• Press Notice, 15 May 2026 (Intelligence and Security Committee)

• A Humble Address: How MPs confronted the Mandelson scandal - Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 130 (Hansard Society)

• Government response to Humble Address motion of 4 February 2026

• Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) Regulations 2026

• Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

• General Trade Licence for sanctioned processed oil products

• The valedictory House of Lords speech of Peter Hennessy, Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield, 18 May 2026

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

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

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

Mark D’Arcy: And I’m Mark D’Arcy. And coming up in this week’s edition:

Ruth Fox: High politics, international scandal and parliamentary procedure collide in the latest eruption over the Mandelson files. We talk to Conservative MP Sir Jeremy Wright, who is at the centre of the latest Commons row.

Mark D’Arcy: As the winners are announced in the private members bill ballot, are we about to see the second coming of the assisted dying bill?

Ruth Fox: And what is the Government doing and not doing over Russian sanctions? You’ve guessed it. It’s a matter of delegated legislation.[00:01:00]

Mark D’Arcy: But first, Ruth, the rumbling controversy over the appointment of Peter Mandelson as our man in Washington has never really gone away, but it resurfaced with a bang in the Commons this week when the Intelligence and Security Committee, the ISC, took the unusual, almost unprecedented step of publicly complaining about the Government’s handling of the release of the documents.

Back in February, you’ll remember the Government was forced to agree the terms of a humble address to the King mandating the release of all the papers around the appointment of the twice resigned Cabinet Minister to our embassy in Washington.

Ruth Fox: Yes, the ISC was given the job of overseeing what sections of the documents could be redacted, in effect, blacked out for reasons of national security and international relations.

Now they’re complaining that the Government is redacting sections of these documents for other reasons, reasons not envisaged in the humble address. Sir Jeremy Wright is the senior MP on the ISC and on Tuesday he asked an urgent question in the Commons. We [00:02:00] met him later to ask him what his concerns were and what he thought of the answers he’d received from the Government minister Darren Jones.

Sir Jeremy Wright MP: The job that we have been commissioned to do by the House of Commons is quite different to what we normally do as a committee, which is to produce our own reports. This time, what we were being asked to do is on behalf of the House as a whole, have a look at the redactions, which the Government was proposing to make to material in relation to Peter Mandelson, that they were obliged to disclose under the terms of the humble address agreed on the 4th of February, and determine for ourselves whether we thought those redactions were appropriate.

And in two particular regards, those redactions could be made. They could be made either because, without the redactions, the material in question would be prejudicial to national security, or alternatively prejudicial to international relations. So our job was to have a look at the redactions the Government proposed to make for either of those reasons and decide whether we agreed that actually they [00:03:00] were appropriate redactions.

And without disclosing too much, I can tell you that on some occasions we have agreed, and on some occasions we haven’t. And the final word is ours and the House of Commons was very clear about that. So we were looking at documents that were redacted for the purposes of protecting international relations or national security.

But what we noticed was that there were also redactions on some of those documents for other reasons. Now, we didn’t have the role of deciding whether those redactions were appropriate or not, but we could see that the Government was proposing to make them. And so it occurred to us that it would be important for the Government to not just level with the House of Commons about what redactions they were making and why, but more importantly than that, if those redactions were beyond the scope of permitted redactions under the terms of the humble address, as agreed, and of course, as you’ll remember, the Government did agree the humble address, there was no vote in the end, it was all agreed, then the House of Commons should be told that, and the [00:04:00] Government should come back to the House of Commons to ask specific permission to make redactions for those other reasons.

That clearly hadn’t happened. I’d raised it a couple of times in the chamber. We raised it privately with officials too, and we were concerned that if we didn’t raise it, no one else could, because of course, we are the only ones that have seen the documents with those alternative redactions on them.

Otherwise, what will happen is when the documents are finally revealed, they will have other redactions on them, but nobody will know what’s under those redactions but us. So we felt the need to do it for those reasons.

Mark D’Arcy: So what you are overseeing is the process of making sure that nothing that’s prejudicial to national security or international relations is revealed inadvertently in those documents, but the Government’s also blacking stuff out of the text for other reasons. And what might those be?

Sir Jeremy Wright MP: Yes. So there’s probably two sets of other reasons. First is a list of reasons why redactions are made that the Government has to be fair to it warned the House of Commons [00:05:00] about, so we’ve already had one dump of documents and with that collection of documents that have been released was another document that said this is the Government’s approach to redaction.

So on the 11th of March, that extra document was produced alongside the documents that were revealed. And in that document the Government produced about its approach to redaction, it said, we’ll redact individual’s email addresses and phone numbers. We’ll redact the identities of junior civil servants.

We will redact personal data of third parties where not in scope of the motion, and we will redact for reasons of legal professional privilege. And then it said in that same document, and I quote, it may also be necessary for the Government to make further redactions in future publications based on other public interest principles, including commercially sensitive information.

So the Government was putting the House of Commons on notice at that point that there were a number of reasons why we might redact beyond international relations and [00:06:00] national security. But then also saying, and beyond even this extra list, there may be further reasons why we seek to redact. And what we know is that that was done because we’ve seen that happen in the documents that we’ve had our eyes on.

And of course we know that there are vetting documents that the Government is not disclosing. And Darren Jones on Tuesday made reference to that and to the reasons why the Government were not prepared to release those documents. And we might come back to that. So I guess the answer to your question is we knew there were other categories for redaction, partly because the Government had noted the fact. They hadn’t, I will observe, come to Parliament and asked for specific permission to do that, but they’d said, look, we always do this, every Government always do this. Nothing to see here. But then of course, hinted at even further redactions for even further reasons beyond that. And it seemed to me and to us that what ought to happen is the Government ought to be transparent about the reasons for [00:07:00] redaction.

And more than that, because the humble address is extraordinarily broad, I think you could make a reasonable argument too broad, they really didn’t have the option of only agreeing privately not to supply things to the House of Commons. In my view, they had to come back to the House of Commons. And if something was to be redacted beyond the terms of the humble address, then an amendment to the humble address needed to be proposed and agreed.

Ruth Fox: So do you think actually in terms of what the Government would like to redact, they might well have a case, but it’s actually, it’s the principle of you can’t do this without the House’s permission. There’s an accountability question here, but actually if they came back to the House and asked for permission, they might well get it and that your committee might well agree that actually quite a number of these things should be redacted.

Sir Jeremy Wright MP: Yes, I think that’s exactly it. I think that we would have considerable sympathy with the Government’s argument on, for example, vetting files. So what we’re talking about here is the information that people were asked to provide about Peter Mandelson during the process of [00:08:00] vetting him or indeed information he provided himself, which of course is highly sensitive.

But more than that, the argument that’s been made to us, which we broadly accept, is that if people who are subject to vetting, or people who are being asked about those subject to vetting during the vetting process, believe that there’s a chance that what they tell the vetting process will one day be made public, then they’re likely to be less forthcoming, less honest about the information that they give and that will inhibit the vetting process.

The whole point of vetting is that people are brutally honest, incredibly forthcoming, even when it’s difficult for them to be that forthcoming because you want to know absolutely everything in order to conduct an effective vetting process. Anything that inhibits that, inhibits vetting, and anything that makes vetting less effective, I think you can argue is detrimental to national security.

