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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/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 in this special edition, we are focusing on the work of the Commons Petitions Committee, 10 years old now, and we are talking to an eminent panel of four former chairs of the Committee, Cat Smith, Catherine McKinnell, the current chair Jamie Stone, and the founding chair Helen Jones, no longer an MP, but joining us today down the line from her home.

So first of all, Cath, Cath McKinnell. Can I ask you, as an ex Minister, does the work of the Petitions Committee kind of impinge on your ministerial [00:01:00] radar? Were you conscious that there's a petition on something in your particular policy patch that you would have to respond to? Did it have any influence or traction?

Catherine McKinnell: So as a very proud former chair and member of the Petitions Committee, I would never use the word impinge. I would say that what comes through the petitions system is really valuable and really powerful, and some of our best debates that we have in Parliament come on the back of petitions. As a Minister, I responded to a petition on grief awareness. Now these are issues that I don't think get enough time talked about, they're often cross party agreement, they're not party political issues, so they don't get the attention maybe that they should, but actually they're really profound conversations that I think genuinely change lives and change the way schools operate, making sure that children get the support they should, and they do change legislation as well. So I definitely think they do not impinge, but they do impact.

Mark D'Arcy: And Jamie Stone as the current chair, do you have the [00:02:00] sense of Government ministers paying a lot of attention to the decisions you make about what petitions go forward for debate and when they're scheduled and things like that?

Or is this something that Whitehall kind of waits to hit it?

Jamie Stone: Well, I mean, what we do is, as a Committee is we're in charge of deciding which ones we'll debate. And by and large, if they get over a hundred thousand signatures, it'll be a debate. And then we timetable them. And right now we've got a big old queue of them.

So we're having to make some quite tough decisions on that. So we have the initiative. The ball is in our court if you'd like. And I dare say, I don't know, but I would imagine in Whitehall there'd be some ministries that think, that one's coming forward here, we're not particularly looking forward to that one.

Mark D'Arcy: What's the biggest petition on the queue at the moment?

Jamie Stone: The biggest one is about ID cards, which is just about to hit 3 million signatures. That this is a lot of people.

Mark D'Arcy: And is this yes, bring them in, or no?

Jamie Stone: No, we don't like it at all. And of course that then bites into right into Government policy.

This one has really struck me, 'cause I've had people in my local Asda stopping me to say, hi, Jamie, oh, I signed that [00:03:00] petition. And when you're trying to, you know, get your potatoes into your bag or something, it's a bit inconvenient. But I think I agree with Cat. There's a reach out here, which is really, really interesting.

Ruth Fox: And Jamie, can I ask you, how does it work in practice? So you're the Committee Chair, you've got this queue of petitions, you've got to allocate the time, a member of the Committee has to present the petition in the debate because members of the public can't do that. They can be in the audience, in the gallery, but it's got to be an MP that presents it.

So how do your members of the Committee decide which ones they're going to present? Because presumably there must be some petitions that get through that need to be debated, that perhaps members don't actually agree with.

Jamie Stone: Well, there's two things I would say. First is that I really do salute the members of the Committee because they step forward and say, I'll do that one.

And sometimes you get two or three saying, oh, I wanna do it. And we had a couple times we've had to actually vote on it.

Ruth Fox: Oh goodness.

Jamie Stone: On which one's gonna lead. On the other hand, if I think about the one about should animals be stunned before they're slaughtered, I said, now would anyone like to [00:04:00] lead this debate?

And there's a lot of people looking at their feet and I said, oh, does that mean colleagues you want me to lead the debate? And there's a lot of nodding, but that's how it's done. And I'm very grateful to the way people step forward and step up the mark on it. And, you know, people are very, there are difficult debates for the opposition and difficult debates for the Government. Everyone I've seen so far in the Committee is extremely fair minded about it. And that I think is really something special.

Mark D'Arcy: And Cat Smith, what's it like to have to hold your nose and present a petition with which you may fundamentally disagree because there's no one on the Committee who supports it?

Cat Smith: I'm trying to think of an occasion where that actually happened. I think that because you are on a Committee and the Committee is made up of members from across the House, you can usually find one member of the Committee who is enthusiastic about the issue before us. So I never was in a position of having to go and present something I fundamentally disagreed with.

