• Hansard Society (6 March 2026), Written Parliamentary Questions: Our evidence to the House of Commons Procedure Committee

• Procedure Committee (2 September 2026), Letter from the Leader of the House of Commons regarding the average cost to the Government of answering Written Parliamentary Questions

• Hansard Society (1 February 2026), Why MPs can’t just quit: The curious case of the Chiltern Hundreds - Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 129

• Hansard Society (12 May 2026), Why can MPs not simply resign their seats? Why must they apply for the Chiltern Hundreds?

• Procedure Committee (11 February 2026), Elections within the House of Commons, Fifth Report of Session 2024–26

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 episode:

Ruth Fox: Hopey changey Andy makes his debut in the House of Commons.

Mark D’Arcy: But how is Parliament going to monitor his rewiring of the state? So far, the new circuit diagram includes an Office of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, Number 10 North, and more decentralised add-ons are yet to come.

Ruth Fox: And the £1.3million bill to answer over 6,000 written questions tabled by MPs during the summer recess: what on earth is going on?[00:01:00]

Mark D’Arcy: But first, Ruth, you talked about hopey changey Andy. “Hopey changey” of course was the line that Sarah Palin, the long-forgotten US Vice-Presidential candidate, applied to Barack Obama’s rhetoric, his tendency to have lots of soaring phrases and, at least as she accused him, not so much in the substance department. Well, Andy Burnham, it’s early days yet. He’s been surviving, his detractors say, on vibes since he became Prime Minister and was constantly hinting of all the largesse that would be coming out of government and never really saying no to anything. And that was a line of attack that was taken up when he made his debut in Prime Minister’s Questions this week from the Conservative Leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch. Now, normally a September sitting of Parliament is a slightly odd affair, a fag end, if you like, a bit of legislative detritus left over from before the summer, a few ministerial statements on great events that had happened in August when Parliament wasn’t sitting and weren’t quite great enough to merit a [00:02:00] parliamentary recall, and the odd general debate on this or that. This time though, we’ve got a whole new administration out there, a new Prime Minister, lots of new cabinet ministers getting into new positions, lots of substantial policy tweaks being announced, and a plethora of statements, not just Andy Burnham’s till-they-drop three-hour marathon on Tuesday, but other statements from other ministers about quite substantial developments in policy since. So it is been a startlingly busy September so far.

Ruth Fox: It has, yes. We think it’s the longest prime ministerial statement to Parliament in recent memory.

Mark D’Arcy: Three and a half hours or thereabouts, tributes to Andy Burnham’s bladder were paid at some point.

Ruth Fox: There’s more than I need to know about. Yes, so we’re only into, as we’re recording, the third day of Parliament sitting after the summer recess. But as you say, some big statements, some meaty statements. Andy Burnham’s statement on the first day back setting out of his political philosophy and political [00:03:00] direction. So an awful lot on the diagnosis of the country’s problems, as he sees it, of Thatcherism, privatisation and Brexit. I’m paraphrasing a bit, but not too much. Followed fairly quickly by this quite meaty statement from Louise Haigh, Chancellor of the Dutchy of Lancaster, and to all intents and purposes Deputy Prime Minister it seems, about the rewiring of the state and machinery of government reorganisation that’s going to deliver the plans of the new government.

Mark D’Arcy: And delivery is always such a big deal for governments. This constant complaint that we’ve heard from several different prime ministers over the years now, that they pull the levers and nothing happens. So finding a way to go from policy announcement to actual delivery that actual voters notice, hopefully, from the point of view of the particular government, then proceed to vote for them in future. That’s something that a lot of governments have completely failed to master.

Ruth Fox: Yes. And I thought it was interesting you contrast that with Andy Burnham’s statement and also at [00:04:00] PMQs, and we’ve seen it over the summer in some of his social media activity and press interviews. A very strong emphasis on, “I”, not “us”, not “we”, but very much a personalised “I”, “I’m going to do this”, “This is my government delivering this”, “I’m going to make this change.”

Mark D’Arcy: Yes. I suppose it’s the kind of rhetorical style that you pick up as a metro mayor because you are very much the personification there. But this is a government that has other figures in it too.

Ruth Fox: Yes. And he’s presenting himself as the agent of change. And then also we’ve had comments off and remarks from people like John Healey saying this is a continuity government. So there’s a sort of slight clash there. But before we get into the mix, I think this rewiring of the state raises some really serious questions for Parliament, and some of the MPs touched on it during the various statements when they were asking questions of both Burnham and Haigh. But before we get into the meat of that, just on the vibes question. What did you make of Andy Burnham back in [00:05:00] Parliament at the despatch box for the first time since he left over 10 years ago to run as Manchester’s mayor? Obviously it’s a changed House of Commons, a very different environment. But you’ve watched many a PMQs.

Mark D’Arcy: Yes. And I think that he was trying to do something different. Now it’s not an unusual thing for an incoming Prime Minister to announce that they want to do PMQs differently and be more consensual. And it usually lasts about 15 minutes.

Ruth Fox: No more Punch and Judy.

Mark D’Arcy: Well, I can remember John Major doing it, I can remember Gordon Brown doing it, and particularly prime ministers who’ve just taken over from another prime minister without a general election to enforce the change, usually want to try and have a stylistic change and it often doesn’t last. The pressures in PMQs to become gladiatorial are just so intense. But I was very struck that Andy Burnham was deliberately trying to engage with questions even when they were delivered in a Westminster sarcastic mode and people made jibes about [00:06:00] his cosmetic changes to create Number 10 North or his vanity exercise in this, or whatever the phrase was, he would still try and engage with the substance of what was being asked rather than fire back. He did a little bit with Kemi Badenoch, because I think it was very difficult not to in the end, because there was a series of exchanges there rather than just one question and one answer. But in general, he was trying very hard to extract a bit of substance, try and deliver some sort of answer, usually “yes” in some form it has to be said. And that was one of the criticisms Kemi Badenoch not made of him. That he doesn’t seem to be a man who’s capable of saying no. That’s the criticism, incidentally, which I think will last a bit. But he was definitely trying to sound a positive, optimistic note and get away from the slightly doom-laden atmosphere that’s glowered over British politics for quite a long time now. So that’s my main take from it. And in particular, a footnote to that is he was particularly nice to Liberal Democrats, and I think this may be on the long term premise that maybe [00:07:00] Labour might one day need the Lib Dems’ votes, if not in this parliament, in the next. So maintaining goodish relations is probably quite important to him. He gave one particularly interesting answer for me on electoral reform. Someone was saying, it’s time to bring in PR, and he said, no, there’s got to be a mandate at an election to change the electoral system, very wisely not going down the referendum route, I think. And so no change in the voting system before the next election, but watch out for the implications of that which are maybe that he will try and do something like the Tony Blair / Paddy Ashdown era cooperation on constitutional issues and have a deal that’s acceptable not only to him and his party, but to the Lib Dems and maybe to other parties as well, that can be put in their manifestos and then enacted the other side of another election if Labour’s returned to power.

