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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 coming up in this week's edition.

Ruth Fox: Welcome to the washup. MPs and peers brace themselves for a frenzied bout of last minute bargaining to pass outstanding legislation before the parliamentary session ends.

Mark D'Arcy: Should there be questions in the House about the sudden explosion in the number of questions in the House?

Ruth Fox: And the questions you've asked us, on everything from dilatory motions to Prime Minister's Questions.

Mark D'Arcy: And Ruth, let's start with the washup, the mysterious ritual in [00:01:00] Parliament, which marks the end of a parliamentary session. The period when the House of Lords suddenly has a lot of leverage with a deadline looming for the prorogation of Parliament, in which to make last minute amendments to bills, to bend them to the will of peers when the government wants to get its legislation through, but hasn't quite managed and they could lose the whole bill if it isn't passed by that prorogation moment when the music stops, you might say.

Ruth Fox: Yes. And Mark, we know today that the Government has confirmed what has been speculated on for a while, that the King's speech will take place on Wednesday the 13th of May. That Prorogation deadline, though, is a little less clear.

Mark D'Arcy: There's a certain amount of fluidity, but not all that much.

Ruth Fox: No. So the leader of the House indicated prorogation will be sometime week commencing the 27th of April, but it could, depending on business, slip a little bit later.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah. The magic formula they always use on these occasions is subject to the progress of business. So if peers really want to go on and on, they lose a potential bit of holiday in early May, basically.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. So I reckon at the moment, [00:02:00] if they were to sit for the entirety of that week commencing the 27th of April, then in the Commons, there's a maximum of probably 12 sitting days, when they come back after Easter. They could then carve out another couple of extra days the following week, the week of the local elections, if they needed it. But that's not a lot of time left.

Mark D'Arcy: And Ruth, talk us through what's left to be decided. What are the negotiations going to be on?

Ruth Fox: Yeah, so there are 17 bills still in progress, of which the government's got carry-over motions on five of them, which means that they can carry them over into the next session.

So although they won't complete their progress, they won't get anywhere near completing their progress in some cases in the Commons, they will reappear in the next session and they'll just be able to resume at the stage that they've reached in this session.

We should probably start out with the uncertainty over three of the dozen bills or so that are left to go through. And that's the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, the Diego Garcia Bill, this is the bill about the Chagos Islands and the treaty with Mauritius to hand [00:03:00] over ownership of the islands. And then there's the Public Office Accountability Bill, also known as the Hillsborough Law. And the problem with each of these three is that they seem to be sort of stalled and it's not clear whether the government has got a resolution to the problems with the bills.

Now we're gonna come on to a listener's question about the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill. So I'll pause that one. And I actually think that's probably the easiest to deal with because it's still in the House of Commons after Second Reading, so it, if necessary, could get a carry-over motion before the end of the session. So I think we'll park that one and come back to it in listeners questions after the break.

But the Diego Garcia and the Public Office Accountability Bill, I think, are more challenging. So the Public Office Accountability was pulled, I think at report stage in the Commons, because there's this row between the campaigners on the one hand who want this duty of candour in the bill to apply to all public bodies and so on, and the [00:04:00] government has got a problem with that because in opposition, it promised this.

Mark D'Arcy: It promised exactly this. And the politics of this are very, very toxic. It's called the Hillsborough Bill because it mainlines to the issue in the whole Hillsborough scandal that there was a coverup about the behaviour of fans and accusations were made and people were besmirched by officialdom who were not telling the truth about what really happened.

So that there's a blanket call for a duty for public officials to be candid, to tell the truth to official investigations about what happened. But should that extend to the security services? And what if there's a get out for them? Does that mean that the truth won't be told in cases where it gets a bit awkward for the security services?

Ruth Fox: Yeah, and that's essentially why it's stalled, because they have not been able to resolve between the campaigners' position and the position of the security services, how they reconcile this problem.

Mark D'Arcy: And just imagine the political impact of this on Merseyside, having made a flat promise that this was going to be delivered, if it isn't. [00:05:00]

You've got people like Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester, Steve Rotherham, the mayor of Merseyside, all on board for this law. They will expect it now to be delivered and the voters in Manchester and Merseyside will expect it to be delivered and there will be a hell of a price to pay if it's not.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I think the Government can carry that over if it wants, because it hasn't completed its passage in the first House, so it's still in the Commons.

Mark D'Arcy: So you can play for time on that one, and you can work out what your policy is and see if some workable compromise can be agreed that everybody can live with. Obviously it hasn't been yet because it hasn't been presented, and I'm sure if they could resolve this issue easily, they would do so. We'll have to wait and see what that delivers.

But then you get onto the Diego Garcia Chagos Islands bill, and all the international high politics that revolves around that.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. And this one is not so easy to resolve because this has been through the Commons and is in the Lords, and therefore a carry-over motion in the Commons is not possible. And the House of Lords doesn't do carry-over motions into the next session. So [00:06:00] theoretically.

Mark D'Arcy: Has never done

Ruth Fox: Well, yeah, theoretically, I suppose, you know, if they were, if the Government can assemble a majority for it, they could get a motion through the House of Lords to do exactly that for these exceptional circumstances.

But it sets a precedent that they probably don't want to. On the other hand, the question is, well, the high politics of this, which way is it headed?

Mark D'Arcy: Well, there's high international politics on this. Because one minute you get a US administration saying, yes, we're in favour of transferring the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, including that great US air base at Diego Garcia to Mauritius.

Then President Trump changes his mind. Then he changes it back again. Now he's changed it back again still and is now against it again. So there's the international dimension on this. There's the criticism that this is a surrender bill and Britain is paying far too large a dowry to Mauritius to take over the sovereignty of these islands, and then there are worries that the Mauritians might eventually hand it over somehow to China. So all sorts of high international politics there.

It strikes me as it's not impossible [00:07:00] that opponents of the bill might think it well worth killing it, by not allowing agreement to be reached by the end of the session so that the issue could be pushed forward into the next session. Not the bill, but the issue, that there would need to be a new bill to try and enshrine the treaty in British law and take it forward. So there's a lot of politics that could be played here.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Reform in the House of Commons, conservatives in both houses, I mean, they've made a big issue of this, and they would take it as a considerable victory if the bill doesn't get through.

From the government's perspective, they might be quite happy to kind of kill the bill and not have to deal with it further, given the difficulties it's posed. But they've then still got the unresolved question of what they do about their agreement with Mauritius and the diplomacy around that. So even if the bill doesn't get through, they've still got a political problem to resolve,

Mark D'Arcy: Oh yeah, it's another hot potato that will have to be dealt with in some fashion, but possibly seeing this bill die and having to readdress the issue and possibly get President Trump to actually sign up to something and stick with what he signed up to in the [00:08:00] next session.

Ruth Fox: Good luck with that.

Mark D'Arcy: Tall order might be part of it, but there's quite a lot of gameplay around this issue from all sides as well as a lot of criticism within the House of Lords. And it doesn't strike me as at all impossible that the House of Lords would have a majority to stop this bill. And just get the government to really think again about it.

Ruth Fox: Well, it may well not come back. I mean, that may just be it. The Government may just sort of sit on it and let it fall.,

Mark D'Arcy: Let the issue fall. I suppose it could be brought back and Parliament Acted apart from anything else. I mean, they may not wish to bring it back, but they could. And then make it law automatically if the Lords didn't play ball.