So there is a perfectly rational argument to be made. In outline, Darren Jones was making it on [00:09:00] Tuesday, and I think the Intelligence and Security Committee has huge sympathy with that argument. What we don’t believe though, is the Government is simply entitled to assume the House of Commons agreement to that argument. It must come and make it, and if the House of Commons agrees as I think it probably should and would, then of course there’ll be a moment for the House of Commons to say: take your point, we will amend the humble address to say, yes, of course we accept, you’ll redact for those reasons. I don’t think the Government has anything to fear here. First of all, it has a very large parliamentary majority in the House of Commons. But secondly, I think that it has a very clear, persuasive, rational argument to make. But our point is that you can’t avoid as Government making it. They have to come to Parliament and make the argument because, for good or ill, they are stuck with the terms of the humble address as it’s drafted and I think it’s very, very hard to argue that, in the terms of the humble address as drafted, there’s sufficient latitude for the Government now to redact for these other reasons.

Mark D’Arcy: Is part of the issue here that the humble address [00:10:00] was basically cobbled together during the debate? People were producing manuscript amendments at the last minute because what the Government had initially proposed wasn’t satisfactory to the House. So you’ve got something that was perhaps too rapidly produced.

Sir Jeremy Wright MP: Well, I mean, look, I think, I mean there were several stages to the production process, if I can put it like that. So the original humble address, which was drafted by opposition front benchers, I wasn’t involved in that process, was very broad.

As I say, it asked for all documents relating to the appointment of Peter Mandelson and all documents relating to his time as ambassador. Now of course, what that means is that all of the diplomatic telegrams that pass between Peter Mandelson and anybody else were within scope of the humble address.

That is why my committee has been spending so many hours working through them. Because there are an awful lot, as you would expect. So huge breadth there. Now the Government then proposed an amendment and I don’t know how long it took to think about it, but it was there on [00:11:00] the order paper for all to see, and on the 4th of February, which said, we’ll perhaps accept that, but we will not disclose papers prejudicial to UK national security or international relations.

And I’m afraid, given the atmosphere of distrust that pervaded this whole process, the House of Commons, I think, took the view that, well you could hide all sorts of stuff under that. So we’re not going to accept that you Government get to decide what you hold back for those reasons. So what we need is a mechanism to keep you honest on that point and that was the Intelligence and Security Committee, and that I did have some involvement in because as deputy chair and, and therefore in the Commons, where our chair is in the Lords, and he was, incidentally, involved in the process too, it was right, I think for us to say, well look, we think this is broadly speaking the sort of thing the Intelligence and Security Committee was invented for. If there is material that needs to be scrutinised, requires some parliamentary [00:12:00] oversight, but is sufficiently sensitive that it can’t be shared with everybody, then it’s the sort of thing that the ISC does.

So perfectly reasonable I think for us to offer our services to break the deadlock here. Then the Government agreed that that would be a sensible amendment to its amendment. And now all of that you’re right, happened behind the Speaker’s chair very quickly when the Government was obviously in some considerable political trouble.

The reason all of this was being conceded is not because the Government felt that it would do so out of the goodness of its heart that day. It was doing it because it faced a substantial rebellion on its own backbenches. So there was considerable political jeopardy for the Government, considerable pressure of time to get it done.

And that is why I suspect you are suggesting it was done in a rush. You are absolutely right, but what I think wasn’t explored at that point, and that probably is because of the rush, was the other reasons the Government might subsequently wish to redact for. But that’s fine if the Government subsequently discovers there are other good reasons for redaction, and [00:13:00] we’ve discussed that those might in fact indeed genuinely be good reasons, then I think there is a way of dealing with it and that is to come back to the Commons to say, look, currently on our books is a humble address.

We’ve now decided that there may be other good reasons beyond those we agreed during the process of agreeing the humble address that we think we need to redact for. We’d like your permission House of Commons to redact for those reasons too. And I think the Government needed to do that and still hasn’t done that. Because it hasn’t done that, hence the urgent question because we’re running out of time. If at the end of this process the Government produces the final tranche of documents and says, as it doubtless will, right, there you are then House of Commons, that’s everything, job done, move on, we’re not gonna talk about this anymore, then I don’t think that would be a reasonable reflection of their obligations under the humble address as currently drafted.

And again, I’m perfectly prepared to listen to, perhaps even accept, arguments about a redraft or refining of the humble address, but I [00:14:00] do not think it’s appropriate for Government to make those decisions without the consent of the House of Commons whose judgement on the humble address is what matters.

Ruth Fox: During the course of the urgent question and Darren Jones’ response, it became clear that what we are looking at is a huge disclosure of documents. He described it as, I think the biggest volume of documents under a humble address ever presented to Parliament. Can you take us behind the scenes a bit, giving us a flavour, a bit of colour, how has it affected your committee?

So do you all have to gather together in one place, in a secret location, private location to look at these documents together for days on end? Or is it a steady stream coming through each week and what impact has it had on your other work?

Sir Jeremy Wright MP: Well there there’s a mixture of the familiar and the different here.

I mean we do meet in a secure location anyway. And we meet all together and it’s very important that when the committee makes decisions, we do make them collectively. That’s part of, I think, the underlying authority of the committee. It’s a cross party committee and we do quite genuinely operate in a [00:15:00] nonpartisan way.

I have never seen party politics operate in the committee. I hope I never do. I think it’s very important that it doesn’t. So secrecy is absolutely part of our daily business. As are very large collections of documents, we quite often see very substantial amounts of documentation and we need to see it in paper form because it isn’t secure to communicate it electronically.

So we can’t, I’m afraid to sit at home and read them on email. We have to go physically to our office and read them there. So all of that very familiar. We got the documents in more than one batch, but we have put aside all other work in order to complete this task. As I say, it’s unusual in the sense that this is a direct commission from the House of Commons and to do something that is part familiar and part unfamiliar.

Because considering documents for their impact on national security is absolutely bread and butter for us. But doing so for their impact on international relations is not. So we needed to consider [00:16:00] something less familiar to us, which is that international relations impact. And in order to do so, we took some additional evidence in order to equip ourselves as best we could to do that task.

But it was a very specific commission. And also what was unusual is that normally speaking, what we are doing is producing a report of our own. We weren’t doing that here. We were looking at other people’s documents and considering redactions to them. So what we might do as a committee on occasion is say, well look, we’ll reword our report to avoid a particular national security revelation problem.

We couldn’t do that here, so we couldn’t reword anything. We had to either leave it as it was or take things out. So combination, I think of the familiar and the different. But on the issue of impact on other work, it’s been considerable. We’ve really not had the bandwidth to do anything else at all while we’ve conducted this process.

And we’ve sat there for hour upon hour, upon hour looking at these documents. And then in cases where there [00:17:00] was a wish to persist on Government side with the argument that we still want to redact, even when we initially said, we don’t think you should, then we heard the argument again, and considered it again and made a final decision.

So this has been a fairly extensive process. It’s had huge impact on our staff who’ve been fantastic, I have to say, at turning around an immense amount of work in a very short space of time in order to try and help the Government get these documents delivered to the wider House of Commons as soon as possible.

But I’m afraid it has meant that everything else we’ve been doing has been pushed sideways while we’ve done it.

Mark D’Arcy: The issue of when the whole document dump is finally released to the House of Commons is beginning to loom as well. And one question that was raised several times during the answer to the urgent question on Tuesday was, would it be before or after the by-election at which Andy Burnham is seeking to return to Parliament? So would it be before or after the Makerfield by-election on June the 18th, and do you have an answer [00:18:00] to that one?

Sir Jeremy Wright MP: Well, I don’t, and you are right that that was a question asked several times, and a journalist of your experience will not have failed to notice that it wasn’t answered by the Minister either.

And he would know I wouldn’t. So I don’t know what you can draw from that. The Government’s stated intent throughout this process has been to get the documents processed and revealed where they can be as soon as possible. That’s what ministers have said on many an occasion. We have done as a committee everything we can to facilitate that.

