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Intro: [00:00:00] You are listening to Parliament Matters, a Hansard Society production, supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk/pm..

Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox.

Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark D'Arcy. Coming up this week.

Ruth Fox: Public inquiries. They're now a big part of the scrutiny of government. So should Parliament, not ministers, set them up and monitor their work?

Mark D'Arcy: You ring my bell, the rapid rise of policy wonk whizkid Torsten Bell, now Minister for Pensions.

Ruth Fox: And how much room is there in the modern commons for masterclass theatricals?

Mark D'Arcy: But first Ruth, I think before we start, we ought to do a quick community note as it were. We've had a few little technical hitches this week and so [00:01:00] what we're offering is going to be a shorter and possibly slightly less polished version of the pod than usual. But I do hope listeners will bear with us through it, and we hope to be back and firing on all cylinders in next week's edition.

But in the meantime, quite a lot of interesting things going on in Westminster for us to chat about.

Ruth Fox: There are. Yeah, so we talked last week, Mark, um, about the demands at Westminster for public inquiry into what was happening with the grooming gangs in towns across the UK and how politicised that has suddenly become on the back of Elon Musk's social media hits.

And, uh, in fact, as we said, this is not going to go away for Labour. It certainly died down a little bit because there's been a bit more focus this week on the state of the economy and Rachel Reeves' position, but it's not gone away. I mean, this is going to rumble on and on. The Home Secretary Yvette Cooper's um, just announced a series of local inquiries into grooming gangs and, and some Labour MPs, Rotherham's Sarah Champion for example, are saying that's what's needed.

But the question I think Mark is, is whether that will be enough to satisfy [00:02:00] critics elsewhere in Parliament, and indeed outside Parliament, and the media and so on. But it's also opened up this question of who sets the parameters for public inquiries. And a lot of MPs in the last few days have been getting interested in this question.

And of course, there are an awful lot of inquiries for them to get interested in. These things cost an awful lot of money. When tragedy happens, when there are scandals in various organs of the state, there's always calls for a public inquiry. But then shortly thereafter there are criticisms of the public inquiries for how much they cost, how long they go on for, and critically one of the things is what happens with the recommendations.

And a number of MPs have said, you know, some of them on social media in recent days, what is the mechanisms for monitoring what happens to public inquiries. And what's Parliament's role in this? So we thought we should probably cover it in the podcast.

Mark D'Arcy: And indeed, and it sent us scurrying to some fairly recent select committee reports.

There was one last year, there was one in [00:03:00] 2014 from various committees in the House of Lords, that have come to the view that Parliament ought to build up a kind of formal mechanism for both the setting up of public inquiries, deciding their terms of reference, possibly deciding who chairs them, for example, and then following up what they come up with later, because as you say, any number of public inquiries at the moment, there's the Grenfell inquiry, there's the Infected Blood inquiry, there's all sorts of other inquiries into things like COVID 19, that's been running on for years and probably will run on for more years yet, there's the occasionally eye popping inquiry into spy cops, there's a kind of political infiltration by the police into particularly left wing groups of one sort or another.

It's costing the taxpayer millions upon millions of pounds in each inquiry, sometimes tens, sometimes even hundreds of millions. Then the results of these inquiries come out. There's a brief fanfare, flutter of coverage in the newspapers, and the whole thing all too frequently then disappears into the undergrowth of Whitehall, [00:04:00] never to be seen or heard of again.

Ruth Fox: Yes, and that, that's what prompted in the House of Lords last year. a Statutory Inquiries Committee to be set up. It was actually at the behest of, um, Lord Norton, Professor Lord Norton of Louth, who was, I think, our first guest on this podcast when we interviewed him about his book on the 1922 committee, and it's something that he's been concerned about for quite a long time.

So this was a sort of an ad hoc inquiry, temporary committee, to look at this question of what is the purpose of inquiries, how are they set up, how are they monitored, and how do you track the implementation of their recommendations. It's fascinating, it goes into what's the purpose of inquiries, but you say about the number of inquiries that are going on, I mean, in its report, which was published last September, it says that there were 18 public inquiries in the UK last year.

2023, 2024, 18 of them.

Mark D'Arcy: And these are the all singing, all dancing, full scale statutory inquiries presided over by some senior figure with barristers representing all sorts of what are known in the trade as core [00:05:00] participants going on with the full majesty of legal process, potentially penalties for people who refuse to give evidence.