I found myself just presenting petitions that I actually wholeheartedly supported. And that probably made it easier, especially because before [00:05:00] you get to the point of standing up, often in Westminster Hall to present this, you meet with the petitioners who started the petition, you chat to them about why they've done it and the issues.

And often they're quite, they pull on the heartstrings. They're quite emotional petitions. You know, ordinary folk don't just go on the Parliament website and start any e-petition unless they're incredibly motivated. And often it's the most sort of tragic and upsetting circumstances that have led someone there.

So for me, the diversity of the Committee members meant that I had at the time, you know, Government MPs, and it was a Conservative Government, of course, who were quite happy to step up and take some of the ones that were maybe awkward for the opposition and vice versa.

Ruth Fox: And Helen, you were the first chair of the Committee back in 2015.

So as sort of the inaugural chair, you had a bit, not quite a blank sheet of paper, but, a sort of opportunity for you to set out with your new Committee members, how the system was going to work. And of course, listeners for the back history of this, there'd been a Number 10 Downing Street petition site, which had been very, very [00:06:00] popular.

But had led to lots of problems because it was in the control of the Government, not Parliament, and yet it was parliamentarians that were getting criticised by petitioners in the media because they weren't responding to them. And there'd been this sort of constitutional standoff, if you like, which had caused a lot of sort of reputational problems, and the Petitions Committee was a solution to this problem. So you were the first chair, you had a think about, well, how are we gonna work this? How's it gonna operate? What were you thinking? You know, were you thinking about trying to push the envelope a bit?

Helen Jones: Yes, I think we were. To me, one of the values of the Petitions Committee is to ensure debates on things that would not otherwise be debated in Parliament.

We did get, when I was Chair, a lot of petitions on things that were already being debated. We got, for instance, snowed under with petitions on Brexit at one point, for and against, but we started off with a petition on more research into brain [00:07:00] tumors, and we decided to do an inquiry into it.

And at the time there was some pushback on that, particularly from the Deputy Leader of the House who said this had not been envisaged. And I said, well, many things are not envisaged, but they still happen. "The Government does not want you to do this." To which I gave the obvious reply, "I do not serve the Government, I serve the House." And it was a petition, which originally we thought was going to be important to a small number of people. We were not sure that it would get beyond a hundred thousand. It did because of the charities involved. It showed us a lot about how conducting an inquiry could allow people's voices to be heard. We conducted the inquiry often in a different way to a normal select committee. We would sit people around the table and talk to them, we would hold individual round tables. And I think that set the mark for what came [00:08:00] later to show us actually how to engage with people, how to allow their voices to be heard and how often talking to people actually changes your view of what a petition is about.

I can think of one for instance on road tax for young people and when we met the originator of the petition, what we realised was this really was about young people in rural locations not able to access work or training opportunities because of the cost of running a car and public transport was poor. And so it can actually change your mind about the issue. And what the petition system has allowed people to do is to be heard in Parliament and it's also got a lot more people watching parliamentary debates. When I was there, the petitions debates were the most watched debates in Parliament. [00:09:00]

Mark D'Arcy: And the most watched parliamentary events after PMQs, indeed, petitions debates. Did the system kind of catch up with that and realise that people were watching this?

Helen Jones: It did a bit, yes. I don't think it is fully there even now because obviously the debates are in Westminster Hall and you can't have votable motions in Westminster Hall.

Part of my plan to allow the Petitions Committee to take over the world was eventually to get time on the floor in Parliament, but a general election interrupted that. I think it will come. I don't think all Ministers understand it or even all MPs understand it yet, or understand how powerful it can be, but particularly in the current climate, it is very important that we have methods which allow people to engage with Parliament and allow these type of voices heard.

Mark D'Arcy: And just to pick up, just to help the listeners out a bit here, votable motions. You can vote on motions in the Chamber of the House of Commons, but in Westminster Hall, [00:10:00] they never actually take a vote. So there's never a controversial motion in Westminster Hall. It's all, "This House has considered this issue" kind of stuff, rather than...

Helen Jones: Technically it's an adjournment motion. You know, and that isn't always a problem. But I think on certain issues there will be a need for votable motions, and I hope the Committee gets there eventually.