Ruth Fox: That's an interesting scenario. I mean technically the House of Lord hasn't rejected it because it's stalled and the Government hasn't brought it back, but the Lords hasn't passed it.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah. But for the purposes of the Parliament Act not passing is enough.

Ruth Fox: Absolutely. And so they could bring it back in the second session and if the Lords still opposed it and were laying down amendments that were. Problematic. Providing it goes through the Commons in an [00:09:00] identical state and it's the same bill that goes through, obviously that would be easier for the Government to bring about than the campaigners who want the assisted dying bill going through as a private members' bill because the government could do all the necessary procedural motions to get it through in an identical state and then put it back in their Lordship's laps and say, go at it. Like it or lump it. If you don't pass it, we will Parliament Act it. So, yes, something I think to keep an eye on.

Hadn't thought about that.

Mark D'Arcy: Absolutely. High stakes, international politics meets parliamentary procedure, what's not to like.

Ruth Fox: So that leaves them with about a dozen bills that they've gotta sort out. Two of them are in Second Reading in the Lords, and I think there'll probably be no problems with these. They'll get through fairly quickly. Grenfell Tower Memorial (Expenditure) Bill, and the Ministerial Salaries (Amendment) Bill, which is about sorting out the payment of peers who are ministers in the House of Lords, which was part of the kind of settlement on the Hereditary Peers Bill that we talked about.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, there's not much party political controversy about either of those, so they'll probably have a fairly smooth passage through, but there are [00:10:00] some very large, very meaty, very significant pieces of legislation with some very big outstanding issues in them as well.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, and this is where I think the difficulties are gonna come for the government in terms of how much negotiation they have to do with the Lords.

So there's the bills that are at consideration of amendments stage in the Lords. So you've got the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, you've got Tobacco and Vapes, you've got the Victims and Courts Bill. And there are gonna be some quite big issues there that they're gonna have to resolve. And I think probably at this stage we ought to introduce my colleague Matthew England, who is our legislative guru in the office here at the Hansard Society, who's got his finger on the pulse of the legislative agenda because he's been following much more closely than I have the sort of detail of what's been happening with some of these bills.

And in fact, last night there was quite a bit of legislative activity regarding the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill and this vexed question of a social media ban for under sixteens. So Matthew, welcome to the pod.

Matthew England: Thank you.

Ruth Fox: What [00:11:00] happened last night? So the House of Lords had previously agreed an amendment for a social media ban for under sixteens. That went back to the Commons a short while ago. MPs disagreed with that. Or I should say the government didn't want that amendment and proposed a delegated power as an alternative to enable ministers to regulate it at a later date via statutory instrument, via regulations.

Mark D'Arcy: When they've decided what they want to do.

Ruth Fox: To ban children at a certain age from certain internet services and so on.

But the government's argument is, we've got a consultation, we don't want to predetermine it, we want the outcome of the consultation first. What did their lordships decide last night?

Matthew England: It's helpful, I think, to go back to the start. It's very difficult to understand how what's called ping-pong works without going in chronological order very often.

So as you say, when the bill was initially going through the House of Lords during its ordinary legislative stages, the House of Lords inserted an amendment against the Government's wishes to [00:12:00] require the Government to introduce regulations requiring social media companies to ban under sixteens from accessing their services.

When the House of Lords then passed that bill with those amendments back to the House of Commons, the House of Commons did two things. They disagreed with the Lords Amendment to require a social media ban for under sixteens, and then they proposed something called an amendment in lieu. And the amendment in lieu introduced, as you say, a very broad delegated power to allow the government, if indeed it wanted to in the future, to require specified internet providers to prohibit children under a specified age from accessing specified internet services or specified features of specified internet services. So there's a lot of things left to be specified.

Mark D'Arcy: The one thing that's not specified is the actual policy there. Yes. Because there isn't one yet.

Matthew England: Yes. And it's awaiting an ongoing consultation in government.

So those two things, both the Commons disagreement to the original Lords Amendment [00:13:00] and the Commons alternative proposal went to the Lords last night, and the Lords voted to what's called "insist" on its original amendment for a social media ban and to disagree with the Commons alternative proposal, and that will now go back to the Commons for them to decide their response.

Ruth Fox: And that apparently the bill is going back to the Commons on the 15th of April. So, I mean, again, we're into this sort of difficult scenario for MPs, particularly on the Government side of having to, at the government's behest, vote against things that really they believe in.

They want a social media ban for under sixteens. And the government's saying yes, but not yet.

Mark D'Arcy: I think this is a very smart move, a very smart piece of politics by the House of Lords to keep dropping these issues back in the laps of MPs at a time. It's politically painful to keep having to vote against their own instincts on things and where the public may also notice, and they could even face an electoral price at those elections in May.

Ruth Fox: [00:14:00] Yeah. And there's another one that's going to land in MPs' laps shortly, and that's on an amendment on the Crime and Policing Bill. So Matthew, unusually there was an amendment at Third Reading in the House of Lords, proposed by the Government this time, to this bill, in relation to imposing a duty on internet providers and search engines to take down revenge porn within 48 hours.

So first, can you explain why was the government making an amendment at Third Reading? I mean, Third Reading in the Lords typically are tidying up amendments. Of course, in the Commons, listeners, MPs can't amend the bill at third reading. This is a distinction between the two Houses. It's not unknown, but it's fairly unusual to get a big government amendment to a third reading.

Matthew England: Yeah, this is one of those procedural differences between the Commons and the Lords. Whereas in the Commons, amendments at Third Reading never happen, in the Lords, you're allowed to table amendments for certain specified reasons. So one of those is to tidy up some drafting or technical problems [00:15:00] with the bill and make it operable without changing any of the underlying policy.

But there's a second reason why the Government may table amendments at Third Reading, which is to give effect to commitments that they'd made at earlier stages. And in this case, the Government had made a commitment at Report Stage to bring forward provisions in relation to revenge porn or in the legislative language, non-consensual intimate images.

And the Government brought forward this amendment and the commitment was one they'd made to the Conservative peer Baroness Charlotte, Owen and Baroness Owen wasn't happy with the proposal that the Government had come forward with, and what what she did was essentially propose a series of amendments to the Government's third reading amendment to strengthen some of the provisions.

Ruth Fox: So that will have to go back to the Commons, and I think that's gonna be 20th of April. Again, we're getting quite close to the prorogation deadlines for this, but essentially what she's done is she's sort of put it back into the laps of MPs now to decide, and again, [00:16:00] it's smart politics, but it's also this sort of scenario where Charlotte Owen has basically said, yes, okay, so you're telling me that you want to ban, but the detail's not there. There's not enough specificity. I mean, it's an awful lot of specified and flinging around this process at the moment, but it's not detailed enough. I want to toughen it up. I want belt and braces approach. And over to the House of Commons, will they vote for it or will the government try and tough it out and say no?

Mark D'Arcy: And I think it's worth adding as a footnote to this, that Charlotte Owen, when she was appointed to the House of Lords at a very young age, I think she was 27 when she became a peer, having worked in Boris Johnson's Downing Street before that, there were a number of eyebrows raised and a lot of sarcastic comments about a peerage for life for doing the photocopying in Downing Street.

And I fear, I may have made some of those jokes myself, but she's performed pretty impressively in this. She's managed to marshal a coalition to win votes in the House of Lords and send back an issue where the House of Lords is certainly ahead of the Government and possibly ahead of the House of Commons in terms of being in [00:17:00] tune with public opinion.