We have turned around these documents really remarkably quickly, given the scale of the challenge. So I would not accept that any part of any delay is down to the Intelligence and Security Committee. It most certainly isn’t. We have completed our work on the documents the Government has given us, so there is no impediment on our side to the Government publishing them at any time.

Darren Jones’ argument was, well, look, people have got to read it. Well that’s [00:19:00] true. But the sooner you give them to us, the sooner we can read them. So I don’t think that’s a reason not to publish. He also made some very strange remarks about parliamentary time being required for this process. Now I can see that parliamentary time should be needed in order for people to ask questions.

Having digested these documents and if necessary, challenge ministers on what’s not there. But they’re not gonna be able to do that, I’m afraid, until they’ve read them themselves. And I think this will be a very substantial number of documents. So the chances of anybody being able to do that on the day that they are first released is minimal.

And one of the deficiencies, in my humble opinion in our parliamentary process here is that statements are made very, very shortly before Members of Parliament are expected to respond to them. And that means that you have trouble enough, frankly, working out what’s really going on and asking properly considered and intelligent questions about it with a normal [00:20:00] statement, which would be much, much shorter.

A matter of two, three pages. If you’ve got hundreds of pages, that’s clearly impossible. So I don’t think that we need a huge amount of parliamentary time when the thing is originally released. We are gonna need much more subsequently. So probably a week or so later when people have had the chance to read it.

Ruth Fox: You’ve obviously been looking in your committee at documents where the Government wants to make redactions. Have you seen the material which is not redacted? Do you have any sense of, of the actual volume here and you’re talking about, you know, it’s going to take possibly days to read this stuff. So are we looking at multiple volumes here?

Is that what you, and and are you confident that the Government has actually met not just the redactions issue, but also the scope? Have they covered off everything within scope, do you think? Because that’s, it’s such a broad, humble address and request that that’s totally quite tricky. They may have missed things and you, you might not know.

Sir Jeremy Wright MP: Yes. Well I think that’s a risk and of course we don’t know what we don’t know. So [00:21:00] I can tell you what, well, I can’t tell you, but I could tell you what we have seen. I can’t tell you what we haven’t seen. And of course we have only seen documents where on those documents there’s a proposed redaction for reasons of potential prejudice to national security, to international relations.

So I have no idea whether that’s 80% or 8% or 1% of the full total. I can’t tell you that I simply don’t know. But all the indications we have, both from the Government and, indeed, from the Speaker, is that this is a very, very substantial amount of documentation, and so I think it’s reasonable to expect that people are not going to be able to just flick through and get an instant idea.

Also, of course, my experience of redacted documents is that it sometimes takes a few readings to work out what on earth you’re looking at, because the redactions make it a very disjointed read. So I don’t think we can realistically expect Members of Parliament to respond meaningfully to these documents [00:22:00] until they’ve had a good number of days, and I think it will be days, to read them properly.

And the whole purpose of the exercise, as I say from the Government’s perspective and I think from the country’s perspective is to try and understand what went on here. And if you want to understand that, then you need to read these documents properly and then you need to ask questions about what they reveal or don’t reveal.

And as you say, it may well be that the Government’s holding things back, but if people read these documents and think, hang on a second, there’s surely something beyond this, then that’s why they need to be given the opportunity to challenge ministers and say, are you really sure you’ve given us everything?

Now I will say, my sense is that the civil servants who’ve been involved in this process have been working heroically hard to try and turn around the request that the House of Commons has made of them. But I can’t say that the Government has given everything it should have done under the terms of this humble address.

I can’t possibly give that endorsement because I haven’t seen everything that they intend to disclose, let alone [00:23:00] anything they don’t intend to disclose, unless they’ve told me or us that there is something that they’re not disclosing. Now, the only thing they’ve said, specifically, they are not disclosing is the original vetting file.

That’s the only thing I think I can specifically refer to as having been discussed by Government, by saying, look, we’ve got this, but we’re not giving it to you. Beyond that, there’s very little wriggle room in the humble address actually for the Government not to hand things over. They’ve got two choices, as I see it in the wording of the humble address, either to give it to the House of Commons as a whole, or if they don’t want to do that, to give it to the Intelligence and Security Committee for us to consider.

And it is our choice whether the whole House of Commons should subsequently see it either unredacted or redacted. Those are the only two options, which is why if they want to employ a third option, in my view, they need to come back to the House of Commons and say, can we please have the option of something else, which is to say, we’re not gonna give you this and these are the good reasons why not.

Mark D’Arcy: And what’s the end game to this [00:24:00] process? There’s a whole spectrum of possible outcomes to the disclosure of these documents. Prime Minister totally vindicated to Prime Minister was clearly wrong in what he said to the House and may indeed have actively misled the house about whether due process was followed in the appointment of Peter Mandelson.

How does that play out now? I mean, I’m not asking you to come to a verdict, uh, but how, how does this play out? Is there going to be an all singing, all dancing debate on the contents of these documents at some point?

Sir Jeremy Wright MP: Well, I think you are right. That’s the range of possible outcomes. I suppose I might mischievously wonder whether the Prime Minister will still be there by the time we get to the end of this process in order for us to throw him out for it.

But yes, I think all those outcomes are possible and it will depend on what’s in this pile of documents and what conclusions people reach about them. But as I say, the question of how we go about considering them will be a combination of what time the Government wishes to offer because contrary to the impression Darren Jones was giving on Tuesday, the Government decides what the agenda for the parliamentary [00:25:00] day is.

And so if they wanna make time available for this, they most certainly can. If they choose not to, and the House of Commons believes that there is nonetheless a debate that needs having, there are other means to get it. Either opposition days where the opposition can decide, well, we’re gonna take some of the time allocated to us and use it for this purpose.

Or in even more exceptional circumstances you can apply to the Speaker for an emergency debate, which would be given three hours in a subsequent day. I don’t know whether he would do that. That’s a matter for the Speaker. But there are ways in which the House of Commons can debate this if it wants to. I would hope that the Government would have the sense to say, look, this is a big deal, we’ve given you a lot of documentation, you need time to absorb it, but then we’ll make available a Minister at the very least in a statement to say, if you’ve got questions, we’ll try and answer them.

Mark D’Arcy: And one warning shot that was fired during that course of that urgent question was from David Davis, a veteran Conservative MP, who was suggesting that he [00:26:00] might put down a motion of contempt of the House against the Prime Minister if he didn’t feel all the proper documents had been disclosed.

I kind of felt there was a certain slight relish on the faces of Conservative MPs, the prospect of returning that treatment to Sir Keir Starmer after he did it to Boris Johnson a few years back.

Sir Jeremy Wright MP: Well, I, my own view is we should all be very careful about using cudgels that can be used against us one day or indeed already have been.

The cycle has to stop sooner or later. I have the perhaps heretical view that it’s wholly inappropriate actually to use humble addresses as a device of political debate. We were wrong to do it here. The Labour Party was wrong to do it when they were in opposition. I think there’s something distasteful personally about involving the Monarch in what’s a political discussion, but be that as it may, there is a humble address on the books now. We have agreed it, it is a fact. If the House of Commons believes that the Government has deliberately refused to comply with its terms, then I think [00:27:00] there is an arguable case for David Davis or anyone else to make. But as of yet, none of us have seen the documents and it’ll be very hard to reach that judgement, I think, until we all do.

But look, I take the view that this is, and I said this on Tuesday, not just a matter of process, it’s a matter of parliamentary sovereignty. If the House of Commons decides something, given that the Government has a majority in the House of Commons, it’s not very often the House of Commons decides something the Government doesn’t like.

But when the House of Commons decides something, it is not open to a Government to say, well, I just don’t want to do it. The House of Commons is sovereign and if the House of Commons decides it wants a set of documents, then the Government either has to hand them over or it needs to persuade the House of Commons that it shouldn’t hand them over.

