources to consider them and Parliament is not necessarily very well equipped from that perspective, particularly digitally, to deal with big volumes of evidence, let's call it by that, from petitioners. So that's one area that I think could be much better.

The other area which they already do very well, but they could still even do more, is linking with the rest of parliamentary business. They have a really interesting system that no other Parliament in the world has of linking in with Westminster Hall debates, where petitions that don't get the high volume of signatures can still get involved and give their evidence through a survey and then MPs use that evidence in the speeches in Westminster Hall debates.

They link in quite often with committee inquiries happening and they tag the debates in the Order Paper. [00:56:00] So there's a number of things that's happening but that could happen much more systematically because in effect with the petitions you submit, you submit a representation of all the problems that the country is going through.

So it's actually really rich information and I'm not sure actually it's all being used to its full effect. And then the other side is what we've spoken about already, which is going beyond the usual suspects. So you have a more diverse pool of petitions coming through.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, Cristina Leston Bandeira and Richard Huzzey, thanks very much indeed for joining Ruth and me on the pod today.

Ruth Fox: Well Mark, I thought that was a great discussion, but I think it's probably all we've got time for this week.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, just time though for a quick reminder that our podcast will be appearing slightly later next week because we'll be taking in the debate on the Assisted Dying Bill, the first chance the Commons has had to debate this subject for quite a while since the last Private Members Bill on the subject.

Ruth Fox: So we'll see you then.

Mark D'Arcy: See you then. Bye. Bye.

Ruth Fox: Well that's all from us for this week's episode of Parliament [00:57:00] Matters. Please hit the follow or subscribe button in your podcast app to get the next episode as soon as it lands.

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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 my carrier pigeon.

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Parliament Matters is produced by the Hansard Society and supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. For more [00:58:00] information, visit hansardsociety.org.uk/pm or find us on social media at Hansard Society.