In this special episode of Parliament Matters, we sit down with author and researcher Sam Freedman to explore the themes of his book, Failed State. Freedman delivers a sharp critique of Britain’s governance, examining how bad laws and weak parliamentary scrutiny are contributing to systemic dysfunction.
This engaging conversation covers Parliament's structural flaws, the realities of modern political life, and bold reform ideas—exploring how fixing the core of our democracy could lead to better outcomes for everyone.
Themes discussed in this episode include:
Parliamentary scrutiny in crisis: Freedman highlights the erosion of Parliament's role in scrutinising legislation, forcing the unelected House of Lords and even the courts to fill the gap, creating further constitutional tensions.
From part-time MPs to professional politicians: How Parliament's evolution has failed to keep pace with its members’ changing roles, leaving many MPs frustrated and directionless.
Poor legislation’s ripple effects: Freedman discusses how the lack of oversight has led to flawed laws and policies, citing examples from his time in government, such as the rushed Academies Act.
Decentralisation as a solution: Freedman makes the case for empowering regional and local authorities to address over-centralisation and strengthen governance.
Sam Freedman
Sam is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Government and a senior adviser to the education charity Ark. From 2010 to 2013, he served as a Senior Policy Adviser to Education Secretary Michael Gove, after which he worked with the teacher training charity Teach First. Between 2018 and 2021, he was CEO of the Education Partnerships Group, an international charity that supports governments in sub-Saharan Africa with education policy. Now a widely respected political commentator, Sam runs the popular Substack newsletter 'Comment is Freed' which is often cited as the most-read politics publication on the platform. His recent book, Failed State: Why Nothing Works and How We Fix It, has become a bestseller. You can follow his insights on Twitter @samfr and at BlueSky @samfr.bsky.social.
Sam Freedman (2024) Failed State: Why nothing works and how we fix it (Macmillan: London)
Comment is Freed Substack - politics, policy analysis and foreign affairs from Sam and Lawrence Freedman
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[00:00:00] Intro: You are listening to Parliament Matters, a Hansard Society production, supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk/pm
[00:00:17] Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox.
[00:00:24] Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark Darcy, and coming up in this special edition of the pod, we talk to author and researcher Sam Freedman about his book, Failed State, which attempts to diagnose what's going wrong with government in Britain.
[00:00:36] Ruth Fox: He told us a big part of the problem was bad laws pushed through a Parliament that was unable to scrutinise them properly.
[00:00:43] Sam Freedman: I see the lack of scrutiny given to legislation as being an increasingly important part of our state's function. It's really the focus of the second part of my book, and though I blame Parliament itself less than I blame the executive for using its historic sort of power, an unusual level of power, versus other countries to sort of ignore and avoid scrutiny as much as possible.
[00:01:09] As I say in the book, this is not a new phenomenon. We've always had a very strong executive. But in the last 20, 30 or so years, you've seen executives fight against even the sort of smallish amount of scrutiny that Parliament was giving before with a variety of tricks and changes, which has left the Commons, I argue, extremely ineffective in performing a scrutiny role, which in turn has then led the Lords to have to do a lot more.
[00:01:38] Which puts a huge amount of pressure on a, on an unelected chamber, and then ultimately, I argue it's led the courts to have to do a lot more. The courts have ended up stepping in to try and deal with the lack of scrutiny provided by the Commons, and then that has also created its own sort of constitutional crisis because you have people arguing that the courts aren't elected, and why are they getting involved in politics?
[00:02:00] So, I have um, uh, several chapters where I explore how the sort of fundamental dysfunction of the Commons is, is having quite a widespread ripple effect, now across the whole of the way our politics works.
[00:02:11] Mark D'Arcy: One of the big structural flaws you identify is this idea that Parliament had become a part-time house. You know, barristers would roll in at tea time after a day at the courts. And so the structures of Parliament had evolved to cope with part-time MPs. And nowadays MPs are more or less a fully professional group who spend all their time there, but the institution hasn't caught up with that.
[00:02:35] Sam Freedman: Yes, and I think that sort of part time Parliament was there from when this modern conception of Parliament arose.
[00:02:42] And so you always had this system in which you had, since we've had tight parties, that they have had backbenchers who were largely supportive of what the government wanted to do, had other jobs, were there, you know, if they were on the Tory side, were there because, you know, you know, they were sort of aristocrats who came in from the countryside or were lawyers who did their job in the morning. If they were on the Labour side, it's because they'd been in the trade union movement.
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