At the moment, it has not made the case that it shouldn’t hand any extra documents over that are within the scope of the humble address. Therefore, we should all expect to get everything that’s within scope [00:28:00] of the humble address. Unless it’s been redacted by us for good reason or by the Government for the reasons it has advertised already, it will make redactions.

Otherwise, we should see everything within the scope of the humble address. If we don’t. Then I am quite confident the argument will rumble on.

Ruth Fox: Just for our listeners’ benefit, who may be a little less familiar with this humble address process, you said earlier on that you thought it was a bit distasteful to be involving the Monarch.

We haven’t mentioned the King in this discussion so far.

Sir Jeremy Wright MP: Yeah.

Ruth Fox: Can you just unpack what do you mean by that? You’re not tipping up at Buckingham Palace making demands of the King, are you?

Sir Jeremy Wright MP: No, I’m pleased to say it’s not that bad, but it’s bad enough in my view. So it’s a political device, humble address.

But let me read you what the first line of this humble address says, and all humble addresses say. It says that an humble address be presented to his majesty, that he will be graciously pleased to give directions to require the Government to lay before this House, all papers relating to, and then it goes on to describe what it is [00:29:00] we want to see.

Now I am perfectly content with a motion that says the House of Commons wants to see the following things. I don’t think it’s appropriate, frankly, that it should be phrased as an invitation to the Monarch to give those instructions because that’s inviting the Monarch into a political argument. And we have a constitution in this country, which is finely balanced, in my view it’s very successfully balanced and it’s really important that we maintain that balance whereby the Monarch is a constitutional monarch and does not descend into the arena of political debate, much less party political debate. I use the word distasteful because it is, I think, distasteful to invite the Monarch to do that.

And that’s what this motion is doing. And so, although we all understand, it’s really just political, I think it’s unwise to try and give it a veneer of constitutional significance that it doesn’t really deserve. And I apply it to this motion as I apply it to the various humble [00:30:00] addresses that were put before the House when my party was in Government.

It’s not about constitutional significance, it’s about a political argument. And you think that this is an additional card to play to make it just that little bit more serious and a little bit more difficult for the Government to say no. Well fine. But I don’t think you use the Monarch to do that. So from a personal preference, I would rather we didn’t have such things, but we do.

And one has been passed perfectly properly. It didn’t even get voted on. The Government swallowed it and said, yes, okay, we agree that’s what we’ll do. And therefore they are, in my view, bound to do just that.

Mark D’Arcy: Now, one quick coda to what we’ve been talking about. It was a bit of a side issue when the urgent question was discussed on Tuesday, but there was a certain amount of talk about WhatsApp Government and discussions on WhatsApp groups is one sort of subcategory of the documents that are going to be released under this humble address.

There is a concern that an awful lot of high level political discussion is taking place via what may [00:31:00] very well be a rather insecure channel and that hostile actors might be watching.

Sir Jeremy Wright MP: Hmm. Well, yes, and we will as a committee have more to say about that. You’ll forgive me if I don’t say it all now, but, sorry. Not gonna give you that exclusive, I’m very sorry. But yes, this is not a new concern. It’s the first thing to say. It is not something that has suddenly arisen in the context of these documents. It’s something that’s been happening for a while on which my committee’s been very concerned about for a while.

We have secure communication systems within Government for a reason, and the reason is that there are certain conversations that shouldn’t be had on communication systems that could be potentially accessed by our adversaries. We are always concerned where we think that Government conversations that should be conducted in secure environments are conducted in insecure ones.

Now, we all know that during the COVID Pandemic, the normal systems were harder to operate and people had conversations on WhatsApp and other means [00:32:00] that perhaps they shouldn’t have done in normal circumstances. I think our concern may be that those normal processes have not reasserted themselves as successfully as we might have hoped when the COVID pandemic was over.

But this is not something specific to this Government. But we are concerned that there is too much of a tendency to have conversations outside of secure environment, which are potentially prejudicial to national security. And that needs to be tightened up because if it isn’t, then we will see too many times examples of making life too easy for our adversaries and finding out what it is we are thinking.

And that’s the whole purpose of national security.

Mark D’Arcy: Sir Jeremy Wright, thanks very much indeed for joining us on the pod today.

Sir Jeremy Wright MP: It’s a pleasure.

Ruth Fox: Well, that’s gonna run and run Mark, and we’ll be covering it again when the documents are eventually released after the recess. But, listeners, we might need a week or so to read them by the sound of it.

But I think, Mark, we should take a quick break and come back and talk about legislative bingo. Yes, [00:33:00] it’s that time of the year again, the Private Members’ Bill ballot has been drawn. But before we take a break, do take a moment to rate and review us. If you’re listening to us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, it really helps with visibility on those platforms and so helps grow our audience.

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Mark D’Arcy: We are back and Ruth, with great ceremony, earlier this morning, the private members bill ballot took place. This is one of the weirder rituals in Parliament.

It’s a kind of raffle in which the winners get debating time for the piece of [00:34:00] legislation of their choice. Balls are drawn out of a glass jar by a clerk in white gloves. Numbers are read out. Names are then linked to those numbers. And the next thing you know, the lucky MPs who’ve won the right to bring in a bill, or at least won the right for debating time for a bill, have their phones ringing off the hook as every organisation suddenly decides it wants them to take up their particular pet proposal. And this time the great mystery, the great point of intrigue, is whether anyone near the top of the ballot, the people with the most procedural advantage, you might say, the earliest debates in the next cycle of private members bills, will choose to bring in the assisted dying bill that Kim Leadbeater introduced in the Commons, and Charlie Falconer took forward in the House of Lords, which has now run out of time and fell at the prorogation of the last parliamentary session.

Will they bring in the same bill and try and get it Parliament Acted if necessary? Will they try a different tack, perhaps a different proposal to allow assisted dying? Or may none of those MPs [00:35:00] decide that they want to take up this particular hot potato?

Ruth Fox: Yes. Well, it’s always my favourite event of the parliamentary session, Mark, legislative bingo.

The Deputy Speaker, Senior Deputy Speaker, in all her official get up and gear standing there, great ceremony, as you say, pulling numbers out of a fishbowl. Yeah. It always reminds me of sort of, I refer to it as like the legislative equivalent of winning Willy Wonka’s golden ticket, for those of you who are Roald Dahl fans.

Mark D’Arcy: Who are cast as the Oompa Loompas in this, I don’t know that.

Ruth Fox: Let’s not go there. Apparently 485 MPs put their names into the ballot this time, which is the Deputy Speaker Nusrat Ghani said was the highest number for 10 years. So that in itself is quite interesting. Sir Desmond Swayne has come top of the ballot. He is against the assisted dying bill, so we definitely know he won’t be bringing it forward.

Mark D’Arcy: Yeah. Veteran Conservative MP, arch Conservative, very much what I think of as the Eric Forth school of Conservatism as it applies to private members bills. In other words, he finds most of them sort of flabby vexatious nonsense, which should just be talked out as an [00:36:00] act of kind of legislative hygiene.

Ruth Fox: Yes. I mean, apparently one of your former BBC colleagues contacted him this morning to ask him for his views, now he’s won the ballot. What were his thoughts on coming at number one. And he apparently sent a one word message back. Regrets.

Mark D’Arcy: He’s had a few.

Ruth Fox: So yeah. So we’ll come on to what he may or may not do, because I think it will be pertinent to whether or not the assisted dying bill proceeds, if another member takes it up.

We’ve talked on the podcast before that really in order for that bill to proceed, if they want to take it forward, it really has to come out of one of the top seven of the MPs in the ballot because they get priority for their second reading.

