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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.

[00:00:16] Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox.

[00:00:23] Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark D'Arcy. And welcome to the fourth of our special dedicated mini pods, tracing events on the consideration in the Commons of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, the bill that will enable assisted dying.

[00:00:37] The Public Bill Committee, looking at the detail of the bill, is now in session, working through amendments, and we're going to be talking to Sarah Olney, a Lib Dem MP who's been particularly active this week putting down amendments. We've asked her what her amendments were, how they fared, and and also asked her to comment on the wider conduct of the Public Bill Committee, how things are going, how long it's going to take.

[00:01:04] Well, we're delighted to be joined by Sarah Olney, who's been one of the active members of the Public Bill Committee. And Sarah, first of all, my impression is that things are curdled a bit on the Public Bill Committee, that what may have started out as an attempt to get the mechanism right is turning into something a bit more entrenched and adversarial than perhaps people had expected.

[00:01:26] Sarah Olney MP: Hello, Mark. Yeah, well, I think that's right, actually, and it certainly has taken me a little bit by surprise. I mean, I guess my expectation was it's an issue that cuts across party lines, so while there might have been a little bit of lining up on either side of the argument, at the end of the day, it's different people from different parties. So that our party loyalty is always very strong in Parliament and certainly within the Liberal Democrats, there's a range of views. But for me personally, my colleagues on the bill committee, both of who voted yes at Second Reading, whereas I voted no. We are still very much colleagues and it's not an adversarial atmosphere between us. And I guess I kind of expected that with the other parties as well, but it has been much more adversarial than I was expecting and people very much lining up on, on either side of the argument. And I think just the voting pattern, we've not had many votes so far because we haven't made much progress, but even the votes that we have had, you can see it's a fairly fixed voting position so far. I think that might change. I think there will be other issues that come up later in the bill committee where some people will potentially switch, but currently it does seem to be quite entrenched, but also, I don't know, it is a bit more aggressive than I was expecting.

[00:02:32] Mark D'Arcy: I don't think anyone ever quite expected the committee to get in a group hug as the music came up and total consensus broke out. But I think there is a bit of startlement about quite how aggressively things are being fought out, both within the committee and outside on social media.

[00:02:46] And you have this kind of Greek chorus on social media flamming things up as well. Is that bleeding through into the committee's proceedings?

[00:02:53] Sarah Olney MP: I think it very much is. I mean, obviously I'm giving a partial view because inevitably I find myself on one side of the argument although I hadn't, as I say, expected it to be quite so adversarial.

[00:03:05] I think the thing that's probably taken me by surprise, if you like, about the other side, which, slightly reluctant to categorise it as that, but that is the situation that we're in.

[00:03:13] Mark D'Arcy: That's the people who are in favour of the bill, as is, pretty much.

[00:03:16] Sarah Olney MP: Exactly. But it feels to me They want to defend the concept of autonomy and that this is somebody's right and I'm slightly surprised the extent to how strongly people feel about that.

[00:03:27] I do see it kind of quite whipped up on social media and that then becomes like a really hard line that people are taking. I wasn't expecting people to come into the room with quite such a, a zealous attachment to a right which I don't fully yet recognise to choose how they end their own life. Yes, they have it as long as it doesn't impact anybody else, but once you're starting to ask other people, then I'm not sure you can sort of zealously defend that right because you need then to kind of think about what other people's rights are in relation to that.

[00:03:58] Ruth Fox: And that's what you were trying to do with your amendments this week. So you were introducing the second group of amendments on the first day in committee this week. So you were right at the fore of the, the start of this clause by clause scrutiny. And if any listeners want to know about amendments and grouping of amendments and what on earth we're talking about, listen to last week's podcast where we had former senior clerk in the House of Commons, Paul Evans, to explain it.

[00:04:20] And you were saying off air just before we started, Sarah, you'd listened to it last week and it helped you prepare for this week's work.

[00:04:28] Sarah Olney MP: That's right. I was, I was, I was out doing a leaflet delivery as every good Lib Dem does at the weekend. I was listening to the podcast and it was really, really interesting.

[00:04:37] It actually explained things to me that I didn't previously know about groupings and amendments and so on. And it was great. It gave me quite a bit of confidence going into the bill committee because it's my first bill committee. I haven't done one before. And it's quite an interesting one to get started on.

