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

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

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

Ruth Fox: Parliament's net zero enforcer tells us how he intends to make sure the government sticks to its plans to decarbonise Britain.

Mark D'Arcy: A row over the National Security Advisor.

The government's refusing to let him give evidence to, um, Parliament's National Security Committee.

Ruth Fox: MPs stuck in a brothel at 2am. Tantrums from sacked ministers. And chaos in the voting lobbies. Rishi Sunak's Chief Whip tells us why he published his diaries of parliamentary mayhem.[00:01:00]

Mark D'Arcy: But first, Ruth, it's probably the most important document you've never heard of. The Carbon Budget, the seventh incarnation indeed of Britain's carbon budget, was published at the end of February. And this is a document that sets out the path to getting net zero in Britain. How we can cut our carbon emissions in power generation, in transport, in heating our homes, It even suggests that we should be cutting our consumption of meat and dairy.

So it's a document that has vast ramifications across the whole spectrum of British industry. The last time such a document was published, Parliament almost ratified it with a flick of the wrist with startlingly little debate. This time, there are hopes that it will be much more extensively explored, not least because it has such a huge impact right across the breadth of this country's economic activity.

And someone with a direct interest in that is Toby Perkins, the Labour MP who chairs the Environmental Audit [00:02:00] Select Committee. We went to speak to him in Parliament and he started by telling us exactly what it is that his committee does.

Toby Perkins: The Environmental Audit Committee has a unique role. It's across government.

Every single government department has a select committee that shadows it and then we have two non governmental department select committees. One is the Public Accounts Committee that effectively audits the money. And we are the sort of environmental equivalent of that, looking at right across government, are departments who maybe don't think the environment is their major responsibility, actually complying with the legal commitments that the government has on the environment.

So we assess the environmental performance of the government across all departments, and particularly looking at things like carbon budgets and the impact on our constituents of the decisions government are taking.

Mark D'Arcy: And this is quite an important period for you because the Climate Change Committee, which advises on how the UK should respond to climate change, has just [00:03:00] published its seventh carbon budget, CB7, in the jargon, which is quite an interesting document.

It envisages very substantial changes to the way we live. We'd consume less meat, we'd consume less dairy, we'd mostly have electric cars, our homes would be heated by heat pumps, all sorts of things like that, as well as big reductions in emissions elsewhere to get the UK towards its target of net zero.

Your committee's got the job of acting as kind of enforcer for that.

Toby Perkins: Well, yeah, precisely. I mean, carbon budgets have been in place detailing the amount of carbon dioxide equivalent that the UK will consume since 2008. Budget's been set since 2008 prior, the budget was set before that. And actually over that period of time we have seen a 50 percent reduction in the CO2 that we consume compared to 1990 levels. But the targets as we head towards net zero will continue to get more ambitious and in some ways the low hanging fruit has already been achieved. The [00:04:00] huge increase in renewable energy was very important but is possibly the easiest part of all of this.

And so we're now cutting into far more difficult aspects and the budget that the Climate Change Committee has set, the CB7 that you refer to, is tremendously ambitious and sets out a number of expectations on government. It's now for government to respond and decide, is it going to comply with those budgets, which it always has in the past?

And then crucially, how is it going to actually deliver on those? Because, you know, we have over the years had very ambitious targets. that haven't always been met by the same sort of ambition in policy terms. So it will be really important to see ultimately what the government legislates in terms of bringing about the reductions needed for the 2033 to 37 budgets which was carbon budget six and then the carbon budget seven taking us from 2037 to 2042 because we need to be planning right now how [00:05:00] we are going to achieve those further reductions particularly given that we are going to also in that time having a massively increasing energy need.

So we're going to have an increase in particularly electricity demand at the same time that we need to reduce our emissions.

Ruth Fox: So, as you say Toby, this is looking 13 years ahead, it's looking towards that 2050 target for achieving net zero. We're actually doing quite well, aren't we, compared to many of our sort of, you know, fellow countries in the G20, for example.

So, what is your committee going to be looking at in terms of scrutiny now you've got the proposals?

Toby Perkins: Well, I mean, the role of the Environmental Audit Committee isn't to tell government what to do or to tell it what its policy should be. It's to tell it how well it's doing against the policies it's already told us are its priorities.

So we have Carbon Budget 6. We are, and now have Carbon Budget 7, which government is going to respond to. So we know what they tell us their priorities are. We know that the government have a hugely ambitious growth agenda. [00:06:00] We know that they've said all of that growth agenda has to be achieved in compliance with those environmental targets.

We know that the government have said they're committed to net zero. So it's our job to say, supported by organisations like the, uh, Office for Environmental Protection, well, how are you doing? Are you on target to achieve those, uh, ambitions? And if not, here's some things that you might want to consider.

Mark D'Arcy: And there are some conflicts, aren't there? The government's growth agenda now includes airport expansion. Previous carbon budgets have said there shouldn't be any further expansion in aviation because aviation is one of the big creators of carbon emissions. Is it possible to expand Heathrow, to expand Gatwick, to expand Luton, to have many more flights and still have fewer emissions?

Toby Perkins: Yes, it's possible, but it's definitely not inevitable. The government has committed that the plans for Heathrow expansion will only be approved if they are compliant with those emissions targets. Uh, so that's a reassurance, haven't moved [00:07:00] away from that. But what we haven't yet seen is the detail of how that's going to be achieved.

It is fair to say that compared to five years ago, there's been huge progress on sustainable aviation fuel. The Seventh Carbon Budget says 17 percent of aviation fuel will need to be sustainable in order for these carbon budgets to be met. So the plans that come out for Heathrow, for Gatwick, for Doncaster Sheffield and any other airport expansion will need to be actually having that commitment to sustainable aviation and other aspects included in order to prove how this can be delivered without increasing those emissions.