Ruth Fox: Yes. Listeners may remember that before the summer recess we spoke to the Labour MP Alex Sobel about the Representation of the People Bill when he was trying to get an amendment [00:08:00] debated and voted on to essentially set up a commission to look at electoral reform, the case for it, on the basis that that was more likely to attract support than an outright move straight away to saying, yes, let’s have a bill for electoral reform. Just worth mentioning for listeners’ benefit that this week, first week back, MPs considered the next stage of that bill and Alex’s amendment was ruled out of scope by the Speaker. So it didn’t get debated, didn’t get voted on.

Mark D’Arcy: It would have seemed to me a slightly borderline ruling there. I can see why the Speaker might have done it, but you could have only slightly stretched a point and an amendment that had quite a number of signatures from across the House on it might then have at least been debated. But it was not to be. Mr Speaker’s ruling is there and people never complain about the Speaker’s ruling…

Ruth Fox: Well they do!

Mark D’Arcy: But that way madness lies! Not in front of him, I should say. You don’t get up in the House and say “You’ve got this wrong Mr Speaker” because…

Ruth Fox: They won’t get called again.[00:09:00]

Mark D’Arcy: The displeasure of the chair is not something you want in the House of Commons.

Ruth Fox: So that’s a bit of an aside, but as you say, it’ll be interesting, how does this Government then take that issue forward? Because clearly there’s a clamour on the Labour benches, he’s looking for Lib Dem support.

Mark D’Arcy: There’s also a clamour against, it has to be said. There are a lot of Labour MPs, particularly on the more sort of heavy metal wing in the party, who think that PR will mean there’s never a Labour government again. But leaving that aside, there are certainly an awful lot of Labour MPs who think PR is now necessary and it’s very hard to justify first-past-the-post in a system where people might win an outright majority on less than 30% of the vote next time.

Ruth Fox: Yes. So back to this rewiring of the state, Mark. The core proposition of the government is Andy Burnham says he’s got a political strategy for economic growth. And he links it to this idea that Britain has an excessively centralised state, which I think is widely accepted, but that it has this underpowered centre of government, which again, past prime ministers, people who’ve worked in Downing Street, organisations who look at this like the Institute for [00:10:00] Government, have all argued that certainly Downing Street is underpowered compared to other centres of power in other major democracies.

Mark D’Arcy: Well, you compare what the German Chancellor will have around them, for example.

Ruth Fox: So the argument is you need to beef up that centre around the Prime Minister, around Downing Street, and then you’ve got this decentralisation of policy issues and decisions, to regional mayors, to strategic authorities, to local councils. So you’ve got this balance, on the one hand a bit more at the centre and more devolved. Insofar as where Parliament sits in all this, Andy Burnham had an interesting statement where he described Parliament as a circuit breaker for the country.

Mark D’Arcy: I’m never quite sure what that means.

Ruth Fox: No. And that I think is exactly where we, maybe…

Mark D’Arcy: Maybe that’s deliberate.

Ruth Fox: Yes. What does that mean for parliamentary scrutiny and accountability? Because I think the concern is that if you’re bringing in more to the centre in Downing Street and you’re [00:11:00] decentralising elsewhere, dealing with devolution for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, the risk is that this amounts to more power for the executive at national, regional, and local level, but what about scrutiny by the legislature at national, regional, and local level? And I think that’s the concern, that more executive power and less scrutiny and accountability is not the answer. Parliament’s got to be part of the process of the rewiring of the state.

Mark D’Arcy: And I think you look at how this might work in practice. The government decides that it wants to deliver more housing, so it starts parcelling money out to big local authorities, council housing, soft government loans repaid by the rent that the tenants cough up. Suppose that went wrong. Now in the normal state of affairs that operates at the moment, you would haul in the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government or one of their ministers to explain [00:12:00] what went on. But suppose that this policy is partially administered by Number 10 North, do you haul in someone from there, will they recognise the right of the Communities and Local Government Committee to haul them in? Or would they say that no, we are at the centre here, you’re not the committee that pertains to us, we’re not coming anywhere near you? So there’s immediately a blurring and a difficulty about who might be in charge of what. Can they call in Louise Haigh if it turns out that it’s Number 10 North going on and she’s the Deputy Prime Minister overseeing the work of Number 10 North? We don’t know. The case law hasn’t been built up yet.

Ruth Fox: No. And a lot of this will revolve around what’s the relationship between the Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister and this new Office of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, OPMC.

Mark D’Arcy: And again we don’t really quite know what that does yet.

Ruth Fox: No. And what’s its accountability mechanism? Because if it’s taking a lot of power, decision-making, money, resource from the Cabinet Office, and the Cabinet Office then becomes the overseer of a residual rag-bag of things that nobody knows quite where to [00:13:00] put in Whitehall. And also deals with management, the civil service, the sort of the HR functions. The Cabinet Office has a direct line of accountability to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, PACAC. But it’s designed around scrutiny of more constitutional and devolution issues. Devolution as in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland. Not decentralisation as in, mayoral authorities.

Mark D’Arcy: Greater Manchester or South Yorkshire or wherever.

Ruth Fox: Yes. And it doesn’t scrutinise local economic growth policy, regional policy, housing, transport, water, for example. Now if coordination of a lot and decision-making of some of those issues is being brought into this beefed up Number 10 operation, how’s that going to be scrutinised? PACAC doesn’t seem like the natural body to do it.

Mark D’Arcy: Well if it was going to be the committee that was doing everything, then it would become a very important committee indeed in Parliament it. But that’s not its remit, that’s not what most of its members actually signed up to do. So it, gets a little bit complicated.

Ruth Fox: They’d probably quite like to do it. Because it’s an [00:14:00] attractive proposition, isn’t it?

Mark D’Arcy: A lot’s there. But then at the same time, the flip side of that is, if you are a member of the Communities, Housing and Local Government Committee, you’d have thought, hang on a minute, this is our bailiwick.

