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

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

Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark D'Arcy. And coming up in this week's episode.

Ruth Fox: How long can Parliament bear Rachel Reeves' economic doom loop?

Mark D'Arcy: We look at the pressure points where MPs may push the Chancellor for an alternative economic strategy

Ruth Fox: And why the unelected lords got a vote on delaying local elections, but elected MPs didn't.

Mark D'Arcy: But first, Ruth, let's talk about Rachel Reeves' big Spring Statement. It wasn't supposed to be that big. An event, a kind of update, looking at the latest forecasts and bringing the [00:01:00] economic strategy into conformity with the forecasts. Simples, you might think. But not so much when the economic outlook is so dire.

And that's before you take account of Donald Trump planning to slap tariffs on UK exports to America and give another kicking to the British economy. So a lot of gloom and doom surrounding the Chancellor's forecast and a lot of Labour MPs gritting their teeth. I'm not sure that there were many new voices added to the quite predictable list of critics who spoke up during the statement, but I think all the same, there must be concerns for the Labour Party managers now about the discipline of their troops on those green benches.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. What of course is unclear is whether and when the Government's gonna have to bring votes to the House to push through this program. Particularly, of course, the welfare cuts, we know that there's gonna have to be some, but exactly when, you know, will it be imminently, will it be several months down the track by which time [00:02:00] events may have unfolded further and other pressures may be alive. But I think if you, as you say, if you look at who was speaking out in the chamber, pretty much the usual suspects.

Yeah. The sort of Richard Burgons, who's sort of restored. I think he's restored to the Labour whip, but could well be losing it again if he's uh,

Mark D'Arcy: and will be having to watch his step, you would've thought, because the whips will have their beady eyes upon him.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. People like Andy Macdonald, Imran Hussein, Nadia Whittome, the kinds of people on the sort of soft left that you would've expected to be finding these proposals very difficult. And standing up to the leadership on them, Kim Johnson said on social media, she didn't speak in the chamber, but she put out a statement on social media. This is austerity 2.0, it's here and it's a choice. And she was very explicit that she will vote against any legislation if it's required.

You had some other voices, you know, Rebecca Long Bailey of course, who, uh, was, uh, prominent in the, the Corbyn years. Ran for the leadership.

Mark D'Arcy: Leadership candidate not that long ago.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, she welcomed the statement from the Chancellor, but said, you know, the Chancellor [00:03:00] will be aware of serious concerns, the increase in the number of people living in relative poverty.

And she said, what will the chancellor do to stop this happening? So there was a sense that certain MPs withholding their nose. At this point, it's, it's unclear whether they would explicitly vote against the proposals if it, if it comes to a vote.

Mark D'Arcy: The point at the moment is that the proposals are in the form of a green paper, and so it's not clear exactly what MPs will in due course be asked to vote on.

The thing is though, that if you are trying to make spending cuts, the longer you wait to make them, the less time they have to save money for the government. So you'd have thought that the Treasury at least, would wanna move pretty quickly to go from a green paper to something a lot more solid. There are a, a couple of proposals about fixing universal credit rates.

There's something about establishing that people shouldn't be worse off if they're in work than they were if they're not in work.

Ruth Fox: Well, that first one on Universal Credit, the green paper explicitly talks about legislation and bringing that in to effect from the next financial year. So at some point, therefore in the coming months, they are going to have to legislate.

They [00:04:00] can't kick that one into the long grass and into next year. It's unclear though, whether it'll be through regulations or through primary legislation through a bill. Mm-hmm. So that's in a sense what's got to be clarified.

Mark D'Arcy: But in the meantime, there are all sorts of milestones along the way to the next budget, which will presumably be at some point in the autumn.

And, um, what we've got to look at, for example, on the political front, MPs will soon have local election results to digest. Now, there aren't quite as many local elections as was originally intended because in a number of places, they're gonna reform the system for local government.

Ruth Fox: Come on to that shortly.

Mark D'Arcy: We'll be talking more about that later. But all the same. A lot of pickups by the Conservatives, or even worse from Labour's point of view, Reform.

Ruth Fox: Yeah.

Mark D'Arcy: You know, especially in these big mayoralties that have been created, would send shutters through Labour MPs. Then you've got other things. You've got the comprehensive spending review, the big shakeup of how the government's going to spend its money, which could involve a lot of government departments being very, very sharply squeezed.

Indeed. One thing to [00:05:00] watch out for there is whether that actually generates cabinet level resignations.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. I mean, I think even before you get to the spending review in June, April and the start of the new financial year, you're gonna see the changes kick in, in respect of what's been dubbed by the opposition as the job tax on national insurance changes and, and, and rates.

I see the fallout possibly in the early months, uh, of the financial year from that, you know, in the social care sector, the charity sector, hospices and, and others finding it difficult to recruit. Additional staff that they might need and finding it difficult to be able to afford the employment tax bill that they're going to face.

Mark D'Arcy: As a result of this, are we gonna see a big escalation in the cost of social care for all those people having to pay it as well as for local councils hiring social care firms to do some of their work for them.

Ruth Fox: And more fallout in things like the hospitality and and retail sectors where this is going to bite.

If you're a business that has a large number of relatively low paid staff.

Mark D'Arcy: Uh, so MPs could well be finding themselves questioning Rachel Reeves' budget judgment in making that increase [00:06:00] in employers national insurance in the first place. So that could be another piece of evidence used against her in due course.

Ruth Fox: And going back to the national insurance bill, there have been plenty of attempts, particularly in the House of Lords, to try and carve out some of these sectors from those proposals and the government stood resolutely firmly against them. So if there is fallout in some of these sectors, they're gonna find that, uh, again, difficult to manage politically.

Yeah.

Mark D'Arcy: And Labour MPs will have their votes to stop those attempts to carve out sectors used in evidence against them in their constituencies. No doubt. So there's a whole load of milestones there. Then there are other developments running along in parallel with that. The Government is very keen to kickstart growth by encouraging new mega projects.

The Heathrow expansion, for example, the new Lower Thames crossing tunnel that, uh, was given the go ahead this week. Although the funding for it's a bit more opaque, all those things come with kind of built in green protests against them. And you can imagine that a lot of Labour MPs, there are [00:07:00] Labour MPs pretty well everywhere in the country these days, are going to be taking the heat from some of those protests as well.