Mark D'Arcy: And one of the things you probably need to do to nail down that emissions target is to make sure that aviation pollution and indeed pollution from shipping, carbon pollution from shipping, is brought within the scope of the climate change targets, which it isn't at the moment. It's one of the big loopholes in the current system.

Toby Perkins: That's absolutely right. The previous government ultimately [00:08:00] accepted that principle. This government have also accepted that principle. When Ed Miliband appeared in front of our committee, he was committed to these budgets, including aviation and shipping, what we don't yet have is the legislative back up to actually bring that to life.

So, there is a sort of theoretical commitment that that will happen, both from the previous government and this one. And we look forward to seeing how government actually deliver on that. But we had Ed Miliband confirm that it was still very much this government's belief that that needs to be within these budgets.

Ruth Fox: When you gave your initial response to the Climate Change Committee's announcements, you also, in addition to talking about aviation, you also highlighted heat pumps and the fact that the committee has suggested that the ambition is to have heat pumps in half of existing UK homes by 2040. So that's just 15 years away, so it's a huge ambition, and you talked about the green economy possibly is a route to doing [00:09:00] this, that for example the one and a half million new homes that the Labour government plans to build, what's your committee going to be looking at in that respect?

Toby Perkins: So, on heat pumps, we're not certain whether there will be a new EAC inquiry on that. We haven't announced anything yet. But the last year was by far the largest number of heat pump installations, about 100, 000 heat pump installations last year. It's still some way short of the target, which is 600, 000.

There's a big skills need to make sure we have more people trained up, able to install heat pumps. And then there's also, you know, both push and pull factors, both government incentives, which are currently generous and need to continue if we're going to encourage more people to move to heat pumps, but also the issue of not allowing more gas boilers to be sold after 2030.

So there'll be the two different aspects there. We'll also be looking into this as part of our review into sustainable house building and planning system. You know, the government have a plan for one and a half [00:10:00] million new homes in the next five years. We should expect the vast majority of those to be renewably heated and using renewable energy forms, whether that be solar or heat pumps.

So, we do need to see that expansion if these targets are going to be met and government will have to consider what legislative initiative measures might help it to get to that.

Mark D'Arcy: One of the complaints about net zero, and there's quite a campaign growing against the effort for net zero, is that the last carbon budget was approved by Parliament in what a lot of people thought was an absurdly perfunctory way.

Just a very short debate in a delegated legislation committee, and Bob's your uncle, a huge chunk of industrial policy was made. Is there a push to make sure that Parliament does a better job, does a more thorough and extensive discussion for this budget than it did for the last one?

Toby Perkins: Yes, there very much is.

Um, the previous environmental audit committee shared the previous prime minister's view that that was a totally unsatisfactory [00:11:00] process. We raised this with Ed Miliband when he was in front of our committee a few weeks ago. We will be doing, firstly, some pre legislative scrutiny of the budget. We will be interviewing the Climate Change Committee in about three weeks time, understanding the trade offs that they are spelling out.

They don't tell the government what to do, but they spell out options to the government. Ed Miliband was very sort of enthusiastic about the idea that the committee should do more detailed work to help the government identify those options that are going to be available to achieve this. I think it's important to say that, you know, the carbon budgets go through and they are legally binding on the government, but what they don't do is set out how government are going to achieve those, uh, massive reductions. And so there will often be a lot of legislation that follows that, that will be more detailed. But I do share the view that the CB6 process was totally unsatisfactory, and that we should see far more [00:12:00] scrutiny of, of these budgets.

Ruth Fox: Do you imagine it will go through the normal route for delegated legislation, my favourite subject as listeners know, into a delegated legislation committee, 90 minute debate. I mean, it is in the power of the government to table a motion saying, no, we're not going to do that. We're going to, for example, as your predecessor in the committee, former chair, Philip Dunne suggested there should be a full days debate in the, in the chamber on this.

This is so big an issue. Will you be pushing for that? And are you going to do any scrutiny joined up with other departmental select committees, for example, who have an interest in this area?

Toby Perkins: So on the first question, I absolutely hope there will be a full debate in Parliament. We've already had a commitment from the government to a climate and nature debate as part of the response to the climate and nature bill that there will be a parliamentary event to look at that.

But I hope we will also see a full debate on the carbon budgets. With regard to the other select committees, I suspect we will, as we get into the detail of the carbon budget seven, be inviting [00:13:00] other colleagues to join us. Some of our work will be around things like aviation. I expect us to do you.

Project review into, uh, aviation fairly soon. And I know that Ruth Cadbury, the chair of the transport select committee will join us for that. But more generally, I anticipate us working very closely with other select committees. And they frequently will guest on our committee when we look at aspects like this.

Mark D'Arcy: Do you worry that maybe the political will behind this is fading, that, in the end, you could see the drive to net zero going the way of the government's earlier commitments on international aid becoming jettisoned because it's simply in the too difficult box?

Toby Perkins: I think we need to guard against that. I mean, everything I've heard so far suggests that government still maintain that commitment, the sort of level of investment this government has put into decarbonising our energy supply in the first, um, eight months and seeing that as part of its economic policy is all very [00:14:00] encouraging, but there will always be those who say, well, there's other countries whose emissions are far more than ours.

So there's, so what we do doesn't really matter. And it is really important that we enable, um, ministers when they go off to conferences like COP 29 or COP 30 in the future to be able to walk in there saying, well, Britain's doing our bit and holding other countries' feet to the fire, because there are other countries for whom it is even more difficult than us and if we have failed to deliver on ours we can't possibly hold them to that same standard.

So everything I've heard so far is encouraging but it is about actually making sure we we back up those commitments with solid policy that actually delivers.

Mark D'Arcy: And what do you say to those who regard climate change as a kind of phantom menace, nothing too bad's happened, we'll have vineyards all over Britain, it'll be lovely.