Catherine McKinnell: Just to follow on from that, I mean, I have to pay tribute to Helen actually, for the way in which she established the Committee.

I think we're all very grateful as chairs 'cause I think she did a really excellent job of creating that forum. And actually just whilst we were talking there, I was thinking about the first question you asked me: as a Minister, what is my response to petitions? And I think Helen's right, I think some people probably don't recognise the value of the petitions in not just what they're asking for, but actually what problem are they trying to solve? Why are people coming behind this issue? And as a Minister at the time, I was responsible for some of the policy areas that I had [00:11:00] campaigned on, on behalf of petitioners. I had led their campaigns in Parliament, so the Three Dads Walking on suicide prevention and better awareness, and parents who campaigned on incredibly tragic circumstances where their children had died in water accidents and they were asking for better water safety education within school. They were asking for better suicide prevention understanding within school. Those are two things that we now have in our RSHE (relationships, sex and health education) curriculum that, you know, I was able to work on when in Government.

So I think these petitions really are impactful and powerful. And I actually would agree with Helen that I think it's important that people in Government do recognise the value of it and that we do continue to raise the bar of how important they are. But the other thought I had was actually the transition that took place during the COVID pandemic and how the value and importance of the petitions really rose to the fore because people were at [00:12:00] home, they were anxious and they were online and in order to switch it to a truly online system, we started undertaking online inquiries. So I remember being in a round table on an online forum with Marcus Rashford on children getting food as part of their school holidays. And many of these campaigns that left a very profound impact on me.

The water safety, the suicide prevention, many of those arose out of COVID and some of the mental health challenges, around that, and that sort of ability to really campaign and magnify these campaigns online and then be able to sit in the Liaison Committee and question the Prime Ministers directly about it.

So I was able to put to Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the time, about children's food and using the words of Marcus Rashford to do that. So I don't think we can underestimate the power that people should feel they have through petitions.

Mark D'Arcy: The Liaison Committee, of course, being the committee that does get the chance to question the Prime Minister directly a couple of times a year.[00:13:00]

One of the interesting questions here, Cath, is the extent to which the issues that come before the Petitions Committee are things that are bubbled up from the grassroots that haven't necessarily occurred within the Westminster bubble and how much there's a bit of party politics. Because another one of the early petitions that the Committee looked at was a call for the resignation of Jeremy Hunt as Health Secretary over the handling of the junior doctors strike, I think, and I suppose presumably there's quite a high bar for getting a call for a ministerial resignation to be debated through the Petitions Committee. But the second time, I wonder what the effect is on the mind of a Minister who suddenly has that aimed at them.

Catherine McKinnell: Well, and there's also recently been a petition calling for another general election, and I think that one got quite a lot of signatures.

And I think as chairs of the committees, we have a really important balance to strike, which I think Helen touched upon. You know, we are here serving the House. We are here being the voice of the petitioners, but we are not here to duplicate what should be happening within Parliament, within other [00:14:00] committees and within other processes, and we are not here to undermine democracy. We're here to strengthen it. So I think we've all probably had to take judgments at some point. What is the most responsible and constructive way of dealing with this demand. And where it's directed at personalities or where it's seeking to undermine democracy rather than strengthen it, I think we have to take quite a cautious approach as a Committee to channel that in the best way and the most correct way possible.

Helen Jones: If I can just chip in there, from memory I did the petition from the junior doctors and we left out the bit about resignation because that's not within the power of the Committee and there are mechanisms for achieving that which lie elsewhere.

But we did debate the substance of their complaints. So sometimes you do need to do that because understandably, the petitioners are not necessarily up to speed with all the procedures of the House or Government. You have to allow for that [00:15:00] and ask yourself what is the main issue here that we are going to debate.

Ruth Fox: And Cat, you have now jumped from the Petitions Committee in the last Parliament to the Procedure Committee in this one, and sort of with your new hat on, do you get much pushback from MPs about the role of the Petitions Committee or the desire for votable motions? Something that occurs to me in the last sort of 18 months or so is we had a general election and the petition system is quiet for quite a number of months until the Petitions Committee is reconstituted at the start of the new Parliament.

So you've got months on end where unfortunately the public can't sort of, you know, contact the House, even once you're back for a while. Are those kinds of issues on your agenda?

