This week we highlight Professor Alexis Jay’s damning verdict on the Conservative government’s lacklustre response to child abuse inquiry recommendations and the first major test of Northern Ireland’s “Stormont Brake” under the Windsor Framework. Plus, we take a look at the Armed Forces Commissioner Bill and how it measures up to its German counterpart.
Child abuse inquiry fallout: Professor Alexis Jay, chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse pulled no punches in her evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee, criticising the Conservatives for inaction while in power. We unpack her appeal to MPs to stop treating the issue as a political football and discuss what difference select committees can make in situations like this.
Northern Ireland’s Stormont Brake: Unionist members of the Assembly triggered the “democratic safeguard” to give Stormont’s politicians a say before new EU chemical regulations take effect in Northern Ireland. But Hilary Benn has concluded the provisions do not meet the threshold to invoke emergency arrangements. What does this mean for the UK-EU dynamic and parliamentary politics at Westminster and in Belfast?
Armed Forces Commissioner Bill: We take a deep dive into the Government’s plan for a new welfare watchdog for service personnel and families—how does it compare to Germany’s powerful parliamentary commissioner?
Hansard Society
Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 67: Should Parliament, rather than Ministers, oversee public inquiries?
UK Parliament
Home Affairs Committee evidence, Implementation of Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, Professor Alexis Jay, 21 January 2025
German Bundestag
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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.
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: No action for seven months in government, now sound and fury in opposition. A withering Select Committee takedown of the Conservatives' response to systematic child abuse.
Mark D'Arcy: No handbrake turn as Hilary Benn declines to invoke emergency rules on the EU's single market in Northern Ireland.
Ruth Fox: And it's supposed to be the very model of a modern Armed Forces Commissioner. It's inspired by the system in the German parliament, but is our version all it's cracked up to be?
Mark D'Arcy: And Ruth, let's start [00:01:00] with a quick community note. People may be expecting to hear all about the assisted dying bill in this edition of the podcast. We've spun off a separate edition of Parliament Matters devoted entirely to events around the assisted dying legislation currently before Parliament, so all the analysis of what's being said and done, what's going on, what might happen in the future, will all be on that separate podcast, also out now, wherever you get your podcasts from.
Ruth Fox: That's right, and we're going to have this as a running series. over the coming weeks. So look out for that. And if you can, share it, forward it on for friends, family, colleagues who you think might be interested. Because this is genuinely, I think, Mark, a piece of legislation that people really are talking about in the wider public.
Mark D'Arcy: Absolutely. But Ruth, one of the big events this week in Parliament has been an absolutely stunning Select Committee hearing, the Home Affairs Committee talking to Alexis Jay who chaired the big public inquiry into systematic child abuse that we were discussing in last week's pod. This week she was in front of the Committee and she gave a [00:02:00] pretty damning verdict on the way the recommendations of her inquiry were handled by the previous Conservative government when they came out in 2022.
Essentially she said they did very little about it, to the point where she and colleagues eventually wrote a letter to The Times complaining that nothing had been done, at which point she got a telling off from a Government Special Advisor. So it was actually a pretty blistering takedown of the sound and fury that is now coming from the Conservatives in opposition, having done nothing about her inquiry recommendations when they were in government.
To be fair, they had a certain amount of excuse given the churn of government that was going on at the time. I mean, her recommendations were coming out at about the time that the Liz Truss government was imploded, which was not that long after the Boris Johnson government had imploded.
Ruth Fox: I think it came out, her report came out, the day Truss resigned, so it sort of got shrouded a little bit.
Mark D'Arcy: It hit in the interregnum, you might say, but, um, all the same, this is the kind of thing that you don't want [00:03:00] getting lost in the cloud of politics as usual. Politics as very unusual, I suppose you might say, going on at the time.
Ruth Fox: Yeah, nothing like getting the story straight from the horse's mouth, is there?
And the select committee got that. Sure of all, as you say, the sound and fury, the political fog that has surrounded this issue since Mr. Musk tweeted about it and set it all off. She was pretty blunt. I mean, she described the government's response at the time, so back in 2022, as inconsequential, unsubstantial, committed to nothing.
And she said, I've had lots of media requests in recent days to comment on this, to talk about it, and I haven't. But she did come to the select committee, and I think that's an important point about the role that select committees can play in moments like this, where the key player comes, gives evidence, very clear, very blunt, and sets something on the record, which everybody can then see. It's transparent, everybody can see the questions being asked, [00:04:00] see the responses, and it's on the record, it's recorded in Hansard, in contrast to all these sort of media briefings where you don't know who's talking to who.
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In our latest ‘Whipping Yarn’, we talk with Simon Hart, former Conservative Chief Whip during Rishi Sunak’s Premiership. Hart opens up about his time in one of Westminster’s most demanding and discreet roles, chronicled in his new book, ‘Ungovernable: The Political Diaries of a Chief Whip’.
If a crisis or major national event occurs during a period when Parliament is adjourned, there are often demands from MPs, the media and the public for Parliament to be ‘recalled’. But the House of Commons Standing Orders stipulate that only Government Ministers - in reality, the Prime Minister - can ask the Speaker to recall the House. In recent years the House of Lords has generally been recalled at the same time as the House of Commons.
In response to the Modernisation Committee's call for views on 17 October 2024, we submitted evidence outlining key areas we believe the Committee should prioritise. Our submission recommended a focus on: strengthening legislative scrutiny, with particular emphasis on reforming the delegated legislation system; enhancing financial scrutiny, especially in relation to the Budget and the Estimates; addressing strategic gaps in parliamentary scrutiny; making more effective use of parliamentary time; and reviewing the Standing Orders, language and rituals of the House of Commons.
This briefing explains what to watch for during the Second Reading debate of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on 29 November. It outlines the procedural and legislative issues that will come into play: the role of the Chair in managing the debate and how procedures such as the 'closure' and 'reasoned amendments' work. It looks ahead to the Committee and Report stage procedures that will apply if the Bill progresses beyond Second Reading. It also examines the government's responsibilities, such as providing a money resolution for the Bill and preparing an Impact Assessment, while addressing broader concerns about the adequacy of Private Members’ Bill procedures for scrutinising controversial issues.
In this ninth instalment of our special mini-podcast series, we continue to explore the latest developments in the progress of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, often referred to as the assisted dying bill. We are joined by Dr Marie Tidball MP to discuss the amendments she has secured for a Disability Advisory Board and an independent advocate for people with learning disabilities.
