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

[00:00:17] Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox.

[00:00:24] Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark D'Arcy. Coming up this week...

[00:00:27] Ruth Fox: A huge cut to overseas aid. How will it reverberate through the House of Commons?

[00:00:32] Mark D'Arcy: As an MP is convicted of assault and sentenced to 10 weeks in jail, will his voters be able to throw him out of Parliament?

[00:00:39] Ruth Fox: And is what sounds like a bland, technical piece of legislation in reality, a Trojan horse for rejoining the European single market?

[00:00:54] Mark D'Arcy: But first, Ruth, that big decision that the Government has just announced this week about cutting the overseas aid budget in order to transfer the money to defence and boost defence spending to meet the requirements of President Trump, and indeed to face the security threat from Russia, is something that is going to cause all kinds of ripples in Parliament.

[00:01:14] First of all, it is a mid-air change in Labour policy. This is a very substantial u-turn. It's not very long since the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy was criticising America's decision to gut its overseas aid budget. It was a manifesto promise of the Labour Party that they would maintain overseas aid spending and that's now been dropped.

[00:01:34] And indeed, they were heavily critical of the Conservatives when they reduced overseas aid, when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister. So it's an enormous reversal in policy, and I suppose you can argue circumstances have changed "bigly" since the Donald entered the White House, and it's clear that this is the line of least political resistance.

[00:01:56] Yeah. But is it still for all that a wise decision. To reduce aid that is propping up a lot of countries in, for example, sub-Saharan Africa, where refugees come from, who then cross the Mediterranean, get into Europe, and then attempt to cross the Channel into Britain. So is it a wise, long-term decision or one that might accelerate the kind of people movement that's at the root of a lot of political discontent in Europe already.

[00:02:21] Ruth Fox: Yeah. And of course that was the criticism that David Lammy was making just a few weeks ago about the decisions that the Americans have made about cuts to the U-S-A-I-D department, USAid. And it was a focus of a question that, um, Diane Abbott asked at Prime Minister's questions this week. I think it also raises, whether it's a wise question from a foreign policy perspective, whether it's a wise question from a humanitarian perspective, people have different views on that, and there are other better podcasts than us that can tackle that question.

[00:02:51] But I think from our perspective, in terms of what are the implications for Parliament, I mean, again, we've talked about this on the podcast before, Governments legislating to put targets, policy targets on the statute book, and then effectively finding circumstances change and they can't meet those targets. And that's what we've got here.

[00:03:08] So it's now, well just under a decade since the Government legislated to put 0.7% of aid spending into the statute book, and now for the second time a government is coming forward and saying, well, we're not going to meet that target. And it raises a question, similar to what we heard in 2020-21, when after Covid, Boris Johnson's government said that they weren't gonna be able to meet the target and were going to have to cut back to 0.5% in aid spending. If Parliament has agreed to this target, it has imposed through legislation a duty on the Government to meet that target, then is it free for the Government to just effectively throw that target out of the window and just declare that they're not going to meet it?

[00:03:51] Mark D'Arcy: Apparently, yes.

[00:03:52] Ruth Fox: Yeah. And back in 2021, that was the, the question that was asked by the late Lord Judge.

[00:03:56] Now, of course, sadly, sadly, died, uh, last year, but he asked the question, it's a sovereignty of Parliament question: can the Government expunge or suspend by ministerial statement, which is effectively what we had this week with the Prime Minister at the despatch box, a legal obligation or a duty that Parliament has imposed on the Government.

[00:04:15] And, and yes, seemingly it can.

[00:04:16] Mark D'Arcy: This is something that would be quite different in the US Congress, which does control the purse strings of government to a far greater extent.

[00:04:23] Ruth Fox: Normally, you would hope so, but not, not seemingly at the moment.

[00:04:26] Mark D'Arcy: Well, a majority in the US Congress could probably be mustered quite easily behind Donald Trump's aid cuts. It'd be a rather more ticklish thing for Keir Starmer to actually have to go through a vote in Parliament to do this. And would there be some among his MPs who would say "up with this I will not put", so it's a somewhat more difficult thing because this is a key tenet of what Labour was offering to the country not that long ago.

[00:04:50] Ruth Fox: Well, as he himself acknowledged, this is not a choice he wanted to make, and it's not something that Labour MPs came into Parliament to do, but as you said, the circumstances have changed and this is a politically more palatable choice than, for example, raising taxes or abolishing the, the triple lock on pensioners protection of their incomes.

[00:05:09] Mark D'Arcy: I mean, it's absolutely clear this is the line of least political resistance to raise the kind of money that Keir Starmer is attempting to raise for defence. But I do wonder about the long-term implications. And of course, it also raises other questions for Parliament. It's not just, why isn't there a vote on this? The Government can apparently, more or less do this with the shrug of the shoulders. There will be ways that people can force a vote on this. You know, you can imagine quite easily a delegation of cross party MPs going to the Backbench Business Committee and getting a back bench debate on what is, after all, a pretty major change in government policy.

[00:05:43] Ruth Fox: Well, it's worth perhaps just laying out exactly what will happen now. So the Act, the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2016, which introduced this duty to spend 0.7% of gross national income, not gross national product, GNI, not GDP. I was pleased to see that um, the Leader of the House of Lords Baroness Smith said she'd had to look up the difference before she made, she made her statement in the Lords this week. She's not alone. She's not alone. And there are grounds in that Act for missing the target. So economic circumstances. So any substantial change in gross national income, fiscal circumstances such as the impact of meeting the target on tax, public spending and public borrowing, and then circumstances arising outside the United Kingdom.

[00:06:30] So you can see, clearly, how the grounds are there for the Government's statement. What will have to happen now in, in terms of the Act is that if the Government is not going to meet that target it has to explain why in an annual report, and that'll be the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office annual report, which usually comes out in July.