Cat Smith: Certainly on my radar, and I think you're right before the Petitions Committee was set up, because there's always a delay after a general election for all committees to be set up.

I certainly felt it as a constituency MP if my constituents going, I want to do an e-petition, and I can't, why can't I? And having to explain the process of [00:16:00] Select Committees being set up. I only had the pleasure of chairing the Petitions Committee for a short while when Catherine was promoted to the party's front bench before the general election, and then obviously after the general election, the Usual Channels divvy up the Select Committee chairs in a way that's proportional to the result of the general election. And of course the Liberal Democrats were fortunate enough to get Petitions Committee.

That meant I couldn't continue in that role. But I do think that by moving into chairing the Procedure Committee, I come at that from the perspective of recognising the value of the Petitions Committee. And I think there are potentially some procedural changes that could be made to strengthen what the Petitions Committee has in terms of where those debates take place. By having them in Westminster Hall, we deny MPs the opportunity to be able to vote on them. And I suspect, and I'd have to obviously, you know, get the evidence, but I suspect that the public would be very positive about the idea of MPs voting on the petitions that they propose that we debate at the moment. But [00:17:00] I think they would like to see the opportunity for a votable motion.

And it would also offer an opportunity for MPs to express their opinion when, as so often happens now, we run out of time when petitions are being debated. Not everyone who wants to take part in the debates can. We have standing room only situations in Westminster Hall because it's a much smaller space. And that means that many MPs who want to take part in Petitions Committee debates at the moment actually just can't, because if you don't get there before all the chairs are taken, you don't get the opportunity to take part. And I think there are some procedural questions around that, that I would like to explore.

Although I'm aware that the Procedure Committee's agenda is very, very full at the moment and we have a lot of open inquiries, and if my Clerk would hear this, he would probably be quite panicking at the idea of me suggesting another inquiry.

Mark D'Arcy: Can I just ask you how a votable motion coming from a petition might work?

Would it be that "This House calls on the government to legislate, to do X", whatever it might be. Might that be the kind of form that a vulnerable motion would result in?

Cat Smith: Well, I was thinking more that [00:18:00] you could have a votable motion with "This House has considered X" and obviously the petition, and it would almost be an indication, wouldn't it? So if you voted "Aye", you'd be indicating that you're supportive of the, what is set out in the petition, and I guess if you vote "No", you're not happy with it or we'd like to see it slightly differently. I imagine it would be that, but I suppose that's something that would be explored and fleshed out.

Ruth Fox: And Jamie, do you ever sort of set up a debate, where you've got sort of the pros and cons? The those in favour and those against? So you mentioned the digital ID cards petition at the moment. So you've got a big petition by those against it. But there are people out there who are who are supportive. If you've got, for example, a petition that was in favour of something that had a million signatures on, so it was gonna get a debate. A hundred thousand is the level, isn't it? And then you had an another one, much smaller, but was against and articulated a very clear view. Do you sort of pitch them into the same debate, link them together, or how do you do it?

Jamie Stone: You can do, but it's a bit of a moving process.

And what [00:19:00] you have to understand is that our team of Clerks are absolutely amazing. So if I go back to the debate I led about should animals be stunned before they're slaughtered, you can imagine the dangers of that debate because Muslims and Jews, they believe one thing and then people who are animal rights another. And so the team of Clerks were absolutely amazing, and they made sure that I met either face-to-face or virtually with both sides of it. If you see what I mean? I'm just gonna name check Rahul, a Speaker's intern who did fantastic work on that. During that process, in the days before the debate, I learned a huge amount I didn't know ever. I didn't know that halal lamb, very popular in the Middle East, it actually comes from Scotland.

And there's just one point, if I can just mention this, is that there's another factor here. We have a very clever website and if you click on your constituency, you can see, oh my goodness, in this debate, look at that, 2000 people have signed it. And then the member thinks, maybe I better go to that debate because otherwise 2000 people are cross. So that is driving [00:20:00] people tipping up to the debates and why we've had, as we just heard, the standing room only, which is appalling. You know, that is just shocking if you can't get every Member in. And that is a point I put to the new Leader of the House, Alan Campbell, just this week in a meeting to say, and I would imagine it's being thought about, floor of the House has been mentioned, but we'll see. I would hope it would go that way eventually. I think, well, all of us, aren't we about empowering the Committee?