So it's a performance worth noting. And she could be in the their Lordships' House for quite a long time doing this sort of thing.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I mean, I think you're being a little charitable there about some of the criticism that was made of her. There was an awful lot more, shall we say, speculative comments, insinuation, unpleasant insinuations about her parentage and relationships with the Prime Minister and the social media attacks that she has faced have been quite horrendous. You know, a lot of women in politics obviously face them, but they were particularly vile in her case.

And yes, I think she has captured and led on this question. People can be very sniffy about young people in the House of Lords. And I understand why. But it actually shows also the value of having somebody who understands online and digital and tech, that lives in that world and is thinking about the kinds of constraints that are needed.

But she's got this political hot potato and she's depositing it back in the laps of MPs when they come back from Easter.

Mark D'Arcy: And you can hear the yelping already.

Matthew England: I think it's worth [00:18:00] noting that this is not the only hot potato that's coming along with the Crime and Policing Bill.

I mean, there's at least a dozen other amendments that were inserted against the Government's wishes during the Crime and Policing Bill's passage through the Lords, which the Commons is gonna have to face up to, in the event that there's a protracted ping-pong on multiple of these amendments, and that could string out much more than one or two rounds of ping-pong.

Ruth Fox: And what are the kinds of issues that their Lordships are putting into the laps of the Commons on this?

Matthew England: Well, I think partly because, as was discussed I think in last week's podcast, this bill is a Christmas tree bill, they relate to quite a few different things. So there's some on pornography and the kinds of pornography that should be restricted and on age verification of pornography. I think there's some relating to the prescription of organisations. So creating say a new category of organisation below terrorist groups, but above a normal protest group, sort of extreme protest groups.

Ruth Fox: So this is linked to the whole collapse of the court case in relation to Palestine Action.

Matthew England: Yeah. [00:19:00]

Ruth Fox: So there's there's gonna be a lot of things that the Commons are gonna have to consider. Of course further to what we were talking about last week, Mark, they're not gonna get actually in the Commons that much time, because these things do get packaged up and they might get three or four hours to consider all of these amendments and then send them back to the Lords and it could become quite frantic in the final days, depending upon how things turn out.

Mark D'Arcy: You can imagine there'll be some kind of scorecard in various government offices where they're looking at each outstanding bill chalking off the issues as they finally get resolved one way or another during the course of this. But the ultimate sanction that lies behind this is, why the Lords hand is so strong in this process, is that if the government doesn't agree things by the time the music stops and Parliament is prorogued, the bill falls and an awful lot of work goes down the drain at that point and right, you can then reintroduce the measures in the next session, but that's another bill in what may be a rather busy legislative programme in the coming year. So they don't really want to do that unless they absolutely have to.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. And Mark, there's a third bill which may present Labour MPs with some [00:20:00] difficulties, because in the Victims and Crime Bill, the House of Lords has inserted some amendments to enable victims to have free access to transcripts of court proceedings. So if you are a victim, you don't at the moment, you can't have access to the court transcript of the trial of the person that committed the crime against you. And there's been independent bodies that have said, this is wrong, and it is part of the victim's process of recovery. They should have access to this. The House of Lords has included some provisions to achieve that. And again, the Government is not opposed to it, but it's concerned about implementation and timetables and costs and so on. So it's previously recommended to its backbenchers we want something that's a little more vague than this. And on that occasion, quite a number of MPs, over a hundred Labour MPs, were not present during the vote. So they didn't vote yes or no, they just weren't there. They were abstained. But of course we know that MPs formally can't abstain, but they were somewhere [00:21:00] else. And the question is, how many of them just wouldn't swallow voting to reject that amendment first time round. And if they've now got a variation they've gotta consider a second time round, how many of them actually would accept the government line, or whether the government's gonna have to soften its position.

Mark D'Arcy: Because on the one hand, you've got ministers who have to think about things like costs and implementation issues. But on the other hand, you've got backbenchers who are imagining their opponents and their constituencies putting out on social media Voted against the idea of giving victims the transcripts of court cases they've been involved in.

And when I think there's a lot of public sympathy for the idea of rebalancing the justice system more towards the interest of victims, that's a difficult wicket to bat on.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. So it's gonna be a challenging few weeks for the government business managers. But we've also had Mark a listener's question in specifically about the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, which has been stranded at Second Reading, after Second Reading, since November.

So should we come back [00:22:00] in a few minutes, have a quick break, come back in a few minutes and we can tackle listeners' questions?

Mark D'Arcy: Yes, the mysterious disappearance of the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill being just one of the issues we've been asked about.

Ruth Fox: Yep. See you in a minute. Bye

Mark D'Arcy: Bye.

And Ruth, we are back. And, let's deal with a few questions that have been sent in by listeners now. Starting with one from Kacper Surdy, who you may remember we had on the pod a while ago talking about his amazing expertise about the operations of the US Congress. Do we know what's happening with the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, he asked, it had its second reading in the Commons in November, but nothing since then and a carry-over motion has not been agreed, at least not yet.

Ruth Fox: Yes. So I've been looking at this. So the bill, as Kacper said, it had its second reading in mid-November, the 18th of November to be exact, and Hillary Benn, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, it was his departmental question time this week, so he and his team faced questions about this. A number of people raised the issue of what's happening with the [00:23:00] bill and when will it be coming back, and I think it's fair to say Hillary Benn evaded answering the question directly. So he did not say it's coming back on X day. So he didn't even say it's definitely coming back. He sort of intimated that the government still behind the bill committed to the bill, but there was no sense of a timetable for progress.

So my best guess would be that it is probably one of those that's gonna get a carry-over motion. He made a point of noting that there was a remedial order, which had been passed on the 21st of January that was linked to this bill that has gone through.

But Matthew, what is a remedial order?

Matthew England: Well, a remedial order is a special type of secondary legislation, so it's a statutory instrument made under a power in the Human Rights Act of 1998. What it allows the Government to do is to amend primary legislation after the courts have issued something called a declaration of incompatibility.

And a declaration of [00:24:00] incompatibility is essentially when the court believes that a provision in primary legislation is in contravention of an article of the European Convention on Human Rights. In this case, the High Court had a problem with the original Legacy Act passed in 2023, which gave immunity to certain actions committed during the Troubles where a person had come forward to a new Commission that had been established with information about those incidents.

So they had some trouble on human rights grounds with the immunity provisions and the remedial order was to rectify those incompatibilities by essentially just removing the provisions from the original Act, and essentially because the declaration of incompatibility applied to very large swathes of the Act, what the effect of the remedial order was to remove almost all of the substantive provisions from the original Act.

Mark D'Arcy: Which is why we've got the new piece of legislation now.

Essentially, this is the Government's attempt to replace that legislation with a new framework to deal with the legacy issues of [00:25:00] the troubles.

Matthew England: Yes. I mean, it's worth noting that the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill was presented to Parliament on the same day that the draft remedial order was presented to Parliament.

So they're very much a joint enterprise. The difference between the two is that essentially that the remedial order is to remove provisions from the original Act and the bill is to replace those provisions. So while the remedial order is dealing with issues relating to immunity, which I think the government now opposes, so is removing the provision to give immunity to people, the bill is dealing with the replacement provisions, around setting up a different kind of Commission, so it's replacing the previous Information Recovery Commission with a new Legacy Commission.