[00:04:51] But yes, in terms of kind of explaining why we do the things the way we do them, it was brilliant. So very much for that.

[00:04:57] Ruth Fox: There you go, public service from the Hansard Society. Um, but let's come to your amendments then. So you had a number of amendments to replace the test of capacity, a person's capacity to seek an assisted death with, I struggle to say higher test, but I suppose that's an additional test of ability.

[00:05:17] Have you got the ability to make the right judgment? So the idea being, I think, to protect vulnerable people who might, under the Mental Capacity Act, be found to have capacity, but otherwise, you know, if they've got some, for example, mental health condition, their judgment might be impaired.

[00:05:33] Sarah Olney MP: That's right. So the Mental Capacity Act 2005 basically provides a framework by which you can assess whether somebody has sufficient capacity to make a decision. There's a number of different things that need to be considered. So firstly, there's a sort of a four part test as to whether people have decision making capacity.

[00:05:50] And I'm not going to be able to remember all four off the top of my head, but it is basically, can they retain informatiion.. Can they weigh it up? Are they able to communicate? So that's part of the Mental Capacity Act test. But there's also within the Mental Capacity Act an assumption. You're always assuming that people do have capacity and you're testing for evidence to show that they don't.

[00:06:08] And then another part of it is that as long as people have capacity, they should be free to make an unwise choice. So, the debate we had around my amendment was, is the Mental Capacity Act a suitable way of assessing whether people are able to make this decision, and in the text of the bill it says, a freely made and settled decision to end their own life.

[00:06:28] We haven't had any kind of legislation like this before. This is not a routine decision about sort of medical treatment, which is the sort of thing that the Mental Capacity Act is usually used for. So given that this is completely new, do we actually need a new way of measuring, uh, and to my mind, not just capacity, but ability.

[00:06:45] Capacity to me feels like a slightly passive term, where ability is much more proactive, and that was the debate that we were having. So my proposal was we, we change capacity, which clause three of the bill says should be defined in reference to the Mental Capacity Act, and do we change it to ability, and then in actual fact, what we do then is we say that the Secretary of State should then issue guidance as to how ability should be measured.

[00:07:07] So it would be a specific measure of ability which would just be related to this particular piece of legislation.

[00:07:14] Mark D'Arcy: And how receptive was the committee to that argument? Was there engagement or was it just sort of repel all borders, let's throw this out?

[00:07:22] Sarah Olney MP: There was a degree of engagement. I think one of the interesting things when we had the oral evidence sessions, there isn't a consensus on this point.

[00:07:29] So the Chief Medical Officer, Chris Whitty, was quite clear that he wanted to see the Mental Capacity Act retained because it's already well used and the courts use it and people understand how it can be applied. But we also had evidence from the Royal College of Psychiatrists and they've been very clear that they don't think it's sufficient. And there was a very interesting contribution from the MP for Bexley Heath and Crayford, Daniel Francis, who was reflecting on his own personal experience.

[00:07:55] He's the parent of a child with significant learning disabilities. And he was telling the committee how he's having to sort of battle every day with professionals who've got different perceptions of mental capacity. And that's why he's not confident that mental capacity is a sufficient measure for a decision of this magnitude.

[00:08:13] But, nevertheless, the majority of people who voted for the bill at Second Reading were fairly clear from the outset that they accepted Chris Whitty's evidence on this and that they were going to accept that the Mental Capacity Act was sufficient.

[00:08:25] Mark D'Arcy: So your amendment was thrown out in the end?

[00:08:27] Sarah Olney MP: It was.

[00:08:27] After much debate, it has to be said that yes, it was.

[00:08:31] Mark D'Arcy: You raise a point there, which is that things seem to be going quite slowly and there is a thought that the bill is supposed to get back to the floor of the House of Commons on, say, April the 25th so that it can be sent off to the House of Lords in good time to get the debate started there. If things continue at this pace, is that going to happen? Or are you going to be sitting extra sessions?

[00:08:52] Sarah Olney MP: I don't know, actually. We were kind of scheduled to debate clauses 1 to 11 this week. And we haven't yet finished clause one. So that's And there are, at the time of this broadcast, there's a hundred and six pages in the amendments booklet.