So there's another source of angst and, uh, irritation for them to face.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, if you look at what was said in the, in the chamber and, and in the media afterwards, you know, it's clear that some of the Labour MPs who are opposed to what the government's doing and sort the direction and the track that they're pursuing, MPs are proposing an alternative approach of, you know, let's have a wealth tax.

You've got others saying, you know, we want an end to the the two child benefit cap. Other proposals that are out there that they'd prefer to see implemented. Some on the triple lock because of the, the amount of money that that's costing.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, the triple lock is, is the guaranteed increase in the state pension.

It's either 2.5% or the level of average earnings or inflation, whichever is the highest. And that's generated some pretty switching pension increases in recent years. And people are wondering whether that is a sustainable way to keep the [00:08:00] pension increase uprated every year because it's gonna become more and more expensive in the future.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. You navigate through to, as you said, the comprehensive spending review in June. You've then got, you can have a little bit of a break over the summer, but then your inter-party conference season, pre-budget, the speculation is gonna continue on, one suspects, between now and the budget about what she's gonna have to come back with.

Is it gonna be more spending cuts or is it gonna be tax rises, and therefore the pressure will rise at party conference. You know, there will no doubt be organized efforts to try and get motions passed at party conference, which will no doubt be ignored, but pressure amongst Labour activists who are not comfortable with the direction of travel.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, it could, I think, be a very, very rocky conference for the party leadership in general, not just for Rachel Reeves, but what would become really difficult and dangerous for her is if all this crystallizes into an alternative economic strategy from the one she's pursuing. If what she's doing looks as if it's locking the UK into a kind of doom loop of ever continuing deflation and [00:09:00] austerity.

And by the time the next budget comes around, will there be a lot of Labour MPs who are starting to think, no, we've gotta do something different. And here's a coherent list of measures to take.

Ruth Fox: You sort of look at what are the options. Clearly some would say the the net zero strategy and the costs of that and whether or not Ed Miliband's Great British Energy body is gonna survive.

That will be under pressure. Not even set up. It's barely been set up. But what's its purpose? What's its objectives? Is it, is it gonna achieve enough for the amount of money that it's costing? Possibly pressure to reestablish the fuel duty escalator? That's one that's sort of been stalled for many years, I think.

Mark D'Arcy: I think basically George Osborne hit the brake on the fuel duty escalator, if that's not too much of a mixed metaphor back in 2010, and it is a promising source of revenue in, yeah. Cause a lot of pain to motorists, but there are very few nice, comfortable, easy, well-received ways of taking money away from people.

Ruth Fox: So wherever you turn, tax, council tax reform, you know that's a political hot potato that nobody [00:10:00] wants to touch. But can you continue with a situation where local government, given the position it's in with its finances, where you continue with valuation of homes based on 1991 values.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, yeah. 34-year-old valuations of properties.

Ruth Fox: How sustainable is it in in these circumstances?

So there's all sorts of things they could look at, but they all carry some political pain, some degree of political pain. They'd all probably take, with the exception of things like the fuel duty escalator, you know, things like council tax reevaluation would take time.

Mark D'Arcy: Mm-hmm.

Ruth Fox: And uh, when you look at the Labour parties representing so many different parts of the country now with such different socioeconomic profiles, that inevitably some are gonna be more affected than others.

Mark D'Arcy: You do wonder incidentally, whether the leadership is gonna have to take a view that MPs from certain constituencies that they were a bit surprised they won in the first place must now be considered expendable.

Ruth Fox: Yes, well probably mine, Bishop St. Starford. I mean, you know, my constituency, Hartford and Stortford never had a Labour MP in the nineties, in the height of the Blair Brown years. And, and I was astonished on election night [00:11:00] last year to discover that I'd got a Labour MP. 'cause I would never have said I would. So. sorry Josh Dean, but it might be a short run, uh, political career.

Mark D'Arcy: But it's an easy thing to say when you are the high command in a party, it's quite another thing to be the foot logger in question who's basically going to have a, a black line drawn through their political career by party managers.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, and also what we are talking about, if you're doing council tax reform or you know, or other major reforms, planning reform and so on, what you're talking about is engagement of the civil service and the Government below the political level, and at the same time, the Government's proposals are to reduce the size of the essentially central government by 15%.

So trying to do that at the same time, trying to do in a sense more with less.

Mark D'Arcy: We've heard that story before and it doesn't always work out too well. I think one of the things that one has to be really careful of here is making an assessment of the real world political effects. Of doing [00:12:00] some big reform.

It's terribly easy to say. There's a great consensus behind abolishing the triple lock and giving pensioners smaller increases in future in the state pension, 'cause that's essentially why you do it.

Ruth Fox: Mm.

Mark D'Arcy: It's quite another thing to look at the political backlash. I mean, the backlash over the, the winter fuel allowance cut was uh, a site to behold and made an awful lot of MPs very uncomfortable.

The backlash over something that universally affected all state pensioners. Mm. There would be a huge political cost in that, just as there would be for reforming the council tax. I mean, those whom the gods would destroy, they first persuade to reform local government finance. Yeah.

Ruth Fox: Well that's why they don't want to then, you know, successive governments haven't touched it because

Mark D'Arcy: With a barge pole.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. I think one of the other features of this week is that there is perhaps a growing political consensus, no longer the reserve of Liz Truss, only that the future of the OBR, might, I won't say in question as such, but they're coming under some external political pressure on all sides about whether or not they are now performing, uh, as useful and accountable a [00:13:00] role as perhaps, uh, has, has been suggested.

Yes. But of course, again, how do you abolish or replace them with something else.

Mark D'Arcy: The OBR, the Office for Budget Responsibility. Just to remind people, it was set up by George Osborne in 2010, essentially because he accused Gordon Brown as Chancellor of cooking the financial book. And so he wanted something that gave, if you were, clean figures and clean forecasts, so that when he said that the Government was going to cut the level of national debt to a certain amount by a certain time, he would have independent forecast to back up that this was a realistic possibility.

And so nowadays you have a situation where economic policy is all about trying to meet forecasts of where national debt is going to be in X years time. And those forecasts are inherently inaccurate creatures.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, as we saw during the Truss periods, you know, this is certainly the primary reason for her downfall, the disastrous uh, budget in which she did not have an OBR forecast.