So the fact that they're a joint enterprise, I think also explains why the bill is being held up in the Commons, because while the remedial order has been approved by the House of Commons, it hasn't yet been approved by the House of Lords, and part of the reason why it doesn't seem to have been approved by the House of Lords is because there's a special kind of motion that's [00:26:00] been tabled in the House of Lords by Lord Garnier, which is a motion to decline to consider the remedial order.

Mark D'Arcy: And this is Edward Garnier, as was, the former solicitor general and justice minister in the David Cameron era, a serious legal figure making this move. So he's one to watch.

Ruth Fox: And in fact, in Northern Ireland questions, hillary Benn in response to a question from Gavin Robinson, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party said, I say very simply that the government are keen to progress this. It is a very complex piece of legislation, in part because it is having to fix the mess that the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 left this government to deal with. And he said, I make no apology for taking time to ensure that we get the legislation right, because as he knows, this is the last best hope we have.

So best guess I think, Kacper, is that this will get a carry-over motion before too long. And as I understand it, Matthew, I think if you bring in a carry-over motion at the time that you're actually debating provisions of the [00:27:00] bill, it's not debatable and not amendable, but if you want to bring it in separate to the consideration of the bill at a particular stage, it's potentially amendable.

Matthew England: I believe that's true, yes.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, this is really one where the parliamentary anoraks are firmly pulled about us and all sorts of interesting consequences could ensue.

Ruth Fox: And, Mark, I think we've had another question relating to a bill, the Diego Garcia Bill, but not actually about the bill itself, but about the procedures that surrounded it, or may have happened, but actually didn't, but what the procedures would've been if they had.

Mark D'Arcy: One of the reasons for the non-appearance of the Diego Garcia bill was the threat of a dilatory motion. And people are asking, this is someone called Nicholas, what is a dilatory motion?

A dilatory motion is essentially a motion to adjourn or a motion to interrupt or postpone proceedings on a bill. It can take several forms, but it's normally something that people just get up and say, rather than it being formally tabled in advance. So someone pops up in the middle of a debate and says, I beg to move that this [00:28:00] House do now adjourn, or something like that?

Ruth Fox: Yeah. So if the business being discussed is on a bill, it's that the debate be now adjourned.

If it's just a normal debate, it's that this House do now adjourn. Apparently, if you're in ping-pong on a bill, it's that further consideration of the bill or of the Lords amendments to the bill be now adjourned. We could go on.

Mark D'Arcy: Pull those anoraks even tighter.

Ruth Fox: Even tighter. So it's a standalone motion. It's its own distinct question. And as you say, it's used to interrupt business that's been discussed, and it can only be moved by the member who's speaking. And because of the wording that the House do now adjourn, it's often confused with the motion that is moved at the end of the sitting day to a formally adjourn the House related to the adjournment debate.

Basically it supersedes any remaining business and it's pretty unusual for it to be used these days. I mean, 1995 there was a motion, according to Erskine May, to move a motion at Third Reading of the Crown Agents Bill to [00:29:00] enable the House to discuss the resignation of the Prime Minister as leader of his party.

And in fact, that was rejected, so it didn't happen. A bit closer to home in terms of an economic crises, 1966, there was a dilatory motion moved by a minister to enable debate to enable an urgent statement to be made by the Chancellor, Roy Jenkins about problems with the gold market.

There was a threat made that there'd be a dilatory motion to basically bring business on the Diego Garcia Bill to a bit of a halt. Didn't happen. And in any event, the wider politics and negotiations over this bill took over. But yes, that is what a dilatory motion is.

Mark D'Arcy: So there we have it. Another question we've got here from Brendan wanted to ask whether the Speaker has any authority to ask the Prime Minister to answer a direct question to prevent the kind of nonsense he says that we are currently witnessing at PMQs.

The answer to that is, no.

Ruth Fox: So there's quite a lot of Conservative MPs and Reform MPs getting [00:30:00] up at PMQs, trying to make points of order to the chair, basically asking the speaker if he will direct the Prime Minister to answer the question. And the Speaker has been pushing back and basically saying, this is not a matter for the chair, the content of answers, this is a matter for the minister at the dispatch box. So he's not there to police answers.

Mark D'Arcy: The Speaker is not the arbiter of truth. Cannot be the arbiter of truth. No one can be the arbiter of truth really. Anywhere below the level of the Almighty, at any rate, can be the arbiter of truth. And I know it's frustrating.

I watch Prime Minister's Question Time, and Starmer is asked a question and doesn't really address the question and garbles on about something tangential. So he was asked about his small boats policy by Nigel Farage the other day, and he started talking about Reform's record in local government. Okay?

There is nothing that says you have to answer the question, but I do think that when people are watching, they're a bit surprised that he doesn't at least make some attempt to answer the question, and I don't think [00:31:00] it does the process of PMQs any good for the whole thing to cease to be an attempt to ask the Prime Minister for information and become instead a ritual exchange of parliamentary soundbites that may or may not be related to one another. Or to put it another way, this has become rather silly.

Ruth Fox: Yes. And then there was another sort of bout of, it looked silly to me, where Nigel Farage and the Reform MPs all walked out of Prime Minister's Questions and there were questions asked, including by Cat Smith as chair of the Procedure Committee to the chair of, you know, is there a rule about how many questions you've got to be in the House for, and sit through, after you've asked your question before you are allowed to leave in the way that there are similar rules on debate. And again, that was batted back by the chair. You know, it's Prime Minister's Questions, but I wasn't, I dunno whether you saw it, Mark, I didn't see it because, well,

Mark D'Arcy: outside the chamber cause the cameras weren't on him in the chamber.

The cameras have to be on the person who's speaking or on the Speaker, or occasionally you [00:32:00] can get a reaction shot of someone who's being mentioned. So if someone's talking about one particular member, it's okay for the cameras to pan to them to see what they're saying. But actually the video feed from the chamber did not show the Reform MPs leaving.

What you saw was the Labour MP Marie Tidball across the chamber who was asking a question, start to laugh. And you heard sort of rising laughter from MPs in the background, but what you didn't see was Nigel Farage and co getting up and leaving the chamber. So as a stunt, it lacked the vital visual component that might have dramatised their high dudgeon at Keir Starmer's failure to answer the question.

Walkouts from the Commons don't always look as people imagine they're going to look. It's not normally a moment of sort of dignified drama. It can often descend very quickly.

Ruth Fox: And it kind of did when then the Reform MPs have to slip back into the Commons for the next piece of business. But yes it didn't quite work for them, although it got them attention. Well that was the story out of [00:33:00] PMQs.

Mark D'Arcy: but no visuals.

Ruth Fox: Next question. Well, it's more of a comment than a question. From anonymous. We do occasionally get anonymous questions in. It's a comment about our discussion in relation to the removal of the remaining hereditary peers from the House of Lords, where we talk about the fact that the part of the deal was to increase the number of retirements on the particularly the Conservative benches among life peers, so that then a group of hereditaries could be pointed back to the House as life peerages.

Anonymous says, this already seems to be having an effect. Seven peers, four Conservatives, three cross bench have recently given notice of their retirement. Well, of course, anonymous, there has been a little bit of a shift since his question was submitted because in fact the numbers have gone up since the 1st of January. By my calculation mark there, I think 19 peers have announced their retirement. There are some quite big names.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, indeed. One of my favourite peers, actually, Peter Hennessy, the [00:34:00] crossbench peer, the historian, the constitutional analyst, he hasn't been around in the chamber very much for health reasons, for quite a while now.