Witnesses are sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, etc. Under penalty of perjury. So these are pretty big, serious efforts. And, as I say, the danger with them a lot of the time is that they come out with great big weighty recommendations, and everybody signs up to them, and then nothing happens.

And so one of the big things that needs to happen, in the view of quite a lot of people in Parliament, and including Lord Norton's committee, is that there should be a formal progress chasing mechanism. to ensure that those recommendations are at least looked at and acted on by government.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I mean, one of the problems that the report highlights quite powerfully is the fact that these inquiries are established for a period of time.

They often run longer than anticipated, they go over budget, but when they report, that's then the end of it, because it's usually a judge that's in charge of them. They go back to their judicial role. The secretariat is in effect [00:06:00] disbanded. So there's no mechanism to monitor what then happens. And so it becomes a bit of a vacuum and, you know, governments will respond to the report and say, yes, we support the implementation of the recommendations, but often takes a very long time.

And particularly where you're talking about recommendations that involve a lot of public spending. There's a sort of sense that governments drag their feet, perhaps for understandable reasons. But there isn't, as you say, that mechanism then to see what is or isn't being implemented. And the report from the House of Lords Committee notes on a number of occasions, well, what difference would that make?

And they, for example, highlight in relation to Grenfell, many people in the industry, if you like, around housing and so on, felt that the recommendations of the previous inquiry into a terrible fire, the, the Lacanal inquiry had been implemented, then some of what happened at Grenfell may not have happened.

There's other similar examples where lessons are not learnt. There's then another tragedy or a scandal. You're talking [00:07:00] then about another inquiry, more money being spent and it's just going around in circles.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, well, think of all those inquiries into children who've died under local authority care, which, the litany of those going through the decades is horrible to contemplate. So what might an alternative process look like? I suppose you'd start with the announcement of an inquiry. At the moment, I can remember ministers and prime ministers doing this from time to time. They'd come to the dispatch box and they'd say that we've appointed a former appeal court judge, Lord such and such, to preside over an inquiry and it's been given this remit.

And the start button is pushed and Parliament is told about it. And the only real constraint on ministers' room for manoeuvre in this is that they've got to have a suitably credible figure and a suitably credible set of terms of reference that covers the issues that need to be covered. And the judges for that may be to some extent in the House of Commons, but mostly, they're in the media. It'll be the criticism around, is this the right person to preside over this [00:08:00] inquiry? Is this remit excluding some important area that should be included in the investigation? But maybe Parliament should have a voice in that.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, and that's part of the discussion in the Lords report.

One of the issues is, of course, that the appointment of the chair of the inquiry is so critical, as you say. That is shrouded in a degree of secrecy, how the minister decides who the candidates were that they chose from, what sort of skill sets, what qualities they were looking for, is all shrouded a little bit in mystery.

Then the minister sets the term of reference, usually in consultation with the chair. There's no formal end date for the inquiry sometimes. It's an open ended process. But once the chair is set, once the terms of reference are set, then the accountability function is unclear because it's an independent inquiry.

So by definition, the chair and the secretariat go away and run it.

Mark D'Arcy: And they can't be told what to do, however frustrated ministers get with perhaps they're [00:09:00] taking an awful long time to get somewhere. The alternative process might be for a parliamentary committee, maybe of the Commons, maybe jointly Commons and Lords, once the demand for an inquiry has been made, to look at what the remit should be and possibly to consider who the chair should be so that it's not purely an inside job by cabinet ministers.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, and that's what the Lords Committee last year concluded. So they recommended a joint committee on public inquiry should be established.

But their focus was very much on the sort of the latter end of the process, monitoring best practice in setting up and running these inquiries, so that you could focus on things like not reinventing the wheel and learning the lessons from previous inquiries and ensuring that best practice was followed and then focusing on the implementation of the recommendations and monitoring and tracking, bringing together in one place all the recommendations of all these inquiries.

I think a weakness of the House of Lords report, and it's unavoidable for them, [00:10:00] is that because it's a House of Lords committee, they didn't feel able to make recommendations that touched on the role of the House of Commons in this. That's where I think from our perspective, you know, the focus would fall and say, well actually there's, there must be a role for the, for the Commons here.