[00:09:10] We know that there are more amendments to be tabled, because we learnt that in the press earlier in the week, and we have got through four pages of them. So I don't quite know what happens now, but certainly if we don't pick up the pace a little bit, and I think we will do, because we will have had debates on amendments that occur further down the the order paper.

[00:09:28] So we will pick up the pace a bit, but I mean yesterday we spent a good four hours debating the meaning of the word encouraged, and it was a very good and useful debate, but if we continue at that sort of pace we won't get through it this year, however much time we spend on it. So I think that will be something. Kim Leadbeater in particular, but probably all members of the committee, are going to have to reflect on over recess. We go into recess next week. I don't think it's really sustainable. I don't think as individual MPs we can really afford to devote the amount of time that's kind of implied at the current rate of, uh, of progress.

[00:10:03] Ruth Fox: Did you have any support or any sort of legal advice when you were crafting your amendments? Because one of the issues for Private Members Bills is that members don't have access to policy advice or legal advice. You obviously have... one of the big discussions that's going on in the committees is we haven't got an Impact Assessment, for example.

[00:10:20] So when you were crafting your amendments, and these things are, if you look at the amendment paper, they're quite technical changes very often. And you have to take account of not just what it is you want to achieve, but what the consequential amendments are in the bill that you would also have to craft as well.

[00:10:34] So did you have that kind of advice or did you have to sort of, you and your staff do it yourself?

[00:10:38] Sarah Olney MP: Well, on the sort of the more technical points of it, there's this marvellous team of people in the Commons called the Table Office and you give them a ring and you say, right, this is what I'm thinking.

[00:10:48] This is the sort of change that I think needs to happen and they will craft it for you. They will go through the bill and work out what all the consequential amendments need to be. Part of my amendment was that if we adopted the word ability in clause one, then we could get rid of clause three. So then what's consequential elsewhere in the bill on doing that?

[00:11:08] They're the experts, and so any MP in relation to any piece of legislation can consult with the Table Office. But just in terms of that sort of taking that step back and thinking a little bit more about the policy and kind of framing the idea, not really. I mean, there's a few people who've got in touch with me.

[00:11:24] There's a few other people I've consulted with. I've obviously listened very carefully to the oral evidence. I'd love to say I've read all of the written evidence, but there was like hundreds and hundreds of new pages of written evidence published on Tuesday. And I've got to be honest, I haven't even had the time to look at all of that.

[00:11:40] So that's kind of like what sparked off some of my ideas about the sort of amendments.

[00:11:43] Ruth Fox: Yeah, we should explain for listeners actually. that there isn't a deadline for the submission of written evidence, so it's still coming in, and one of the issues that came up earlier on this week was that the sheer volume of it and the speed at which it's getting published on the parliamentary website, I mean there was another huge tranche published this week, I suspect there'll be some more when Parliament returns, that actually you're sort of starting proceedings with the evidence still coming in, which is one of the problems with the process, you don't have the time to read and absorb the information that comes in.

[00:12:14] A lot of it will be repetitive, a lot of it will be individual people's, individual constituents concerns, but there may be some nuggets of information in there that you, you want to dig out.

[00:12:25] Sarah Olney MP: That's right. I mean, normally in a normal bill, we would have members of the party's policy team, for example, and our whips office.

[00:12:32] And they would do a lot of that reading and analysing and so on. And then you would get a briefing from them. But with this, because it's not whipped, it's a conscience vote. It's a Private Member's Bill. It's just up to me, and the other individual committee members. So I've been spending a lot of my Sunday afternoons recently reading all this through, because there just isn't time in the rest of the week, because I'm spending a lot of time in committee on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and then that means that all the other parts of my job are all getting squeezed out to the other days of the week.

[00:13:01] So it's really, really hard to find the time to look at all of this. But I mean, the written evidence has been interesting. I haven't looked in detail at the most recent tranche, but certainly the first 120 submissions that I have read, mostly in detail. I'm reasonably sure that most, some of it has been sifted because it was, all of it was, you know, expertly informed and very, very interesting.

[00:13:23] So. There may well be bits where it's just come, you know, members of the public going, well, I think this or I think that, but that certainly wasn't in the, in the tranche that I read. So I think there may have been some sifting.