Toby Perkins: Go and speak to scientists who actually know this stuff. You know, we are seeing already the impacts of that climate crisis. You speak to people [00:15:00] who are now flooded every year when they used to be flooded once every 20 years. You speak to any people who know about climate policy, who study the work that we're doing currently on studying the Antarctic, and people who study this stuff will explain that the consequences will be catastrophic if we don't take it seriously. You know, this is probably the key crisis of our time. Future generations will look to see what actions we took. I'm almost certain that they'll say, well, you should have done more when we look back in history, but we are taking serious action in this country and it's the job of my committee to hold government to continue to deliver.

Ruth Fox: What do you say to those who say, well, look, Britain has done very well so far compared to, as I say, some of its other countries around the world. But ultimately, our share of the carbon budget is pretty small compared to, say, America and China. So how far do we go in terms of the pressure on our economic circumstances and [00:16:00] industrialization and so on, if they're not keeping their end of the bargain, as it were?

What's the response to that argument?

Toby Perkins: It's a very strong argument. It's important that firstly, we make the investments now because ultimately renewable energy will be much cheaper. So it will give us a long term advantage. There's a short term cost to pay on that, but in the longer term it will help us.

Secondly, it helps us to then go and argue ambitiously for like, you know, COP 30 about the expectations on the whole globe, but also, you know, as we move forward, you might well see situations where countries who continue to fail to deliver will get tariffs put on them. We'll find that the measures that they've failed to put in place make them, uh, a pariah, make them unable to trade.

And actually those countries who stepped up and, and decarbonized their electricity supply, who got more electric vehicles, who took the action on sustainable aviation, that they will ultimately be in a [00:17:00] very, very strong position at that moment in time. So, you know, I think it's an important thing to do for the sake of the globe.

But actually I think it could well be to our long term economic advantage too. We need to be making that case when we go to these international events, and we can only do that. If we've got our own house in order.

Mark D'Arcy: Toby Perkins, thanks very much for joining Ruth and me on the pod today.

Toby Perkins: Thanks very much, great pleasure to do it.

Ruth Fox: Mark, what did you make of that?

Mark D'Arcy: Well, first of all, it's a bit like Keir Starmer talking to Donald Trump, you almost feel. Really? Toby was very, very keen there to keep a positive tone and keep saying that things are going the way he wants and he expects the government to stick to its obligations, whether it's on cutting emissions for aviation, even while expanding Britain's airports, or whether it's on much wider questions of surcharges and electricity bills to fund the move to net zero and all the other rather painful measures that underpin the drive to [00:18:00] decarbonize the British economy.

So he's resolutely sounding optimistic there. He's quoting Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, who's occasionally mentioned as a possible casualty in Keir Starmer's first big reshuffle. We just have to wait and see whether the government is indeed going to stick to its very sweeping commitments to decarbonize the British economy as they become more expensive and as that expense becomes much, much clearer and more manifest.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I mean, that was my impression, as you say, when he was speaking about Ed Miliband before his committee, the thing that was going through my head is, you might not be there in six months when all this comes to a bit of a head, amidst all the talk of a potential reshuffle. I mean, obviously, from my perspective, what interests us at the Hansard Society is the scrutiny element.

This is going to be, at least initially, this autumn, a carbon budget order, form of delegated legislation. And despite the arguments at the end of the last parliament about how this should be scrutinized, how it could be improved, Rishi Sunak clearly very unhappy [00:19:00] with how it was handled last time. Of course, it ended up in court in 2021, when the court ruled that the net zero strategy which had been presented to parliament to achieve sixth carbon budget had not taken account of relevant considerations, and the government had to come back to parliament with new analysis.

And we're still not really clear, despite the sort of positive sounding words, still not really clear exactly how this will proceed legislatively and in terms of the scrutiny. So what was proposed last time was at least three months to consider the plans for implementation, scrutiny by Toby's committee, possibly other committees as well.

And then it being considered in at least a full day's debate in the House. Time will tell whether that is what we see, or whether we get something rather less than that.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, well what we really shouldn't have is what happened last time around, that a mega significant piece of secondary legislation, the orders to enact all this under the original climate change [00:20:00] legislation, shouldn't be put through in a 90 minute debate in a committee room upstairs from the main chamber. Practically no one there. That's a purely mechanical exercise in people sort of raising their arms to vote when the whip told them to.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, precisely. I think because of what happened last time and because of what you, you talked about at the end of that interview, the breakdown in the consensus on net zero, I think it won't.

There'll be at least a lot of pressure. Whether that means that exactly what was promised at the end of the last parliament will transpire or it'll be something that a halfway house will have to see. Rishi Saks in the, it'd be interesting to see what he does because he's in, still in Parliament, very active on on the back benches.

One presumes that he'll take an interest in it. So if it does go to a delegated legislation committee and he doesn't get on it, well, Rishi, you can still attend

Mark D'Arcy: and, and of course there are ways for MPs to force an issue onto the floor of the House and it wouldn't be totally unreasonable for them to go to the Backbench Business Committee and say, well, if the government's not gonna provide debating time for this, then we should get it from the Backbench Business Committee.

Not a great [00:21:00] substitute for a proper debate in government time. Not least because Backbench Business Committee motions tend to be quite timorous things. They don't tend to be very emphatic a lot of the time. So if someone wanted to say, no, this won't do, they probably wouldn't be able to do it in a Backbench Business Committee debate.

But all the same, somehow or other, MPs have got to make sure that this gets talked about.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, but to be honest, it's a low bar. So last time it was 17 minutes of debate. So anything will be something of an improvement on that. So let's see. Well, Mark, shall we take a break? Pause for a moment. But before we do, can I ask a small favour of our listeners?

If you're enjoying this podcast, can you think of someone who might as well? Someone interested in politics, but perhaps tired of the endless media spin, the horse race coverage, the Westminster theatrics. Someone who just wants to understand how Parliament really works, why it matters and how it shapes our lives.