And of course, the markets reacted badly to that. Mm. But alternatively, you look at where we are now and say [00:14:00] that trying to essentially massage your figures and, and bringing cuts for the purposes of meeting a particular number. 9.9 billion to two decimal places, apparently exactly as it was in, in the, in last autumn.

Trying to achieve that target and massaging your figures based on an arbitrary objective five years hence isn't a sensible way of doing policy either.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah. Would, would the markets really care if the target was a bit squishier because essentially the forecasts are blurred. Yeah. Nobody, nobody believes that things will unfold exactly as forecast.

Partly because events can derail them anyway, and partly 'cause these things are inherently inaccurate. So these forecasts were all made before Donald Trump, for example, slapped a 25% tariff on British car exports to America?

Ruth Fox: Well, the OBR's forecast this week was very clear that they've put a bit of a red light on it as sort of an, an alarm that they haven't, for example, had a look at the implications of the Employment Rights Bill in full, ' cause they don't know fully what the policy parameters [00:15:00] and options are that the government's pursuing there. Because as we've discussed on, on the podcast in previous weeks, that bill is being written mid-process, you know. Rewritten in, in committee and report extensively. So they've not been able to properly consider that. They've considered some aspects of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, but actually the OBR was quite critical of the government because of, uh, delays in getting some of the, the policy information to them by the appropriate deadlines.

So even having given it not a clean bill of health, but scored it, ticked all the boxes that they need to for this Spring Forecast. There are still some big question marks over the numbers.

Mark D'Arcy: So you could see a situation where a consensus emerges in Parliament that this is a silly way to do economic policy.

Ruth Fox: I think we may be there already. The consensus may be there, a consensus, just the absence of what to do as an alternative. Again, we go back to the, the same problem. You might know what the difficulty is, but there's no obvious solution to it that doesn't involve some political, or in this case, market-based pain.

Mark D'Arcy: So what I think we are looking at here is a situation where [00:16:00] we get to the next budget. If the economic storm clouds are still there, if, if the sky is even darker. What then can Rachel Reeves survive if she can't offer some glimpse, at least of sunlit uplands that MPs would actually believe and if she goes down, can Keir Starmer survive that?

Because one of the strongest rules of British politics is that a prime minister who loses their Chancellor is in deep trouble themselves. Uh, if confidence erodes in the whole economic policy of the government, maybe the whole government has to change.

Ruth Fox: Well, that's a big, that's a big issue to hit us with Mark.

Yes. I can't see the advantage to Keir Starmer of changing the chancellor, the person, without, unless they change the policy, and without changing the policy and having a, an alternative, because just replacing the person at the, in Number 11, without really any different possible options before them, I'm not sure that's gonna necessarily help.

And of course, she takes all the political pain at the moment personally and is a bit [00:17:00] of a shield for Keir Starmer. I mean, once he sacks a chancellor, then it's a bit more on directly, who next, all through to him and who next. But the question is, is there an alternative economic strategy out there short of tax increases at the budget?

But you know, again, how long that's sustainable for.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, I mean, there are a few voices out there. Uh, a couple of voices on the Labour benches, the Lib Dems, at least saying that one option, which might help growth is to move closer to the EU. Now, I know you are very skeptical about that whole idea, but it's certainly something that people are saying out there.

Mm-hmm. And I think that what you may get is a situation where, if what the Government's doing now is not seen to be working, people will cast around for an alternative. Hmm. Kind of this is an alternative, therefore it must work, chain of logic perhaps. Yeah. But if, if, if what you're doing at the moment isn't working, try something else and see whether it works, might not seem such an unreasonable, hmm, argument if they've had an electoral dropping in May and maybe a couple of bad by [00:18:00] elections, and the figures are still looking terrible in November.

Ruth Fox: As you say, I'm a little skeptical about the political viability of that as an alternative, at least in this Parliament.

Politically, it opens the door to Reform. It depends what kind of closer relationship with Europe that we might embark upon. But it would open up the whole question of, of free movement potentially. I don't think that's a runner whilst ever we have not got, you know, control of the borders. And whilst people perceive that there are still too many people coming into the country through illegal migration routes, you know, you'd have to contemplate the possibility that you'd need a referendum to sort of change gear, do a bit of a u-turn on, on our approach to Europe. It may be possible through the deteriorating security situation and so on. But, um, you'd have to hope that the European leaders had a little bit more foresight and, and ambition and realization about the seriousness of the situation.

Then those, uh, messages coming outta Paris, for example, that any defense agreement's got be tied to fishing [00:19:00] rights, because I'm afraid if that's the level we're operating at, yeah, forget it. Yeah. It's not gonna go very far.

Mark D'Arcy: I completely agree. What I'm saying is in the cauldron of the House of Commons, you may get people turning their lonely eyes towards the EU.

Ruth Fox: Well, I think some of them do.

Mark D'Arcy: If things don't get better. Yeah. People clearly are at the moment. And the other point is opening the door to Reform. Yeah, sure. But actually continued economic stagnation opens the door to Reform pretty effectively. True.

Ruth Fox: Yes. No, I accept that.

Mark D'Arcy: And on that happy note, Ruth, shall we take a break?

Ruth Fox: See you in a minute.

Mark D'Arcy: Bye. And we are back. And Ruth, one of the striking facts about the new House of Commons elected last year is quite how many brand new MPs it contains. More than half the MPs in the House of Commons weren't there before last July, and one of the most interesting new members is Marie Tidball.

Now she's the Labour MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge. And she brings to her work the perspective of someone who's both a disability activist and someone with a [00:20:00] disability herself, and operating in the context of the House of Commons in that ancient building, trying to be an effective MP, trying to meet all the procedural requirements, is quite a challenge as we discovered when we went and talked to her.

Dr Marie Tidball: It's a remarkable privilege. I'm in the situation where I'm the first person in a hundred years to have represented my constituency to have grown up there, and so that feels an enormous sense of duty to make sure that I am delivering every day for my constituents. But I think, an enormous sense of excitement because the talent and the ability of my other colleagues in, I suppose the class of 2024 is outstanding and it is really exciting to get to work with them day in, day out on all sorts of different projects. I feel we've been incredibly well welcomed by existing and longstanding MPs, and I've had a number of different MPs that have been mentors to me over the years and I've learned a great deal from [00:21:00] them. And a couple of them are, they're around now, so there's been a huge amount of peer support, I would say, and a huge opportunity.