Mark D’Arcy: Yeah. They get the first second reading on one of the seven days that are allocated for second reading debates of private members bills.

These will be Fridays strung out through the coming session. There might be one just before the summer break that most of them will take place in the autumn. And if you are first up for debate on one of those days, you should get your bill through to a second reading vote, whether it’s then passed or rejected at that point is [00:37:00] another matter.

But you get a fair chance. If you are later than that you are then in one of the debates that may happen in the leftover time on one of those days. So you may pick the first day.

Ruth Fox: Behind in the queue.

Mark D’Arcy: But be behind the first debate of the day. So you may or may not even get debated depending on how much time is taken up by that first debate.

So it all gets very complicated very quickly if you are later than number seven in the list. And ideally you want to be quite early on in the list just so that you’re earlier in the queue for later stages of consideration as well.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. So out of the top seven, we’ve had a quick look at the third reading votes, and four of the top seven MPs in the ballot voted in favour of the assisted dying bill at third reading.

So Lauren Edwards, Labour MP, came second, and I think if you were an assisted dying campaigner, you’d have to be hoping she would take it on because she’s second in the list. Andrew George, the Liberal Democrat MP, then fourth in the ballot. So if Lauren Edwards doesn’t take it forward, you’ve got to be hoping Andrew [00:38:00] George does.

And then behind him, Luke Evans, the Conservative MP and Jessica Toale, the Labour MP. So Luke came fifth and Jessica seventh in the list. So the campaigners have got options, if any, they can persuade any of those MPs to take it forward. They don’t have to make a decision and present their bills until the 17th of June.

So that’s first reading. So they’ve got some time. We certainly had no immediate indications today after the ballot of those MPs putting their heads above the parapet and saying, yes, I’m gonna do it. So I suspect they’ll be wanting to take soundings. They’ll be talking to the campaigns. Of course, they’ll be bombarded by other options as well.

Mark D’Arcy: They may have a pet private members bill on a completely different subject that they might prefer to do.

Ruth Fox: And that’s important for their constituents that they, they’ve promised or something. So I don’t think we’ll hear, possibly, until after the Whitsun recess is over.

Mark D’Arcy: Well, Andrew George was the name that immediately caught my eye because he has form in private members bill world.

He, during the coalition years, had a private [00:39:00] members bill, which would’ve taken the edge of what was called the bedroom tax, which was restrictions I think on housing benefit. I forget the gory details at this distance, it’s a long time ago. But, uh, it ran afoul of something called the financial initiative of the Crown.

The idea that the Government has to acquiesce to the financial consequences of any piece of legislation. And so the money resolution was not moved by a Treasury Minister, couldn’t be moved without internal Coalition agreement. And so what would happen was that every week the bill committee would meet, the chair would solemnly inform the committee that because there hadn’t been a money resolution, they couldn’t proceed with consideration of the bill. And so it was stymied and this little ritual was enacted week after week until everybody just got bored with it and the bill eventually fell.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. So he clearly got more experience with the system and knows some of the pitfalls. Just to go back to Lauren Edwards, we don’t know what she might do, but in the third reading, she did issue a statement afterwards, back in June of 2025, saying, I believe this bill, the assisted dying bill, is one of the most important, compassionate and empowering [00:40:00] changes to healthcare we’ve seen in a generation, it’s about choice, etc, etc. So she clearly very strongly supports it. Andrew George, he too is a big supporter of it. He’s also expressed quite a lot of concern about the position that the Lords have taken and what he deems to be clearly filibustering. Indeed, he tabled an early day motion back in February that, this House believes the use of filibuster tactics in the House of Lords to frustrate the majority will of the democratically elected House of Commons is unacceptable and blah, blah, blah.

That was quite a, it’s quite a long EDM statement.

Mark D’Arcy: Yeah. More, more unfinished business from the Coalition years. Because of course, the Lib Dems did try to reform the House of Lords then with rather half-hearted support by the Conservatives and the whole thing ran out of steam again. But, uh, I think there’s a lot of angst about the House of Lords.

Ruth Fox: Well that’s gonna be, I think, interesting into what, how he might see this, because if he sees it as a sort of a route to having a go at the Lords, trying to achieve sort of Lib Dem ends on the Lords as well as on assisted dying, I mean, (a) it [00:41:00] could get very, very complicated and very, very messy. But on the other hand, you know, he talks in this, this EDM about calling on the Government to take legislative steps to ensure private members bills backed by a majority in the elected house can never be defeated by undemocratic means in the House of Lords.

So there’s an opportunity to pursue something that on a policy level he supports, assisted dying, but also the sort of wider political constitutional, philosophical objectives of his party in terms of hammering the Lords for their undemocratic, as they see it, undemocratic nature. He’s apparently told, again, your former BBC colleagues that bringing back the bill is a possibility, but he won’t be rushed to make a decision. He said he’s probably got a dozen subjects for a private member’s bill, possibly. He said if he were to take it on the assisted dying bill, he feels it’s important the House of Commons demonstrates to the House of Lords we are not prepared to put up with the abuse of power we saw when the aborted the bill only weeks ago.

Mark D’Arcy: So watch that space. I suppose [00:42:00] the key judgement that MPs who might be minded to pick up the Kim Leadbeater bill and have another go at getting it through, have to make is whether there’s enough support in the House of Commons for that to happen now, whether perhaps some of the people who voted for the bell last time around will be less inclined to do so this time. There have been surveys that have suggested that, that some MPs have rather gone off the bill I was struck during the King’s Speech debate, you remember that one of the rituals there is that, a couple of MPs make quite humorous speeches seconding the humble address. And one of them was Naz Shah, the Labour MP.

Now she was on the bill committee and she had some praise for Kim Leadbeater, even though she eventually voted against the bill at third reading. But she did have some praise for Kim Leadbeater for putting it through the House of Commons. And I thought that the cheers for that particular statement were a bit more muted than perhaps Kim Leadbeater might have hoped.

And I don’t know if that’s a straw in the wind. I don’t know if it’s just my interpretation of the noise level. But I thought that [00:43:00] suggested possibly a bit waning support. Maybe completely wrong. It’s pretty thin evidence of which to try and make a judgement like that. But it did seem to me that there was a sort of like lukewarm character to that.

Ruth Fox: Well, I think any MP who’s contemplating it has got to think about several things. One is, do you want to really take on what is a divisive issue? There’s just no way of, of avoiding it. It is a hugely divisive issue. And Kim Leadbeater has taken an awful lot of flack and opprobium and so on. So there’s a personal and political question that’s got to be answered about do I as an individual MP want to take this through and bear that?

I think there’s then a sort of a, a broader political question about where’s the Government gonna stand on all of this? And perhaps more pertinent, who’s the Government gonna be?

Mark D’Arcy: Well, there is that small detail, isn’t there?

Ruth Fox: It’s gonna be a labour Government, but who’s gonna be the Prime Minister? Yeah.

Who’s gonna be the health secretary? Who’s gonna be the justice secretary? You know, we could have musical chairs and cabinet quite soon, or possibly later on in the year. Who knows? And it’s not a given that the people [00:44:00] in post will necessarily want to give any support to this, or will just think that, that actually this is a huge distraction for the Labour Party, a huge distraction for Labour MPs, and we just need to stop it now, kick it into the long grass, I don’t know, put it to a Royal Commission or something. Because it has, I think one of the concerns the Labour MPs I’ve talked to about this have is that it’s becoming toxic within the parties as well.

Mark D’Arcy: Mm-hmm.

Ruth Fox: That it’s become so divisive.

Not just in the country, not just in the media, not just on social media, but within the parliamentary parties. And do you want that?