[00:06:50] So we expect to see something there, and then the Act requires that as soon as practically possible, there is then a written statement to Parliament. So we'd expect to see that in the Summer, but that's some months off. I think we'll see something next week because uh..

[00:07:04] Mark D'Arcy: I think almost certainly next week.

[00:07:05] Ruth Fox: Well, we've got the Estimates Day debates.

[00:07:07] Mark D'Arcy: And um, well, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office estimates, as luck would have it, yes. are, are up for debate. So there is a, a, a definite stage on which parliamentarians can raise this issue. I dunno. Can you put down an amendment to the estimates? Is it conceivable that MPs could get together and propose to put those cuts back?

[00:07:26] Ruth Fox: Well, to be clear, what we're discussing next week in the Estimates is this current financial year's departmental spending plans.

[00:07:33] Mark D'Arcy: So, so the cuts are next year? Yes. So that they aren't covered.

[00:07:35] Ruth Fox: Yeah. So this is different financial years we're talking about. Clearly within the debate there is gonna be discussion about the implications forward looking. And indeed when the, uh, the MP from, uh, the International Development Committee went to the Backbench Business Committee to request that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's spending plans be one of the three estimates, departmental estimates chosen for debate next week, she made strongly the case - I mean, it happened to be on the same day that the announcement was made by the Prime Minister, so it was very timely - she made very strongly the case that it's necessary to discuss this because the topicality. But what they're talking about is, is spending plans in this financial year.

[00:08:11] So the technical term is that these are Supplementary Estimates. Because of course we're heading towards the end of the financial year at the beginning of April. And basically what has to happen is that because of any changes in departmental spending plans, whether that's increases in resource day-to-day spending, or capital or indeed reductions or movements between departments...

[00:08:31] Mark D'Arcy: Money being moved around, whatever it is. Yeah. That all has to be rubber stamped.

[00:08:33] Ruth Fox: That has to be rubber stamped, has to be, it has to have that parliamentary authorisation, and that's what these Supplementary Estimates do to make sure that it's all covered before the end of the financial year and that any sort of additional changes in spending that they need to make to use up their budgets by the end of the financial year is covered.

[00:08:50] So, the Foreign Office, I mean, it's a relatively small budget you know, compared to other departments.

[00:08:56] Mark D'Arcy: Overseas, development aid being moved into the Foreign Office is the biggest single thing that the Foreign Office spends money on by several orders of magnitude I would imagine. And the point here is that MPs can't vote to increase it.

[00:09:06] Even were this, the Estimate for the coming year, which it isn't, they couldn't vote to increase it because while MPS can cut an Estimate they're not allowed to increase it. They're not allowed to just order that more money to be found for something.

[00:09:19] Ruth Fox: Yeah. So this goes back to, we've discussed it on the podcast before, this constitutional principle that only the Crown, the government of the day can initiate expenditure.

[00:09:29] So, only the government could propose increases. The MPs can propose a decrease. They can propose a reduction, but obviously in the context of this Estimate, that's not gonna be relevant to the Prime Minister's announcement. There's no proposal I think that MPs would want to cut it - well, a few of them might, but not the bulk of them.

[00:09:47] The other thing to bear in mind about the international aid budget, of course, is that so much of it now is spent actually on spending on asylum, uh, refugee housing and assistance, for example.

[00:09:56] Mark D'Arcy: And you can imagine that's the bit that gets kept.

[00:09:59] Ruth Fox: Yes. I mean, they'll have to cover that. So I don't think you're gonna see any movements next week to reduce the Estimate for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, be more likely moved in in the other direction, but that that's not permitted under the rules.

[00:10:10] The other thing to bear in mind is that there will be some discussion inevitably about the amount of money that is being spent through the aid budget, actually on effectively domestic provision for um, asylum seekers. Yeah. Refugees.. Yeah. I mean, I think it was something like a quarter of the, of the aid budget at one point was being spent on this considerably more than back in 2019 when I think it was about 6%.

[00:10:31] So that will undoubtedly be a, a focus of the discussion.

[00:10:34] Mark D'Arcy: And I imagine that you will see plenty of Labour disquiet. I mean, we're supposed to be spending 0.7% not that long ago, it went down to 0.5. Now it's going to be N 0.3% of gross domestic income. So it's a very, very substantial cut made quite quickly.

[00:10:49] It's not necessarily going to mean programs just end abruptly in the way that the America has been ending programmes. But all the same, particularly for a, a left of centre government this must be a pretty uncomfortable thing to do. Uh, I've been testing a bit of parliamentary opinion with, with some of my contacts, and one comment that was WhatsApped to me was, and I quote, "what a shower of cynical tossers".

[00:11:11] I, I think some people are most definitely not very happy that this has been done. And there will be counterblasts, there are plenty of people who are big supporters of development aid who will not let this go without at least some very considerable protest. And I suppose one of the forums for that may well be the International Aid Select Committee.

[00:11:30] Ruth Fox: Yes, and the Chair of that Committee, Sarah Champion, made clear her disquiet this week when she was quite critical of the, the Prime Minister's decision. I actually think it, it raises some difficult questions for the future of that Committee. Mm-hmm. I did put this out on social media this week. The International Development Committee was retained as a select committee, despite the fact that the Department for International Development was abolished.

[00:11:53] Mm-hmm. Now, normally when you get that kind of machinery of government change, the select committee would also fall as well. They kept this, I think because the politics of abolishing it were quite difficult.

[00:12:04] Mark D'Arcy: And, and because at one point there was a commitment to spend a very large chunk of, uh, the national income on aid.