Particularly, I've found the whips have been really, really helpful in making my time here more accessible as well, and that's been quite significant in terms of me doing my job to the best of my ability.

Ruth Fox: You had a recent article where I think it's fair to say you expressed a few frustrations about life at Westminster.

Can you tell us a little bit about that? And obviously this is something on the agenda of the Modernization Committee that's been set up by the Government to look at, uh, reforms in the House and sort of what you hope might happen.

Dr Marie Tidball: Yeah, I really believe that if you have, as I do, a disability, that you need to really help smash the glass ceilings for other people.

So me getting here isn't enough. You know, we've got 20% of the voting age population is disabled. I want to see that reflected in Parliament. I don't want it to just be about me, and we've already made a lot of progress in setting up the first ever disability Parliamentary Labour Party group, [00:22:00] which is fantastic to bring together so many other MP colleagues.

Not just the 2024 intake, but, but beyond that, who've got experience with disability and are really knowledgeable about that field. And it's quite a sizable group. And really look at how we can make Parliament more inclusive for generations to come. And in terms of frustrations, I think I talked about that I'd be very happy to chain myself to the outdoor handle if it meant I didn't have to speak about the inaccessibility of door handles to senior people in Parliament anymore. And that's one example. But the distances across Parliament, you know, the weight of the doors, the difficulty in turning the handles is a significant issue, uh, as much as it is a, a bit more lighthearted.

But I think one of the things that we really want to get to the crux of is making sure that disabled members can really have a strong voice in the chamber itself. And there's lots that we can learn from the Lords. They're already eons ahead of us in terms of the kind of reasonable adjustments that they're making.

Ruth Fox: They'll like that.

Dr Marie Tidball: No, they are. And I mean, I I, I've said [00:23:00] to colleagues and parliamentary colleagues, they need to do a side-by-side comparison of what the Lords are already doing to see where actually the Commons can at least match the Lords, you know, could we break up sessions so that it's not a six hour block of a debate?

'cause I think part of the problem is, and particularly because of what's expected of us as new MPs now, you can't easily always sit in the chamber for six hours and not leave. Not only is that physically exhausting for most people, and it's particularly physically exhausting for disabled members, but also in terms of the amount of output as a member you are expected to do, it's not a practical thing.

Mark D'Arcy: There is a feeling out there that if a Parliament is ever to reform itself, it's best to do it shortly after a general election and once you've gone beyond that, MPs are kind of marinated in the existing system and perhaps less keen to make a change. Is there a mood for change amongst your colleagues in the class of 24?

Dr Marie Tidball: I absolutely think that there is. I mean, we've, we've talked about disability and we have had [00:24:00] some of the Modernization Committee clerks, we've spoken to the Deputy Speakers and, and also the Speaker about these issues as well as some of the senior whips on, on our side, and there is a receptiveness there and we've been through systematically some of the things that could improve our, our engagement in the chamber. So I've mentioned one thing already, but I think there's also, you know, having the list and knowing where you are on that list and being allowed to go out and then come back in in a couple of speakers before. 'cause I would rather be spending as much time as I can in the chamber. But at the moment we are in a situation where it's all or nothing.

And that's the sense that people have. And I think it's about changing that culture to say it's not about not spending the time in there to listen to the debate of others, but it's about recognizing that actually you might not need to be there for the whole six hours and you might need a bit of flexibility so you can go out and take medication.

So you can go out and eat. So you can move around because the physical space of the chamber isn't, is not very comfortable, for people with disabilities like mine, but it is not just disabled members. It's [00:25:00] those of us who also have young families and young families that live in our constituencies. And I think that that's a big shift in the group of 2024s is a lot more of us have our children living in our constituencies, thrilled that they do.

But in terms of juggling the life of having so many days a week down here, having more predictability about voting times, and sitting times is, is crucial to be able to balance that. And we need that. You know, we need our MPs to much better reflect the general population and the lives the general population live and lead. And the way that we can do that is to ensure that parliament can accommodate MPs who are parents, who are single parents, who have a family in another part of the country and, and, and have children. And, and some colleagues have also got children that themselves have got special educational needs and disabilities, which has another layer of complexity.

And I know for my constituents that's a big issue too. So I think it's about, recognizing that Parliament is a very, very special place. This job is a [00:26:00] huge privilege, but we need to make that job accessible for more ordinary, exceptional, but but more ordinary people to do and to do well, and to balance around having a, a family and having other caring responsibilities.

Mark D'Arcy: Uh, just one final thought then. I mean, you've had a bit of a baptism of fire that you've been in two bill committees already. A lot of MPs have yet to be in a single one of these, but they do involve an enormous amount of your time.

Dr Marie Tidball: I started off on the Employment Rights Bill committee, which was a huge privilege, and I was put on that in part because I made my maiden speech at the second reading.

As someone who's in a lot of work in disability and and equality, it was really important to me to do my maiden speech in that particular session and being on that bill committee was a really fantastic experience. We had really brilliant ministers on the committee, which I, I learned a lot from and really understood the process and the nitty gritty of when to intervene and the kind of speeches you might want to make, and really getting your head around how the amendment process worked and [00:27:00] the role of backbenches in that forum.

And it was great for me because I got to also ask questions at the oral sessions that we had at the start of that bill committee and then made speeches on issues that mattered most to my constituents particularly. I really wanted to make sure that I did a speech on the school support staff negotiating body.

As you know, I have a disability, and when I was at school, I had some amazing classroom teaching assistants who enabled me to access education and fulfill my potential. And so it was actually quite a poignant thing for me that. I was now a Member of Parliament, having come from a state school, having been a, a child that had had a SEND statement myself, and now here I was on the bill committee for the employment rights bill that would put in place the school support staff negotiating body for people like that who'd supported me, who I'm still in touch with as the Member of Parliament, who are still living in the constituency who would've benefited from better pay and terms and conditions.

So that was hugely [00:28:00] significant, making sure that we did what. We said we were doing the manifesto around equality impact assessments and just some fantastic work in there as well on parental rights and, and improvements on that front.

Ruth Fox: Well, Mark, what did you make of that discussion with Marie?