Someone, well let's face it, with some procedural nerdery and parliamentary history thrown in. Basically someone like you. Maybe it's a friend, a colleague, a fellow student, party or [00:22:00] union member. Send them the link to the podcast and encourage them to listen. We're a small independent podcast. We've got no marketing budget, so we're very reliant on word of mouth.

So if you could also rate us on your podcast app, that would be a huge help. So, we're going to go for a quick ad break. It helps pay the bills and, uh, gives you a moment to share the podcast. So, if you can do it right now, we'll be back in a minute to discuss our next subject, the row over the National Security Advisor giving evidence to Parliament.

Mark D'Arcy: See you then. And Ruth, we're back and we'll start with a somewhat bizarre row. One of the things that Parliamentary Select Committees have to some extent established is their right to talk to key officials about key areas of government policy. Now, when Gordon Brown decided there should be a national security strategy, he created a parliamentary committee to oversee it.

And it's been a very, very high powered committee. It contains former foreign secretaries, very senior backbenchers, chairs of key select committees. [00:23:00] And for many years since, that committee has had no problem in getting access to the linchpin of the whole national security operation, the National Security Advisor.

Right up until now.

Ruth Fox: Yes, so there has been an exchange of correspondence, shall we say, between the chair of the committee, Matt Western, the Labour MP and his fellow Labour MP and Cabinet Office Minister, Pat McFadden, because the National Security Advisor, who of course is Tony Blair's former Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell, who's been brought back Keir Starmer, he wants Jonathan Powell to appear before the committee, as all his predecessors have.

And Pat McFadden has written back and said, well, I'm sorry, but Jonathan Powell is a special advisor. He's not a civil servant and therefore he won't appear, but you can have his deputies, um, which should we say the committee is not very amused by now. This is a high powered committee. I mean, not just the issues that they're dealing with.

In addition to Matt Western as chair, [00:24:00] you've got seven other select committee chairs. So you've got people like Emily Thornberry, you've got Karen Bradley, Home Affairs Committee Chair, you've got the Chair of the Defence Committee, you've got the Chair of the International Development and the Justice Committees and so on.

The former National Security Advisor himself, Lord Sedwill, formerly Senior Civil Servant.

Mark D'Arcy: In that very role, isn't it?

Ruth Fox: Yeah, in Theresa May's government. You've got the former Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, Sir Julian Lewis. You've got a current member of that committee. You've got a couple of former Defence Secretaries.

I mean, you could go on and on. It's a full house, basically. It is. And there's only two new MPs on it. Both Liberal Democrats, but they've both got an interest or a sort of past experience in terms of military and security issues. So it is a high powered committee and I really don't think they're probably going to let this one go.

Mark D'Arcy: It's a bizarre tale in a way. I mean, Jonathan Powell is a very interesting figure, as you say, he was Tony Blair's Chief of Staff. He was actually a key figure in the Northern Ireland peace process. One of the things recorded in the memoir he wrote about the process was he, as the [00:25:00] Prime Minister's Chief of Staff, found himself one day waiting on a street corner in Belfast to be picked up by people from the IRA to go and negotiate with key members of the IRA army council.

That must have been pretty nerve wracking. So it would be surprising to discover that the reason for this was pure nerves that he didn't like giving public evidence or something like that. I mean, having said that, uh, I once interviewed him about that very book about the Northern Ireland peace process, and he clearly was a pretty nervy interviewee.

But you can't imagine he can be that worried about going in front of, uh, a high powered parliamentary committee full of people he probably knows quite well. Probably knows, yeah.

Ruth Fox: Well, I would, um, some of those names are people that would have been part of the Blair and Brown governments. So presumably he does know them.

And frankly, a lot of civil servants might say that, you know, even at very senior levels. It is a nerve wracking experience, no matter what level you've achieved.

Mark D'Arcy: So the question then becomes, what is the actual objection here? Was Jonathan Powell made a special advisor, as distinct from a senior civil servant, with a view to [00:26:00] using that as an excuse for not putting him in front of the committee?

Or is it just an unfortunate set of circumstances that for one reason or another they made him a special advisor? And now they don't want to set a precedent for special advisors going in front of select committees.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, except, I mean, as you say, every previous national security advisor has appeared before the committee.

But they've also, there's a row about the access to the agendas of the National Security Council. So previously, the committee has been provided with the agendas on a quarterly basis in confidence, dating back to 2013, when that first happened. It's also had since 2018 access to meetings of the subcommittees of the National Security Committee, all of them, except the nuclear one, apparently, and, you know, these papers are held in very special circumstances by the parliamentary officials, MPs can't take the documents away, they're held securely, and, um, the government has said no, they're not going to be sharing agendas for those meetings either.

So, it's arguably bigger than just the Jonathan Powell question, it's about broader questions of [00:27:00] accountability.

Mark D'Arcy: They seem to want to keep the whole national security process a bit tighter than it has been up to now. I suppose with the roiling boil of international politics at the moment, maybe they've got good reason to keep things locked very tightly.

All the same, there has been a sort of offer made here that he can go and meet the committee in private and not in a formal evidence taking setting. But that's not really quite the same thing as getting stuff on the record with the full all singing, all dancing committee process. So, there's something going on here and it's a little bit elusive exactly what it is, other than perhaps just a new wave of extreme caution about national security issues.

Ruth Fox: Well, the correspondence that Pat McFadden sent says that the government is committed to providing spaces for ministers to debate freely and frankly in private. This convention applies to engagement with Parliament and the select committees, and the government routinely rejects requests for this information from other select committees.

Therefore, whilst the government is actively pursuing a greater [00:28:00] transparency with Parliament, this principle of non disclosure continues to cover this matter. Now, the other argument they're citing is the Osmotherly Rules.

Mark D'Arcy: You've left the backflip involved in that sentence. Yes. The government is actively committed to more transparency except where we don't want it.