Ruth Fox: Yes. And I think this is where things are going to potentially get more complicated. Because there’s an awful lot of cross-departmental issues now and it’s probably going to have to fall to the Liaison Committee, the committee of chairs, to try and work something out here. And also we might need Standing Order changes because Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, PACAC, its defined role is to scrutinise the Cabinet Office, not to scrutinise directly Number 10 and this new format.

Mark D’Arcy: It gets very complicated indeed when you start trying to work it out. I think one of the things that has developed in recent years in the committee corridor is much more of an appetite for joint working on cross-cutting issues between different committees. So they try and get out of their little silos and work together more effectively. And I think they may end up having to do an awful lot of that. And maybe it’s the joint [00:15:00] committee, maybe it’s partly the housing committee and partly some other committees, pull in the relevant official from Number 10 North to talk to them. Or the relevant minister from one of these cross-cutting departments that Andy Burnham’s creating.

Ruth Fox: Yes. The other element in all of this is the Government is saying essentially that they want to restore ministerial responsibility, take powers and responsibility away from unaccountable regulators, independent bodies and so on, and ministers take the decisions, be accountable to Parliament. But again, that raises then the question of how is that going to be scrutinised, are MPs going to have the powers, the structures, the information to do that scrutiny? Have they got the capacity to do that scrutiny? And then there’s another interesting strand, which is essentially that she indicated that she wanted scrutiny and accountability to be done by Parliament rather than judges, rather than the courts.

Mark D’Arcy: So are they clamping down on judicial review?

Ruth Fox: Exactly, what does that mean in that context? [00:16:00] And it was very unclear from the statement and will need to be explored further. But at the moment, as things stand, our favourite subject, delegated legislation, statutory instruments are subject to judicial review. Primary legislation, bills, are not. So, unless they are going to do more through bills rather than statutory instruments, which will take longer and will be more complicated for them than simply shoving through a lot of SIs, then they would need to change the remit for judicial review.

Mark D’Arcy: And that would presumably mean legislation?

Ruth Fox: Possibly, yes.

Mark D’Arcy: Yes, I can imagine a bill to bid the judiciary sleep and its appointed limits keep.

Ruth Fox: I remember in the last parliament, Dominic Raab had a consultation on reducing the scope of judicial review and clipping the court’s wings. And obviously that brought out a huge range of legal and other actors, and campaigners, who were very concerned about the implications of that. Now I think there is a case for clipping back some of the cases that can go for judicial review and some of this [00:17:00] strategic litigation that now takes place.

Mark D’Arcy: And the other dimension to it is very often you get judicial review about whether there has been a proper consultation on a particular policy or particular move by the Government. And there’s a striking phrase in one of Andy Burnham’s announcements about this, too much performative consultation going on, and we need a bit less of that so that we can actually generate action. So again, you have another area where maybe they will start reducing the requirements for consultation on all manner of things before a government can act to build something or change something.

Ruth Fox: And then there’s a whole set of questions. If they’re going to take powers back from regulatory bodies that have got them at the moment and they’re going to take them back to ministers, is that going to require legislation? Can they do this through other non-legislative means? What role is Parliament going to have in scrutinising all this?

Mark D’Arcy: And in particular their Lordships, you can imagine particularly some of the retired judges who sit in the House of Lords might take a very dim view of clipping the wings of the [00:18:00] judiciary.

Ruth Fox: And then there’s the question of money. Follow the money. Parliament’s not very good at that actually, as we’ve talked about many times.

Mark D’Arcy: Parliament is awful at that.

Ruth Fox: But for example, if the Office of the Prime Minister is a separate entity to the Cabinet Office, but is going to be beefed up and have an awful lot more resource and be making a lot more decisions, what’s the accountability trail in terms of the money and the estimates, the spending plans for departments that Parliament scrutinises and approves? And obviously this rewiring may mean that there’s an awful lot of changing of departmental budgets and spending plans because things are being moved, not least, and one department, Innovation, Science and Technology, has been abolished. So will they need supplementary estimates and so on in the remaining months of the financial year to sort all that out? I suspect they will.

Mark D’Arcy: It’s also worth talking about what happens to the money that’s parcelled down to the new devolved authorities. And again, another striking moment in Andy Burnham’s marathon statement on Tuesday, where [00:19:00] he basically issued an open invitation to practically every local authority in the land to come and sort out a better devolution deal and get more power for itself. And that would imply getting more money for itself. And how is Parliament going to scrutinise the spending of that money? I’m not suggesting that MPs have to sit at the shoulder of every local mayor and look over it and just check that all their decisions are right. But particularly when things go wrong, Parliament may need rather more robust mechanisms for dealing with local problems in local areas than perhaps it has at the moment. The Public Accounts Committee can’t be everywhere, for example. The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee can’t become a kind of localised troubleshooter for everybody, but you’re talking about potentially very large sums of taxpayers’ money going to local authorities, and there must be some way of just making sure it’s spent as Parliament intends, as ministers have wanted.

Ruth Fox: Yes. And if you think about other parts of Europe where they’ve got this greater decentralisation and you have exactly the same issues, postcode lotteries, you’ve got [00:20:00] areas of success and areas of failure sometimes right next to each other, if you live on the other side of the road you might be getting a better deal. Managing that in our political culture where MPs have such a very close, engaged, almost social-worker relationship with their constituencies, and that link back to Westminster, in a way that in PR systems where you have party lists and you have a more distant relationship with the legislature and you have bigger federal operations, I think it’s going to be quite challenging to deliver that in our parliamentary system.

Mark D’Arcy: Certainly. I mean there are several shades to that. First of all, PR doesn’t inevitably mean party lists. It depends which system you have. Second, I think there’s just a moment where the voters have to learn how to operate a new system. And it may be actually rather more than a moment, it may take a while for people to get used to a really dramatically different system. Metro mayors are still bedding in, and we’ve had several generations of them now in some places. So there are questions there about getting the system [00:21:00] right, and making sure that there are proper chains of accountability. But I’m sure the Treasury will be worried at the idea that it could be splurging money out all over the place to all these new metro authorities, and in the end the money is squandered because they don’t have the systems in place to spend it effectively. I’m sure that’s a nightmare for the Treasury. Now, maybe that’s a patronising view of how local government works and that actually local government may be able to spend it much more effectively than that. But I have no doubt at all in my mind that there’s a lot of anxiety there.