But he was having great fun when he was there and I think it's a great pity he hasn't perhaps had more time in the chamber. He was at one point threatening to write a memoir of his time in the House of Lords, which he wanted provisionally to call Chamber Music. But, he hasn't been there for a while, so I suppose it's fair enough to resign when you can't really participate anymore.

I'm a big fan of Peter and I think he will be missed because he does bring a great breadth of analysis to Lords debates.

Ruth Fox: And some of the names that listeners may recognise, Lord Bragg, Melvyn Bragg.

Mark D'Arcy: Oh, yes.

Ruth Fox: Earl Attlee, who's a Conservative peer, but he's actually the grandson of Clement Attlee and also a bit of a spitting image of Clem Attlee, and of course sits on the Conservative benches. Of course, Clement Attlee was the great labour Prime Minister.

Lord Hugh Dykes, former Conservative, then Lib Dem MP, then Conservative again, I think, then joined the Crossbenches in the House of Lords.

Lord [00:35:00] Julian Fellowes of West Stafford.

Mark D'Arcy: Of course the creator of Downton Abbey.

Ruth Fox: Downton Abbey fame.

Yeah, Baroness Lea of Lymm, the economist, been around for a long time, used to be head of the Centre for Policy studies and many, many other economic roles.

And then not included in that list of 19 are two additional peers who've also retired but with a cloud over them.

Of course, Lord Chadlington and Lord Mandelson, both of whom have got issues in relation to the code of conduct amongst other things. And there've been four deaths since the start of the year. So Lord Triesman, David Triesman, former Labour minister, Lord Flight, Lord Bishop of Guilford, and Lord Wallace of Tankerness.

So all told that means there's 25 peers that have left the House for one reason or another, but of course that's balanced out by the number of peer appointments that have been made and at quite a rate since the New Year. So in terms of the overall numbers, not that much difference really.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, I mean, the departure of the non reprocessed [00:36:00] hereditaries, if you like, at the end of this parliamentary session will make a little bit of a dent on the numbers, but seven or eight leaving is almost certainly gonna be counterbalanced by the influx of newly created peers. So it's not, as you say, gonna make a vast amount of difference to the size of the House. Even though there is a bit of an effort to encourage people who just don't appear to leave, that again is not always easy to implement.

So, you know, if they don't want to go, even if they're not turning up very much, it's quite hard to make them go.

Ruth Fox: And, Mark, we've had an interesting question in from one of our international listeners, Daniel Schumann from the America Governance Institute, who says he's an avid listener and enjoys learning about the British Parliament and how it compares to his own Government and the US Congress.

And we keep him company as he goes for walks in Arlington, Virginia, I think, where he's trying to de-stress from the problems affecting the US Congress. And Daniel's question is about the fact that in the House of Representatives, decisions on appointments to various committees [00:37:00] and other matters are the outcome of what he describes as a combination of constitutional, parliamentary and party rules.

So some organisational decisions have to be ratified by the chamber, but they're actually made by the party. Other decisions are a consequence of the Constitution or whoever can muster a majority.

It's possible, but difficult to hijack the agenda in the House and to move legislation that the majority party leadership opposes.

So he wants to know, he says he's curious about the interplay between party and parliamentary rules in the Commons. We've got a politically independent Speaker, but it's not clear, he says, who chooses ministers and shadow ministers, who appoints members to the select committees, who, if anyone, can constrain or direct party leadership?

And is it possible for backbenchers to hijack parliamentary proceedings? So this is a bit of an essay question Daniel but we will try our best.

Mark D'Arcy: Good heavens, yes, there's an awful lot there to ask. First of all, it's fairly clear who appoints ministers and shadow ministers.

Ministers are appointed by the Prime Minister. [00:38:00] Shadow ministers are appointed by the Leader of the Opposition. Obviously, they take into account internal party considerations about who has to be appointed to what, but it's their decision.

When you come to select committees, there is this interplay that you described between parties and backroom deal making over who gets what select committee.

What happens is, at the start of a Parliament, depending on the strengths of the various parties in the House of Commons, the chairs of select committees are divided up. Typically the governing party will chair the Treasury Select Committee, and then a lot of the other select committees are divided up between the parties. The opposition gets to chair the Backbench Business Committee and the Public Accounts Committee, for example, but the others are divided up according to party strengths. And this time because Labour's so overwhelmingly dominating the numbers in the House of Commons, Labour is chairing most of the select committees.

And there are only a few left to the other parties. So the Conservatives' big chair is the Home Affairs [00:39:00] Committee. The Lib Dems are feeling quite pleased with themselves to be chairing the Health Select Committee this time around.

So the first of all, the allocation of which party provides the chair for a committee is determined by a central deal, and then the House elects, the whole House elects the candidates who vie to be in that chair from a particular party. So there's a whole House selection to determine, for example, which Conservative should then chair the Home Affairs Select Committee.

Ruth Fox: And because the candidates have got to attract support, not just from their own party, but from the opposition they have to garner support from, if you're looking to be a Labour chair, you need some support from the Conservatives to sort of sign your nomination papers and then you've obviously got to appeal to the wider House to win as many votes as possible. So it does mean that in terms of winning out as a chair, you've really got to not appear to be in the Government's lap. You need a degree of independence.

Mark D'Arcy: I think people like the idea of the select committee chairs, the scrutiny is having some level of [00:40:00] independence. I mean, that's possibly less true in this Parliament where the House of Commons is basically two thirds Labour.

In the previous Parliament, what you tend to find is where you had two or three Conservatives vying for the chair of a particular select committee, when they were the governing party, the opposition was often the decisive influence. And they would tend to vote for the person they thought would be most trouble to the government. This time the the mathematics of the House, if you like, the numbers game there, is such that maybe this time it's more about who the Labour MPs like most of the time, essentially.

Ruth Fox: And then the membership is allocated according to the balance of representation in the House.

And then each party votes for the members who put themselves forward from that party to be on the committee. So it's a private arrangement that each party has about to arrange the election of the members of that committee themselves. And it's not terribly transparent how that's all done.

Mark D'Arcy: rules. And it may just be a carve up without the boring formalities of an actual [00:41:00] election. Certainly for some of the smaller parties.

Ruth Fox: And of course, there's then a series of other select committees that are not elected by the House. They're appointed by the whips and these things are all set out in Standing Orders. And again, they'll be allocated as sort of part of the central carve up, who's gonna chair and so on. But they'll be appointed by the party business managers, by the whips.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah. And things like the Intelligence and Security Committee, not technically a select committee of the House, but an advisory committee almost you might say, of parliamentarians. That's all done by internal nominations and deal making essentially, because they want to make sure that you have a set of members of the Intelligence and Security Committee that the security services trust enough to actually talk to with some degree of candour.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. So then next subsection of Daniel's question, is it possible for backbenchers to hijack parliamentary proceedings?