Ruth Fox: Now, the government argues that the Osmotherly Rules, we'll come on to explain that in a minute, these Osmotherly rules are the government's defence. They state that it's for ministers to decide whether special advisers appear before committees or not. So, what are the Osmotherly rules? These are the guidance for civil servants on giving evidence to parliamentary select committees.

They're named after the civil servant who drew up that first version of the guidance back in uh, 1980. And there's been various iterations of those rules since then, but they've never been formally accepted by Parliament. They're government guidance. They're not something that Parliament has ever signed up to.

Mark D'Arcy: And it's been a flashpoint before now. It has, yeah. Where people have, civil servants have fallen back on the Osmovoli [00:29:00] rules. Yeah. And the Commons Committee in question is having none of it.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, and government rules state officials providing evidence to select committees do so under ministerial agreement and instruction.

Okay. When a select committee indicates it wants to take evidence from a particular named official, including special advisors, the presumption is that ministers will seek to agree to such a request. However, the decision on who is best able to represent the minister rests with the minister concerned. So Matt Western's gone back to Pat McFadden and said, well, the rules are not a defence because they set out that normally you would agree to this.

And the past history of this position has been that the advisor would appear. So this is, I suspect, going to run and run a bit. And we'll have to keep an eye on what happens. But it's a little bit difficult to explain, and to understand what the government's rationale is. And there's not a resolution in sight at the moment.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, certainly we'll keep an eye on that one. Meanwhile, if you like a counterexample of the government treating Parliament better, there are two very big [00:30:00] pieces of legislation currently in the Commons pipeline. The Employment Bill. and the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill. Both very substantial pieces of legislation, and both to hosannas from backbench MPs and business managers have been given two days of detailed debate at report and third reading stages.

None of this one day for all remaining stages, get it knocked off in three hours nonsense. Oh no, the employment bill in particular seems to have a positive rain of government amendments descending upon it. So there's going to need time to process those.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, so I don't think it's necessarily a gift from the government to scrutiny, but it's just

Mark D'Arcy: I'll blow the gaff on that one.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, so I mean just to give a sense of the scale of it, the Employment Rights Bill is at report stage, so it's been through committee, it's already had one set of amendments, it's now going back to the chamber for consideration, and there are over 200 pages of amendments. There are two mammoth new schedules, for example, one is 25 pages long and one is 40 pages long, so I've said there's 220 odd pages of amendments.

Well, 65 of [00:31:00] them are just two new schedules.

Mark D'Arcy: Blimey.

Ruth Fox: The amendment paper is littered with the name Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, who is, of course, the business secretary. These are all clearly government amendments. Now, some of them will be in response to what was discussed at committee, where the government's taken away the issues and the ideas, possibly has taken away amendments and trying to improve them or to make them more technically useful, improve the drafting.

But there is also a sense that certain aspects of it are being drafted again, um, legislation being drafted mid air.

Mark D'Arcy: But it is something to be welcomed, that the idea of having report stages that last just a couple of hours gives MPs remarkably little flexibility to proffer amendments, to debate them properly, to consider them, and this is at least giving a bit of headroom for a decent scale of debate on a couple of very important pieces of legislation.

So, I never say this usually, three cheers for the government business managers for getting this one right for whatever reason they did it.

Ruth Fox: And, um, should we [00:32:00] talk about estimates?

Mark D'Arcy: Yes, we were talking last week about how there, by coincidence, at the very moment the government was slashing the aid budget, there was going to be an Estimates Day debate looking at the money allocated to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

So a chance for that very point about the cuts in spending to be addressed by MPs, and as it turned out, the subtleties of that meant that actually there was mostly supposed to be focusing on the previous year's accounts, so it wouldn't necessarily directly allow them to address the forthcoming cuts, but they were bound to be mentioned, and indeed they were.

The former Deputy Foreign Secretary Andrew Mitchell, for example, weighed in and warned that development was part of a kind of continuum along with diplomacy and military force, and it was a very bad idea to neglect one element of that trio.

Ruth Fox: Can I make, at this point, a plug for a blog post I've written on this, uh,

Mark D'Arcy: Oh, surely not.

Ruth Fox: This vexed question of the government's breaching, again, of this 0. 7 percent target for international aid spending. So, I went back over the [00:33:00] last few days and looked at the legislative history of this question, and you've got to go back to 2005, 2006 for this, and have traced then back through to the current day what's happened.

And it is, frankly, a story of legislative failure. Gesture politics being legislated for, and very easy for the government to breach.

Mark D'Arcy: Yes, I always hate this thing where governments say, We've legislated to make ourselves do something, whether it's on carbon budgets or international aid spending, and this will force us to deliver on our own promises.

And as soon as it becomes inconvenient to deliver on those promises, badabim.

Ruth Fox: And basically all that they, it turns out that they had legislated for was a requirement to tell Parliament that they weren't going to meet the target. And you think about the administrative and parliamentary and legislative time that has been taken up with that piece of, of legislation. It really does feel a pointless exercise that this is not the sort of thing you should be legislating for. And the blog asks should you be able to, um, premeditate non compliance with an act. Given that effectively they've abandoned [00:34:00] the target, should they now amend or repeal the act rather than have it sitting there and this sort of pretense every year that they're going to keep coming back and say well we're not going to meet the target, we're not going to meet the target.

Why not remove it from the statute book? Anyway, you can find it on the Hansard Society website, hansardsociety.org.uk..

Mark D'Arcy: And in the meantime, it's just worth pointing to a little bit of sleight of hand that occurred in that debate as well, because while we were talking last week about it being formally about the previous year's estimates, the financial year that's just about to come to an end, and not about the future funding changes, it turned out not to be quite like that.

Ruth Fox: No, well they put, as well as the supplementary estimates, so the sort of the end of year changes that they need to get done before the end of this financial year at the end of March, beginning of April, they also put at the same time the vote on account, which is basically the consideration and the votes, the approval vote for effectively the spending for the first 40 percent of next year's funds as well.