Helen Jones: Yeah, there are occasions when we have had petitions that we simply couldn't agree with for various reasons. We had one, for instance, on screening for I think cervical cancer from memory and there were a group of women whose friend had tragically died and she hadn't been of the age for screening, but the medical advice was not to screen that early because you get too many false positives. And I met with the people concerned and I [00:21:00] had to explain to them why I couldn't support it. And at the time, they were quite upset, as you might expect, they were trying to do the right thing. But I got a very nice letter from them later on saying we're sorry if we sounded really angry, we are trying to do the right thing, we understand why you said this. And I thought, yeah, we've gone through a process there. I learned something from that and I learned a lot as chair of the Petitions Committee where you are having to pick up new subjects all the time. But I think also the people doing the petition learn something. And they would be then knowing what to look for in the rest of their campaign, which was a very well-intentioned campaign. They wanted to stop younger women dying of cancer.

Ruth Fox: That is one of the interesting things about the process of e-petitions, isn't it? This comes out in the academic research, not just in this country, but also, in other jurisdictions that actually petitioners don't necessarily expect you as [00:22:00] parliamentarians, the Government, to agree with them and to act on what they want.

And actually it's the process by which their issues are considered, debated and that they get some kind of response, even if it's not perhaps the response they might have wanted, but actually that provides a really valuable route in terms of public engagement and in terms of, you know, persuading citizens of the value of the legislature as a deliberative body.

Catherine McKinnell: Absolutely. I would agree with that because it's that sort of, you know, shout at the telly or shout at the radio about issues or feel that your voice is at least being spoken in that public forum and is being heard. So I think the value of the petition is feeling heard, feeling represented, feeling that you're not shouting into thin air. But that you are being listened to, and I think that does come down to the quality of the response as well, for example, from a Government minister, and also the number of MPs that turn up [00:23:00] to voice that for you. But I do think there's value in and of itself in that process.

Mark D'Arcy: And what's striking about the Committee is just the sheer breadth of the subjects that it has to deal with.

So I wondered if I could, as it were, go round the table and ask each of you in turn, what was your favorite petition? Most interesting, most significant, whatever criteria you want to use. Cat Smith.

Cat Smith: Oh gosh. It's really hard. It's really, really difficult. I mean, the one that strikes out and has just jumped into my head was the one from Gaza Families Reunited, at the beginning of the conflict, there was a petition that was started for those with family connections in the UK to be able to bring their relatives to the UK to safety. And I met some incredibly interesting people and had some really thought provoking conversations as a part of that petition, so that's the one that jumps out.

But I feel like I've done a discredit to every other petition that I engaged with as well, because they were all amazing.

Mark D'Arcy: Cath McKinnell.

Catherine McKinnell: I agree. That is an extremely difficult question to answer. I think giving voice to people during COVID [00:24:00] for me, so the petitions addressing maternal mental health and the experience of women going through childbirth and having young children during that period, I think probably had some of the biggest impact because there was no other way to raise those concerns. But also tribute to Helen, one of the inquiries I remember when I was a member and she was chair was the High Heels at Work. And this seemed frivolous in people's imagination, but actually these were really profound issues of, you know, serious safety at work and health and safety and women's rights as well. So I actually think that was quite a profound one.

I hope I haven't stolen yours, Helen.

Mark D'Arcy: Helen.

Helen Jones: I would, I think, have to go back to the first one, funding for more research into brain tumors, because it not only set the tone for the Committee, we met some terrific people during that inquiry. People who had lost family members and whose only aim was not to cast blame on this, but [00:25:00] to make things better for other people, they were really brilliant people. And we got a pledge from a Government Minister of 40 million pounds, which you don't often get out of a Minister in those circumstances. But I too, like Catherine, enjoyed the high heels one, which people thought was frivolous, but actually showed up how a lot of young women were being pressurised at work. And I got to hang out with someone who'd been on Coronation Street. So that was good.

Mark D'Arcy: Jamie Stone.

Jamie Stone: Well, I suppose there was one petition that never actually flew because it got very little support, which said that the UK should become part of the United States. So that sort of demonstrates the breadth of stuff we get.