[00:12:11] Ruth Fox: Yeah. So if you are now cutting it back considerably and you haven't got a department to scrutinise, I think it does raise some questions about whether the rationale for retaining the committee as a standalone scrutiny body can be maintained or whether it would be better now to just accept that it, it is rolled into the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office select committee

[00:12:33] Mark D'Arcy: And viewed from the standpoint of the government you do rather wonder if they would not want to have a committee whose prime function would be to issue kind of jeremiads about the impact of the cuts that have been made in every report they now issue.

[00:12:46] Ruth Fox: And talking as somebody who's, who's looking at the sort of scrutiny priorities of Parliament, I find it quite difficult to justify as well, because you are always told the response from officials and from ministers when you talk about improvements to the scrutiny process and new bodies is always, well, you know where the resources come from. These things cost money. If you think about the prioritisation of this issue and this policy in a standalone scrutiny committee compared to, for example, we haven't got a standalone scrutiny committee to cover EU relations, which we have covered on the podcast previously. Mm-hmm. Which is a critical, important issue to our economy. We don't have standalone scrutiny body for delegated legislation, which is the, the legislation of everyday life that affects so many of us. And yet the scrutiny of it is poor and particularly poor compared to the House of Lords and what they've got available. We don't have a body to scrutinise treaties. Again, a topic we've covered on the the podcast. So in an ideal world, this would not be an either or question. You'd have all of them. But we don't live in that world as Keir Starmer is discovering. Difficult choices have to be made. And that's the same for Parliament. And therefore, you know, I think, I think questions are gonna have to be asked about the use of resources and whether there are other priorities for committees that might play a, a bigger role in the future.

[00:14:02] Mark D'Arcy: That might now overtake the diminished overseas aid budget.

[00:14:05] Ruth Fox: Yeah.

[00:14:06] Mark D'Arcy: Well, on that cheery note, Ruth, shall we take a break?

[00:14:09] Ruth Fox: Indeed. But just before we go, I'll make my regular appeal to listeners. If you're enjoying the podcast, do like it on Apple or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts because it is a way that helps other people, other listeners, find us.. So while we take a short break, help pay the bills, do that now - like the podcast on your app. Press that button. See you soon.

[00:14:29] Bye.

[00:14:32] Mark D'Arcy: And we are back, and Ruth breaking news literally while we've been recording this podcast. The Labour MP Mike Amesbury, has been back in front of the courts appealing against the 10 week jail sentence he was given for punching a constituent. And that sentence has now been suspended for two years, and he's been given all kinds of requirements for going on an anger management course, doing community work, having his alcohol consumption monitored in a variety of other things.

[00:14:59] So the question now arises what happens to Mr. Amesbury next? There've already been plenty of calls for him to quit the Commons. He should just resign his seat and go. And when he was first sentenced to jail, there was a suggestion that there would be a recall petition that would lead to a by-election. If 10% of his constituents signed a petition for him to go, he would be removed from the House of Commons and a by-election in his seat would ensue. Does that still happen with a suspended sentence.

[00:15:27] Ruth Fox: I think it does. Under the Recall of MP Act. Yeah, I think, so.

[00:15:30] Mark D'Arcy: Because the trigger point is when an MP is actually jailed. Yeah for any length of time, the recall process kicks in. Uh, wasn't clear whether suspended.

[00:15:37] Ruth Fox: There are three triggers for recall, and one of them is conviction for an offense where a sentence is imprisonment or detention. After all appeals have been exhausted, so that was likely to have been the delaying factor on recall here if he didn't voluntarily go, but he's now appealed. It happened very quickly. I mean, yeah, I'm surprised at that. But his conviction still stands, and his sentence in effect, still stands. And the fact that it is suspended under the act, my understanding of how it works is that, that the recall trigger still applies.

[00:16:07] So unless he voluntarily resigns in the coming days, then he would be subject to recall and the grounds are met. The Speaker would inform the local returning officer in his constituency, who would then become what's known as the Petitions Officer for the purposes of recall. And this person, he or she, would have to, uh, put in place the arrangements for a recall petition.

[00:16:28] Mark D'Arcy: So his constituents could go to not exactly polling stations, but petition stations or whatever you would call them and sign. And if 10% of them signed a petition calling for Mr. Amesbury to go that would be it. He'd be out and there would then be a by-election to fill the vacancy.

[00:16:44] Ruth Fox: Yeah, so petitioners go to what's called a designated signing place.

[00:16:48] Mark D'Arcy: A designated signing place. That's snappy, isn't it?

[00:16:50] Ruth Fox: Which effectively is your, a bit like a polling station.

[00:16:53] You can also sign the petition by postal vote or proxy. You can't sign online. This is one of the confusions. It's called a petition, but of course, we're now used to petitions being online - E-petitions. This is not an E-petition. Voter ID is also required under the Elections Act of 2022 of course, a recent change. And the petition will be open for six weeks from the point at which it starts. The Act stipulates that there are a maximum of 10 signing stations that can be opened, but it's at the discretion of the Petition's Officer, the returning officer to decide how many there should be up to 10 and where they should be.

[00:17:31] And of course, one of the issues that arises with these recall petitions - this will now be, I think the, the seventh, I think we've had six recalls so far - one of the issues is, is where you place them. Because getting effectively a polling station location for six weeks - open normal working hours Monday to Friday, and then the, the Petition Officer having discretion to put in additional hours in the evenings, for example. Mm-hmm. That's pretty tricky. Yeah. I mean, remember for general elections, the polling station's only open for a day and that causes in intense problems for schools and local government buildings and so on. So that, that is one of the challenges.

[00:18:06] Mark D'Arcy: Yeah. And there's also this issue that if you're going in to sign a petition, people know what your opinion is. It's not like you've got several options here. Should he stay or should he go? If you're going in there, you are signing up to say he's gotta go.