So that went through and the sums are pretty astonishing. I mean, what they were [00:35:00] approving this week was something in the region of about 70 billion pounds worth of adjustments across departments in this financial year to sort of tidy up this financial year.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, you know, they say a billion here, a billion there.

A billion there, yeah. Pretty soon you're talking about real money. Yeah. Yeah.

Ruth Fox: And then you're talking 900 billion for next year to cover the first few months. So basically it sort of gives them parliamentary approval in advance and then they'll have another round of main estimates and supplementary estimates later to sort of tidy things up.

Mark D'Arcy: So, so MPs were actually being asked in effect to approve the first tranche of cuts to international aid next year.

Ruth Fox: We're not quite sure where they fall. I mean, I think they're talking about that in 2027. So I'm not sure whether it falls into the next financial year or it'll be the financial year after that.

We need to see more detail and some of the accountants may know better than me. I'm afraid I've struggled, struggled to follow that, but it's certainly coming and obviously it dominated the debate. The Foreign Office is facing difficulties in terms of the budget, there was actually in this year, an increase for them in the, in the supplementary estimates [00:36:00] to tidy things up to meet the 0. 5 percent target. So at the same time as you're talking about cuts in the future, they were actually making some adjustments. They met the commitment to the target this year, which was all very odd. A lot of that debate was about the UK stepping up to sort of leadership position in the world, enhancing soft power, the dangers and difficulties of, of, what will follow if we cut international aid on the back of what the Americans have done?

And there was a great quote from Emily Thornberry, as Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, are we going to step up to the challenge? We're more capable than that, but we cannot do it on two chewits, a button and a postage stamp. So I thought with the chewits she was showing her age.

Mark D'Arcy: And one of the things that a lot of British aid has been directed at is helping various countries build up civil society.

And you have a rather alarming story to tell in that regard.

Ruth Fox: Yes, we've done a lot of work over the, probably about ten years ago with an organisation in Serbia called the Centre for Research, Transparency and Accountability, CERTA. It's a fantastic organisation, [00:37:00] it's sort of part parliamentary monitoring, part facts monitoring, combination of the Hansard Society, the Electoral Reform Society, Full Fact, My Society, uses technology to monitor what's happening politically in Serbia.

It's been supported by The U. S. State Department, USAID, has been supported by our British Embassy. We did some work with them about 10 years ago in terms of, you know, civil society engagement. How we have built a relationship with Parliament as its sort of critical friend, and they wanted that kind of relationship with their Parliament.

And I went out about, probably nearly, goodness me, 10 years ago now, to speak in the first civil society forum that they had had in the Serbian Parliament. Anyway, to cut a story short, fantastic organisation, operating in recent years in really difficult circumstances. And we heard last week that their offices, along with actually four other organisations not dissimilar to them, were raided by the Serbian police.[00:38:00]

On the pretext that they had heard in the media from America that aid funding from USAID had been misappropriated by organisations internationally, was corrupt essentially, and they raided Serta and others on the pretext of investigating this corruption, of which there is no evidence. And I would absolutely guarantee there'll be nothing there with, with Serta, that everything will be above board.

But it's sort of an example of how the anti democratic forces in countries like Serbia at the moment will be using what's happening in America to their own ends. They were in their offices for 24 hours, turning it over, looking through all the files, and obviously it puts pressure on the staff and their supporters.

And so it's a difficult time. So solidarity with them. We'll obviously keep an eye on that but it's an example of how what's happening across the ocean has quite serious ripple effects over here.

Mark D'Arcy: And with that Ruth, shall we take another quick [00:39:00] break?

Ruth Fox: See you in a minute.

And we're back and Mark, there's been some eye catching stories in the press to trail the new memoirs by Simon Hart, chief whip in Rishi Sunak's Government in the last Parliament, caused by desperate Conservative MPs trapped in brothels at 2am. That's the clean story I can tell. There were plenty of others that I wouldn't repeat on this podcast.

Endless shenanigans, personal misdeeds, a sense of entitlement, it went on and on. What occurred to me was no wonder he just seemed to lack a focus on legislative business. He was dealing with all that.

Mark D'Arcy: And what set eyebrows shooting skywards in Westminster was the fact that here was a book that had been written by a chief whip.

Chief whips are supposed to stay stump. They may know everything but they're not necessarily supposed to tell everything. So we had a quite a long chat with Simon, and, uh, the first question I asked him was why he'd seen fit to rip the veil from the confessional and tell all, or tell, well, a bit, because I think some names [00:40:00] were sanitized and various anecdotes were kind of anonymized in various different ways, but tell quite a lot more than pretty much any previous chief whippers ever dared say.

Simon Hart: I don't regret it. I think it's unquestionably going to be uncomfortable reading in some respects, but the more I reflected on the last few years, the more I'd come to the conclusion that there was this narrative creeping in, which was that the only reason we lost the 2024 election was because we chose July rather than October or November.

And if only we hadn't done that, then everything would have turned out. differently. Well, that is just fundamentally wrong. We lost in 2024, partly because we've been in 15 years, or nearly 15 years, and that's a long stretch for any government, but our reputation for integrity got done over towards the end of Boris's regime, whether we We think that is warranted or not.

It is unquestionably the case. And our [00:41:00] reputation for economic competence got done over during Liz's short term in office. Again, we can have an argument about whether that's a legitimate charge, but it is nonetheless charged. So we suddenly found ourselves slipping to 20 points behind Labour, our nearest competitor, in the second week, I think, of Liz's regime.

And we never recovered. We never went up, we never went down. The nation had just taken a collective view that the joke had worn a bit thin, and that we were no longer the party that they wanted to be running the country. We have to ask ourselves, if we're serious about not letting that happen again, we have to ask ourselves, what were the root causes of that?