Ruth Fox: But for the MPs, and some MPs raised this during the debate, for MPs, if there’s failure in your patch, what are you doing about it? And if your role is at Westminster, who are you raising that with? How effective is your ability to get anywhere in raising it if the problems and the powers are devolved to your local council, your local authority, and so on?

Mark D’Arcy: Your local council, your local authority may be run by your own party and your own local colleagues.

Ruth Fox: Yes. Or, if you’re talking about [00:22:00] failings of a public body, trains or the water authority, whatever it may be, how does that then link in back to Westminster?

Mark D’Arcy: It may link in a lot more directly because Andy Burnham seems to be very keen on taking back control, as he put it, of a lot of these basic public services. Now, it was very convenient for ministers once upon a time to be able to say, oh no, that’s all the fault of Avanti West Coast Main Line or Thames Water, whoever it might be. But once ministers are again in control of these things, that’s fine, as long as things go well. Once it’s not, hooey!

Ruth Fox: Yes. I think it’s going to be an interesting period. But there’s an awful lot of questions for the House of Commons in particular to sort out, in terms of the scrutiny model.

Mark D’Arcy: The idea of how it’s working is still unfolding really. And we’ve had this statement from Louise Haigh, which has been helpful a bit. But I think what we need is the custom and practice that will develop as things unfold a bit further.

Ruth Fox: Yes. Well, Mark, shall we take a short break and [00:23:00] come back and talk about one leader in to the House of Commons and back, Nigel Farage and, one leader out, Keir Starmer’s announced he’s leaving Parliament.

Mark D’Arcy: It’s another whirl of Westminster’s revolving door. See you in a minute.

Ruth Fox: See you in a minute.

Mark D’Arcy: And we are back, and so, Ruth, is Nigel Farage. The Reform Party leader returned to the House of Commons as the first business before the House when it reconvened on Tuesday. He was reintroduced to the House flanked by his deputy, Richard Tice, by another Reform MP, Andrew Rossindell. He strode up into the centre of the Commons chamber and took the oath of allegiance. Perhaps it’s my imagination, but he seemed a little bit tetchy when he did it. And his exchange with the Speaker that you normally have as a new MP taking their seat was a fairly perfunctory one. And he strode out of the chamber. And that was that. And it is no surprise, of course, that he won the by-election in his seat. He won his Clacton seat pretty effectively in the last general election. And he retained it with an even [00:24:00] bigger majority this time around against the full mighty force of Count Binface, but against none of the main political parties. And now he’s back and he’s promising that he’s not going to spend very much time in Westminster, he’s going to go out in the country and campaign, which is something that, if you remember, the old Liberal Democrat leader, Paddy Ashdown, used to make a point of, “I don’t like Westminster, I’m going to go out and talk to real people.” A similar thing being suggested by Nigel Farage, but tellingly, he didn’t turn up and make a contribution in Andy Burnham’s big statement, which surely was a good stage for a party leader to reintroduce themselves to the House, you would have thought.

Ruth Fox: Yes. Well there is a pattern amongst these leaders. They’re desperate to get to Westminster, but then when they get to Westminster, they hate it. They don’t want to spend any time there. Yes, it was surprising that he did not stick around for the statement or the Louise Haigh statement long enough to put some questions.

Mark D’Arcy: Still less for PMQs the next day, indeed.

Ruth Fox: Yes. Well, he might not have got a question this this time round,

Mark D’Arcy: Not automatic.

Ruth Fox: But I thought it was interesting that he didn’t [00:25:00] stick around for the statement. Of course, we should say Reform Party conference is happening this week. There is this issue now that the whole party conference season in the recess of three weeks is built around Conservative, Lib Dem, and Labour conference. And the other conferences, the SNP found this, but didn’t they?

Mark D’Arcy: The SNP were constantly irritated that when they had many more MPs than the Lib Dems, the recess was designed to accommodate the Lib Dem conference, but not theirs.

Ruth Fox: And obviously Reform UK have only got, well I’ve lost count of the number of MPs now, but it’s what, six, seven, something like that. They’re still a small party in parliamentary terms, but obviously in terms of the country and the attention that they attract and their position in the polls bigger, they would argue, than some of the other parties, and again the Lib Dems, you know, going higher in the polls than them. So he may have had an awful lot of other stuff that he’s got to get through for the party conference, but I think it’s interesting. Yes, he won the by-election, no surprise there, but I think, whatever else they were trying to achieve, it hasn’t stopped the standards [00:26:00] inquiry, that has resumed. And I do think it’s stymied their ability to dominate the airwaves during the summer recess in the way that they did in previous years.

Mark D’Arcy: This time they’re being rather blown off the stage by Andy Burnham and his arrival in government. And so it’s not the greatest moment for Reform. I think people are rather diligently in the media trying to do a bit of reporting on the Reform conference, not helped by a number of journalists being blocked from attending. But Nigel Farage has done an interview with the BBC’s political editor, Chris Mason, and news lines from that have been emerging today, but at the same time, as you said, they’re not commanding the airwaves in the way that they did last year when they really did look like tomorrow belonged to them.

Ruth Fox: Yes, well that’s what happens when you’ve got a new incoming Prime Minister and an essentially new government and a sort of a major Labour relaunch. I think the challenge for Nigel Farage though is that, you look at the two front benches now, with Kemi Badenoch and Andy Burnham, we talked about hopey-changey Andy, that was Nige in previous years. [00:27:00] He’s been the kind of the “hail fellow, well met”, the optimistic, always smiling, always joking. He looks a bit grouchy at the minute. As you said, when he entered the Commons earlier this week…

Mark D’Arcy: It did not look like a joyful return, I must say.

Ruth Fox: No, he didn’t look very happy about it. And it may just be, he’s made clear, he doesn’t find the House of Commons a comfortable place. He’s not happy with the way it works, and clearly does enjoy campaigning more than sitting on the back benches hoping for two minutes to ask a question in a five hour debate.

Mark D’Arcy: Yes. It’s a lot easier to dominate the House of Commons when you’ve got a despatch box in front of you, a large cheering squad behind you. And a much greater time allocation, which is what you get when you are the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition. And he’s not either of those at the moment. Maybe one day he will be, maybe his view will then change, who can say. But anyway, as one leader returns, another departs.