[00:18:18] Ruth Fox: Yeah. There's no option to sign to say you support the MP and want him to stay.

[00:18:22] Yeah. That is not on the petition paper.

[00:18:24] Mark D'Arcy: Yeah. And so in, in a sense, it's not what you call a secret ballot.

[00:18:27] Ruth Fox: No.

[00:18:28] Mark D'Arcy: People will know your opinion.

[00:18:29] Ruth Fox: There have been calls from, you know, a number of bodies that that should be changed. I actually think there's some merit in it that, you know, you should have the option. 10% is relatively low. It's not difficult for opposition parties, opposition voters to pull that together over a six week period. So there is an argument to say that either the threshold should be higher. Or you should have the option of having a genuine, you know, how many support, how many oppose him and want, want him recalled.

[00:18:57] Mark D'Arcy: But if you have a six week petition process kicking off now, the result of the petition would not be there in time for that by-election to be held on the same day as the local elections in May. Essentially the petition period would extend into the middle of April. So I don't think you'd quite have time to have a by-election then.

[00:19:14] No. So the earliest you could have a by-election is it seems to me to be about mid-May.

[00:19:18] Ruth Fox: Unless he voluntarily goes. Unless he voluntarily goes now. So that's the whip. Yeah, that's where the whips will be trying to apply some pressure.

[00:19:24] Mark D'Arcy: So certainly if I were Labour, I would not want to long drawn out campaign.

[00:19:27] I assume that ever since the original incident that kicked off this whole process back last October, the rival parties have had their teams in that constituency trying to sort of prepare campaigns for what they quite reasonably anticipated was a quite likely by-election.

[00:19:43] Ruth Fox: Yeah. The, the other thing is this six week period is one of the other areas that's been criticised and, and people have said, well, you know, maybe that needs to be reduced. Mm-hmm. Because very often in these recalls, you get those numbers, you get over the 10% in the first couple of weeks. Yeah. And you've then got this imposition for a four week period on these locations, these signing locations. So an administrative inconvenience. Mm-hmm. And you've got the cost to the local authority. I mean, these are not cheap to run. Yes. And all of a sudden, because of the misbehaviour of an MP, a local community, local constituency, have got these additional costs.

[00:20:16] Mark D'Arcy: So one way or another, it looks quite likely that we'll see a by-election in the Runcorn and Helsby seat in Cheshire. And uh, that could be rather dicey for Labour. Even though they polled over 50% of the last general election there. The polls have changed rather a lot since then.

[00:20:32] Ruth Fox: Yeah, and just worth saying at the last general election last summer, Reform was second with 18% of the vote, and the Conservatives were third with 16%.

[00:20:40] But as you say, a long way behind Labour on 53%. Mm-hmm. But you would, you'd think in these circumstances that Reform must fancy their chances?

[00:20:47] Mark D'Arcy: Well, they certainly must, but uh, again, it's a test for a political party's political machine, how good are they at actual electioneering? For years, the Liberals and then the Liberal Democrats were the people who saw themselves as masters of by-elections, who could conjure a result out of the most unpromising seat. Have Reform got the same powers and abilities to go into a seat where they may not have had any great presence before and conjure an MP out of a by-election.

[00:21:13] Ruth Fox: We will see.

[00:21:14] Mark D'Arcy: But only time will tell as we say in journalism.

[00:21:16] Ruth Fox: And just, just worth adding before we move to other things, Mark, that the whole question of recall, I mean, we will see what happens with this process, whether it plays out, it's not beyond the realms of of possibility that it, it'll be as in Blackpool last year, where the Conservative MP, Scott Benton, he started going through the recall process and then pulled out halfway through, voluntarily resigned halfway through, and it all sort of came to an end. That's a possibility as well. Worth saying that there's an incentive here for the MP to stay on because they continue to be paid. There's no provision...

[00:21:47] Mark D'Arcy: You get your salary until you are pushed out the door.

[00:21:48] Ruth Fox: Yeah. So, you know, these factors will all come into play in, in the thinking of the, of the MP. But in terms of where the future of recall stands and what lessons may be learned from the, the recall elections we've had so far, and if we have this one in, in Runcorn, the Standards Committee at the end of the last Parliament issued a, a landscape report as it, as it described a review of the standards landscape. And it recommended that there should be post legislative scrutiny of the operation of the Act.

[00:22:17] The Electoral Commission has recommended a review several times, made a number of recommendations urging that, that the Act should be reviewed because of the, some of these procedural issues that we've talked about. And we've only touched on a few of them. There are a whole swathe of others, sort of administrative processes and procedures that are a bit clunky.

[00:22:33] And the position of the Government, as of earlier this year was that, uh, Lucy Powell said the Recall of MPs Act is broadly operating as intended. The Government is committed to working with the Modernisation Committee and the Committee on Standards to consider how recall interacts with the sanctions available to the House.

[00:22:49] Mm-hmm. So, watch that space. I mean, as we discussed, uh, in, uh, recent podcast, the Modernisation Committee's agenda is very focused on standards. So it may well come forward with a, with a review, but I don't think that's gonna be done by the Standards Committee because they don't feel that they can review the Act when they are involved in the process.

[00:23:06] Yeah. Well

[00:23:06] Mark D'Arcy: that's fair enough, isn't it?

[00:23:07] Ruth Fox: Yeah. So let's, uh, see what happens.

[00:23:10] Mark D'Arcy: Indeed. And in the meantime, let's take a quick break.

[00:23:15] Ruth Fox: Well, Mark, we're back. And, um, I think we should talk about the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill...

[00:23:21] Mark D'Arcy: Because we are party people here at Parliament Matters and we know how to have fun.