[00:13:33] Ruth Fox: When you've decided on what it is you want to do with your amendments, are you then talking behind the scenes? Is there a sort of lot of discussions, you know, meetings going on with other members of the committee, with Kem Leadbeater? And also, are you having any contact with the government? Because one of the big issues that's come up this week is that the government obviously it has a duty to the statute book. It has to ensure that the bill is sort of legally workable, technically accurate and so on. And there's been some frustration that amendments have been tabled and then only on the day of the debate, at the end of the person who's moving the amendment, the end of their speech, does the government get up and say, well, we think there's a problem with this.

[00:14:11] What's going on behind the scenes?

[00:14:13] Sarah Olney MP: So there is quite a lot of debate behind the scenes between different members of the committee and also obviously with other Members of Parliament because other Members of Parliament who aren't on the committee can table their own amendments and then they want to know if a member of the committee will sign the amendment so that that committee member can then move it and speak to it in the committee.

[00:14:30] So that's absolutely happening and different members of the committee are talking to those who they know are sort of sympathetic with their point of view on these sorts of things and talking about how to kind of approach it in committee. So that's definitely happening. I know that Kim is having meetings with Members who have laid amendments and talking about those amendments and I know that, for example, she laid a number of amendments the Thursday before committee started and some of that was rewritten versions of amendments from other members who then withdrew their own. So those conversations are happening. She and I have not had a meeting about my amendments, presumably because she thought we could just debate that on the, on the floor of the committee.

[00:15:10] So those, those sorts of things are happening, but you're right. I mean, there's two government ministers in the committee. So Stephen Kinnock for the Department of Health and Sarah Sackman for the Ministry of Justice and it's been a point of contention quite what the role is because they seem to be there both as representatives of the government to advise on the legality and the the operation of what's being proposed but they also appear to be there in their own right as Members of Parliament and so while the government doesn't have a view on the bill the two of them as individual Members of Parliament do, and they're voting. And there's been quite a lot of questioning about, well, they seem to be riding two horses here, how can Sarah Sackman have a view on something that the Ministry of Justice minister doesn't, you know, it's the same person, so that's been subject to quite a lot of debate. But the other point you make there Ruth, as well, is we've spent an awful lot of time debating amendments, and then the Minister will stand up and give their view on the amendments and it's kind of like actually would have been useful to have had that government view at the start of the debate so that we could consider it as we, it's no good us having a massive debate about what we think about, you know, yesterday, as I say, three hours on the definition of the word encouraged and then the minister stands up and says well it has no meaning in law or whatever it was she said. Yeah and this goes to the issue of use of time doesn't it? We've known that maybe we wouldn't have debated it at quite such length. Yeah.

[00:16:34] It is a bit frustrating and I don't think it's necessarily terribly helpful either because everyone in the committee I think is committed to getting a version of this bill that we can present to our fellow MPs and we want it to be reasonably robust.

[00:16:48] We want to demonstrate that we have taken this process seriously. So to find that there's kind of like these weird, unanswered questions about exactly how the process is supposed to work, that we're not getting a little bit more from the government about, they don't need to take a view on the bill, but they do need to be fairly clear about what they think can and can't work, and how they expect the committee process to really serve the passage of the bill. Slightly undermining, I think.

[00:17:13] Mark D'Arcy: And on the subject of amendments, of course, the ones that have been hitting the headlines recently are the amendments to change the kind of judicial oversight of the assisted dying process so that it's an expert panel rather than a high court judge. The point is been made again and again, that this isn't what was promised in the Second Reading debate.

[00:17:32] MPs may feel that they've been sold a process that's now been changed in, in midstream. How's that changed the atmosphere in the committee?

[00:17:41] Sarah Olney MP: It has created quite a bit of friction. When I was speaking to my amendment on Tuesday, I forget which MP it was, but they sort of intervened to say, oh, but that's going to be sorted out by this new amendment.

[00:17:53] But we haven't seen the amendment. We don't know what it says. And if it's going to change everything so drastically, then that really undermines our ability to debate the amendments that have already been laid. Because if you're saying that actually this is going to change the whole nature of the bill, how can we properly debate these amendments at this stage?