Ruth Fox: Yes. So I was surprised by this and in some ways not surprised at all. I suppose I was surprised by the timing: Keir Starmer [00:28:00] announcing on the first day back that he is leaving Parliament. And I was surprised the timing was so quick after stopping being Prime Minister. I was surprised by the timing because it means he’s not sticking around for the assisted dying bill debate Second Reading next week.

Mark D’Arcy: A cause with which he’s been fairly closely identified.

Ruth Fox: Absolutely. So we’ll perhaps come to that. But I was also surprised having announced it, the speed, literally he put his letter into the Treasury seeking the Chiltern Hundreds that day.

Mark D’Arcy: Amusingly the Chiltern Hundreds are the Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham.

Ruth Fox: Indeed they are.

Mark D’Arcy: Tee-hee. A nice little final touch there, the door hitting him on the bottom as he goes out.

Ruth Fox: Yes. If any new listeners are wondering what on earth we’re talking about with the Chiltern Hundreds and these three hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham, we have a previous podcast, listeners, that explains why MPs cannot just resign their seats and instead need to take an office for profit under the Crown. And these are the Chiltern Hundreds in this [00:29:00] case. And Nigel Farage previously had to take the Manor of Northstead, the other office that is maintained to enable MPs to leave Parliament. So we’ll put the link to that in the show notes because it’ll explain it all.

Mark D’Arcy: And we really don’t want to go back into the mists of time for that one again. But yes, it’s a pity in a way. There are quite a number of live ex-Prime ministers now. I think it’s about nine. Is it nine? And startlingly few of them are still in Parliament.

Ruth Fox: Just three, aren’t there? There’s just three. There’s Rishi Sunak.

Mark D’Arcy: Rishi Sunak is still in the Commons.

Ruth Fox: David Cameron.

Mark D’Arcy: And Theresa May.

Ruth Fox: Theresa May, yes. They’re both in the Lords.

Mark D’Arcy: Yes. So no Tony Blair, no Gordon Brown, no John Major, no Boris Johnson, and no Liz Truss. So there’s quite a number of people there. And in some ways it’s quite a good thing to have ex-prime ministers in the Commons contributing their wisdom. I suspect that prime minister is a job that you can’t possibly truly understand until you’ve done it. And having a few people who’ve been at the top on the bridge of the Ship of State, [00:30:00] whatever metaphor you want, is actually quite a useful thing. It just leavens the debate. People can be often surprisingly sympathetic to their political opponents because they faced the same dilemmas themselves. So it can be a very useful thing to have that. That’s not to say that you expect them to be there voting on every no-mark statutory instrument that comes up, diligently going through the whole grind of parliamentary business. But having the likes of Theresa May and David Cameron and Rishi Sunak able to comment on things as they unfold doesn’t strike me as a bad thing for the workings Parliament. So it’s a pity to lose Keir Starmer so soon. And I think he has some reason to feel a bit hard-done-by by his party, having led it to the greatest general election victory in its history barely two years ago, to be summarily removed from power in a spasm of panic after the absolutely dreadful local elections that they suffered earlier this year. But all the same, it does seem to me a little bit petulant to be just walking out quite so soon. Maybe he’s got some big international job lined up and that’s it, goodbye [00:31:00] Westminster. But I don’t know, but we shall see.

Ruth Fox: He’s apparently going to focus, he said, on foreign affairs and international relations, and violence against women and girls. The two issues he’s going to continue to work on. It doesn’t surprise me in the sense that we’ve talked about this on the podcast before. He’s another leader who has no love for Westminster. I think my patience wore thin when he said, he was asked the question, I think it may have been the Guardian journalist, what did he prefer, Westminster or Davos? And he said, Davos. Well, he’ll have plenty of time to spend there, clearly, now, on the international circuit. I found that very odd in any party leader at Westminster to be saying that, but I find it even odder for a Labour party leader to be saying that. But there we are. I think it’s also difficult for him because he took, particularly during the election campaign, pot shots at Rishi Sunak. That Rishi was going to be off, off to California with his billions, with his tech bro friends and abandoning Westminster and his constituency pretty quickly after the election if he lost. And actually Rishi Sunak has stayed and [00:32:00] is a presence in the Commons. He’s been seen in adjournment, debates, he’s asked some questions, so he is a presence. He’s actually doing the job. He’s present in his constituency. And actually, if Starmer decided to stick around, it’s not the most onerous role in the Commons because nobody expects them to turn up for every vote, particularly not with Labour’s majority.

Mark D’Arcy: It’s not as if Labour, as you say, has a precarious majority here. And it is useful, as I say, just to get occasional leavenings of wisdom from former PMs. James Callaghan was around for a term or so after he lost office as Prime Minister. He put through a private member’s bill to give the royalties from Peter Pan to the, I think, Great Ormond Street Hospital. Obscure piece of knowledge that I’ve just plucked out of the top of my brain. Theresa May is a regular participant in Lords debates. David Cameron, of course, famously came back into office. And I suppose maybe Rishi Sunak might have half in mind that precedent he made David Cameron his Foreign Secretary, and maybe someone is going to make Rishi Sunak [00:33:00] their Foreign Secretary at some point in the future, or maybe some other role in a future government. He’s a lot younger than a lot of ex-prime ministers are. So his political future is not over.

Ruth Fox: Yes. Although the Conservatives’ political fortunes and path to office looks trickier.

Mark D’Arcy: Well, absolutely indeed. And I suppose the other point to make about this is it leaves Labour with an at least mildly awkward by-election to come. On paper, Holborn and St Pancras, Sir Keir Starmer’s old seat, looks pretty safe, but funny things happen in by-elections. Ask the Liberal Democrats.

Ruth Fox: Well, we will see, I don’t think we’ve got the date for that by-election.

Mark D’Arcy: We haven’t yet. The main point about it at the moment is the speculation that Zack Polanski, the Green leader, is going to use it as his route into Parliament. And he’s almost being cornered into that. And there’s also talk that maybe the local Green Party would select someone else. It would be a pretty odd situation if your leader trying to get into Parliament was then rejected by the members. So, anyway, that’s a long way ahead.

Ruth Fox: But I mentioned it briefly earlier, Keir Starmer departing so quickly in this September [00:34:00] sitting, the first day, not sticking around until next week’s assisted dying bill Second Reading debate when the bill is coming back, the MPs’ going to try and get it through using the Parliament Act, which we’ve talked about on the podcast a lot previously. So I don’t want to get into that. We’re going to be doing, listeners, a special podcast next week. We are delaying our usual recording time 24 hours to record on the Friday rather than the Thursday as we normally do, so that we can listen to that assisted dying debate and find out what happens with the bill and then discuss it afterwards. But I just find it odd given that he was so central to the reason why this issue rose in salience up the political agenda, why somebody like Kim Leadbeater was willing to take it on as a private member’s bill.