[00:23:27] And, uh, this is, unpromising though it's title sounds actually an astonishingly important piece of legislation that's currently grinding its way at slightly slow pace through the House of Lords. What it does, is it gives ministers powers to do pretty much whatever they want to implement whatever reset deal Sir Keir Starmer finally manages to extract from the European Union in the hope of boosting British trade with the EU.

[00:23:56] Now, this is one of the bete noirs of yourself, Ruth and uh, and of the Hansard Society and many people in Parliament itself because this is a skeleton bill. This is a bill that gives ministers, and I paraphrase the powers to do "whatever the bleedin' hell they want to do when they actually figure out what their policy is".

[00:24:14] And we are waiting on the EU negotiations to do that.

[00:24:19] Ruth Fox: Yeah, well, I think it's, it's a little bit narrower than that. I'll defend the government slightly on this. It's a little bit narrower than that. The bill is specifically about provision on the marketing and use of products in the UK and the units of measurement and quantities in which those goods are marketed.

[00:24:35] So it's not a full scale bill to implement the reset agreement. Clearly some aspects of a reset agreement if there is to be one, might flow through because the, the whole question of products, trading products, marketing products, and different markets will be relevant. And one of the reasons this Bill is controversial and has particularly attracted the ire of the Brexiters in the, in the House of Lords is precisely because being a framework bill, giving powers to ministers to effectively make decisions about policies at a later date, leaves open the prospect of either regulatory convergence with the EU or conversely regulatory divergence. But the suspicion they have is that it's gonna mean regulatory conversion, so effectively aligning with the EU through the back door.

[00:25:20] And that the provisions will then be subject to implementation through not primary legislation, which this is, but through Statutory Instrument, and therefore subject to much less parliamentary scrutiny than it would've attracted if it had been done through a bill.

[00:25:35] Mark D'Arcy: And Lord Frost, Boris Johnson's Brexit negotiator at one point - he is the man who's called the greatest frost since the great frost of the 1700s by Boris Johnson - he's been making exactly this point, that he thinks that this is a Trojan horse for, if not quite rejoin, then certainly re-enter the single market or re-enter the customs union. And this would provide ministers with a lot of the powers necessary to make the necessary alignments of standards and so forth that would make that possible.

[00:26:06] Ruth Fox: Yeah, and the House of Lords Constitution Committee and the Delegated Powers Committee, two really high powered committees in the upper house, they have been really critical of this bill. Very, very critical. Amongst some of the most strongly worded reports we've seen even for recent years.

[00:26:21] Mark D'Arcy: And let's face it, they've had to grind out some pretty strongly worded reports on other, other legislation before now.

[00:26:25] Ruth Fox: So, so this sits alongside some of the, the big Brexit bills for the breadth of the powers, the, the framework, skeleton nature of the legislation, the extent to which as the committees, uh, describe it, that it amounts to an unacceptable transfer of power from Parliament to the executive. So they've criticised basically the lack of policy detail. Parliament doesn't know what it is that ministers are going to do with the powers that that ministers are asking them to give them.

[00:26:49] Mark D'Arcy: And that's because ministers themselves don't know what they're do with those powers I fear. They've got a good idea, I suspect.

[00:26:55] Ruth Fox: Yeah, and it sounds really, you know, we've laughed about it. It sounds really techy, but you know, it covers things like product safety, environmental protection, as well as this question of alignment or divergence with the EU. So it gets into some really, really important areas that will affect all our lives. The Delegated Powers in, in particular, that that Committee, it called for six of the clauses to be removed from the bill. This is only a 12 page bill, so you know, you're starting to gut the bill.

[00:27:23] Mark D'Arcy: It's major surgery.

[00:27:23] Ruth Fox: Yeah. And uh, it talked about an unacceptable shift of legislative power from Parliament to the executive. The Constitution Committee said the decision about whether to pursue closer or weaker alignment with EU was effectively left entirely to ministerial discretion and we are of the view that such a significant policy decision should properly be scrutinised by Parliament and implemented by way of primary legislation. Which this bill would do the opposite of. There was a rare public evidence session where the ministers were - Justin Madders and Lord Leong - were hauled in, to account for themselves and try to explain. And to be fair to them, I, my impression - the reason we're talking about the bill this week is it's had Report Stage in the House of Lords. Mm-hmm. So it's had committee stage four days in committee in sort of November, December, and then there's clearly been a period since the New Year where the ministers have been engaging with members of the House of Lords about ways in which they can amend or ameliorate the provisions of the bill to address members' concerns and to respond to the committee's criticisms. In the Report Stage debate this week the ministers were thanked by a number of members for the proactive and constructive, polite way they tried to engage with the issues and they've come forward with some amendments.

[00:28:36] Mark D'Arcy: And I suppose one reason for that engagement is this is a Bill started in the Lords so the Parliament Act isn't available to the government to get it through. If all else fails they don't have a big stick to wave over their Lordships in the, in the way that they would for a bill that had started in the House of Commons. So once this bill has cleared its Third Reading in the Lords, it's off to the House of Commons where the huge government majority will tank it through. If the Lords make changes that are unwelcome to the government, there could be a bit of ping pong to follow.

[00:29:02] Yeah. But by and large, it sounds like the Government has the advantage here and uh, can get its way. I suspect partly 'cause Labour peers will vote for it and Lib Dem peers will doubtless be enthusiastic about it as well. So.

[00:29:12] Ruth Fox: Even cross bench critics, of which there are many, you know, have acknowledged, you know, I mean, Lord Anderson for example, who's been one of the leading voices on this, he said, you know, he's appreciated the way the government's listened to the committee's concerns. He sits on, I think the Constitution Committee, he talks about it might have been possible for the government to have gone further.