Mark D'Arcy: Yes, it is entirely possible, if you've got a sympathetic speaker who's prepared to stretch proceeds a bit. Now, the classic example of [00:42:00] this was John Bercow who set a precedent for allowing an extra amendment to a Queen's speech. Somehow, magically he came up with a form of words with the aid of his then clerk Robert Rogers, now Lord Lisvane, they came up with this marvellous piece of verbal gymnastics that allowed John Bercow to rationalise allowing an extra amendment to be put to what was then the Queen's speech. And that was a precedent that was taken forward in the Brexit years and used to allow extra amendments to be put down to allow backbench coalitions, cross party coalitions, usually remainer coalitions to try and seize control of the House, to pass legislation, usually to stop a particular kind of no deal Brexit or to stop various manoeuvres that Theresa May and Boris Johnson and others have been planning to try and get Brexit through.

So it is possible, but it takes quite a conjunction of different forces for that to happen.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. And in those sort of periods, you had the break down between the backbenchers and the government about this question of a European referendum. And [00:43:00] then once you get into Brexit, the issue splitting across party lines.

And the sort of the traditional whipping arrangements not really applying. So it is, as you say, it's that conjunction of very special circumstances, which are quite difficult to bring about on any bog standard piece of legislation.

Mark D'Arcy: And what you've also gotta say is that when he became speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle made it quite clear that he wasn't gonna go there himself.

I suppose a future Speaker might decide that they would be prepared to go there, but he said he didn't want to follow that precedent and thought that it should be ruled out in future. So maybe it'll become a lot harder for future backbench coalitions to seize control of the agenda in that way.

Ruth Fox: And that links into Daniel's final point. Are there parliamentary rules a majority cannot alter at will? I mean, we don't have super majorities in standing orders in the ways that other parliaments do. So if there's a majority, there's a majority. And as you say, the sympathetic Speaker who can interpret the rules sometimes, I mean, in defence of John Bercow, it doesn't happen very often. Not many people come to his [00:44:00] defence these days, but John came into to the role of speaker very much promoting himself as a defender of backbench rights, and his argument was there was a wish on the part of backbenchers, a considerable number of backbenchers, to debate these issues and to consider them, and that the rules of the House shouldn't be used in a way to thwart that.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah.

Ruth Fox: And he was giving an opportunity for the House to express itself.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah. You could say it's the Speaker's job to allow the House to get to the decision it wants to take. And the issue after the 2017 general election was that Theresa May's government was trying to behave as if it had a huge majority without the small formality of actually obtaining one at a general election.

So it was a minority government trying to take very big decisions when it didn't have a majority. And it tried by procedural means to kind of bolster itself.

And John Bercow didn't let it. And there was enormous frustration within government about the idea that the rules were being made up by the Speaker as he went along.

But he had a reason to do it.

Ruth Fox: Well, I [00:45:00] hope Daniel that answers your multi-part question. Christmas tree question, in fact. So we've got a final question. I think we've just got time for this Mark. On restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster, this whole long running saga. We've had a question from Ian who says, as a regular listener, thank you for the brilliant podcast. Thank you Ian. And he says, regarding what to do about restoring the Palace of Westminster, I know this option isn't on the table and it's a fantasy thought experiment, but I like the idea of moving to a new building permanently. What are your thoughts on this? A modern purpose-built building has many benefits. It could be a great national design and economic project as the Australian Parliament Building was. Heaven forbid it could even not be in London in this digital age. Sacrilegious idea, I know. And it could bring economic benefits to another part of the country. Question, Mark.

Mark D'Arcy: A sort of British Canberra or Brasilia, because I think it would almost have to be a modern capital city [00:46:00] rather than just a modern Parliament building plumed somewhere else outside the M25.

The difficulty I always find with this idea is I think Parliament has to be right next to the Government.

Parliament needs to be able to whistle up ministers when there's a crisis, not have them get on a train to appear before MPs.

Ruth Fox: I don't think you could guarantee their arrival.

Mark D'Arcy: Hyper optimistic. So I think first of all you'd be talking about not just a Parliament building, but moving the government alongside it as well. I mean, you say, given that this is a digital age, maybe ministers could appear virtually, well, we had a bit of that during the pandemic era and it wasn't a satisfactory way of Scrutinising government. It didn't really work all that well. It was the best that could be done at the time, and it was better than nothing, but it wasn't ideal. I think you still want, even now, ministers appearing in the chamber where members can see the whites of their eyes and the movements of their body language as well as the simple text of what they're trying to say.

Ruth Fox: [00:47:00] Yeah. And there's also not just what goes on in the chamber or in committees itself in terms of looking into the whites of their eyes and getting that direct response. But there's also what goes on in the corridors of power behind the scenes that we don't see. It's the sort of the oil that greases politics, is those conversations in the corridor about an amendment or that help you build a coalition of support among fellow backbenchers for something. The opportunity to grab the ear of a minister for a few moments.

Mark D'Arcy: And going back to what Daniel was saying earlier, the differences between the US Congress and the British Parliament, the big different is British government sits in the British Parliament. And so there is access directly to ministers.

You know, the great ministers don't just appear for occasional grand committee hearings. They're in the chamber. They're making the case directly to legislators in a way that doesn't happen in the US Congress.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. The then broader question Ian about whether or not we should have a new building is a slightly separate question because you could have a new building [00:48:00] in London, in and around Westminster, and I do think this is something that the Government and Parliament may have to confront because if the answer to Restoration and Renewal and the multi-billion pound costs that they are facing, and of a decant from the House of Commons and the House of Lords for extended periods is no, the government won't support that, won't fund it, the question then is well then what?

One option would be a new building. You build that. You then decant everybody into that. And Westminster is a World Heritage site, so you can't just ignore it.

You would have to restore it to some degree, but you could think about how it was gonna be used.

I personally would say in those circumstances, you gut it. You do all the sort of basic work on the mechanical and engineering and sewers and the windows and the roof and so on. But you can do that when it's empty much more quickly and cheaply. And if it's not coming back as a Parliament, then what is it coming back as? And I would say bring it back as a Westminster World Heritage Site visitor centre.

Mark D'Arcy: [00:49:00] Museum of Democracy. And wedding venue.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. There's all sorts of things, ways you could utilise it. So then the question is, well, if you wanted a new building, where does it go? I mean, the options would be. Richmond House, has obviously been touted as an option for the House of Commons, but it's not big enough for the House of Lords.

Mark D'Arcy: This is the old Department of Health building, which is just on Whitehall, little bit up from the existing parliamentary buildings.

Ruth Fox: The House of Lords under the R&R proposals would go into the Queen Elizabeth the Second conference centre. That frankly is a dreadful looking building. I'd raize it to the ground and build something there. The heritage people will no doubt resist that.

If not that, then what? I mean, I've long thought that you ought to look at Victoria Street as an option. Through compulsory purchase, could you basically take hold of some of that land and use it to build out parliamentary and government facilities?

I mean, at the moment, anybody who walks down Victoria Street, it's been a building site at various places for quite a long time. They keep knocking down the buildings there. Yeah. And [00:50:00] raising up these office towers.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah.

Ruth Fox: Most of which are half empty.

Mark D'Arcy: A canyon of unattractive office buildings, basically.

Ruth Fox: I have, you know, I am no expert, I have no idea what the cost would be, but it seems to me that if you're not going to repair the palace, carrying on as we are is not an option. So think more radically about the alternatives. And if it is a new building, it's gotta be near Westminster. So, you know, are there options in and around Victoria or somewhere nearby that you could look at some new design planning?