Mark D'Arcy: Well, first of all, I think she's pretty impressive.

She's, she's got a lot of facts and figures at her fingertips. She's got an analysis. She's already done two whole bill committees, and that's not nothing in the context of the current House of Commons where some MPs have yet to do the full detailed scrutiny work that every bill's supposed to get. So she's already establishing herself, I think, as quite an operator in the Commons. But it is also quite striking that the constraints that her disability imposes on her in her Commons work. I mean, when we went to meet her, I was suddenly struck by the fact that she was in the same office that had been occupied in the previous Parliament by Robert Halfon. Robert Halfon, the Conservative MP who was an education minister. Mm-hmm. Who was also disabled. And this is one of the few vaguely disability [00:29:00] friendly offices available to the House of Commons authority. It's got easy access to the Commons chamber. There's a lift nearby to get you up there.

It's got easy access to, uh, get into a car from quite close to the door by the office. So there are all sorts of reasons why it's not a bad place for someone with a disability to have their office. But all the same, there aren't many of those. Very few in the Palace of Westminster, I mean.

Ruth Fox: Two, three, I would've thought probably.

Mm-hmm. Perhaps in the more modern office building of Portcullis House, but then you've got the difficulties of traversing from Portcullis House into the palace. But if you actually want to be, or need to be relatively near the chamber and the committee rooms and so on, there's very few. I mean, the lifts are very small.

You've got winding staircases up to committee rooms, you've got winding staircases up to offices in turrets. One researcher once told me that, um, their office was at the top of this winding staircase at the top of this turret. And, uh, you're supposed to have two routes of, of access and exit in cases of fire, but there was only one.

So if there was a fire at the [00:30:00] bottom of this staircase, they'd have been completely stuck. So what happened is that they put a ladder outside the window, down the wall. I'm not sure how true this is, but it sounded very realistic.

Mark D'Arcy: And, and one of the things about Commons life is MPs often pop into each other's offices for a chat or for meetings or so forth.

And an awful lot of those offices, especially in the old Victorian part of the Palace of Westminster, are very, very inaccessible to someone who's not completely a or bodied. And, and we are not just talking here about. You know, people in wheelchairs we are talking about, and people who may be a bit creaky in the joints suddenly having to go up incredibly windy spiral staircases into distant turrets.

And it's quite a yom, even, even for the, the absolutely able-bodied, which I'm not really, so heaven only knows what it's like if you're struggling a bit.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, and I was also struck in the conversation and we, and sometimes it's easy to forget this, we focus very much on the, the physical constraints of the, of the building.

In terms of access for members who, who are [00:31:00] disabled or parliamentary staff who are disabled. Mm-hmm. But actually for members, there's also the procedural challenges that are opposed and, and interesting listening to Marie there about, you know, the, the difficulties of just sitting on those green benches for hours on end to participate in a debate.

You know, I once did sit on the green benches. I don't think you're supposed to, but many years ago on a tour I once briefly did and my feet didn't touch the floor. Now that in itself is not good.

Intro: Or if you're sitting there for while it's for uncomfortable, and,

Ruth Fox: And bear in mind, you know, you're trying to follow a debate.

You're trying to follow a bill. You've got all your papers around you. You might have your iPad, unlike some of the more modern parliaments in Scotland, Wales, and, and Northern Ireland, for example, where they've all got desks in front of them where you can deposit these things and you can work at them.

You haven't got that in the commons. You've just got these really uncomfortable green benches. With a, a microphones above you and the loudspeaker in the back of the seat, uh, in a grill. If you, if you've got some hearing issues,

Mark D'Arcy: uh, I suppose all [00:32:00] this might feed into the Modernization Committee that's been set up to look at updating the procedures of the House of Commons.

And this is one of the things that maybe people like Marie Tidball will feed into it, that actually you need a few more breaks. You need better seating. You need all sorts of better arrangements to allow you to meet the requirements and, and maybe the person in the chair at a common sitting should be ready to allow MPs to enter and exit the chamber a little bit more on, have to sit there until their moment comes to be called.

Well, of course, those kind of things.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, of course. This is where the push for speaker list is coming in. Um, many of the new MPs won't speaker list. They want less time spent on voting and sort of options for electronic voting on the estate so that they don't have to spend that kind of time in the chamber.

We don't know exactly what the MP's evidence to the modernization committee is 'cause it hasn't been published. We discussed on a previous podcast, but, uh, you know, Marie mentioned that she'd submitted evidence to the Modernization Committee and this is clearly has been highlighted by Lucy Powell as chair of that committee and leader of the House of [00:33:00] Commons as a priority.

So I'll have to see what they come up with.

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

Ruth Fox: See you in a minute.

Mark D'Arcy: Bye.

Ruth Fox: So, Mark, we're back and, um, I thought we should discuss the changes to local elections for certain councils this year, and why on Earth it is that the House of Lords got a vote on whether or not some of these councils, nine of them, should have their elections postponed, but the elected House of Commons, the MPs, didn't.

Mark D'Arcy: It's quite an interesting tale, isn't it? Quite a good illustration of how the very detailed procedures of the Commons and the Lords contrast, and how particularly the procedures of the Commons can be manipulated to avoid awkward moments for any government that wants to avoid them.

Ruth Fox: Yes. Well, listeners, we're back to my favorite subject of delegated legislation again.

Just to, to bore you with this, don't you just love it? So essentially what we're talking about is an order to postpone the elections that are due in May. They've come about because of the government's proposals under its [00:34:00] devolution white paper for local government reorganization and councils who want to be part of this reorganization.

They were invited to approach the government to say, we don't wanna have local elections this year. We wanna press on with this reorganization.

Mark D'Arcy: So the idea is, for example, in, in my patch of Sussex, they're going to create a new super authority, which will include the former counties of East Sussex and West Sussex, plus Brighton and Hove presided over by a mayor, I guess, with some kind of assembly, scrutinizing the work of the mayor, but also sweeping away all the existing district councils.