And the committee, if there is to be a committee on public inquiries, could actually do more than that. As you say, if we have a situation now where the House of Commons chairs of select committees, for example, are elected, MPs have a role in that, we have select committees looking at pre appointment hearings for appointments of chairs and senior officials to a range of public bodies, why shouldn't Parliament The House of Commons particularly have a role in scrutinizing, perhaps not formally appointing, but certainly scrutinizing, commenting on perhaps a pre-appointment hearing for the chairs of these public inquiries.

And yes, being able to have a role in commenting on the terms of reference

Mark D'Arcy: and perhaps also, uh, a kind of sifting role [00:11:00] to say that there should definitely be a full dress Commons debate on the findings of this inquiry at some point. Maybe not every public inquiry would merit a full scale Commons debate on its findings.

Maybe some of them would go to Westminster Hall, maybe some of them might be referred for consideration to a select committee. But having someone outside of the government business managers able to say there should be a full scale debate on these findings seems to be quite a useful, valuable, independent element injected into the process.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I mean, I think if you think about that list of inquiries that we just talked about at the beginning when they report. They are likely to generate a ministerial statement. I mean that's the other thing, if the minister isn't forthcoming with a response then it's not hard to see that an urgent question will draw the appropriate minister to the house to respond.

Mark D'Arcy: But there's a difference isn't there between having a statement where people are quite constrained by the rules of debate as opposed to a full scale Commons debate which can have much more intervention back and forth, ministers can be [00:12:00] pressed much more than they are in the course of a statement where, you know, the opposition spokesperson, for example, will have one go at asking questions about what the ministers just said.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, that's true. And I think that the second round then is it's not just what happens at the beginning after the report is published, but then what is the process for holding ministers to account for implementation? So you want that first hit, but you also want an opportunity to have, if necessary, a full scale debate.

Later on, it's me 12 months in, for example, well what progress have you made, Minister? You said all of these things in that first response, whether it was a statement or a debate. Where are we now, 12 months on? Where are we 18 months on, 24 months on?

Mark D'Arcy: Or at least they could push it to a, the, relevant select committee and say, why don't you follow this up and perhaps put a bit of pressure on there to make sure that these things aren't forgotten.

Also, it would perhaps foreclose on some of the shenanigans that can happen around the publication of reports. So if you think back, I mean, this is like the ancient history now to the Scott inquiry into the [00:13:00] arms to Iraq scandal, there was going to be a ministerial statement. And I think the opposition spokespersons were given, was it an hour, was it an hour and a half to look at this vast footnoted report?

I think it was Robin Cook and Ming Campbell for the Liberal Democrats who between them divided up the work. So they were looking at different sections of the report and cooperating on it so they got as much of a view as they could and could then go into the Commons and ask what awkward questions they could.

And this is famously remembered as one of Robin Cook's most brilliant Commons performances that he had so little opportunity to see the report but still managed to tear the government to shreds.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, and that's one of the challenges and that one had particular implications because there were security matters involved and that sometimes this is what happens with some of these inquiries, you know, where they touch on intelligence, where they touch on security, and we've got two inquiries at the moment, as you said that the spy cop scandal and also the inquiry into military behavior in Afghanistan, which, of course, we've talked about on the podcast before, because it's involved the former veterans minister, Johnny Mercer, in being asked to [00:14:00] to essentially identify his sources to that inquiry with a threat hanging over him of going to prison if he didn't.

So where you get into that area, then there's a whole other layer of considerations, which perhaps can't always go to a select committee or an open debate in the House, but then you need a mechanism for accountability to Parliament.

Mark D'Arcy: An interesting question, I suppose, is whether anything is ever done about this report.

It's a report by House of Lords committee, which means that, as you said, It's, to some extent, a slightly low status report, and the precedent of the earlier 2014 report, I think the Lords Constitution Committee, is everyone said, oh yes, jolly good idea, and then it was all totally forgotten about in the press of events that followed.

So it actually needs a bit of an upwelling of demand in the Commons for this to happen. Oppositions are always in favour of these things, but the test is whether governments can bring themselves to create mechanisms which will ultimately make their life harder. I'm not holding my breath.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, well, that is the challenge, isn't it?

I mean, the flaw, I suppose, in the plan here is that that House of Lords report in [00:15:00] 2014 came forward with a whole set of recommendations, and very, very few, if any, almost none of them have been implemented. As you say, there needs to be political impetus to get the Commons engaged, and to try and deliver on either a joint committee, preferably, or if not, then, okay, if the Lords want to go ahead with their own, But it will have more limitations than if it were a joint committee involving MPs.