Mark D'Arcy: I have occasionally seen proposals, why not just build a new building on St. James' Park or Green Park? Taking away public Green Park wouldn't be wildly popular, but then neither is spending several billion quid on restoring the existing parliamentary buildings. So there is no option that's very attractive and almost anything you do is going to be rather expensive.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. So we don't know when actually, when this is. Gonna be debated in the House of Commons? No, there was a lot of speculation that it would be before the Easter recess. That hasn't happened.

Mark D'Arcy: Didn't say which Easter.

Ruth Fox: No, [00:51:00] I don't know when. Maybee they'll squeeze it in before the end of the session, but if not, you're then kicking it into to late May.

Possibly longer. Watch this space.

Mark D'Arcy: I still think you'd be lucky if we get it before Christmas, but there we go.

Ruth Fox: So Mark, I think that's all our questions for the moment. So if we take another short break and come back and discuss written parliamentary questions.

Mark D'Arcy: Yes, indeed.

So we'll move from questions to questions.

Ruth Fox: See you in a minute.

Mark D'Arcy: And we are back. And one of the interesting developments in Parliament since the general election has been the explosion in the number of written parliamentary questions. The rate at which they're being submitted has almost doubled, and that has all sorts of implications for the workload on government departments and for the significance of the questions themselves. Is the sheer number diluting the importance of the parliamentary question?

The days when people were talking hush tones about the danger that questions would be asked in the House about something is rather [00:52:00] reduced if so many questions are being asked about so many issues. So what's going on?

Well, Ruth and I have to help us with all this, back in the studio, Matthew England, the Hansard Society's researcher, and Matthew, you and Ruth together have put in a submission to the Commons Procedure Committee about this issue.

Why are there so many questions? What does it mean? What are the knock on effects? So talk us through what the issues are here.

Matthew England: So the first question that we looked at was just establishing the premise of the question, i.e., that there has been an explosion in the volume of written parliamentary questions, which I think some people have questioned, but the data seems to show that there is such an explosion.

So the data we have is that between 2010 and 2024, before the election, an average of 296 written parliamentary questions were tabled across all MPs on an average sitting day. Since the election that's gone up to about 450, so a roughly 50% increase since the start of the [00:53:00] election.

One other thing we found was that that sessional data masks something that's happened within that session. So not only is this session higher than previous sessions, but the later parts of this session have been much higher than the earlier parts of this session. So if we just take the last six months of 2025, for instance, then we see that over 600, 604, written parliamentary questions were tabled on an average sitting day, which is more than double the pre-election rate.

So there's definitely a big increase that's happened here.

Ruth Fox: We'd kind of expect that to some degree in that the early months of a session, if a new Parliament, when you've got so many new MPs, they're finding their feet. But many of those MPs are now making up for lost time in the early part of the session.

We should probably establish Mark the importance of written parliamentary questions. In our evidence, we talked about them as a vital component of the parliamentary system. They're used by MPs to obtain information from ministers that they can't get through other means, they're about pressing the government to take action, to get a [00:54:00] specific attention on an issue, of course, it's a valuable means of getting the issue and perhaps more importantly, the government's response on the public record.

Mark D'Arcy: Sort of the building blocks for making a case. So you establish a certain set of facts, then you ask a minister about them in oral questions in the chamber.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. They're often used as part of a wider campaign, but of course such a significant increase in the number of questions poses a resource question. How do the parliamentary authorities deal with it in terms of the actual administration of the system when MPs are submitting them, but then also how does government deal with them when they're coming on in at such a rate?

And Matthew, how do MPs actually table these questions? Because there are different routes they can use, aren't there?

Matthew England: First of all, the distinction between a named day question and an ordinary question. So the distinction being that a named day question is a question where you specify a day on which you want the question to be answered. And that tends to be a shorter timeline than the ordinary questions. And [00:55:00] they tend to be used for more urgent questions.

And an ordinary question is just a question that doesn't have a specified deadline. Although the government tends to answer them within seven working days, and they're considered late if they're not answered within 10 working days.

There are different routes by which those questions can be tabled. So you can just go down to the Table Office and hand them in printed form. So do a hard copy question. Or you can submit them by the e-tabling facility that the House of Commons operates. And there's an increasing percentage of questions being submitted by that facility.

And the use of the Table Office as a means of submitting questions is declining.

Ruth Fox: And are there any limits on the number of questions that MPs can submit by these routes?

Matthew England: Yes. So, Named Day questions because they're the more urgent ones have a limit of five per day, so you can only use a limited number of those. So that forces MPs to prioritise the questions for which they can name a specific day to be answered.

Ordinary questions don't have an [00:56:00] overall limit on how many you can submit, but there is a limit on how many you could submit per day via the e-tabling facility. You can only submit 20 e-tabled questions of any kind on a particular day, and that's sort of a technical limit designed to stop the e tabling system being overwhelmed.

But in theory for ordinary questions, because there's no limit, you can just go down to the Table Office and hand in as many as you like in hard copy because the limit only applies to e-tabled questions.

Mark D'Arcy: And you can imagine that if there is this vast increase in the number of questions coming in, that the units that there are in each government department devoted to answering parliamentary questions are feeling a bit overwhelmed.

That's a difficulty in itself, which means that presumably more people have to be assigned to that unit to get the questions answered in good time. And every now and then you see the Procedure Committee hauling in ministers from a government department that isn't managing to answer questions in good time and giving them a good telling off.

Matthew England: There's a real incentive amongst departments not to be the worst performer because the Procedure Committee can't invite every minister to come at the [00:57:00] end of a session and explain themselves. They'll only invite the worst performers. So the ministers have a bit of pressure, even if they're not doing particularly well, not to be the worst.

Ruth Fox: And do we know what's driving this? I mean, this isn't just sort of new MPs making use of this facility, doing it randomly. What are the pressures in the system that are driving the increase, do we think?

Matthew England: It's difficult to tell just from looking at the data what the explanation is. I mean, we hypothesised quite a few potential explanations.

One of which was just the pressure to demonstrate parliamentary activity to constituents and to the press to say, I've tabled this many questions this week, and to be a top performer in the measurements that appear online of how many questions that a member has tabled.

Mark D'Arcy: So this is, theyworkforyou.com and so forth?

Where you'd show up well in their statistics.

Matthew England: Yeah. Another is the growth in the number of members' staff, the more members' staff there are, the greater the capacity of MPs and their offices to draft and research these questions. And the more that end up being tabled. [00:58:00]

Mark D'Arcy: I suppose the nasty thought occurs to me that maybe the greater the capacity of MPs' staff, the greater the capacity of particularly the younger MPs' staff to use chat GPT or something like that to draft extra questions.

Matthew England: Yes. I mean, the government in its evidence to the Procedure Committee suggested that AI might be a possible explanation for why there were so many questions being asked. And as did Sky News, when they did a report on this earlier this year, suggest that part of the reason was that MPs and their staff were using AI to draft batches of dozens or hundreds of questions to be submitted all at once.

Ruth Fox: I mean, that could be part of the explanation, but I don't think it's the whole. There's also questions about whether the House authorities are perhaps as strict as they perhaps were in the past in terms of what they allow to be submitted.

And this whole question about whether or not the House authorities or the clerks actually should have any role in this, and whether they should be able to say to MPs actually that's not permissible has been a source of friction with some of the smaller parties who are a bit unhappy.

A big issue that is highlighted by MPs who are on the higher end, shall we say, of the submissions, is that they're [00:59:00] just not getting good answers from ministers. In some respects, just not getting any real answer at all. And therefore they're submitting follow up questions.

Is that reflected in the data, Matthew?