[00:29:30] They, for example, Mark, of our favourite subjects, Henry VIII powers, powers, that enable ministers to amend primary legislation, even to repeal primary legislation by Statutory Instrument, the Government have hemmed those in and limited them. They've introduced some additional statutory consultation requirements. They've extended some of the parliamentary scrutiny procedures so that they're the, the higher level of affirmative scrutiny procedure, which will require their Statutory Instruments to be subject to a, an approval debate and vote by both Houses rather than lower negative procedure, which wouldn't require that.

[00:30:04] So they've tried to respond to some of the concerns, but ultimately, if you've got six clauses in the bill that the, the Delegated Powers Committee thought were inappropriate, in terms of the transfer of legislative power from Parliament to government. Those are still in there.

[00:30:19] Mm-hmm. Um, so what you're talking about is an ameliorative exercise.

[00:30:22] Mark D'Arcy: They've taken a little bit of the edge off it. Yeah. But I suppose part of the reason they, they feel comfortable doing that is that the, the government majority in the Commons is so huge that you clearly get its way there, don't go it through, and Peers do not as a matter of convention, almost ever reject Statutory Instruments.

[00:30:37] So it would be quite a big thing for the Government to issue a new set of regulations under the powers in what would then be an Act and for the Lords to reject it. So I think they can feel reasonably confident that they'll get their way.

[00:30:50] Ruth Fox: They will, I mean, the, the House of Commons is even less likely to reject a Statutory Instrument than, than the Lords. But I think it raises, and we saw this in the debate, it raises two other related matters. When it does get into the Commons, we are going to see an about turn, a very visible about turn, where people who were ministers in the last Conservative government banging through framework bills with huge powers, people like Andrew Griffiths now the, the shadow minister on the, the Conservative opposition benches in the Commons are suddenly going to be criticising the government for doing exactly that in this bill.

[00:31:25] They're not wrong. Yeah, they're not wrong.

[00:31:27] Mark D'Arcy: They're not wrong. It's, it's just this ..

[00:31:28] Ruth Fox: But they've set the precedent.

[00:31:29] Mark D'Arcy: It's the, it's the embarrassment of people who were all in favour of sweeping powers for themselves when they were in power doing a four minute mile up the road to Damascus suddenly being against such things. And were there to be a Conservative Government after the next election one feels they'd do a four minute mile on the road back from Damascus to Jerusalem.

[00:31:45] Ruth Fox: So these things are suddenly necessary. Ministers must have these powers to ...

[00:31:48] Mark D'Arcy: Taking a small onion from their pocket they continued, you know.

[00:31:52] And, and I, I always find this whole business of people doing exactly the opposite of what they were saying when they were in opposition a bit risible but entirely predictable. Yeah. And it just, it just engenders cynicism. But that show business. Yes.

[00:32:03] Ruth Fox: And, and, uh, the constant problem we face in the, the parliamentary reform, um, democracy sector, I'm afraid.

[00:32:09] But the other issue, it raises. It touches into the debate about the role and future of the Attorney General Lord Hermer, who's been attracting some criticism. Mm-hmm. Apparently, quite vicious internal briefing in, in Labour ranks, being seen as a block on legislation being difficult, standing in the way of government policy.

[00:32:27] Mark D'Arcy: There was a pretty nasty attack on him from Lord Glassman, the guru of the blue Labour movement, describing him, I think the words was something like "liberal idiot", not exactly the kind of collegiate comradely language one would hope for in the Labour movement. But who's even surprised.

[00:32:44] Ruth Fox: Just to sort of explain the context for this, the Attorney General, when he came into office has made a number of speeches in which he's made clear his commitment and the government's commitment to restoring the rule of law as he sees it. And one of the areas has been that he does not want to see a repeat of what previous governments have done, which is this excessive reliance on delegated powers, on Henry VIII clauses, on skeleton legislation now. And yet, here we are. And yet here we are. So there is an argument that this was one of the early bills at the start of this Parliament ,it was necessary to get these bills out quickly and it was too early for him to exercise the kind of influence over that legislation that he might be able to do in future sessions.

[00:33:28] But there's questions about whether he's now influencing the amendment process. By trying to persuade Ministers to sort of roll back a bit and, and make these concessions. And there was an interesting letter in the Times this week from our colleagues at the Constitution Unit and the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, praising him and saying he's trying to reinstate the norms that were damaged in the, the years under, particularly Boris Johnson's government about respect for the rule of law and commitment to parliamentary scrutiny and, and defence of constitutional standards.

[00:33:57] And it shouldn't be seen as a block on legislative progress.

[00:34:00] Mark D'Arcy: But all oppositions are in favour of great levels of parliamentary scrutiny and proper standards and against, as we've been saying, Henry VIII powers and skeleton bells. All governments suddenly find they're incredibly useful things to have.

[00:34:13] Ruth Fox: Absolutely necessary! And, and the thing that they forget - and this is the thing that I would put to Andrew Griffiths - is when you do it in Government, that's all very well, but you then set the precedent for the next government.

[00:34:25] Mark D'Arcy: They've opened the door.

[00:34:26] Ruth Fox: And you also give, uh, the, the current Government will be giving these powers to whomever follows them. Mm-hmm. Not just ministers within their own government, but ministers in the future government. Mm-hmm. These powers are not time limited. They sit on the statute book until such time as they may be repealed. And I think a too often current ministers forget that.

[00:34:46] Mark D'Arcy: Mm-hmm. And possibly over the Atlantic current Presidents may forget that.

[00:34:50] Ruth Fox: Yes.

[00:34:50] Mark D'Arcy: But leaving that aside, Ruth, we've got a couple of questions from, uh, listeners.