But part of the problem, I think, a lot of the time is it's an ongoing issue with scrutiny. You've got to stay on it. Often the publication of reports is sort of seen at the end point.

Mark D'Arcy: It's not so much publish and be damned as publish and be forgotten.

Ruth Fox: Yes. And, and, you know, in order to make progress, They need to be progress chasing all the time.

Mark D'Arcy: And you can imagine, actually, that being the chair of the Inquiries Committee, were such a post ever to be created, would actually be a pretty good pulpit to occupy within Parliament, that would require, I think, quite a senior politician in it to make it work.

Ruth Fox: You can see, of all the select committee chairs, it would sit, I think, alongside something like chair of the Treasury [00:16:00] Committee, Foreign Affairs, Public Accounts Committee a really attractive position for a senior backbencher to get their teeth into and to try and bring about some genuine change.

Mark D'Arcy: And with that, Ruth, should we take a break?

Ruth Fox: Yes, Mark, let's just take a break. But before we go, listeners, if you value the podcast, can I ask you to rate it on Apple or Spotify?

As we said in last week's episode, we're going to be doing some special editions coming up starting later this month on the assisted dying bill. And we want as many people as possible, obviously, to be able to access these. And word of mouth marketing is the best. So if you're able to rate us on Apple or Spotify, that will really help other listeners find us.

Mark D'Arcy: See you in a minute.

And we're back. And Ruth, you were talking just before we went to our break about the assisted dying bill. And of course there has been an important event announced just as we were starting to record the pod today, which is that the Leader of the House has confirmed that next Wednesday, the [00:17:00] debate will be held on the money resolution for the bill.

This is the government formally authorizing any expenditure necessary in connection with the Bill so that that doesn't act as a block on the legislation going forward, because if there isn't a money resolution, the bill can't proceed because it's no good passing a law that hasn't had the spending necessary to underpin it authorized.

So that will be a little bit of a moment next week, and they'll actually have to be a debate.

Ruth Fox: Yes, basically any bill, whether it's a government bill or in this case a private member's bill, that gets a second reading, a money resolution is needed to give parliamentary approval to the financial consequences of the legislation, and only a minister can do that.

It can't be a backbencher. So in this case, although the sponsor of the bill is Kim Ledbetter, as it's a private member's bill, Under the procedural rules, only a minister can bring forward a money motion.

Mark D'Arcy: What's the phrase, the financial privilege of the Crown?

Ruth Fox: Financial initiative of the Crown. So, basically, it's a constitutional principle dating back to [00:18:00] 1713.

It gives the Crown, the government of the day, the exclusive authority to request or recommend expenditure to the House of Commons. So, to table a money motion, the government's got to essentially, um, assess how much money they think will be required, have some idea, we hope, about where the funding is coming from, and then they have to get agreement of the House to this money motion.

Now, these can be debated for up to 45 minutes, so I would expect next week there are going to be a number of questions about, well, what is the expectation of ministers about how much this legislation is going to cost, both to the National Health Service and in relation to the judiciary, because there's a role for judges in this process of assisted dying.

Mark D'Arcy: And I suppose that will in itself give an indication to the government's estimate of how many people they think will wish to use the assisted dying process.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, the leader of the house in her statement today at business questions has said this does not indicate government support for the bill, but that you have to have a money resolution in order to proceed at public bill committee stage, which [00:19:00] we expect to start later this month.

So we knew that it was going to have to come. We've been waiting for this announcement, but of course, although the government, you know, it's part of its neutral stance in saying this is a matter for Parliament to decide, they are nonetheless, in effect, signing up, in principle, to whatever the cost may be.

And therefore there are going to have to be questions that are answered by ministers about what do they think the cost is going to be. And In effect, they're signing up almost to a blank cheque.

Mark D'Arcy: This is not support, it's sort of support. They're saying that if the Commons passes this bill, if Parliament passes this bill, they will not say we're not authorising the spending.

So I suppose you can put inverted commas around that and call it support. It's certainly not standing in the way of the bill, and bills have been blocked before. when a government has refused to move a money resolution. I suppose the other thing to watch out for is whether there's any attempt at some kind of last minute ambush to stop the money resolution being agreed.