Mark D’Arcy: He drew up the guidelines that are the existing law now for prosecutions.

Ruth Fox: And he’s been very clear all along that, he supports this. Of course the government has maintained a position of neutrality, because of course not every member of the government supports [00:35:00] assisted dying. But he has consistently voted for it. And having led your troops up the hill to then leave them stranded, I don’t know, maybe they don’t care. Maybe Kim Leaderbeater’s not bothered, but if I were her in her position, I’d be a little bit miffed, I think.

Mark D’Arcy: I think there’s possibly some reason to be miffed there. And of course we talked about Labour’s majority as a government isn’t really in doubt, and they don’t need Keir Starmer to be there in the lobbies voting day in, day out. But the assisted dying bill, yes, it could come down to one vote. My sense is that maybe the political steam has gone out of assisted dying a little bit, and maybe some of the support has drifted away. We have no way of testing that until the vote comes. But they might quite like to have had one more certain vote in the book for them there, and they don’t have that now. Of course, there have been other by-elections. We don’t know what the position of some of the new MPs will be. But certainly the Green Party manifesto includes a commitment to assisted dying. So maybe the new MP for Gorton and Denton [00:36:00] would have replaced someone who was against assisted dying.

Ruth Fox: Well, talking of elections, we may or may not have some House of Commons elections for select committee chairs as a result of new changes in Government on the ministerial ranks. Because when Andy Burnham did his setting up of the Government and allocated all the ministerial roles, three chairs of select committees got Government jobs, and as a result, they’ve had to resign as chairs of their respective select committees. So Housing, Communities and Local Government; Justice; and Women and Equalities select committees all need a new chair. And nominations close next Monday. Only Labour MPs, of course, Mark, can be candidates.

Mark D’Arcy: For these particular committees, because they’re the ones that have been allocated in the share out of select committee chairs to Labour, Labour’s position in the Commons being so dominant they chair most select committees. So you’ve got three plum committee chairs here, and Labour MPs vying for each of them.

Ruth Fox: And there will be a ballot, a [00:37:00] contest if more than one candidate is nominated and wants the job. And I would have thought probably there will be. There’s some names circulating.

Mark D’Arcy: There are names circulating. And it will also be a contest held under new rules, because the Commons Procedure Committee has decided to clamp down on the kind of campaigning that had emerged in previous select committee elections. At one point you could go into Portcullis House and sit at the coffee bar and all the tables would be strewn with flyers for rival candidates for particular select committees. Clearing out my office the other day, I came upon some campaign literature from Barry Gardiner from some long-forgotten and distant election now, in which he was running to chair the Environmental Audit Committee. And there was a very striking picture of a bee voting for Barry. Bless! But I think this became a bit of an irritant. MPs were feeling that they were getting vast drifts of paperwork being popped under the doors of their offices and strewn on tables in restaurants and bars, and it was just getting annoying.

Ruth Fox: In fact, the Procedure Committee chair [00:38:00] Cat Smith, that was what she ran on as part of her campaign when, after the general election, she wanted to end what she described as the silly season of select committee chair elections and this proliferation of pizza style leaflets that were being shoved under MPs’ offices’ doors, and they couldn’t move for being lobbied by potential candidates. So, as you say, new rules that were agreed by the House earlier this year on the recommendation of the Procedure Committee. So if there is an election that they’ve basically got to run it in 14 days or less, the current timetable that was outlined by the Speaker, that if there is more than one candidate and a ballot is required, then the elections will take place on 14th September. So they meet that objective. The campaign rules, candidates will have to agree to abide by them as part of their sort of nomination process.

Mark D’Arcy: They have to sign in blood as part of the nomination now, and woe betide the candidate who then issues a leaflet.

Ruth Fox: Yes. And that’s the critical bit, no printed literature. So you can’t be shoving these things under doors. There’s going to be an agreed distance that the candidates and campaigners for [00:39:00] those candidates cannot be in and around the ballot boxes, which I think will be in one of the voting lobbies, the division lobbies near to the House. So they’ve got to stay away from those. We will, however, have a published booklet of statements from the candidates setting out why they want the job.

Mark D’Arcy: Always entertaining reading.

Ruth Fox: Indeed. So we will see, we may have news next week of some chairs. Or if not, the kind of names that are circulating, some interesting ones. Justice Committee, it is reported by the press, I go no further than that, Mary Creagh, former minister active on select committees before, did she chair Environmental Audit in the last Parliament?

Mark D’Arcy: She chaired Environmental Audit at one point. It wasn’t the last Parliament, I think it was the Parliament before. I think she’d lost her Wakefield seat in 2017. And she’s come back for a seat in Coventry at the last election, but she was certainly the chair of Environmental Audit and she was extremely active there.

Ruth Fox: Yes. Another name Catherine Atkinson, a [00:40:00] more recent MP, for Justice. Women and Equalities could be an interesting one. It’s reported that Anneliese Dodds is interested in that. And also Olivia Bailey, who was until recently a schools minister and had been involved I think in the work on the gender identity conversion bill. Other names for Housing and Communities: Catherine West.

Mark D’Arcy: And another former minister ejected from government heading straight for the committee corridor.

Ruth Fox: Yes. And of course Catherine’s, probably her claim to fame will be that she was the first person on the Labour ranks to come out and make clear that there needed to be a contest against Keir Starmer, said she would put herself forward as a candidate if nobody else did. Abena Oppong-Asare and Alan Strickland are the other names that are circulating.

Mark D’Arcy: And in the new scenario, you’ve got to say Housing, Communities and Local Government is a pretty plum committee. Because that’s where a lot of this Government’s policy action is clearly going to be.

Ruth Fox: Yep. Next question is what’s going to happen to the Innovation, Science and Technology Committee because that department’s been abolished. So [00:41:00] will that survive? Will the Government abolish that committee?

Mark D’Arcy: It did exist before. It was a crosscutting committee with no attached department to it before the science department was created.

Ruth Fox: It was the Science and Technology Committee then.

Mark D’Arcy: Yes, there was a Science and Technology Committee and it was there for quite a while and it did crosscutting inquiries, notably with the Health Committee into the COVID pandemic. So it’s been around for quite a while and I dare say it may be maintained in that role.