[00:18:11] Because, obviously, if we vote to change something in Clause 1, is that then going to be reversed or undermined by an amendment that's laid for a later clause that we haven't yet seen? So that makes it really, really difficult to have these debates and frankly, half the room have seen the amendment that, that Kim is going to be laying about the panel and the other half haven't.

[00:18:33] So how can we have a debate about how that later amendment is going to impact the amendment that I'm currently talking to? It is a bit frustrating and it is kind of like fueling that sense of divisiveness and, and suspicion, if you like. And again, I feel like it's undermining the committee process because we haven't got a complete view of what it is that we're effectively debating.

[00:18:56] Mark D'Arcy: And talking to colleagues outside the committee, do you get the impression that this may have changed the balance of opinion for when the bill comes back in whatever form to the House of Commons? I mean there's now plenty of people saying support is fading, people are reconsidering whether they're in favour of this process if it doesn't have a High Court judge sitting at the top of it.

[00:19:16] There's talk that this change may lead to the bill being defeated perhaps at the Third Reading stage in the House of Commons later on. Are you getting those vibrations?

[00:19:25] Sarah Olney MP: So I've got to be quite honest, I have not had an opportunity to speak to colleagues much about this. I've been in the committee room too much this week to be able to chat to colleagues outside it.

[00:19:36] I haven't been in the chamber and when I'm not in the committee I've got like dozens of other things that I then need to go and attend to. So I haven't had these direct conversations but to the extent that I've been able to form an impression, it is partly that people are quite anxious about the process. Is the Private Member's Bill the right vehicle? I think what there is is a real appetite to have a carefully formulated assisted dying bill. But I think where confidence is starting to fade is whether or not that can be achieved via the Private Member's Bill process.

[00:20:08] And it is partly this kind of like you can suddenly import an amendment that changes everything. And in actual fact, the amendment has some - that I haven't seen, and so can't really comment on in detail - but a panel and the involvement of psychologists and social workers, all of those things were absolutely coming through in the oral evidence that we had would be a really, really good idea. Take it away from the courts and have it overseen by perhaps a retired judge.

[00:20:36] That sounds sensible in terms of not getting the process too sort of bogged down in court delays and so on. So they sound sensible. So in actual fact, I don't think people would necessarily worry too much about, about the change per se. It's the fact that you can make these really profound changes at this stage that I think people will start to get anxious about because I feel like there's a lot of debates we're having in committee and a lot of the amendments are trying to address things that could really have been addressed, should really have been addressed before the first draft was laid before the Commons.

[00:21:07] Because there's quite a lot of unknown about how the bill itself is actually going to be delivered. You know, things like, how's capacity going to be judged? There is not a consensus of opinion across the medical and legal establishments about this. And that would have been a much more useful debate to have had prior to the legislation being drafted, rather than MPs who really don't know much about these issues trying to do it in committee.

[00:21:31] So I think it's more a kind of, is this the right process to tackle these issues, is the sort of the growing nervousness.

[00:21:37] Ruth Fox: It does seem quite extraordinary, I would think, for listeners. outside of Parliament looking in to think that the sponsor of the bill produces an article in the Guardian, goes on the media, just the night before the committee starts its clause by clause scrutiny to talk about an amendment, which I think as we're speaking, I don't think has yet been published.

[00:21:58] So you say you haven't seen it, half the committee hasn't seen it, we haven't seen it, and yet half the committee apparently you think has seen it. I mean, it does seem pretty extraordinary and frankly disrespectful to the committee process, I would have said. I mean, you know, one of the things the Hansard Society is always banging on about is the sort of need for, for Parliament to hear first and yet that didn't happen again.

[00:22:19] Sarah Olney MP: Yeah, one of the committee members made that point that, you know, the Speaker gets very upset when ministers make announcements to the press before they're announced on the floor of the Commons, and then this is what we're seeing again. I'm speculating somewhat about who's seen the amendment and who hasn't.

[00:22:33] I know that Kim is talking to other people on the committee, and there are conversations going on that I'm not involved in. And there was a committee member, who wasn't Kim, who told me very confidently that my amendment wasn't needed because this new amendment was coming. So that's why I'm assuming that there are members of the committee who know what's in this amendment.

[00:22:51] But unless and until it's been published, you know, we can't have a proper view on it. No committee member can. Nor can we then consider what amendments we want to table or, you know, what arguments we might bring in support of our amendments or how we might vote on amendments. If something is coming, that, you know, might, might change everything.