[00:34:53] Ruth Fox: We have. So should we start with one from Alex Green who has got a question about select committees and parliamentary private secretaries. So with a reshuffle on the horizon, we can expect a number of the new intake to begin moving up to junior ministerial roles or PPSs. And as a result, a number of vacancies on select committees are likely to open up. How do each of the parties decide how to fill select committee vacancies? Is one way best? And how strong of a link between committee membership and future promotion to PPSs or ministerial status really exists?

[00:35:27] So my first question, Alex, is do you know something we don't about a reshuffle on the horizon? It, to be fair, it is being touted in the media, but there is chatter.

[00:35:34] Mark D'Arcy: There is chatter certainly, but when is there not reshuffle chatter in Westminster. When a reshuffle comes, and it may or may not be soon, who knows, the parties backfill any vacancies that are created in select committees by an internal election process if they need it.

[00:35:51] If you are one of the smaller parties, you'll say the Liberal Democrats, and there's only one person on your parliamentary contingent who actually fancies the vacancy in, say, the Environmental Audit Committee or wherever it happens to be. You don't really need an election for that. You simply take forward the nomination and give it to the Committee of Selection that formally puts it through the Commons process. Where lots of people are gagging for a plum role on the Treasury Committee or Public Accounts or Foreign Affairs or wherever, then you have to have an internal election, and they're supposed to be democratic elections done by a proper process, and it shouldn't just be the party leadership nominating someone.

[00:36:26] Now, in reality, sometimes the party leadership wants to just give a little help to a particular candidate.

[00:36:31] Ruth Fox: A favoured candidate. Yeah, I mean, procedurally, there's no specification in the Standing Orders of the House of Commons about how the parties should choose which of their MPs go on to committees. In 2010, when these select committee elections were introduced for chairs and members, the House of Commons agreed in a motion that parties entitled to nominate members would put names forward resulting from "a secret ballot by whichever transparent and democratic method of internal election they choose". Well, we know that elections take place. I'm not sure I'd describe them as transparent.

[00:37:04] Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, transparent is an odd word here.

[00:37:06] Ruth Fox: Yeah. Um, I mean, sometimes these things obviously leak, but we don't necessarily see the slate of candidates from which they were chosen.

[00:37:13] And of course, in the last Parliament, it was one of the problems that actually when vacancies arose, they didn't have people wanting to take up the positions.

[00:37:21] Mark D'Arcy: This, this is if you like, a second wave election now. At the beginning of the Parliament, there was a great scrabble for places on select committees and people who really, really wanted to be on a particular committee would be campaigning , you used to find leaflets on the tables and the coffee bars and things like that.

[00:37:38] This time around, I think for many committee vacancies it may well turn out to be more of an exercise than the whips putting someone in a half Nelson to go on a committee they're not particularly interested in. When the Conservatives had very few Scottish MPs you know, more or less any Conservative MP with a "Mac" in their name was finding themselves being persuaded to go on a Scottish Affairs Committee. Anyone who might fill the gap.

[00:37:59] And you may find this time that if there isn't great enthusiasm for a place on some comparatively backwater committee, that someone will just have to be frog marched in by the party apparatus, just so they can't be criticised later for not having the full contingent of, of Members of Parliament in their particular committee.

[00:38:17] Ruth Fox: Yeah. And it's worth saying, of course, um, we've been critical of this, that a significant number of new MPs were promoted directly to PPS's I mean as well as ministerial office. But the PPS ranks - the Parliamentary Private Secretary ranks, the bag carriers for ministers - they are littered with new MPs.. They've not had to bother with select committee time on, on, on, on the committee corridor.

[00:38:38] And if you've been a reader of our Parliament Matters weekly bulletin, you will know 'cause you'll be seeing each week that there are quite regularly motions on the Order Paper.

[00:38:47] Mark D'Arcy: There's always a little bit of churn isn't, there. There's always someone coming on and someone coming off and sometimes it's because someone perhaps isn't attending the committee as much. Sometimes it's because they've been made a PPS, or whatever. And there have been sort of little micro reshuffles along the way. I, I suppose the more exciting possibility here, and I use excitement in a very niche sense.

[00:39:06] Ruth Fox: A Parliament Matters sense.

[00:39:07] Mark D'Arcy: In a Parliament matters sense of the phrase, is if the next reshuffle plucks someone from the chair of a committee into government, and then of course you may well have a quite plum vacancy opening up with an actual salary attached to it. I suppose you could see people almost moving the other way. Some ex ministers might then want to get on select committees or might want a, a suddenly vacant chair of a select committee as a kind of consolation prize for having been expelled from the Garden of Eden back out into into the non-government world.

[00:39:35] Ruth Fox: Well, I think that goes to Alex's point about is there a, a strong link between committee membership and future promotions? We don't really have the data and the research for that on memberships.

[00:39:43] Mark D'Arcy: It's anecdotally it's become a more obvious thing. Yeah. I mean the, the tale of Tom Tugendhat for example.

[00:39:49] Ruth Fox: But that's chairs not members.

[00:39:50] Mark D'Arcy: Who, who was a committee chair who went straight in as a relatively new member to chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, spent a couple of years strutting his stuff there and then was a candidate for his party leadership.

[00:40:00] Yeah. Yeah, let alone anything else. And then it was made a shadow, minister in quite a senior brief, so there's that side of it. Less so in general with ordinary committees. Although the Public Accounts Committee, it was striking that it was at one point at least used as a place for people who were seen by the party establishment as up and coming future ministers.

[00:40:20] Mm. To learn the ropes and the chains and the electrodes of parliamentary life. And so you used to have, for example, people like Matt Hancock, the future health secretary, people like Ben Gummer, son of the more famous John, who was the policy coordinator for Theresa May, lost his seat, uh, slightly unexpectedly in 2017. They were on the Public Accounts Committee, learning how ministerial life worked, learning about great departmental blunders, and so learning what not to do as much as what to do perhaps, but it was certainly seen as a bit of a training ground.