And so that's what I've attempted to do. Yeah, it's a bit colorful in parts. I accept that. But it does demonstrate that we were contesting very strong headwinds coming out of all quarters. I tried to be careful about how to demonstrate that the sort of variety and ferocity and frequency of the winds that we were contesting and frequency of the winds that we were contesting.

Just to do my little bit in reminding people that Rishi Sunak was a very [00:42:00] decent man trying to do a decent job, but it was bloody difficult.

Mark D'Arcy: I mean, there are people who will now say that no future Conservative MP who's trapped in a brothel being extorted will feel able to phone a Chief Whip because he's in trouble.

Simon Hart: Maybe that's true. Maybe they might think twice about going to the brothel in the first place. You know, the whips office is not the department of covering up. I think this is exactly the problem. I think there was this sort of belief that somehow, it didn't matter what went on, the whips were there to sweep up the mess, bury the damage somehow, and never speak of it again.

Well, that's all very well. But the problem is that that doesn't exactly force us into examining other ways we can adjust the modus operandi of Parliament, the way in which we select our candidates, the way in which we help and mentor and support MPs and ministers in a way that actually ends up in them not being.

In these difficult positions, I feel really strongly about that, you know, the, the reason we lost the 2024 election was because the public got [00:43:00] bored of the psychodrama, and it might have been a sex scandal, a financial scandal, a property scandal, or it might actually, I attach just as much significance in some respects, of our failure, being attributed to the fact that, you know, there were defections going on, there were threatened defections, where at least at one stage, I think there were four alternative leadership campaigns going on. You cannot run a political party and expect to be taken seriously by the public if that is what is happening. And so, to back to your original question, Mark, have I, you know, breached an ancient code? To some extent, there was this belief that Chief Whips don't write books, but that is to sort of suggest that we'll just carry on as normal forever, and you know, I think we were past that stage.

We were reduced from 353 to 123 in numbers, and that wasn't because we went to July and not the autumn for the election, it was much more deep seated than that.

Ruth Fox: Explore that question then, Simon, about who is being selected as candidates. It's a problem not just for the Conservative Party, we've [00:44:00] seen it in other parties as well.

And you, you highlight in the book that you, you came to realise a system of candidate selection, training and mentoring was flawed and at the root of all the problems. And that really comes through from reading it. So what should be done differently, because the huge sense of entitlement that some of these, this cast of Conservative MP characters in the book, we don't know their identity, but you know, there's quite a lot of them, they seem to expect you to sort of come along and clean up the mess.

Simon Hart: I think you're right that this is not, by the way, this, none of this is unique to the Conservative Party. We've seen in the first few months of the new Labour administration, them have to contend with all sorts of difficult issues around some of their MPs, some of their new MPs. So this is not all about us, it's a, it's a problem.

One of the reasons I think it's a problem is that when we select candidates, this is my personal view, I'm not sure we ask the question often enough or loud enough, what makes a good MP? [00:45:00] And for that matter, a good minister, you know, these, a lot of these people will end up in charge of huge departments with multi thousands of people and multi billion pound, uh, budgets.

And one of the answers I give to that question is we shouldn't be asking just about your policy expertise or your experience in your previous job. Actually, for politics to work, there has to be the ability to deal with disappointment, to deal with frustration, to understand the necessity for compromise.

Those are quite difficult concepts for a lot of ambitious people, and they're difficult enough for anybody. I mean, who doesn't hate compromising? I mean, I always think that my way is the right way. And, you know, I get forced into compromise rather than willingly go there. And one of the reasons for that is that our system, and I think other parties a lot, depends actually more often than not on people knocking on our door saying, I'd like to be an MP, or I'd like to be a member of your party and a candidate for your party.

That's great. And we get some brilliant people. That way. [00:46:00] But we don't necessarily get exclusively brilliant people. And sometimes we get just really fantastic people who might struggle with some of the pressures that politics in 2025 presents. And in those situations, you know, we take people in, we get them elected, and then we say, right, pal, you're on your own.

Here's a budget. You've got four or five members of staff. You may have never run an office before. You've got an office in Westminster. You've got an office in your constituency. You should get on with it. Woe betide you if you get it wrong. Then, a few years in, you might be lucky enough to become a minister.

As I say, get all of the trinkets which come with that, your big smart car, your red box, your budget. And you're told immediately, right, report to such and such a department in the next two hours. Um, you're doing a media round tomorrow morning, by the way, nobody tells you that. And don't you dare for a minute slip up.

That is an intense pressure to put on people if you don't also have the support in place to help them, train them, mentor them. I think, by the way, it's much better than it used to [00:47:00] be. But I think that it, what it does is leave people who might have fantastic potential but may not necessarily be cut out going it alone and doing all of that stuff without any help at all.

It leaves those people exposed and then that's when the wheels fall off.

Mark D'Arcy: Just a final thought, really, to sum up what's in your book. My impression when I read it was that you didn't so much resemble the ringmaster of government business, the pivot on which the whole legislative machine turned. You seemed a bit more like the designated driver on an out of control stag weekend.

I mean, is that how you felt about it?

Simon Hart: Um, there's no doubt that being in the Whip's office In the fourth term of a long period in government, when you're 20 points behind in the opinion polls, and you've got multiple noises in the margins, is a testing environment. I still [00:48:00] maintain to try and finish on a positive note that most of the people I encountered in politics on all sides of the house were actually thoroughly decent people trying to do a thoroughly decent job for the right reasons.

But I do think that. Like a lot of other workplaces, people get themselves in terribly complicated situations from time to time. A wrong word here, a misjudgment there. So I don't necessarily want to point a finger at blame. I mean, I've obviously the press has alighted on a few particularly jaw dropping stories.

But in a way, I don't mind about that because it's got this subject being talked about. Because I think it does need to be talked about. Otherwise, we'll just continue. To repeat the mistakes or, or build in an artificially, unrealistically high level of expectation, which can never be met. I think there's lots to be proud of and lots to be hopeful about, but we do need to be honest with ourselves.