Mark D’Arcy: When you need unity and, absolutely, at a premium, this matters a lot. The Government attitude matters a lot because below the line, under the radar, if you like, Kim Leadbeater’s, bill was given an awful lot of procedural support in the last parliamentary session.

Things like keeping other bills out of its way in the private members’ bill process. Things like providing extra time, extended debates. It was all, as I say, a little bit below the radar. People who aren’t well versed in Commons procedure wouldn’t really have [00:45:00] seen what was happening, but it was there. And it doesn’t have to be there.

A new chief whip, a new Government, a new set of ministers might, as you say, take a completely different line.

Ruth Fox: But also there are an awful lot of ministerial powers in this bill, delegated to ministers, dare I say it. I’ve got to get it in, haven’t I, I mean, you know.

Mark D’Arcy: Everything’s delegated powers in the end.

Ruth Fox: It comes back to it. My favourite subject. But you know, it is replete with some pretty broad delegated powers, which give a lot of influence over the operationalisation of this policy to ministers to decide after it gets Royal Assent, and having some indication of how they propose to do it was a big thing in the Lords.

Mm-hmm. That was one of the problems that I think it’s come across, getting through the Lords.

Mark D’Arcy: Well, we’ve got a new health secretary, we don’t know what he thinks about a lot of these issues, for example.

Ruth Fox: Well, I think he voted for it at second and third reading, but you know.

Mark D’Arcy: We don’t know about what he thinks about the operationalisation.

Ruth Fox: No, no. So there’s an awful lot to consider. And I think another thing that will have to be brought into play is the question of what Desmond [00:46:00] Swayne who’s topped the ballot, what he does.

Mark D’Arcy: Mm-hmm.

Ruth Fox: Because he’s got a choice now. He could bring in a small bill. A small technical bill that is going to attract Government support that’s not particularly contentious, that attracts cross party support. And you’ll get something on the statute book.

Mark D’Arcy: Yeah. It all gets passed in a couple of hours flat. Yeah.

Ruth Fox: So that’s one option. Or he could choose to bring in a highly contentious big bill, which would take up an awful lot of time in committee.

Mark D’Arcy: Yeah.

Ruth Fox: And you know, one of his objectives, if he’s against the bill, I don’t know how strongly he feels about assisted dying and, and his opposition to it.

But if he wanted to, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that the procedures of the private member’s bill process could be used to stymie the progress of an assisted dying bill that’s lower down the list than his bill.

Mark D’Arcy: For example, you can only have one Private Member’s Bill bill committee at a time.

So for example, if you were to draw out the bill committee for Desmond Swayne’s bill, even if the assisted dying bill was the second bill on the list, if that committee lasted for [00:47:00] several weeks or months before the assisted dying bill could get to the wicket in bill committee, then you make it so much easier to filibuster the rest of the process.

You can draw things out for a very long time if you want. Creative minds will be on it.

Ruth Fox: Absolutely. I think there’s precedent to have a second bill committee with the agreement of the Speaker, I think, there’s some precedent, but there certainly isn’t precedent to have three or four.

Yeah. So if not Lauren Edwards taking it forward as in second in the list, then that would be a problem in that respect. Interestingly, one of the things Desmond Swayne has said about private members bills is we’ve already got too many laws, we should be taking time to repeal some of them rather than making more of them. So that might be where he heads, you know, a bill to repeal a whole host of things that he doesn’t like.

Mark D’Arcy: A great repeal bill, as is something that a lot of Conservatives have talked about in the recent past to sweep away lots of what they regard as unnecessary and vexatious laws. So maybe that will be Desmond Swayne’s process. And you know, that could be so technically complicated that it would take an awful long time to, dreadfully sorry, to contemplate [00:48:00] in bill committee.

Ruth Fox: Absolutely. Yeah. Interestingly, he said in his blog last time the private members bill ballot took place, so after the general election in 2024, he said, every year I obey the instructions of my Whip and put my name into the ballot, then I hope like hell, that once again, I will be unsuccessful. It was interesting, I obey the instructions of my Whip to put himself forward for a bill, but I thought it was quite interesting, Mark, this year that the Conservatives who obviously are a small number of the total membership of the House of Commons, they have got more private members bills in the top 20 than any other party.

Mark D’Arcy: I think last time around they didn’t have any so, or very few, I can’t remember the exact figures at this distance, but there were barely any Conservatives if any at all in the last private members bill ballot in the top places. So this time the swings have swung and the roundabouts have gone round, and here they are again.

And actually, just looking at the, the list, there are some quite interesting names, a little bit further down the batting order of, uh, quite senior figures in the Conservative [00:49:00] party. John Whittingdale, former private secretary to Margaret Thatcher, former culture secretary, is there at number five. A little further down the list, you’ve got people like Damian Hinds, former senior Conservative Minister. You’ve got Victoria Atkins on the shadow front bench. So you’ve got some quite senior Conservative people. And of course you’ve also got Robert Jenrick, formerly a very senior Conservative and now a member of Reform. It’d be very interesting to watch and see what he does. As well. I imagine there will be some Reform aligned bill that he wants to bring in and that could be quite, uh, an entertaining occasion in the private members bill calendar if he manages to get it to the wicket. Again. Yeah. As we’ve been saying, it is entirely possible to spin out debates on earlier pieces of legislation so that later ones are not debated. And it might be that some mean minded people in the other parties decide that’s how to stop Robert Jenrick from getting his moment in the spotlight.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. I think the next thing to look out for is when the Leader of the House of Commons tables the dates for the sittings for private members bill Fridays, we haven’t got those yet, so we [00:50:00] need to look out for those and see how they’re spread across the parliamentary session, how early they are in relation to things like summer recess and so on.

Mark D’Arcy: Well, it’d be very interesting if there is a second private members bill Friday before summer recess.

That might be a sign that the Government is prepared to try and assist.

Ruth Fox: Mm.

Mark D’Arcy: If for example, Lauren Edwards, who’s second in the batting order, does take up the assisted dying bill that would allow the second private members bill Friday to be used to debate assisted dying. Yeah. So, uh, we’ll be off to the races.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Well, let’s see what happens. But before we, uh, take a quick break, Mark, any thoughts on the, uh, Labour leadership so far? I mean, I was just thinking about, um, Desmond Swayne saying, I always obey the instructions of my Whip. I mean, it brought to mind, I was thinking of Andy Burnham, of course, when he left Westminster, he decided that whipping at Westminster was a big part of the problem and he apparently favoured abolishing it.

So I’m, I’m looking forward, Andy, if you do get back in at Makerfield and come back into Government and indeed as Prime Minister to see whether indeed you do abolish whipping, which would make our life very interesting.

Mark D’Arcy: [00:51:00] Well, it would, it would certainly be interesting from a number of points of view, not least that of the current Labour Whips.

And meanwhile, outside Parliament, obviously Andy Burnham has been very active. I mean, he was acting as if he was the Labour candidate anointed to contest Makerfield rather before it had actually happened. But as it turned out, uh, he was duly anointed as the Labour candidate. There were terrifying pictures of him in very short shorts taking a run.

Ruth Fox: I noted that he had slightly longer shorts in subsequent outings.

Mark D’Arcy: Very prudent, my lord, very prudent. But also he’s been kind of foreclosing various policy options. He’s been backtracking a little on whether or not he would immediately attempt to rejoin the EU as Prime Minister. He said earlier that he thought the country should rejoin, but there’s been a little bit of watering down on that.

There’ve been questions raised about his stance on trans issues. There have been questions raised about all sorts of things. I’m just seeing reports that he’s apparently now endorsed proportional representation and a change in the voting system. So lots going on up there that could mainline back into Westminster.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I think on PR I [00:52:00] think he’s always been a fan.