That would require quite a bit of whipping. Might be quite an interesting manoeuvre for [00:20:00] someone to attempt but I imagine the people behind the bill will be on the alert to make sure they have the votes available to make sure that the money resolution gets through all right.

Ruth Fox: Yeah and the House having voted for a second reading and given its clear expressed view that it wants the Bill to go to the next stage for further consideration for scrutiny to look at the amendments, sort of do that would seem underhand and I think would look particularly bad to outside observers looking on thinking, what on earth is this about?

So I think that's highly unlikely, but it will be an interesting 45 minutes discussion to look out for.

Mark D'Arcy: Yes, watch that Hansard. And staying with current events, also as we were just preparing to record the pod, the news came through that the Labour MP now sitting as an independent, Mike Amesbury, has pleaded guilty to charges of assault and, uh, I suppose now will go forward for sentencing, but has been expelled from the Labour Party and there's already talk that there might be a by election in his seat.

Ruth Fox: Yes, so he's pleaded guilty at Chester Magistrates Court today. And as we say, the Labour Party's [00:21:00] expelled him, having suspended him previously. So the question is, what happens now? We won't know exactly, I guess, until we hear what decision the court reaches on his penalty. If he's pleaded guilty, is he going to get a custodial sentence or not?

But the talk is that there could be two routes now. One is that he could just resign his seat. And obviously that would lead to a by election. The other option is, could there be a recall petition? So it's worth, perhaps, Mark, just refreshing our memories about how a recall petition is triggered.

Mark D'Arcy: Recall, of course, was brought in by the Coalition as a way of allowing the voters to have a say on whether an errant MP who's been punished for something by the Standards Committee or who has committed a criminal offence should remain a Member of Parliament.

If 10 percent of constituents sign a petition, that automatically triggers a by election. And almost always, that means doom for the MP concerned. I think one MP so far has survived a recall petition, and that was Ian Paisley Jr. in Northern [00:22:00] Ireland. Otherwise, there have been several other by elections, or MPs resigning in advance of a recall petition because they don't want the humiliation of being expelled from their constituency by their own voters.

Ruth Fox: So basically, if an MP is convicted of any offence, and sentenced or ordered to be imprisoned or detained, then a recall petition can be triggered after all appeals have been exhausted. It's worth just mentioning that if a sentence of over 12 months in jail were to be applied, then MPs are automatically disqualified from Parliament.

You don't need to have to bother with the recall petition, but anything less than 12 months would trigger recall.

Mark D'Arcy: The other route, I suppose, would be a Standards Committee inquiry, which found that he'd brought the House into disrepute and imposed a suspension of more than 10 days from the House of Commons, at which point a recall process is automatically triggered as well.

So there are a number of routes by which, uh, Mr Amesbury might find himself outside Parliament.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, and, um, you know, we'll have to see, but it's hard to argue, if you recall, the images that were [00:23:00] captured on CCTV of him, um, basically thumping somebody in the street. Now, he, he has, you know, obviously his own arguments about why that happened.

He says he felt threatened by the person involved. But it's hard to argue that that doesn't bring into question whether you're bringing parliament into disrepute and whether your behavior is, is of a standard that we should expect of MPs.

Mark D'Arcy: Yes, I think there have been some off colour jokes about connecting with the electorate, but what you could see here is the first by election of the current parliament in a seat where Reform came second, albeit a distant second, at the election last year.

Mike Amesbury got 53 percent of the vote. Reform, I think, were some way behind in, I think, about the 20%s?

Ruth Fox: 18 percent they got. So they were second. Conservatives were third on 16%. So in current circumstances, when you look at the polls, when you look at the disgruntlement of the public with both of the main parties, not hard to see that Reform may be licking their lips at this one.

Mark D'Arcy: Anything can happen in a by election, I think, is a very good [00:24:00] rule to look at here. And I think it might be quite an interesting battle between Reform and the Conservative Party, with always, I suppose, the possibility of Labour coming through the middle, were there to be a by election. Because I don't think the Conservatives can easily afford to have Reform grabbing the headlines on this.

So you can imagine a very hard fought contest ahead. Should this, as we say, come to a by election, it's not a completely done deal that that would happen. If Mike Amesbury's punishment doesn't trigger. the whole process of recall, then potentially he could sit out this Parliament as an independent, maybe even contest the next election as an independent if he so desired.