There are some things we're not in the right place and yeah, you know, was it emotional? Yeah, I mean, we're talking [00:49:00] about people whose careers, life plans, ambitions were falling apart in front of their very eyes. We're talking about people who were struggling with extraordinary pressures being imposed on them.

As I said, I'm not trying to excuse them, but it's what we saw. And I think we didn't always make the right calls. I hate it when I hear people think MPs are there to, you know, feather their own nest or get one over on the voters. That's not the Parliament that I saw. But it's a Parliament which has got some flaws, yup, and we could do better, yup, but it's still an extraordinary, rewarding, and privileged place in which to exist, even, as I say, if there's, um, a few things which, uh, you know, they're not meant to be funny, by the way, they're meant to be, you couldn't make it up moments, rather than, some kind of hilarious Stag Weekend. Wasn't like that.

I, I said to somebody when I started all of this, it was intended to be a sort of lighthearted look at life and politics for the purposes of my kids. And it sort of [00:50:00] started as a comedy and slightly ended as a tragedy. Actually, some of these realities came into full view.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, Simon Hart, thanks very much indeed for joining Ruth and me on Parliament Matters.

Simon Hart: Thank you both, very much.

Ruth Fox: Thanks, Simon.

What did you take from that?

Mark D'Arcy: Well, quite a lot, really. By the end of it, Simon Hart was clearly pretty angry and frustrated with the antics of some of his flock. That line I used about he seemed almost like the designated driver in an out of control stag weekend seemed to me a fairly fair one, really. As you were saying at the beginning of this, you do wonder how they managed to get legislation through sometimes when they seem to be half the time involved in a constant rush of firefighting for particular individuals personal problems.

And I suppose it's partly a problem of kind of the end times for a government that's been in power for a very long time, maybe some sort of critical festering mass of people, personal disappointment and angst from people who never were ministers, or who were ex ministers and couldn't see themselves [00:51:00] getting back through the pearly gates into government again.

Uh, and that sort of poison accumulates and finds different ways out. Sometimes it's in perpetual plotting, sometimes it's in perhaps sinking into rather unethical behavior of various different kinds, but whatever. It must have been a nightmare and you can't help but at various points in the book feeling rather sorry for Simon.

But honestly, the, the last days of Rishi look like an absolute shambles.

Ruth Fox: Well, they were, um, I was very interested in his take that, you know, you can get the best person for policy, for professional experience, a polished CV, but actually they need the emotional make up to deal with Westminster as well and that you need to, the party needs to be selecting to look at that and to be thinking about emotional resilience.

Mark D'Arcy: You need people with the emotional stability to cope with disappointment, frustration and the general grind of parliamentary business. And people who [00:52:00] think that the earth is going to shake with their every footstep once they're in parliament often go to the bad quite quickly.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. And that's, you know, there are highs and lows in politics, um, and particularly now, as we know, the, the sheer sort of drudgery of dealing with the, the onslaught of, of, of social media, comment, and, and, and so on.

It's very, very difficult. And, and, you know, the reality is, you go from being a distinguished person in your community, respected, you get the, the letters MP after your name, and you're a hate figure. Nothing has changed in your, your personal approach, nothing's changed in what you've done, but it's just by dint of being elected, that is now what happens.

And a lot of new MPs have historically struggled with that, particularly since the expenses crisis. And so I do think that, you know, having that resilience is, is necessary to cope with it. But as Simon sort of indicated, you know, And partly, of course, why he's written the diaries. The parties aren't really, sort of, doing anything to address that.

Because the way that they select [00:53:00] candidates is, frankly, antiquated.

Mark D'Arcy: And they need to face up to the idea that they need to, sort of, stress test their potential MPs and possible future ministers, uh, much more effectively.

The other point that, that also struck me, I mean I put it to Simon in that interview, was that both Boris Johnson and the Liz Truss took very heavy blows from bad whipping decisions. And he didn't seem to have created a similar tripwire at any point. And maybe that was because Rishi Sunak was a bit more prepared to listen to the chief whip and the whipping operation than his two predecessors had been.

But one way or another, though they got into trouble over votes and they got into trouble over the antics of individuals, they didn't have a whipping catastrophe on a par with the Owen Patterson vote or the fracking vote under Liz Truss. So at least they escaped that pitfall.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I think it was also probably the identity of the Prime Minister as well and his, his approach.

I mean, [00:54:00] he, he comes across as much more of a focused details man, which you could never accuse Boris Johnson of being. And Liz Truss was sort of off doing her thing, you know, proceeding at 150 miles an hour, regardless of any context around her. So he, I suppose as a Prime Minister, it was a different proposition.

But yes, they did manage to avoid that pitfall. It was just all the others that they had to cope with.

Mark D'Arcy: And I should also say that this is just a taster of a much more extensive interview. Uh, one of our whipping yarn series that we will be running over the Easter holiday. So keep an eye out during the parliamentary break in Easter for an extended interview with Simon Hart, which will tell a lot more about his time as chief whip and give a lot more of his reflections on the lessons he learned during that incredibly turbulent period.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. With that, Mark, I think that's all we've got time for this week. Just to say to listeners to look out for our next mini podcast in our series, looking at the Assisted Dying Bill. This week we're talking to Professor Colin Gavaghan of Bristol University, who's [00:55:00] an expert on the assisted dying process, in New Zealand, which is an interesting case study, was also started out as a private member's bill. Uh, so we talked to him about how it's been working because they've, uh, the government's just reviewed it.

Mark D'Arcy: They've had three years in operation and there are some very interesting lessons that have emerged from that, which may well be applied here in the UK in due course.

But for now, goodbye.

Ruth Fox: See you next week.

Mark D'Arcy: Bye.

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 at Hansard Society.