Yeah. That existed underneath the county council. So a big de layering of local government and a whole new structure. So they're sweeping away the old councils, which would've had elections. The two county councils would've had elections this May. Mm-hmm. But the idea of having full dress elections for them and then they hold authorities abolished a year later, yeah, seemed a bit of a waste of, of taxpayers money. So the councils argue that that shouldn't happen, and lo and behold, it's not now gonna happen.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. So the government had to [00:35:00] lay an order in Parliament to basically postpone them for a year. Now they, they say postpone in practical terms, they're never going to take place because the councils will not exist one presumes unless there's a change in plan at some point. But the order will be subject to what's called the negative scrutiny procedure, which again we've talked about on the podcast, but essentially means that it will automatically come into force unless either House of Parliament passes a motion to a null it within 40 days, and that that motion is known as a prayer motion.

There's specific wording for this. So in the House of Commons, MPs have to pass a motion saying a humble address be presented to his majesty, praying that this particular order be annulled. In the House of Lords, it's slightly different. They've got two options and they've got more freedom, flexibility around the wording so they can similarly table a motion to annul an instrument, which is called a, a fatal motion. Or they can table a motion which is non-fatal, which merely expresses regret.

Mark D'Arcy: Ah, the regret [00:36:00] motion. The regret motion. A parliamentary pout.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, that's a good one. And they can add on words at the end of their motions to say why they think this shouldn't happen or why they regret it.

Mark D'Arcy: So this House, this House regrets this motion 'cause it's a very silly idea kind of thing. Yes.

Ruth Fox: Well, they're, they're still praying to his majesty a humble address. But yes, they tack on the words at the end. Now you've gotta go back to 11th of February. So 11th of February, the Government lays this order to postpone the elections.

40 day scrutiny period begins the ticking clock, and that expires 31st of March. So that's due to expire at the end of this week. Now, what happens is the following day, the Leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch, tables a motion to annul the instrument in the House of Commons. These are very rarely debated by MPs because the government has to make time, has to schedule it, and it controls the agenda in the chamber, and it very rarely does table a debate unless it's requested by the Leader of the Opposition.

So that's essentially why [00:37:00] it's in her name. That's the 12th of February. They do the same in the House of Lords, the Conservatives, Conservative peer tables a motion, but they don't table a motion to annul it. They table a motion to regret it. Why? Because they say in the House of Lords, we have a convention that we never reject, a statutory instrument.

Not entirely true, there are precedents, but there does seem to be this developing notion that the House of Lords must never reject a statutory instrument. So we got a regret motion instead of a fatal motion. Now, fast forward to the end of February, Baroness Jones, a Green Party peer, she tables a fatal motion.

She wants this instrument, like Kemi Badenoch, to be annulled.

Mark D'Arcy: So I'll see your regret motion, and raise you a fatal motion. Yeah, we're going to outperform the rest of the opposition here.

Ruth Fox: Yes. 4th of March, the order comes into effect. So it becomes law as soon as the minister signed it back at the beginning of February, but there's sort a convention that for 21 days, negative statutory instruments don't actually come into [00:38:00] force.

Generally speaking now, there has not been a debate on it at this point, so it's been several weeks where, you know, motions have been tabled, requesting that this be annulled. But it's now in fourth, 4th of March. 5th of March, the Liberal Democrat peer, Baroness Pinnock, tables, another fatal motion. So you now have two Lord's motions that are calling for the instrument to be annulled broadly on the same grounds.

You know, the lack of democratic consultation, the democratic deficit, and politically, of course, some of the smaller parties, Reform, the Greens, the Liberal Democrats, all think this is bad form. It's gonna harm their electoral prospects.

Mark D'Arcy: Well I was gonna say, this is, this is of course completely uninfluenced by the thought that the Liberal Democrats and the Greens might gain seats in the, in, in these elections that have just been postponed.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Now, meanwhile, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in the House of Lords has reported on this, and it's certainly not one of their worst reports on, on an instrument by any stretch of the imagination. It's quite mild, [00:39:00] but it does draw attention to some concerns with the explanatory memorandum and the government's explanations and so on.

But here we are. We've now got to early March and we still haven't had debates. We have to wait till this week to get the debates. So in the Lord's Monday 24th of March, as we're speaking today on on Thursday, and then yesterday in the House of Commons, Wednesday the 26th of March. So this is weeks after the instrument was laid, weeks after it came into force and weeks after, the motions were first tabled.

Now interestingly, between those two days of the, the Commons and the Lords debating them, that was the deadline by which the notice of elections had to be published under the rules for, for the forthcoming May elections. So had MPs and peers wanted to reject the instrument, to annul it, had they voted for. It, it would've been complete chaos because they'd been demanding that, in fact, the elections did take place, in the Commons, [00:40:00] a day after the notices would've had to gone out. How on earth would a local authority have organized their elections in such circumstances? So inevitably what happened is that there were peers, for example, in the debate on Monday who said, you know, I would've been minded to vote for the fatal motion.

I don't think this is appropriate. I'm not happy with it, but if I do so, and it were to succeed, what on earth would happen?

Mark D'Arcy: Total chaos would ensue.. Yeah. That's one of the interesting things about this. I mean, sometimes peers have in the past wanted to vote against elections, but not actually wanted to win that vote because the result would've been chaos.

I mean, when they brought in proportional representation voting for European elections back in the 1990s, the Conservative opposition was very against the whole principle of PR and wanted to vote against it, but also knew that if they succeeded in voting down PR elections, they wouldn't have time to select candidates for the Euro constituencies.

And so chaos would've [00:41:00] ensued there. So there was a very carefully monitored vote where there was just enough vote to demonstrate their opposition to it, but not enough to win it. And people were sort of being taken aside and don't vote for this. You might actually stop it and then we dunno what we do.

Ruth Fox: And there is that sense, I mean, this is one example. There are other examples in previous parliamentary sessions where. The government uses its control of the timetable to run down the clock towards that 40 day period, sometimes beyond the 40 day period, and it's completely unknown what would happen if one house of Parliament voted to reject a statutory instrument which had gone beyond the 40 day period.

Nobody knows legally what would ensue because it's never been tested, but they use their control of the agenda to run down the clock. Now we've gotta be careful because we don't know what took place behind the scenes in the discussions. Mm-hmm. Between the Labour and Conservative offices.. Yeah.

This

Mark D'Arcy: is, this is what I was getting at here.

Yes. Whether this is all a bit stage, but what happened in the House of Commons then? 'cause their Lordships actually got a debate on this and there were speeches made and denunciations and all the rest of it. But what about the Commons?