There isn't a way for him to be forced out of parliament absent those procedures.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, well we'll have to see what decision of the court is, now he's pleaded guilty, but this is probably going to unfold over the next few weeks. But, um, Mark, perhaps we should then turn to another development this week, which, um, we've talked about a little bit.

The position of Tulip Siddiq, the city minister with the anti corruption brief. She, uh, [00:25:00] resigned concluding that her position was distracting from the work of government, following an inquiry from the advisor on ministerial interests. And her departure has prompted another ministerial reshuffle.

Mark D'Arcy: A micro reshuffle you might almost say, because it only really involves a couple of changes.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, so, um, she's been replaced by, uh, Emma Reynolds, who's, uh, an MP who came back to Parliament having lost her seat in 2019. She's now back in Parliament. She's got the, the City Minister's Brief, raising questions about, uh, the suitability of that appointment, again, because of her prior work as a lobbyist when she was out of Parliament for City UK, essentially a trade association for the banking and the city itself, and raising questions about the suitability of that appointment and her sort of past work.

But the mini reshuffle has also brought in somebody that we and others, to be fair, had highlighted as a likely ministerial appointment in the future, the new Labour MP for [00:26:00] Swansea, Torsten Bell.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, Torsten Bell, whose brother Olaf, is the head of policy in Downing Street now as well. So there's quite a powerful little sort of dynasty within government there.

Before that, he was the head of the Resolution Foundation, a left of center think tank, looking at ways to raise living standards for people on low to middle incomes. Before that, he was head of policy for Ed Miliband. He was, supposedly, the inspiration behind the 2015 election stunt, the Edstone, this stone monument in which Labour's policy promises were to be engraved, which was, uh, I think to say it was much mocked is a bit of an understatement.

Ruth Fox: Disaster, I think.

Mark D'Arcy: And there are all sorts of interesting things to say about Torsten Bell. First is that he came into Parliament with, kind of, the words future Chancellor of the Exchequer practically tattooed on his forehead. In a government where quite a number of ministerial posts were given to people who were straight through the door having just won their seat for the first time.

I mean, people like Georgia [00:27:00] Gould, Sarah Sackman, Al Cairns, the Veterans Minister, were given ministerial jobs as new MPs. Perhaps Torsten Bell was almost slightly miffed that he wasn't among that number and had to wait a whole six months before going through the pearly gates into ministerial office.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, and it's interesting, he's only made two speeches in the House of Commons. I mean, he's raised questions, he's made a number of interventions and debates, but he's only made two speeches. The first was his maiden speech. And then the second was this week, first day of his appointment as a minister, where he was responding to a pretty difficult debate about the WASPI women in Westminster Hall.

Again, we've talked on the podcast about the relative inexperience of some of these ministers and and how they're having to handle being at the dispatch box or being the sort of the lead minister speaking in the Commons on some of these difficult issues with very little experience of parliamentary culture.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, indeed. I mean, he's remarkably undercooked in terms of parliamentary experience. I think [00:28:00] back to the famous incident of Harold Wilson having to make his maiden speech as a minister from the dispatch box in October 1945. It wasn't quite as bad as that, but almost. It was a pretty tough thing to have to do when you barely had a chance to find your way to your ministerial office.

And sorry, Minister, it's straight off to Westminster Hall. You've got a really tough debate to respond to. He did a reasonable job, I think. But, yeah, it's not an easy baptism.

Ruth Fox: No, no, no. The other thing I think to look out for is because of his policy wonk background, there is a record of statements, both in front of select committees.

Of course, he was one of the people that was regularly brought in after a budget or a financial statement by the Treasury Select Committee to expound on his views and give the committee his wisdom. So there's an awful lot on the record. And just before he was elected as a, as a Labour candidate for the election.

He published a book, Great Britain, How We Get Our Future Back. There's an awful lot of material in [00:29:00] that about economic policy and social policy.

Mark D'Arcy: You kind of imagine that the Conservative central office has gone straight onto Amazon and ordered half a dozen copies to, uh, for their research department to comb through.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. And the prime thing they're going to be looking at. is the fact that he has been critical of the pension triple lock, which of course is one of the things that Labour has effectively doubled down on and has said that it's going to retain.