Mark D’Arcy: Yeah.

Ruth Fox: So, um, but it’d be interesting, would it, if he got into Downing Street, would he push it forward?

Mark D’Arcy: A PM who wanted PR? Well, also of course, we’ve had the site of Wes Streeting doing the classic ministerial resignation statement during the King’s Speech debate, demonstrating that he was doing so brilliantly in the Department of Health that he had to resign.

Ruth Fox: I think it was a tad more complicated than that.

Mark D’Arcy: Yeah. I think it was a tad more complicated than that, but also attempting to set out a very broad brush agenda of policy changes and different approaches that he might like to take. So that’s just the start. I think we, we may see more of Mr Streeting from time to time and there may be other contenders who emerge who also make speeches in the Commons to, uh, bolster their credentials.

Ruth Fox: Well, let’s take a quick break and can we come back and talk about Russia and sanctions, because I think it’s fair to say over the last course of the last 24 hours or so, quite a lot of Westminster has been very confused about what’s been going on.

Mark D’Arcy: And of course, it gives you the chance to revisit that favourite subject of yours. Because I’m afraid [00:53:00] this is a matter of delegated legislation. Join us in a few moments.

Ruth Fox: See soon.

Mark D’Arcy: We are back. And Ruth, there is a lot of confusion going round at the moment about what exactly is happening with this country’s sanctions against Russia. On the one hand, the Government says it’s introducing a tough new range of sanctions. On the other hand, the opposition says that they are actually allowing the import of diesel and various other Russian products into this country, which amounts to a weakening of the sanctions.

So is the Government being tough with one hand and patting the Russians on the head with the other, or is everything being completely misunderstood? To understand this, I think we have to delve into the complexities of the system for regulating trade through ministerial licences issued under delegated powers, issued under sanctions legislation against Russia.

Take it away, Ruth.

Ruth Fox: Right, I shall try my best. I think it’s pretty clear that the Government communications machine has struggled with this [00:54:00] one.

Mark D’Arcy: Chris Bryant said as much in the debates that they had earlier this week, that they hadn’t covered themselves with glory in communicating what they’re doing. But that’s what they all say.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Well, um, except to be fair to Chris, he did take responsibility for it, which we haven’t always seen from ministers at the despatch box sometimes. But essentially since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in fact, since the Russian invasion of Crimea prior to that, we have imposed extensive sanctions on Russia.

But until this week, we had not banned imports of refined products made with Russian oil, but refined in third countries like predominantly diesel and jet fuel. What you have to go back to is the regulations that were made in 2019, and I’m afraid they’re called the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019.

And these are the central legal source of sanctions on Russia, including prohibitions on all the sort of export or import of certain goods and [00:55:00] services. And these have been amended numerous times since 2019 to add new sanctions to them and so on. In those 2019 regulations, there is a regulation number 65, which states that a prohibition on export and import do not apply to anything done under the authority of a licence issued by the Secretary of State.

Mark D’Arcy: And these licences are not even secondary legislation. They are tertiary legislation. They are licences issued under secondary legislation.

Ruth Fox: Yes. So, whereas the regulations themselves have to be laid before Parliament, the general trade licence does not, these are licences which don’t even have to be applied for by a company. If its export and imports meet the requirements that are set out, they’re automatically deemed to be licensed and thus exempt from sanctions. So basically last year, on the 16th of October 2025, [00:56:00] the Government said it would introduce a ban on things like jet fuel and diesel and so on, refined products made with Russian oil in third countries.

And the EU made the same announcement at the same time. And we’ve done that quite a lot with our sanctions, tried to align them, the introduction, imposition of them with the EU, but for some reason, the Government didn’t actually produce the regulations to implement those sanctions until this week when they produced what are called the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) Regulations 2026.

As always happens with sanctions regulations, they’re made under an Act of Parliament. They’re made under powers in the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018. And they’re made using the made affirmative scrutiny procedure.

Mark D’Arcy: Ah, my old favourite.

Ruth Fox: You remember that from COVID where a lot of the regulations that were made to basically restrict movement and keepers in our homes and so on, all of that was made using the made affirmative procedure, [00:57:00] which basically means that they become law when the Minister makes them, when he signs them, which he did earlier this week. And then they’re presented to Parliament. They’re already in law. But they can only remain law if they’re debated and approved by both houses, usually within 40 days, which for these regulations will be by the 25th of June.

Now, what these latest regulations do is insert a new chapter into the 2019 regulations.

Mark D’Arcy: Chapter 41B [4IB], if I’m not much mistaken.

Ruth Fox: I believe so. And what this does is impose sanctions on these processed oil products derived from Russian crude oil, but processed outside Russia and then exported to us. And they took effect from yesterday as we we’re recording 20th of May.

So far so good. So it looks like the Government has imposed the sanctions that it said it would impose, and that Russia will not be generating income from [00:58:00] any products that are processed using its oil that are then sent to us. However. And this is the bit where it gets a bit complicated. At the same time, the Government issued a general trade licence in relation to sanctioned processed oil products.

And that provides that the sanctions set out in this new chapter 41B [4IB] would not apply to anything specified in this general licence. You with me?

Mark D’Arcy: So we are banning the import of Russian processed oil products, even if they were processed in the country outside Russia, but then un banning them. So we ban with one hand and you unban with the other.

Ruth Fox: Exactly. And that general licence provides authorisation for the import of diesel and jet fuel.

Mark D’Arcy: And I think what this tells us, frankly, is that the Government is extremely worried about what might happen if this country runs out of diesel. That’s our food distribution network. That’s the diesel that powers the tractors and agricultural vehicles that grow our food.

There would be some pretty serious [00:59:00] problems were that to run short. And most Governments would feel that they were gonna be in deep, deep trouble if the voters were seeing empty freezer cabinets, empty cooler cabinets at their local supermarket when they went to do their local shop. So I think that’s possibly one of the main reasons for this.

I think there is generally an increasing worry, now, about what will happen if the crisis in the Persian Gulf isn’t somehow resolved, and if the oil doesn’t start to flow again reasonably soon, and the worries are accumulating in Whitehall, that’s leaving aside the effect on the economy of losing all the business and economic activity generated around airports and air travel.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. But the problem with this then is that the Government knows that problems are coming down the track as a result of the situation in the Straits of Hormuz, and the war with Iran if the fighting restarts, but it hasn’t really prepared the country for that.

Again, it’s not really been upfront and clear about what the [01:00:00] timescales are, what the implications are, whereas other countries have been doing more on that front.

And I should say that whilst we are doing this, so on one hand we sort of appear to be imposing sanctions and then taking it away with another bit of, uh, tertiary legislation, imposing it on the one hand with delegated legislation, secondary legislation, and taking it away with tertiary that doesn’t hit Parliament, doesn’t have to be approved by Parliament, doesn’t have to be scrutinised by Parliament.

And it’s a huge shock to the political system. Because basically the MPs and the journalists and the comms teams don’t really understand how this all fits together. And it’s quite complicated as we’ve just discovered to explain.

Mark D’Arcy: Well, and indeed, and you’ve got the question, who’s monitoring this stuff apart from, of course, from our good selves in the Hansard Society.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. But one of the differences here is that there’s not been much prior discussion of this. So people were unprepared and it all came as a huge shock. Whereas in other countries there’s been more discussion about it. And I think it’s important to say that other countries are doing this. I mean, obviously they’ll have their own legislative vehicles and procedural vehicles for doing it, but other [01:01:00] countries are delaying implementation of these kinds of sanctions on third party refined products, jet fuel, diesel, because they’re facing exactly the same difficulties as well.

So it’s quite possible the Government didn’t anticipate that this was gonna be remotely controversial, but because they’ve laid regulations on the one hand saying we’re imposing sanctions on the other, taking them away, it gave the impression that they were.