Ruth Fox: Of course, there’s the precedent of the International Development Committee. Which survived the abolition of the Department for International Development. And all of that sort of policy work went into the Foreign Office, but that committee survived. So there is precedent, as you say, but also it would be very odd to not have a standalone committee that is looking at science and technology issues given the age we are living in. Not least, we need somebody thinking about AI. So I suspect it will survive, but it might have a slightly adjusted remit, but we will see.

Mark D’Arcy: Time alone will tell. And with that, Ruth, [00:42:00] should we take another break?

Ruth Fox: Yes. And let’s come back and talk about what on earth MPs have been doing over the summer recess tabling thousands of questions, which are going to cost us the taxpayers about £1.3million apparently. So we’ve talked about written questions on the pod before, but it’s been a busy recess for some MPs, so I think we should get into the detail of that.

Mark D’Arcy: And we are back. And an interesting phenomenon has been detected by the Hansard Society’s gimlet-eyed scrutineer of all things parliamentary, Matthew England. It’s an almost doubling in the number of written parliamentary questions put down by MPs during the summer recess. Although Matthew, as you’ve been figuring out, the raw figures compared between this year and 2025 are actually a little bit misleading here. So what’s going on?

Matthew England: Yes, so it might be helpful if I explain first how written parliamentary questions are published when parliament’s sitting and how they’re published when parliament’s not sitting. So when they’re sitting, it’s usually quite simple. [00:43:00] A Member can table a written parliamentary question on any day when the House is sitting, and then it’s simply printed on a piece of paper on that sitting day. When the House of Commons isn’t sitting, Members of Parliament can still submit written parliamentary questions electronically by the e-tabling system, but they aren’t formally tabled until a printing day at the end of the recess. So all of a sudden, all at once on one day, at the end of the recess, all of the written parliamentary questions that were tabled over the whole recess appear. And that day this year was 28th August. So if you look at the number of written parliamentary questions that appeared on the printed paper on that day, it came to 6,162. If you compare it with last year, the figure was 3,363. So on the face of it, it appears like there’s been a very significant increase. Why the comparison is slightly misleading is that in 2025 the figure had increased very significantly compared to the year previously, [00:44:00] and it took the Table Office rather by surprise and the number of questions that had been submitted outstripped their capacity to process them on a single printing day. So for several days after the printing day, they were still putting forward written parliamentary questions that had been tabled over the recess. So the final figure wasn’t 3,300, but actually 4,641 because over a thousand questions had to be tabled on subsequent days. What we don’t know is whether that’s going to have been the case this time around as well, whether there’s still a backlog of written parliamentary questions tabled over the recess that still need to be formally tabled and we will await the Table Office’s verdict on that one. But what we do have is a sort of floor. We can say if we compare this year’s printing day figure with last year’s final tally, it’s increased by at least 33%. And if there is a backlog, it would have increased by quite a lot more.

Mark D’Arcy: So quite a substantial jump even with the, if you like, adjusted figures that you’ve just given us. So what’s going on? Why is this happening?

Matthew England: In [00:45:00] our evidence to the Procedure Committee’s inquiry into written parliamentary questions, which I think is still ongoing, we highlighted a sort of general rise in the number of written parliamentary questions that were being tabled. And that was a trend that’s been going on since more or less the start of this parliament and a little bit before as well. The causes of it are a little bit harder to identify, but we posited quite a few in the course of putting our evidence forward. One of them, which has been quite popularly suggested in the press, is the use of artificial intelligence. And of course it’s quite difficult to tell whether a written parliamentary question has been drafted using artificial intelligence. And all of those who have been accused of it have very stubbornly denied it. So it’s difficult to tell to what extent that is an explanation. Other explanations are that members have a lot more staff than they did say 5, 10, 15 years ago. And those staff have boosted the research.

Mark D’Arcy: So they’re churning out the questions to justify their existence essentially.

Matthew England: Partly so, yes, but also [00:46:00] Members have just a much greater capacity to research and draft questions than they did before. Another is the shift from in-person tabling to electronic tabling. So even 5 or 10 years ago, a greater proportion of questions were tabled physically by a member or their staff walking down to the table office and putting a question in. Now, it’s pretty much universally done via the e-tabling system, and indeed during recess it can only be done by using the e-tabling system.

Ruth Fox: And there used to be a limit on that. But the limit doesn’t apply during recess. So that also opens the flood gates.

Matthew England: Yes. So when the House of Commons is sitting, there is a limit on the number of questions that can be submitted via the e-tabling facility, and that number is 20, so no member can submit more than 20 questions on each sitting day via the e-tabling facility. During the recess, there is no such limit. There’s a defensible explanation for that, that there are no sitting days during the recess effectively, there’s only one day on [00:47:00] which they’re printed. And if we had a 20 question limit on that printing day, then members could only table 20 questions for the entire recess period. So, in effect, they solve that problem by lifting the limit entirely, but that allows members to submit an unlimited number of questions on every day during recess, and then they all pile up. And it’s compounded by the fact that they all pile up and get submitted right at the end, which causes problems not just for the table office in processing them on to the system, but for the Government who suddenly have 6,000 questions to answer within a deadline.

Mark D’Arcy: But who are the questioners? Is this one of those instances where it’s a few MPs generating vast numbers of questions and monopolising the whole thing?

Matthew England: One of the starkest things about the recess figures this year in particular is just how concentrated the question submissions are among a small number of MPs. The figures that we’ve calculated suggest that the top five question submitters were responsible for 42% of the written [00:48:00] parliamentary questions submitted. And those top five are 1% of the backbenchers in the House of Commons, submitting 42% of all of the questions. Even within those top five, the top two or three are submitting just by themselves something to the tune of 600, 700 questions each, which is about 10% of the total.

Ruth Fox: If you look at the names Mark, we’ve got, top of the list, Ben Obese-Jecty, the Conservative MP; then Mike Wood, Conservative; James McMurdock, the independent formerly Reform UK; Sir James Cleverly, Conservative; and Charlie Dewhirst, Conservative. Now, eight of those top 10 are Opposition MPs, which is not surprising. Written questions are a good route for obtaining information and scrutiny by Opposition MPs. There are two Labour MPs in the list, Callum Anderson and Adam Jogee, who are 9th and 10th in the list and have tabled 125 and [00:49:00] 138 in those cases.