[00:40:50] Ruth Fox: Yeah. What we'll do Mark is there's a Hansard Society blog by an academic at, um, Birmingham University, Stephen Bates and, and his team, who've looked at the role of chairs specifically and the sort of the direction of travel between government and back to, to committees. If, if you remember when these were established elected chairs back in 2010, the hope was that they would be a sort of seen as an alternative career path to ministerial office. And in fact, the research shows that actually it's, it's rather more complex than that. There is an element of that. Some do see it as a career destination, but chairmanships, as you say, you mentioned Tom Tugendhat you know, can be seen as a sort of launchpad for careers into ministerial office. You've also got chairs-as-postscript for, as you say, ministers or shadow ministers who've left and gone back to being a select committee and then chairs-as-interlude, which I suppose is the, is the Jeremy Hunt scenario?

[00:41:43] Mark D'Arcy: Yes. Oh, Jeremy hunt was chair of the Health Committee very successfully and in very high profile way because of course this was the Covid era and then came back into government as Chancellor afterwards. Yeah, so that was quite an interesting moment. And of course you have people like Margaret Hodge chairing the Public Accounts Committee as an ex minister and probably making more of a splash doing that than she ever did as a minister.

[00:42:02] Ruth Fox: Yeah, well it was always said, you know, she knew where the bodies were. Having been a minister, she know, knew how Whitehall operated. So, yes.

[00:42:09] So Alex, I I hope that answers, uh, as your question as much as we can. We'll put some links into the show notes about that.

[00:42:15] We've had then Mark another question from Barnaby Jackson, friend of the podcast and indeed of the Hansard Society. He says, can we ask or demand our MPs reach out to us, their constituents to explain their understanding of the new American administration's position on global security affairs. Well, good luck with that, I think, if anybody understands what their position is.

[00:42:38] Mark D'Arcy: I I, I think the, the key point is to actually understand it in the first place, and that may be some while in the emerging.

[00:42:44] Ruth Fox: Barnaby then goes on to say, what's Parliament doing to support them respectively to ensure the public can make critical decisions or take precautions in our own lives.

[00:42:53] Mark D'Arcy: I mean, dig fallout shelters perhaps.

[00:42:55] Ruth Fox: It sounds very 1970s and 80s.

[00:42:56] Mark D'Arcy: Stock up on canned goods.

[00:42:59] Ruth Fox: Which I believe they've been doing in Sweden.

[00:43:01] Oh yeah. Sort of. Who can blame them? Nuclear. Nuclear instructions.

[00:43:04] Mark D'Arcy: Well, I mean, there are ways in which MPs can try and find out what the American government is thinking about. American governments have traditionally had quite an outreach to, uh, UK politicians.

[00:43:17] Ruth Fox: DOGE will have done away with those.

[00:43:18] Mark D'Arcy: DOGE will have cancelled those, I imagine Elon probably doesn't think it's a good idea to explain anything.

[00:43:22] But anyway, there are also all sorts of transatlantic links specifically for parliamentarians. There's the Foreign Affairs Committee, which I imagine will be desperately trying to organise tours over to Capitol Hill to see what's going on in the US Congress and see what they think about it, and just generally exchange views.

[00:43:37] There are plenty of sort of umbilical cords there, through which views may flow.

[00:43:41] Ruth Fox: Yes. But then I think Barnaby's question about, well, what Parliament does to support the public, the constituents to understand what's happening and to, as he describes it, take precautions. I'm not sure we we're quite there yet Barnaby I think that's possibly a, a future step if things were to deteriorate in the Western alliance still further. But it's possibly too early days for be thinking about that. Um, but clearly MPs will be getting letters from constituents, concerns about the direction of the alliance, concerns about the implications of defence, and as we were discussing at the beginning of the podcast, the changes in international aid spending. You know, concerns about the implications for Ukraine in particular, which has been debated this week in Parliament to mark the third year anniversary of the invasion.

[00:44:22] Mark D'Arcy: Plenty of Ukrainian communities around in, in various constituencies across the country.

[00:44:26] Ruth Fox: So, yes, I think we watch this space. I think this is gonna run and run over the course of this Parliament.

[00:44:31] Mark D'Arcy: Absolutely. It's the, probably the biggest single issue now confronting MPs is the complete and utter change in the national security environment that's come about in a matter of weeks. Yeah. So I think it will be a constant theme, a constant backbeat to pretty much any other decision that has to be taken.

[00:44:49] Ruth Fox: Yeah, and as we're recording this, Keir Starmer is of course in Washington, so we will see how he survives the experience.

[00:44:55] Mark D'Arcy: And doubtless he'll be reporting back to MPs with a full dress, all singing, all dancing statement to the House next week.

[00:45:00] Ruth Fox: Next week. I'm sure he will. So we'll, no doubt discuss that next week on the, on the podcast.

[00:45:04] But uh, in the meantime, before we go, I think you've got an update about our next episode in our assisted dying special series.

[00:45:11] Mark D'Arcy: Yes, indeed. I mean, listeners will know we've been running this special series dedicated to all things to do with the assisted dying bill. This week we're talking to Kit Malthouse, who's a supporter of the bill, who's on the bill committee. We'll be talking to him about what it's like there, what the action has been on the committee, what big things are coming up, and just the general political atmospherics around what is still the most controversial piece of legislation that's likely to be passed by this entire Parliament.

[00:45:35] Ruth Fox: Yeah, so look out for that listeners, and uh, we'll see you next week.

[00:45:39] Mark D'Arcy: Bye for now.

[00:45:39] Ruth Fox: Bye.

[00:45:42] Intro: 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.