The one that sticks in my mind is the one that, the first one I led, which was the one on, let's have another general election. So when you met with the petitioner, and you talk to people, you think we just had a general election. The country's just spoken. What's all this about? And I think it's taught me how changeable [00:26:00] politics can be even in a very short space of time.

But that was the first time I met a petitioner. And you know, just to go back the earlier point that, oh, what's the point of voting? They don't care anyway. And we're seeing turnouts dropping in this country. Now, this is a bit sweeping. I see what my colleagues think, but I personally think that the engagement through the Petitions Committee is actually good for democracy. I think it's getting people, as has already been said, that we are listening and I think that, that I hope is special, I would suggest. Hope that doesn't sound too pompous.

Ruth Fox: No, I mean, the Hansard Society's own research, when we used to do our Audit of Political Engagement, sort of public attitude survey every year of what the public thought about politics and Parliament consistently found that, petitioning was the second most popular form of participation every year after voting. So that sort underscores it. But looking to the future, if we were to criticise the system, an argument would be that it's giving voice to people who've already [00:27:00] got a voice or to lobby groups or to charities, and that too many of these sort of petitioners are white, well-educated middle class people who have already got a voice and know how to operate the system. And actually it's perhaps not reaching the hard to reach groups, the hard to reach voices so much. A notable feature I think of some of the petitions is that a lot of the constituencies in Northern Ireland have got quite low levels of petitioning engagement.

So what we do about that.

Cat Smith: Well, I think that's probably something for all MPs, not just those of us that have chaired the Petitions Committee, to when we meet with our constituents. Because as a local member of Parliament, you have so many opportunities to go into community groups, adult day centers, schools, girl guides, and talk about how people engage with their MP.

And I always try and remember to include in that, as well as writing to me as your MP, you could start a petition. And making sure that it's just part of that obvious way of engaging in democracy, as much as firing off an email.

Helen Jones: There's a lot of [00:28:00] outreach work still to be done. We started doing it when I was Chair, and then of course in the Parliament after that, they got hit by COVID, so it was much more difficult. What we found was a lot of petitions were started in London or Bristol, as you would expect. I don't know if it's the same now. There's a very tech savvy population, although they were signed all around the country. We started doing outreach work for charitable groups. I remember doing a session with young Muslim women in Birmingham. So there is a lot of work still to be done on that. I'd be the first to say so, and I'm sure it's ongoing now.

Catherine McKinnell: So I think what's another interesting feature is how it interrelates with the traditional, as old as Parliament, written petition process. I still remember when I was first elected in 2010, one of the first things I did was present literally piles of paper of constituents that had presented to me [00:29:00] a petition about a Post Office that was closing and waiting till the end of the day and presenting that and literally putting it in the bag behind the Speaker's chair.

That's where the phrase comes from, I understand, "It's in the bag". I think having that localised petition is very powerful to engage a whole community. But what's really the magic of the e-petition process is that you would discover, yes, their local Post Office is closing in this place in Newcastle, but actually this is happening right around the country and can garner that national sense of when an issue is just a localised concern and when it's a much broader concern. And I appreciate that doesn't necessarily deal with the diversity, but I think the vast geographical expanse of interest in petitions, it is a really important factor, and I think education for young people on it is really important as well.

Jamie Stone: But the stuff in the bag, behind the Speaker's chair, that would get a Government response, but with the Petitions Committee, there has to be a Minister, a real live Minister has to tip [00:30:00] up and actually address this issue.

Mark D'Arcy: So it's not three lines by a civil servant?

Jamie Stone: No. On the one on veterans, the Secretary of State turned up himself and that was, you know, maybe a first, maybe you had Secretary of State in your time. I don't know. I don't, that... Hilary Benn was there.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, we've been very fortunate to have four very busy people around the Parliament Matters studio today, and thanks very much indeed, Cat Smith, Cath McKinnell, Jamie Stone, Helen Jones for joining us on Parliament Matters. I'm sure the ongoing saga of the Petitions Committee and its ever growing powers will come back to haunt us in further editions.

Thanks for joining us today.

Ruth Fox: Thanks everyone.

Outro: 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.

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