Mark D’Arcy: Well, the name that leapt out at me in that list was of course James Cleverly, formerly the Shadow Foreign Secretary, and now putting himself up to be the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London. He’s in a London-adjacent seat, not actually in Greater London, Braintree in Essex. But Matthew, I asked you to take a look. Was there any suspicion that some of these questions that he’s been asking are perhaps related to his mayoral bid?

Matthew England: It depends on your interpretation, but I’ll give you the numbers. So I think James Cleverly himself submitted around 450 questions over the summer recess, and around 20 of them mentioned London in some way. And one interpretation would be that some of those questions are to collect certain kinds of data or put certain kinds of pressure that might help him when he runs a campaign for Mayor of London.

Mark D’Arcy: Well, you’ve dug out some stuff. There’s a percentage of rough sleepers who are foreign nationals. Figures about things like rental costs and council tax and business rates in [00:50:00] London. So that’s not the normal purview of the Shadow Foreign Secretary, it has to be said.

Ruth Fox: Nor the MP for Braintree. Because he’d be asking about housing and homelessness figures and so on for his own constituency. So yes, again, this is not terribly unusual, but the scale?

Mark D’Arcy: Not unheard of, certainly.

Ruth Fox: If we’re talking 20 questions, you might argue that it’s not appropriate, but it’s not highly unusual and it doesn’t explain the other 420-odd questions that he’s asked. The other thing that then arises, as you mentioned, it puts huge pressure on government because they’ve got to answer these in a certain amount of time, specified period. But the other thing is the cost of all of this. Louise Haigh has indicated in her statement in the House this week, that she highlighted the huge rise in questions. Obviously it has resource implications and the Government has indicated finally what it reckons as the average cost of answering one of these PQs. And that’s also risen, unsurprisingly.

Matthew England: Yes. the Procedure Committee I think have been nagging the Government for [00:51:00] an answer to this question for some time, because the previous figure we had was from 2012. And at the time they said, the Government suggested that it was about £164 in civil service costs to answer a written parliamentary question on average. This time the Government have come back to the Procedure Committee and suggested that the cost is around £219 to answer a written parliamentary question.

Mark D’Arcy: Inflation in action.

Matthew England: For context, to answer the sort of 80,000 or so written parliamentary questions in the whole of 2025, the government says it cost around £17½million pounds just to answer those questions. And one interpretation of that is, well, it’s a lot of money to answer questions coming from a small number of individuals. But another interpretation might be that 80,000 questions may sound large, but it’s actually three questions per MP per week. And you could argue that the Government ought to have the resources to answer three questions per MP per week. It doesn’t sound too unreasonable. So there’s different [00:52:00] interpretations, but what’s certain is that the cost has risen per question and the number of questions has risen, meaning that for two reasons, the overall cost of answering these written parliamentary questions for the Government has increased quite a lot.

Ruth Fox: Yes. Do a quick calculation Mark, 6,162 questions at £219 each. You get £1.3million just over summer recess.

Mark D’Arcy: Democracy doesn’t come cheap.

Ruth Fox: No. and I think that’s an important point is that democracy and scrutiny doesn’t come cheap.

Mark D’Arcy: And it has to be done.

Ruth Fox: But I do think that’s an issue. And the Procedure Committee has obviously been looking at this about whether or not some of the questions are entirely legitimate and appropriate. Quite a lot of questions when I look at them, I think you could Google that. And are some of them and perhaps some of their staff using PQs as a first resort in terms of research rather than as a sort of a last resort because they can’t get the data anywhere else? And also, this is having a negative effect, I think, on the quality of answers. Quite a lot of the time you look at [00:53:00] the answers and you think that’s dismal, it doesn’t even begin to answer the question. And inevitably that then leads to further questions being tabled, as the MP who’s originally tabled it tries to get to the bottom of the answer. And sometimes you’re seeing, Labour did this in Opposition in advance of the general election, an MP puts down a question about a policy area wanting particular data figures, things that will be embarrassing to the ministers and that they can use in an election campaign. And of course, they don’t put one question down for the whole of government. It ends up being 25, 30 questions. because they pose the same question to every government department asking for the same data.

Mark D’Arcy: How much are you spending on biscuits?

Ruth Fox: And then it goes on and on and on. So there needs to be some really serious thinking about what’s the purpose of written questions, how is the system operating? Whether new restrictions are needed, but also whether there needs to be some quality control on both the questions asked and the answers that are put out. And obviously we await the Procedure Committee’s views on that.

Mark D’Arcy: [00:54:00] And certainly it’s also an important weapon for an Opposition to try and gather information as part of their political strategy. I used to know a government spad in John Major’s Health Department way back in the 1990s, who would be very carefully scrutinising the questions coming from Labour’s shadow Health team at the time. And they got a series of questions, which was to do with the amount of lifesaving equipment in hospitals. And eventually they came up with the most minimalist answer they could devise, which was ultimately all equipment in hospitals can be considered to be lifesaving equipment. That’s the kind of game Special Advisers play. But there’s also a get-out clause, it should be remembered, where the Government can turn around and say that the cost of gathering the information you’ve requested is disproportionate and therefore we’re just not doing it. So there are various ways in which questions can be batted back.

Ruth Fox: Yes. Well, we’ll wait to see what the Procedure Committee comes up with. We may have an update perhaps from the Table Office. If anybody in that office is listening to the podcast this week, they might be able to tell us whether, or we might know by next week’s, [00:55:00] recording, whether there’s any further written questions have emerged. But thanks Matthew for digging away on those numbers.

Matthew England: Thanks for having me.

Ruth Fox: And with that Mark, I think that’s all that we’ve got time for this week. it’s been a big return to Parliament and the pod.

Mark D’Arcy: Absolutely. And a much more eventful September than perhaps we are used to. And, continuing the events of September, we are of course going to be 24 hours later in publishing the pod next week because we’re going to try and take in the Second Reading of the second incarnation of the assisted dying bill on Private Members’ Bill Friday, September 11th.

Ruth Fox: Yes. And then the following week we’ve got an exciting development. We’ll be doing a live podcast for students, new students here in London at Queen Mary University of London. So we’re looking forward to that and we’ll give you more details of that next week. But for now, listeners, if you are new to listening to the podcast and you’re enjoying it, remember to subscribe in your podcast app, rate and review us, it helps others find us. And to our regular listeners, thanks for coming back. [00:56:00] Speak to you next week. Bye.

Mark D’Arcy: Bye-bye.

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.