Ruth Fox: So in the commons, Kemi Badenoch's motion [00:42:00] was scheduled for debate in a delegated legislation committee.

So there are two choices. It could have happened in the chamber or it could have happened in a delegated legislation committee. Now the fact it happened in a committee suggests to me that possibly the Conservatives were not pushing this too hard and they didn't actually want the debate in the chamber.

I think if they'd probably been pushing the whips and demanding a vote in the chamber, presumably they would've got one. So they wanted to highlight their concerns. But not too far, not not too much.

Mark D'Arcy: And when was this debate?

Ruth Fox: So this took place last night in, in a delegated legislation committee.

Mark D'Arcy: So, so, so competing for the headlines with the big spring statements.

Yeah. And Prime Minister's questions and all the other major events taking place in the chamber.

Ruth Fox: So would've got very little notice. Debate lasted about just over half an hour, which is about the average for these, course, these debates, contrast it with the House of Lords where they went on for about an hour and a half.

But the reason then is, once you kick it into a committee, you don't get a vote on the motion. You get a vote to say that you have [00:43:00] considered the motion. Completely pointless. You don't actually vote explicitly.

Mark D'Arcy: Ritual rubber stamping.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. That would only happen if it had occurred in the chamber. So as a consequence, you're in this sort of bizarre position in which the unelected peers in the House of Lords had a quite extensive debate and a vote on the order to postpone elections and in the Commons, the elected MPs in the elected House of Commons didn't, and this just highlights and illustrates the perversities of the procedures around delegated legislation, but also the democratic deficit, I'm afraid, between the Commons and the Lords.

Mark D'Arcy: Absolutely.

I mean, the, the funny thing is if you wanted to make the House of Commons a lot more democratic, one way to do it would be essentially to give the House of Commons, the House of Lords standing orders.

Ruth Fox: Some of them, yeah. So Mark with that, got that off my chest.

Mark D'Arcy: We've got a few questions from listeners actually to deal with as well in, in starting with one about the operations of the House of Lords.

Ruth Fox: Yes. So we've had a question from [00:44:00] David Boothroyd, who's a Westminster City councillor, and he's very eagle eyed.. He's noticed that there's a business of the house motion on the order paper for the House of Lords next week for the 31st of March, which suggests, in his words that the Government is taking back Thursdays, and he wonders if this is because of the Lord's delaying legislation.

Mark D'Arcy: Hmm, things are not happy in the House of Lords. Partly 'cause of the impending legislation to exclude the hereditary peers, which I think has, has got a lot of people digging in their heels on all sorts of different issues in their Lordship's house. But it's also what happens when the government business managers decide that things are going a bit too slowly for comfort, so they want to take over Thursdays, which are normally a day reserved for balloted debates on subjects chosen by back bench peers. And so at a given day, they'll have a couple of debates on subjects chosen by Conservative peers, and then another day they'll be cross bench peers, and another day they'll be Labour peers and so forth.

That is taken away. When the Government thinks that [00:45:00] its legislation is progressing too slowly, and because it takes away sort of perk, a chance to talk about things that peers actually really want to talk about, it's kind of a slight slap on the snout for them.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. So what this will do in effect is it will suspend a standing order that provides that government business won't have precedence on a Thursday and essentially says, no, we will take that back. Thank you very much.

Mark D'Arcy: You're gonna be sitting in committee to get all this stuff done.

Ruth Fox: But the motion states that this will go through to the end of the session, and of course, what we don't know is when the session will end.

Still an unknown.

Mark D'Arcy: But it, it is quite clear that they just want to get things moving along and that's why it's happened and it's happened in previous sessions. It will doubtless happen in future sessions. So it's not totally unusual, but it's just a sign of, yeah, the way the wind is blowing.

Ruth Fox: Yes. Sign that there is a feeling on the government benches at least, that the opposition benches are dragging their feet on some of their Lordships build and they like them to hurry up a little bit more.

So Mark, the next question, we've had in is from Ruth Chambers from Green Alliance, and she's [00:46:00] asking a question about the EFRA committee, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. She's noticed, again eagle eye, that they've published a letter from what she's described as a concerned stakeholder following one of their recent evidence sessions they've been holding with the bosses of the water companies.

And it follows up the session with the chief executive of Severn Trent Water, and she wants to know is publishing correspondence from anonymous sources, common practice for select committees.

Mark D'Arcy: It's certainly not unheard of. There will be rules about the circumstances in which can it can be done. I mean, I think evidence submitted to committees can be anonymized at the committee's discretion.

Mm. It's not something that the person submitting the evidence can necessarily require of the committee, but there have been plenty of inquiries on pretty delicate subjects. I'm thinking of the recent defense committee inquiry into Armed Forces Housing.

Ruth Fox: Mm-hmm.

Mark D'Arcy: As someone who's lived in RAF married quarters in the 1960s, I still have occasional post-traumatic moments about termite infested dwellings in [00:47:00] RAF Akrotiri.

But, uh, leaving that aside, you know, there are chain of command issues here about service personnel making complaints to a Commons committee. Yeah. So you can see why they'd want their evidence to be anonymous. And thinking back to an earlier defense committee inquiry, the one into the treatment of women in the services, which is a subcommittee inquiry chaired by Sarah Atherton,, who was briefly a defense minister, was quite a swinging inquiry as well.

You can see there was a strong case there for anonymity.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Well, I actually anticipated you, knowing your interest in that defense committee, uh, report on service accommodation. I actually had a look last night. Doing my prep for this podcast and according to the report, 22 out of the 67 written submissions listed were anonymized.

I was actually surprised. I thought they might have had more written submissions to that, but, um, yeah, so I think if you are contemplating evidence that you might want anonymity for, I think the best advice would be to look up the House of Commons guidance for giving written or rural evidence to House of Commons select committees.

There is a document that runs to, couple of dozen [00:48:00] pages of advice and probably best to get in touch with the committee clerks in advance to seek their advice and, and indicate why you want or need anonymity.

Mark D'Arcy: Indeed. And don't underestimate the political potency of this whole issue of sewage pollution by water companies.

Yes. Because that is a huge, huge deal over quite a large swathe of the country. Uh, so I'm looking forward to that report with some interest as well.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Yeah. Well Mark. Next question. This is, this is from James who's anonymized his surname. Interestingly, I dunno whether you worked.