Mark D'Arcy: This is the requirement that the state pension has to rise by at least two and a half percent or by the value of the increase in average earnings or by the rate of inflation, whichever is the greater. So there's a kind of rolling increase in the state pension, which of course is a very big kind of annual bill that the Treasury has to find, and it's kind of electoral kryptonite to even question that, so he's signed up to a policy position, but the government isn't signed up. He's now the Pensions Minister, with a foot both in the Treasury and in the Department for Work and Pensions.

So he has two bosses. [00:30:00] He's got Rachel Reeves in the Treasury and Liz Kendall in Work and Pensions. And he'll have to kind of rationalise that position with both of them.

Ruth Fox: Presumably he's then going to get called up by both select committees, so he's going to get double doses of this. But he's going to be in charge of some really quite tricky policy issues, I mean the pensions review for example that's going to be underway.

We'll have to see what he makes of that, but on his appointment I went back to have a look at his maiden speech. And there's an interesting line in that, I think, that we were both taken with, that he talked about his experience. He'd worked also for Alistair Darling at the time of the banking crisis. He was working, I think, as a special advisor to Alistair Darling, who he clearly admired greatly.

And in his maiden speech, Torsten Bell said, As the banks went bust, he, Alistair Darling, taught me that politics is a vocation to be lived up to, not a game to be played, and that the MP's role is to combine service to a community and also service to a cause. So we'll see how he lives up to that, uh, in the coming years.

Mark D'Arcy: I think the other thing to say is that [00:31:00] he's clearly quite a tough cookie. There's a semi apocryphal story that when he became Ed Miliband's head of policy, the interview consisted of him telling Ed Miliband everything that he'd got wrong, to the point where Ed Miliband allegedly turned to him and said, look, Torsten, I am the leader of the party.

I am the leader of the opposition. To which Torsten Bell is supposed to have replied, what, do you want a hug or something? And certainly Ed Miliband remarked when answering a question from Torsten Bell that when Torsten Bell was his head of policy, he did what Torsten said more often than Torsten did what he said.

Ruth Fox: Which given the record of the Ed Miliband period in opposition may not be a great herald for the future. Let's see.

Mark D'Arcy: Always interesting when someone comes into the government's trailing clouds of glory.

Ruth Fox: Well Mark, talking about another topical event this week, you said you wanted to talk about performance art in the House of Commons Chamber, particularly on the Opposition benches. So I [00:32:00] presume you're talking about Mel Stride?

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, Mel Stride, the Shadow Chancellor. This week he had Rachel Reeves very much in his sights, the Chancellor had had a pretty miserable week, with City Confidence wavering, the cost of government borrowing going up very sharply, a lot of people saying that They were beginning to lose confidence in her ability to manage the economy.

So, it was Mel Stride's chance to do a bit of political damage and it didn't quite work out that way. I suppose what we're getting at here is the problem that a lot of former conservative cabinet ministers are having now that they're in opposition the skill set you need is completely different. The technocratic skills, going through a spreadsheet and taking good political decisions, are no longer applicable.

They need to be able to coin sound bites They need to be able to score political points in a way that resonates with the general public. So Mel Stride attempted a very, sort of, sarcastic Shakespearean [00:33:00] peroration, comparing Rachel Reeves to Hamlet, talking about poison being poured into the ears, which actually didn't happen to Hamlet, it happened to Hamlet's father.

I did this for O Level. So you had a moment where you were thinking, he's not getting this quite right, and his peroration was all about the decision waits for them to go or not to go, that is the question. And in the mouth of a more thespian political operator, this might have been impressive, it might even have been wounding.

Somehow, with Mel Stride, I'm afraid it rather belly flopped.

Ruth Fox: Yes, I think possibly in the words of Donald Trump, no less, you might say that Mr Stride is perhaps a little low energy. Well, an attempt at a joke, I think, he said of Rachel Reeves, that her trip to China, where she was trying to evade China, duck difficult questions on the economy was, quote, the Peking duck, and it didn't get much better than that.

Mark D'Arcy: Boom, boom.

