One year on: How is Parliament performing? - Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 100

News

One year on: How is Parliament performing? - Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 100

11 Jul 2025

In our 100th episode, we take stock of Parliament one year after the 2024 general election. With a fractured opposition, a dominant Labour government, and a House of Commons still governed by rules designed for a two-party system, how well is this new Parliament really functioning?

Please help us by completing our Listener Survey. It will only take a few minutes.

LISTEN

We examine the rise in political defections – is this the social media age at work, making it easier for MPs to leave their parties and harder for party leaders to keep control?

One year after the King’s Speech, we also explore how Keir Starmer’s government is echoing the habits of its predecessors – rushing through vague “skeleton bills” that grant ministers wide powers with little oversight. Meanwhile, MPs continue to be sidelined from properly scrutinising major international agreements, and Parliament still lacks a mechanism for keeping track of the UK’s evolving relationship with the EU.

This episode looks ahead at the challenges facing scrutiny and accountability as 10% budget cuts loom across the Commons. We reflect on the experiences of a new generation of MPs – many frustrated by outdated rules, creaking infrastructure, and a political culture badly in need of renewal.

Can the House of Commons modernise itself before crisis forces change? Plus: the assisted dying bill as a crash course in lawmaking for new MPs, and why Prime Minister’s Questions remains as theatrical – and infuriating – as ever.

← Back to Parliament Matters homepage

Listen on our YouTube channel (captioned)

Subscribe to our YouTube channel

Transcript

Please note, this transcript is automatically generated. There may consequently be minor errors and the text is not formatted according to our style guide. If you wish to reference or cite the transcript copy below, please first check against the audio version above.

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/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 this week we are a hundred not out. This is the hundredth edition of this podcast.

Ruth Fox: So we thought we'd celebrate by looking back at the first year of this Parliament and of Keir Starmer's government.

Mark D'Arcy: And Ruth, the thing that really strikes me about the way this Parliament has had to work is the level of political fragmentation. This is not the traditional kind of bipolar Parliament where there's a government and then there's an opposition, and there are a few bit players scrambling around on the sidelines.

We have an absolutely [00:01:00] enormous government party in Labour, albeit elected on just a third of the vote and the quirk of the electoral system. There is something that's worth looking at. And then we have a unusually small Conservative opposition party, an unusually large third party in the Lib Dems, and then a collection of smaller parties whose numbers are going up and down like a yo-yo half the time with various sort of defections and movements between them.

You've got the Greens, you've got Reform, you've got the grouping around Jeremy Corbyn that may be about to coalesce into a sort of direct left wing challenger to the Labour Party. Then of course you've got the nationalist parties. There's the SNP and Plaid Cymru, and then you've got Northern Ireland parties as well.

So there's a galaxy of political alignments on the opposition benches, which is making the politics of this Parliament unusually complicated. Not least, of course, because this is all against the background of opinion polls, which show that Reform is now the lead party, even though it only has five [00:02:00] MPs in the chamber.

And that's just gone down to four.

Ruth Fox: Yes. I mean, that Reform is one of those parties that goes up and down as you say.

Mark D'Arcy: Reflecting their immigration policy. They didn't have a one in one out approach.

Full transcript →

Use the links below to subscribe to the Hansard Society's Parliament Matters podcast on your preferred app, or search for 'Parliament Matters' on whichever podcasting service you use. If you are unable to find our podcast, please email us here.

Apple

YouTube Podcasts

Spotify

More ways to subscribe

Parliament Matters homepage

Latest / Highlights

News / 101 resolutions and a Finance Bill. How the Budget becomes law - Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 117

It’s Budget week, so we look at what happens after the Chancellor sits down and how the days announcements are converted into the Finance Bill. We speak to Lord Ricketts, Chair of the European Affairs Committee, about whether Parliament is prepared to scrutinise the “dynamic alignment” with EU laws that may emerge from the Government’s reset with Brussels. And we explore the latest twists in the assisted dying bill story, where a marathon battle is looming in the New Year after the Government allocated 10 additional Friday sittings for its scrutiny. Please help us by completing our Listener Survey. It will only take a few minutes.

Publications / Budget 2025: Letter to Chief Whip Jonathan Reynolds MP calling for an ‘Amendment of the Law’ motion

The form of the first Ways and Means motion tabled after the Budget – either an Amendment of the Law motion or an Income Tax (Charge) motion – determines how much scope MPs have to propose amendments when the Budget is translated into the Finance Bill. An Amendment of the Law motion provides broader scope for amendment and was standard practice until it was unilaterally dropped by the then Government in 2017. We have written to the Chief Whip urging the restoration of this procedural practice so that MPs can properly fulfil their constitutional responsibility to scrutinise the nation’s finances and ensure that consideration of the Finance Bill is a genuinely political debate, not merely a technical exercise.

News / Is the House of Lords going slow on the assisted dying bill? - Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 116

In this episode we look at the latest Covid Inquiry report addressing the lack of parliamentary scrutiny during the pandemic and the need for a better system for emergency law-making. With the Budget approaching, we explore how the Commons Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle MP, might discipline ministers who announce policies outside Parliament and why a little-known motion could restrict debate on the Finance Bill. Sir David Beamish assesses whether the flood of amendments to the assisted dying bill risks a filibuster and raises constitutional questions. Finally, we hear from Marsha de Cordova MP and Sandro Gozi MEP on their work to reset UK–EU relations through the Parliamentary Partnership Assembly. Please help us by completing our Listener Survey. It will only take a few minutes.

Blog / The assisted dying bill: Is the number of Lords amendments a parliamentary record?

The assisted dying bill has attracted an extraordinary number of amendments in the House of Lords, prompting questions about whether the volume is unprecedented. This blog examines how its amendment count compares with other bills in the current Session, and what the historical data shows about previous amendment-heavy legislation.

Blog / The assisted dying bill: Will it run out of time? The parliamentary options explained

Over 1,000 amendments have been tabled to the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill in the House of Lords. This blog examines the progress of the Bill at Committee Stage in the House of Lords so far, explores the likelihood of a procedural impasse and what options exist if more parliamentary time is needed.