[00:23:11] So, I'm hesitant to be too critical of Kim because this is a really, really tricky thing that she's taken on. And I want to make it work, but I'd have to agree with you, I do think it is disrespectful to the committee. I can kind of understand how it's happened, you know, that bill has been drafted and then the government are having a look at it and what about this and what about that and what about the other?

[00:23:30] And actually there probably are some fairly substantial amendments that need to be made in order for it to be operational, for it to be compliant with existing legislation, for it to be deliverable through the NHS or, or however it's going to be delivered. So many unanswered questions about that. But that's why I think so much of this would have been better done before the legislation was first drafted, before we had the Second Reading debate. And certainly at committee stage it's just too late to sort of start introducing all these kind of novel elements.

[00:24:01] Ruth Fox: Well I think that brings us to the conclusion that actually the Private Members Bill process isn't working for this particular bill, perhaps.

[00:24:07] And we need to take a look at how we could change Private Members Bill procedure to enable these sort of big, moral, conscience vote questions to be explored, but not necessarily on the kind of timetable that's imposed by the PMB process.

[00:24:23] Sarah Olney MP: Well, interesting that you say that, because a Liberal Democrat sort of formal party submission to the Modernisation Committee is about, amongst other things, reforming their Private Member's Bill process.

[00:24:33] And I will say, I believe I'm the named person on the Lib Dem submission because I'm the cabinet spokesperson. Did that before I was selected for this committee.

[00:24:43] Ruth Fox: Well, that evidence has all just been published. So the Modernisation Committee has just started publishing all that evidence. So you can go online.

[00:24:48] We'll put a, we'll put a link to it in the show notes. You can go online and have a look at it.

[00:24:53] Mark D'Arcy: And in the meantime, Sarah Olney, thanks for giving us such a fascinating insiders account on the pod of what's going on in that Public Bill Committee.

[00:25:00] Sarah Olney MP: Pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Sarah.

[00:25:01] Mark D'Arcy: Bye bye.

[00:25:05] Ruth Fox: So, Mark, what do you think we learnt from that? It's quite overwhelming.

[00:25:10] Mark D'Arcy: Well, I think essentially it confirms some of the reservations we had right at the start of this process about the difficulties of trying to tackle an issue this big. through the Private Member's Bill process, with the originator of the bill being a single MP, albeit with quite a lot of backup behind her, the difficulties that the government has when it's not directly responsible for the conduct of the bill, but has to ensure that it's in shape to operate.

[00:25:36] There's all sorts of issues there that are coming through, and I do wonder, I mean, Sarah was talking at the end of our interview there about possibly a bit of confidence in the process eroding and that that might have ramifications when the bill comes back to the full House of Commons in a few months time.

[00:25:53] Ruth Fox: Yeah, we heard also that the sheer volume of work that the members of the committee are having to get through and finding it quite difficult when witness evidence is still coming in, issues about the role of the government, all these sort of aspects of the legislative process. And these are long committee sittings.

[00:26:10] Yeah, that are different to the norm. And obviously Sarah's got other responsibilities, you know, Lib Dem frontbencher, she's got a constituency responsibility. So it's a huge volume of work. And my sense was a degree of frustration at the process.

[00:26:22] Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, I mean, it's one of the things that we're talking about in the main pod this week is, is there a better way to do Private Members Bills, especially when they touch on issues this big, than the way that they're doing it now.

[00:26:34] And so that's a discussion people might like to listen to in parallel to this one.

[00:26:38] Ruth Fox: Yeah, and, and, you know, the Lib Dems, the Hansard Society, you know, lots of other people have submitted to the Modernisation Committee evidence about what their priorities should be. I think it's probably fair to say the legislative angle is going to be kicked off into the long grass a little bit. It's not amongst their top first priorities. But clearly, this process isn't quite working for this bill as things stand. And the thing that struck me as well is the concern about the role of the government. And I do think this is it is an issue. It wasn't touched on in in the discussion with Sarah, but at the end of the committee stage on day one this week there were a number of points of order from members of the committee about this.

[00:27:16] What is the minister's role here? Are they here? as members of the committee - full voting and speaking rights. How are members supposed to know when the ministers are speaking as ministers and when they're speaking as MPs according to their conscience?