Ruth Fox: I mean, you said there that a technocratic minister, you know, the skills needed to take [00:34:00] good political decisions. I mean, the problem that they've got is not just that perhaps some of them are struggling to adapt to the position of opposition and how you need a different set of political skills, but they're also struggling because the rejoinder is always that the decisions they took in government weren't actually very good decisions, they weren't very good technocrats either. So there's a, they're struggling with the messaging, they're struggling with the fact, I think, you know, the rejoinder always came back in the debate from Rachel Reeves, where, you know, you had all this peroration but there weren't any questions here, and you've got no responses to what it would be that you would do, and of course they're a little bit hamstrung and are going to be, seemingly, over the next sort of year to 18 months, because said that there aren't going to be commitments on policy for at least a couple of years while they do a detailed policy review, and that's going to be difficult because they're going to have that thrown back at them all the time.

And I think they're also struggling a little bit in terms of resources because they haven't got the sort of people, the advisors behind the scenes to help them prepare for these debates and these interventions in the house. So it's very much shadow [00:35:00] ministers operating with limited resources. And I'm afraid, as you say, some of them are handling it better than others.

Mark D'Arcy: I was trying to imagine that peroration being delivered by someone like Geoffrey Cox, who really does have the thespian thing down pat, and wonderfully deep resonant voice. And maybe these things shouldn't count as much as they do, but just delivering something with a bit of chutzpah, a bit of authority, can make even a bad joke work. And Geoffrey Cox, that incredibly deep resonant voice, might have been more wounding delivering those self same lines. He might have perhaps improved on the lines as well. But a lot depends on delivery. And there aren't that many people on either side of the chamber who can deliver a really stonkingly good, tub thumping speech in the way that any number of people used to be able to in days gone by.

It's an obsolete political skill. That kind of Oxford Union debating style is, I think, pretty much obsolete now in the [00:36:00] era of social media. But just every now and then, you need to be able to get up and do something as a piece of parliamentary theatre that works, and I'm afraid this was a piece of parliamentary theatre that didn't work.

Trouble is, of course, if Kemi Badenoch wants to make a change, wants to find a new shadow chancellor, she's fishing in a pretty limited pool at the moment. Getting on for 70 percent of the parliamentary Conservative Party's on the front bench in one capacity or another. There aren't that many alternatives to Mel Stride if she thinks he's not cutting the mustard.

The economy, stupid, is the big deal. They need to be hitting on this, and at the moment doesn't seem to be.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I mean it's probably a bit rough to be saying that Mel Stride should be considering his position, or perhaps has undermined his position, on the back of one intervention in a debate. But certainly there were some looks on the Conservative benches that suggested that they felt he hadn't quite hit the target, and had let Rachel Reeves off the hook.

We'll have to see how this plays out, and of course the criticism goes the other way. Lots of commentary, particularly [00:37:00] Reeves's position would survive the next few months. And particularly after the March financial statement, if the economic difficulties continue to deteriorate.

Mark D'Arcy: You're absolutely right, it's completely unfair to say one bad speech, or one speech that didn't hit the target should finish off someone.

If that happened, no one would last more than five minutes in politics. Everybody trips over their own feet from time to time. But, if the Conservatives find that in a few months time they're consistently missing the goal, they really are going to have to start thinking about making a change.

Ruth Fox: The challenge, of course, is that we've talked about this on the podcast before, about MPs participation in debates.

It's not true for Mel Stride because he's got dedicated time at the Dispatch Box this week. But for many MPs to sort of develop their skills as a parliamentarian, as a good orator, or as a sort of tub thumper, somebody who can put the government on their toes, it's pretty difficult to do it when you've got actually quite limited speaking time, something we've talked about in the past, and the danger is that you fall into trying to make a very micro point [00:38:00] or using humor and satire and sort of the cutting line.

The problem with that is sometimes that can work the other way. You can fall into becoming like the court jester in the House of Commons chamber, rather than actually the respected parliamentarian. So there's a balance here about how you perform.

Mark D'Arcy: There is a subspecies of MP who always seem more interested in landing the joke than making the point, and the court jester is never promoted to be a minister, or very seldom promoted to be a minister, and it usually doesn't work if they are.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Well, with that, Mark, I think we'll leave it there. We've dealt with some topical issues this week. We've had to stay on top of lots of developments today as we're recording. So, uh, we'll leave it there for this week. And, uh, hopefully we'll be back to full strength next week.

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

Intro: Bye.

Parliament Matters is produced by the Hansard Society and supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. For more information, visit hansardsociety.org.uk/pmhansardsociety.org.uk/pm or find us on social media at [00:39:00] Hansard Society.