Matthew England: Not exactly, no. I mean. It depends how you count a question as a follow up or a chasing question. But if you want to ask a question that's directly following up on a question you've previously asked, you have a standard form of words that you would use.

So in pursuance of the question of this date with this question number, then ask the follow up question. So we can search through the questions that have been asked and see what percentage of questions come with that form of words at the start, to try and measure the number of follow up questions that are being asked.

And the proportion has stayed roughly the same over this session. It doesn't seem to be the cause of the increase.

Ruth Fox: So they're not formally being followed up, but it may be that other additional follow up type questions are being done, but they are being drafted differently, which is obviously very difficult to track in any statistically accurate way,

Mark D'Arcy: Which all leaves us with a question. Does this [01:00:00] actually add anything to the sum of parliamentary scrutiny or is this all just a load of frenetic activity signifying very little at the end of it all? How do you tell that, I suppose a very good question, but

Ruth Fox: Well, one issue, Matthew, is in terms of the MPs that are submitting the big number, the big volume of questions, who are they and which parties are they coming from?

You know, are they Labour backbenchers? Are they opposition backbenchers?

Matthew England: There's two things to note here. One is that, there is quite a heavy concentration of questions among a small number of MPs. So we know in our evidence, for instance, that 22% of all written parliamentary questions submitted over the period we looked at were submitted by just 2% of the question submitters. So 10 times the proportion you would expect.

It is true that opposition members submit vastly more questions than government members. So we showed that the average non-Labour MP submitted four times as many written parliamentary [01:01:00] questions as the average Labour MP, which I suppose you would expect. I mean, Labour MPs have less reason to question the government because they're less likely to disagree with the things that the Government are doing,

Mark D'Arcy: And they have more informal channels to ask questions through as well, I suppose.

Do we have the names of a few individuals who are asking these questions? Who were the big questioners?

Matthew England: I don't have the list in front of me, but some of the names that came up were Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty, the Lib Dem MP Dr Al Pinkerton came up quite a lot, the Reform MP, James McMurdock, and the former Reform MP Rupert Lowe, all of those were big question submitters.

I think in terms of general characteristics of question submitters, I think if you look at the top 20 question submitters over the period that we looked at, none of them were Labour MPs and 11 of them were Conservatives, five were Liberal Democrats, two were Independents, both of whom were former Reform MPs, one was Reform, and one was a Democratic Unionist. So they were all on the opposition benches.

Ruth Fox: So that supports the idea that Labour backbenchers, [01:02:00] it's not just a question that they don't wanna question the government necessarily, they've got other opportunities, they've got other avenues to get information, you know, talking to ministers in the corridors, in the voting lobby and so on. They're more likely to be able to get some direct answers that the opposition MPs don't.

But there's also a broader question about how other parliamentary mechanisms are being used by MPs and whether we are seeing an increase in submissions in those areas as well.

And particularly early day motions, Matthew, I mean, I'm very struck that a lot of MPs regard them as parliamentary graffiti. And these are used a lot by campaign groups to get issues onto the record. They're not debated and voted on. They're motions for an early day, which means basically they're never gonna see the light of day.

Mark D'Arcy: The early day never dawns.

Ruth Fox: But your evidence to the procedure committee suggests there's quite a big increase in those as well.

Matthew England: Yes, exactly. If you look at the first six months of this parliamentary session and compare it with the final six months of 2025, you can see that the number of [01:03:00] EDMs submitted per sitting day doubled in much the same way that it doubled for the number of written parliamentary questions for each sitting day, which might indicate that both represent a common trend, which is a general and quite widely spread rise in parliamentary activity.

And that may give weight to some of the hypotheses we suggested earlier about pressure for MPs to show measurable parliamentary activity to their constituents and to the public. And also possibly about the use of AI and greater research capacity from MPs' staff.

Ruth Fox: And what's the cost of all of this, do we know?

Matthew England: We don't have good up-to-date data, but the government's evidence to the Procedure Committee suggested that the average cost when they'd assessed it last in 2012 was 164 pounds per written parliamentary question.

Ruth Fox: I suggest it would have gone up since then somewhat.

Matthew England: Yes. But they've indicated that they are conducting a review of the cost of written parliamentary questions, and are gonna submit that in due course.

Mark D'Arcy: And of course, one of the excuses that is occasionally used for not answering a question is that the cost of gathering the information would be [01:04:00] disproportionate.

So government departments do have an eye on how much it costs to provide Parliament with the information MPs asked for.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Well, we await Mark the outcome of the Procedure Committee inquiry, because they're delving into this.

Mark D'Arcy: I look forward to you and Matthew giving evidence in front of them.

Ruth Fox: You never know. And it'd be interesting to see what they make of it and actually whether they do blame Chat GPT or whether they accept that there are other pressures at work. In terms of our evidence, matthew, you came up with a few suggested solutions to the Procedure Committee about ways to sort of better manage this. What did you recommend?

Matthew England: The main solution that we looked at was adjustments to the limits on the number of written parliamentary questions that can be submitted. The level at which that limit is set is primarily a matter for the House itself, but we've provided some information that might inform that decision.

So we look at, in particular, the current limit on e-tabling questions, which is set at 20, and specifically we look at the background to why that limit was first introduced. So back [01:05:00] in the first session of the 2010 to 2015 Parliament, the Procedure Committee looked at the volume of Written Parliamentary Questions that were then being submitted and decided that there were too many and that there needed to be a limit imposed, and that that limit would be put on the e-tabling system.

At the time, the numbers that they were concerned with were 369 written parliamentary questions being tabled per sitting day. And they suggested that their objective in imposing the limit of 20 questions per sitting day was to see fewer and better questions tabled

Ruth Fox: Better.

Matthew England: Whether or not there are better questions tabled as a result of the limit, the limit has clearly failed in its objective to achieve fewer questions because the number of questions being submitted is now almost double the number of questions that were being submitted when they were concerned about the numbers being too high. So the question is, is the limit serving its purpose at 20? And it seems to me that it isn't.

Ruth Fox: Well, we'll see what the Procedure Committee makes of it all, see whether they decide that in fact it's Chat GPT or something [01:06:00] else.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, I think that's all we've got time for in this episode, Ruth. We're gonna be taking a little bit of a break over Easter. We'll be back after Easter. Look out for us. Then we'll be in the buildup to the King speech, the last throes of the washup as we were discussing earlier. Much to talk about then.

Ruth Fox: Yep. Before we go Mark, though, I just wanted to do a quick thank you to Matthew for joining us on the podcast. Hope you've enjoyed it.

Matthew England: My pleasure.

And, no doubt you'll be joining us in

Ruth Fox: a future episode to talk through the next round of the government's legislative programme. And, listeners we'll be putting out on social media some of our greatest hits on the podcast. So if you've missed some of the recent episodes, you'll have an opportunity to catch up and, can I make my regular appeal?

If you're enjoying the podcast, can you share it on social media? Do a repost and a like, and, of course, share it with your family and friends. Help us to build the audience, and grow the podcast. It's one of the ways you can really help us, to develop and ensure that Parliament Matters reaches many more listeners.

See you soon.

Mark D'Arcy: Join us in a few weeks time.

Ruth Fox: Bye.[01:07:00]

Intro: Parliament Matters is produced by the Hansard Society and supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. For more information, visit hansardsociety.org.uk/pm or find us on social media at HansardSociety.