Mark D'Arcy: I'm not sure it's within the rules, but there we are.

Ruth Fox: He wants to know, this is a bit left field for us.

What are our favorite podcasts? What else do we listen to about politics or indeed other things that perhaps he ought to be considering on his podcast list?

Mark D'Arcy: Well, wearing my anorak of office as a, uh, as a Parliament Matters presenter, I mostly listen to political podcasts, I'm afraid, inevitably Alistair and Rory, Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart.

The Rest is Politics, is, uh, for my [00:49:00] money, an incredibly good piece of broadcasting. They're such a good contrasting pair of interviews, and the level of output is now, sufficiently large. I don't necessarily catch up with everything they produce, but there's a leading interview they did with Michael Wolf who's written several books about the Trump administration and the Murdoch family, and his analysis of Donald Trump saying that he's not a politician in the usual sense, he's a reality TV star.

He regards the people who vote for him as fans rather than political supporters, fans to be kept amused rather than political supporters to be as they were fed. And that's a very, very interesting piece of analysis. So, and particularly like Alistair and Rory, I'm afraid, I like the Nick Robinson, series of interviews that he does with a whole range of political figures. There's a very good one at the moment, a two-parter no less, with Rishi Sunak reflecting on his time in Downing Street. Mm-hmm. Absolutely fascinating stuff. With American politics being so dominant at the moment, there's, there's Pod Save America.

Ruth Fox: Oh yes. That's the one you got me listening to, isn't it? Yeah.

Mark D'Arcy: This is, uh, several rather [00:50:00] sweary veterans of the Obama administration talking.

Ruth Fox: That's what puts me off. I'm afraid it's a bit too. Sweary for my liking.

Mark D'Arcy: Talking American politics in great detail. I mean, my main worry about that one is that given the level of madness that Donald Trump produces on a daily basis, at some point someone's head's going to explode on that podcast.

They can't. But its great advantage is that it's real political insiders who've been in the White House staff, who've fought elections, who've worked for different candidates, giving a real insider's view. There's a Pod Save the UK out there, which I'm afraid is nowhere near as good because it's basically, it's comedians being rude about politicians rather than people who've been inside politics reflecting on politics.

Yeah. So that one and the other one I'd add for good measure because I worship him as a living God is Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time. Absolutely fascinating sort of high table level discussions on a, on a given subject. I particularly like the ones that are on historical, preferably ancient history topics.

Mm-hmm. But it's absolutely fascinating and I, and it's done as live, so [00:51:00] he's not editing himself after the event. It's just a straight conversation. And I have some conception of, as someone who had been in broadcasting for a while, quite how difficult that is to do and quite how extraordinary it is that he can do it as brilliantly as he does on a weekly basis.

So in our time is a wonderful, wonderful resource. They're all out there on the BBC iPlayer. Mm-hmm. I'd advise anybody researching a particular topic to go and see whether there's an In Our Time on it.

Ruth Fox: Yes. Well, my, my choices are a little bit more eclectic I think. I'm afraid my approach to Rory and Alistair and Lewis and Emily Maitliss and Beth Rigby and John Sopel, all these political podcasts, I just get frustrated with their discussion of Parliament, so it just winds me up.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, they, they, you do often hear people who've been around in political reporting for a long time making absolutely basic errors about how Parliament works. It's extraordinary.

Ruth Fox: Howlers, so yeah, it does tend to wind me up. My favorite political podcast at the moment is Not Another One. Which is four journalists, Steve Richards, Miranda Green, [00:52:00] Ian Martin and Tim Montgomery, all coming from different party political perspectives.

Again, experience as journalists, some of them with direct political activist backgrounds as well, particularly Tim Montgomery. But I just find the discussion is, is interesting and challenging and disagreeing agreeably, is sort of the tone, but, but, but, but interesting. I also like These Times, which is Tom McTague and Helen Thompson.

So you're that journalist and an academic.

Mark D'Arcy: And Tom McTague, of course, just about to edit the New Statesman.

Ruth Fox: And I'm worried that podcast may now keep be coming to an end. Although Helen Thompson did used to write for the New Statesman, they perhaps recapture it under that umbrella. But that takes a big picture, strategic look at politics and political issues and geopolitical and international relations issues.

And, and I frankly could listen to Helen Thompson opining about these issues, uh, for a very long time on the American side. I too listen to one, but not, I, I can't really get into Pod Save America so much. I prefer Hacks on Tap, which is a similar [00:53:00] thing, but that's David Axelrod who used to work for Obama and Mike Murphy, who's a Republican strategist and consultant, but who's, just to be clear, a never Trumpist, never Trump. He used to work with people like Jeb Bush and John McCain and so on, and he's coined in the last week this magnificent phrase, Trumpanzee, for the chaos in, in American politics. Another one I've gotten into, particularly since the events in Israel 18 months or so ago, it had been going before that, but unholy Two Jews on the News, which is Jonathan Friedland from the Guardian Newspaper, and an Israeli journalist broadcaster I'd not heard of until I came across her, her on this podcast, Yannick Levy, who's, uh, Channel 12 News in Israel. And it's just a fascinating discussion about the state of, of Israeli politics, what's happening with democracy there?

Perceptions from within Israel. But also from sort of the Jewish diaspora in terms of events in the Middle East. So I found that very interesting in trying to understand basically the [00:54:00] deterioration in democracy in Israel. And then of course, I have some footballing podcasts on, which will have no interest to you.

I know. But a slight obsession for me. But the most interesting one I'd recommend, even if you're not interested in football, but you want to understand why football has such a hold on people and why it's such big business is the Price of Football, which looks at the business side of the beautiful game.

And that's a comedian and uh, an accountant, which is an interesting combination, but it's absolutely fascinating. The big business that football is.

Mark D'Arcy: It sounds like the start of a joke, a comedian and an accountant walk into a bar. But we should see, and with that, Ruth, I think we'll call it a day, but just before we go, if you are looking for updates on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, the bill that would enable assisted dying in England and Wales, we have a special separate podcast dedicated to updating you on the developments unfolding there in its consideration in Parliament. So tune to that. It'll be in your podcast feed [00:55:00] right now, and it's a fascinating parliamentary saga that's got a long way to go yet.

Ruth Fox: See you then.

Mark D'Arcy: Bye.

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.