[00:27:31] Mark D'Arcy: I think you can almost invent a parliamentary procedure where they wear a hat when they're a minister and take it off when they're speaking as individuals.

[00:27:36] Ruth Fox: Yeah and you know people like Danny Kruger and Naz Shah who were speaking to amendments were sort of saying you know you've just said that you're neutral on the bill as government ministers, but you're now indicating that you're opposing these amendments. So, so which is it I'm confused. And there were a number of points of order.

[00:27:51] And at the end of it, I think it was beginning to register, particularly the chair of the committees trying to keep things moving that there is an issue here. Now, the chair doesn't have any power, any authority in the committee to say to government ministers, I'm sorry, this is not appropriate. But what, interestingly, Sir Roger Gale, who's one of the senior backbenchers that's been appointed to chair these committee sessions, said was he could see that there were questions and issues in context that needed to be perhaps addressed. And he was minded to refer the matter to the Clerk of the House of Commons.

[00:28:27] Mark D'Arcy: And I think it's always worth saying that Sir Roger Gale's. He's a massively experienced parliamentarian, he was an acting deputy speaker in the previous parliament when Dame Eleanor Laing was ill. And he's potentially one of the most experienced people who could possibly have been put in place to chair this committee.

[00:28:43] No one does world weariness and ennui quite like Sir Roger Gale, he's a world expert at it. But he was looking a little bit concerned during this. And so this is an issue that has to be at least considered. I mean, there may be some kind of ruling from the Clerk. There may be a neutral bat it back.

[00:28:58] Ruth Fox: It's unclear what can be done, but I mean, the problem started with the appointment of the committee.

[00:29:03] The committee has to be appointed in accordance with the political composition of the House normally for government bills. But. Erskine May states that where there is a bill like this, where it cuts across party lines, then you appoint in accordance with the second reading result.

[00:29:18] Mark D'Arcy: So the balance of yes or no in the House.

[00:29:20] Ruth Fox: Yes, but there is a slight discrepancy in the numbers, in that the supporters of the bill have got marginally more seats on the committee than a pure calculation of the yes no vote at second reading suggests they should have. What appears to have then happened is that they've added the two ministers and part of the problem is that the two ministers both voted yes at the Second Reading.

[00:29:45] So it kind of tilts the balance even further in favour of the supporters. So, we've got a briefing coming out this weekend about this, looking at it, looking at the data, looking at the numbers, looking at what the rules are, looking at how perhaps it could have been done differently. If they'd appointed two ministers, one who'd voted yes at Second Reading, one who'd voted no at Second Reading, and they were voting according to their consciences, it might have been different.

[00:30:07] Mark D'Arcy: It wouldn't have affected the balance.

[00:30:08] Ruth Fox: It wouldn't have been in quite the same way. Could they have, or should they have appointed the ministers to the committee to speak to government amendments to make clear where the government had concerns about the legal drafting of the amendments, for example, but not with voting rights. That would have served the same purpose. Government might have been concerned about, well, you know, if we've got amendments that have been promoted through Kim Leadbeater to make technical changes to the bill, would we have got them through?

[00:30:35] I mean, the supporters of the bill would still have had a majority on the committee, because that is a direct consequence of the Second Reading vote. So it was always going to be difficult for people like Sarah, Danny Kruger, Naz Shah, who were opposed to the bill at Second Reading, to win on their amendments.

[00:30:51] They've got to persuade a couple of the members of the committee to come over to their side and as we heard from Sarah although this isn't a party line divide, there's clearly quite a line, a division between the two sides that's developed and set in quite hard quite soon.

[00:31:07] Mark D'Arcy: Yes, I think I think that the points I took out of that interview were apart from anything else that the atmosphere has certainly, I don't know it's soured, but it's certainly congealed a bit in the committee. And there is this off stage Greek chorus of social media commentators flamming up the divisions and the anger on either side of the argument there as well, so I think it's getting more and more difficult on the committee. Things are going very slowly. I can easily imagine them voting to have extra sittings in a week, which makes it even more of a kind of parliamentary yomp than it already is. You know, imagine having three days where you're sitting in the morning and the afternoon.