Mark D’Arcy: They were doing something that weren’t in fact doing.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. And I think one of the things that’s worth considering is that this is not new. And I do think it’s quite interesting that the opposition, for example, were very quick out of the tracks criticising the Government for doing this when in fact they’ve had several years where they themselves, when they were in Government, could have imposed these sanctions on these refined products but didn’t. So question, Mark, why? But also, they have in the past imposed sanctions and then used a general trade licence to in effect water down or neuter the implications of the sanctions that they, the [01:02:00] regulations that they’ve passed. So we’ve certainly found five instances. There may be others. I mean, we are not experts in sanctions policy, but we’ve certainly found five instances where delegated legislation regulations have been passed, and then subsequently trade licences have been used to create exemptions from Russian sanctions.

Mark D’Arcy: So what kind of products are we talking about? It’s not just oil.

Ruth Fox: No, certainly under the Conservative Government, prior to the general election, three times at least they did this. Once in relation to legal services, once in relation to wine and steel, and another in relation to natural diamonds.

And then the Labour Government, since the general election has done it twice as well, in relation to synthetic diamonds, and then more recently sectoral software and technology. So.

Mark D’Arcy: I’m not even sure what that means.

Ruth Fox: No, I’m not sure what it means, and I’m not sure what the reasons for the exemptions were because these seem to be, say, less of a priority than access to diesel fuel and jet fuel.

But there must be reasons for it. But this [01:03:00] process has clearly been going on for quite some time. It’s not unusual and yet.

Mark D’Arcy: But it’s the posture you’re striking of having stern sanctions on Russia. Yeah. While quietly unpicking them behind your back as it were, very strange. I mean, part of the argument seems to be, well we should jolly well be drilling more of our oil from the North Sea. But the problem with that is, okay, if you start tomorrow, you might start getting oil in 18 months time. And then you’ve got to worry about things like refining capacity and the ability to turn that oil into the products that you need. So that’s not a direct alternative to this. We’re starting from where we are now and maybe earlier decisions about not licensing rural exploration in the North Sea were mistaken and have been shown to be wrong by events. You can make that argument or not. But the problem is we’re starting where we are now and if you want the diesel, which this country essentially runs on, that doesn’t look like there’s maybe an awful lot of choice about this. The trouble is the poses that the Government is striking while making those choices.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. And I think, I think it’s just confused everybody. Yeah. I mean it appears to have confused our international partners, appears to have confused [01:04:00] Ukraine, the Ukrainian Government as well. What was interesting about the debate yesterday is Chris Bryant, the Minister, was pressed on, well how long is this gonna go on for, is this a temporary exemption to enable diesel fuel to flow into the country, jet fuel to come in? How long for, described as a transition period for the markets and and so on. What does transition mean? Is that weeks, is that months? Is that a year? And he gave no answer and possibly can’t give an answer to that because they just don’t know how things are going to obviously play out in the Middle East.

Mark D’Arcy: The transition is as long as they want it to be.

Ruth Fox: Yes, exactly. But I think there’s a broader question here that ought to be considered because again, yes, it’s my favourite subject, delegated legislation. But effectively you have got a parliamentary scrutiny issue, because on the one hand, the regulations which set the sanctions are laid before Parliament, scrutinised, albeit retrospectively, but there has to be a debate, and an approval vote in both Houses within a certain [01:05:00] time for them to continue in law. And yet underneath that, ministers have the power, granted to them by Parliament, they’re not doing anything under hand, these powers have been granted to them by Parliament, but through another mechanism that doesn’t go anywhere near Parliament to effectively water down and neuter them.

And that’s the problem with secondary delegated legislation on the one hand and the growth of tertiary or what, for example, the Lords committees describe as disguised legislation, because these general trade licences, they’re not formally legislation, but they have legislative effect.

Mark D’Arcy: Yeah. If you, you ended up in court because you’ve been importing Russian oil, you just want to this licence and say, well, that lets me.

Ruth Fox: Yeah.

Mark D’Arcy: That’s it.

Ruth Fox: So, so it’s all been a bit messy and people have found it difficult to follow, but I hope that helps everybody listening to understand what is going on and why.

Mark D’Arcy: Well, Ruth, we’re nearly towards the end of this pod now, but I wanted to mention the valedictory speech of one of my favourite peers, the crossbench peer, Lord Hennessy, Peter Hennessy. A great [01:06:00] constitutional commentator, started his professional life as a Times journalist reporting on Whitehall when Harold Wilson was moved to order that his ministers shouldn’t talk to him, and has gone on to churn out book after book after book on the workings of the British state.

There’s a book about the civil service. There’s a book about the prime ministers, which is a kind of compendium of just about every story you’ve ever heard about the Prime Minister in British history. There’s a fascinating book called The Secret State about the nuclear preparations that the British state made in case there was an actual nuclear war.

There’s a very funny tale about Harold Macmillan for example, Peter Hennessy tells, who was very impressed when President Kennedy came on a state visit and he was followed by a uniformed air force colonel with the codes for launching a nuclear strike. And Macmillan thought that the British Prime Minister should have something like that for the British independent deterrent, and a whole set of official correspondence then started about how to make this work.

And they ended up with a system where in the event that the Prime Minister was out and about in his official car, [01:07:00] when the nuclear balloon went up, that he would get a call on the RAC’s tannoy system, a sort of radio link for cars in the early 1960s, at which point he would have to pull in at a convenient phone box and make a call to bomber command to unleash the nuclear holocaust. And then the correspondence went on to examine, well, what happens if he doesn’t have any change? Well, you can always make a reverse charge call, came back the answer, but you should ensure that his official chauffeur has some small change available so that this can happen.

I mean, it’s a pretty morbid subject on which to be giggling, but it was just the most surreal correspondence.

Ruth Fox: And some of our younger listeners won’t get this idea of putting change into a phone box.

Mark D’Arcy: Well, those were the days, you know, it seems a long time ago now, but, Peter Hennessy made his farewell speech to the House of Lords a few days ago, and he used it to talk about a term that he invented, the Good Chaps theory of Government, that a lot of the working of our [01:08:00] constitution is essentially dependent on people observing unspoken constraints about what they can do. There’s a sort of internal murmur of steady on old chaps, stops you from transgressing certain barely visible lines in constitutional politics. And it was, I think, a very timely warning.

He was saying that the British Constitution has had some scarring moments as he described them since he joined the House of Lords back in 2010. The highest in the political land have ignored or disdained constitutional decencies and proprieties that are etched into the ministerial code when they got in their way.

And that was a warning, I felt, that was really very important. Because we’re seeing internationally at the moment what happens when an overmighty perhaps over arrogant executive just decides it’s going to trample on all the normal constraints that are observed, things that people have never thought they needed to put into law because they were so obviously wrong.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. We’ll put a link in the show notes, Mark, because it’s definitely worth the read. One thing about Peter Hennessy’s speeches is he always has a [01:09:00] wonderful turn of phrase. Very, very, very well put together speeches. So why don’t we just play out some of the best lines and we’ll see you next week.

Mark D’Arcy: What a good idea. See you soon.

Peter Hennessy: But it’s the politics of decency that is our greatest protection against the slide into the politics of despair, out of whose dark crevices authoritarianism can slink. To so mobilise would require no new statute from Parliament, it would mean not a penny from the Treasury. For it is a matter of spirit, a question of faith. We have done it before, my lords, and we can do it again. That is why, in the end, I’m sure we can break out of the cycle of pessimism and hold the line against those who would curb our liberties and make a bonfire of the decencies in whose defence we must take our stand – and quickly.

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 @HansardSociety.