[00:31:46] Ruth Fox: Or they have to extend the, the daily sessions from a couple of hours in the morning, a couple of hours in the afternoon, they have to extend in the afternoon into the early evening.

[00:31:53] Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, but I think they're very, very keen to try and get this bill through the House of Commons and into the House of Lords so that it can have a Second Reading in the House of Lords well before the Summer recess and the Lords can sink their remaining teeth into the detail afterwards. And so that's an important timetabling issue that's going to start looming larger and larger as this goes on.

[00:32:14] Because if they want this bill done in the parliamentary session, it can't continue to proceed at snail's pace in this committee.

[00:32:21] Ruth Fox: I mean, Sarah's right. If you look at the structure of the amendments and the, the groupings and so on, they'll get through some of the later clauses. Yeah. And they'll get through some of the later clauses more quickly.

[00:32:29] I mean, I have to say one of the things, I can't claim to have watched at all this week, but I certainly watched a good chunk of it on the first day. It is quite difficult as an observer to follow if you, you know, you need the amendment papers, you need the grouping papers, you need to know, you know, where things fall in the bill.

[00:32:45] Mark D'Arcy: You need to understand, as you and Paul Evans were discussing in last week's mini pod, the procedure, because it's not immediately obvious and transparent what's going on. You have to have some understanding of the rules before you go into this.

[00:32:57] Ruth Fox: Yeah, and, and, you know, there was various points where, you know, the chair was having to say to members of the committee, we're not debating that now, that's for later, or we're discussing that amendment, but the division on it's later.

[00:33:07] Now that's all explainable by the rules, and as you say, Paul Evans explained it really well in last week's pod, but if you're watching it on TV and you don't have that sort of expertise, it's a very, very difficult watch indeed. Yeah.

[00:33:19] I do think Kim Leadbeater is going to have to think, I think, quite carefully. You know, she's got a week's recess. I mean, it's an incredibly difficult job she's got and she's taken on. It's a huge volume of work, but I think she's going to have to think quite carefully about the communications from her and from her side of the debate going forward about the bill. Because it was perfectly obvious to any observer on Monday night when you suddenly turn on Newsnight and they're talking about an amendment that nobody can see, that's critical to the bill, that was critical to the Second Reading vote, and yet certain members of the committee haven't seen it, it hasn't yet been published, you know, several days on, and you sort of think what was the rationale behind doing that then, at that point in time, and it being done through the media? This is a legislative process. And I think they've got to win the votes in committee. This is not a vote in the public domain. This is a vote in the committee and then a vote in the wider House. They've got to win that if they're going to get the bill.

[00:34:16] Mark D'Arcy: Now, there may be plenty of people who will argue that in normal bill committees on government legislation, all sorts of last minute amendments are rained down out of nowhere, which is true.

[00:34:27] I think the trouble is that on this bill. On this issue, you have to be incredibly careful of process. You've got to be absolutely sure that the wider public, let alone the wider House of Commons, the wider public see a process that's done with scrupulous respect for all sides of the argument because otherwise it will be used in evidence against you later on and I do fear that the way that that has been handled may bounce back on on Kim Leadbeater and the the pro assisted dying lobby.

[00:34:59] Ruth Fox: Yeah, they've handed their opponents some quite easy um, easy hits this week.

[00:35:04] And you're right, it's not just that the process has to be fair, it has to be seen to be fair. So you've almost got to go the extra mile. And I think, you know, absolute respect for the parliamentary process, for the legislative process, for the committee process. Rather than worrying about what's in the Guardian or what's on Newsnight or anywhere else. The key is, who are the people in that committee?

[00:35:24] Mark D'Arcy: Managing it there. As you were saying Ruth, the committee is taking a bit of a breather during the parliamentary recess next week, and so we will be as well. We'll be back on the 28th of February with another update on what's been going on in the meantime, the future twists and turns that are yet to come.

[00:35:39] So do join us then.

[00:35:41] Speaker: See you then.

[00:35:41] Mark D'Arcy: Bye bye.

[00:35:45] Speaker: Parliament Matters is produced by the Hansard Society and supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. For more information, visit HansardSociety.org.uk/PM or find us on social media @HansardSociety.

Parliament Matters is produced by the Hansard Society and supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. For more information, visit hansardsociety.org.uk or find us on social media at HansardSociety.