• Hansard Society (2023), How does Parliament authorise the Government's taxation plans? A procedural guide to the Budget process

• Hansard Society (2025), Budget 2025: Letter to Chief Whip Jonathan Reynolds MP calling for an ‘Amendment of the Law’ motion

• House of Commons, Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, Mission Government - oral evidence from Rt Hon Darren Jones MP, 20 October 2026

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Intro: [00:00:00] You are listening to Parliament Matters at 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 this week,

Ruth Fox: Putting the budget under the microscope. Treasury Committee chair, Meg Hillier on the tricks of the trade in examining the Chancellor's big announcement,

Mark D'Arcy: How the Commons will put John Healey's plans into effect and into law.

Our potted guide on what to look out for next week.

Ruth Fox: And the minister who couldn't abolish his own department, the former Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, Darren Jones, tells all to a bemused select committee.

Mark D'Arcy: First, [00:01:00] Ruth, the new chancellor, John Healey's first budget is looming. He'll deliver it next week and it'll be closely scrutinised as the first concrete evidence of how Andy Burnham's government plans to do things differently.

Ruth Fox: And one of the closest scrutinies will be Dame Meg Hillier, chair of the Commons Treasury Committee.

And before that chair of the Public Accounts Committee, she'll have a prominent and early role in the budget debate.

Mark D'Arcy: Meg Helio, welcome to the pods. You are, I imagine gonna be the third person to speak in the debate on the budget statement. There's the Chancellor of the Exchequer outlining the proposals.

There's the leader of the opposition immediately having to respond to 'em, which is a pretty difficult gig, but at least they have the backup of the whole sort of opposition machine behind them to supply questions and analysis as they're talking, as they're on their feet. And then we'll come to you probably.

That's right. The chair of the treasury committee is normally the first government backbencher who's called to speak. And so you'll be out within half an hour or so of the chancellor having made his budget statement. And that's a pretty difficult place to be. [00:02:00]

Meg Hillier: it is, but at least I know in advance that I've got to stand up.

One of the challenges is I've heard the budget speech and I'll have heard the response from the leader of the opposition, but I won't necessarily have had time to go through all of the paperwork 'cause I've got to listen to the debate while responding to it. So I might get a chance to look at a couple of the big charts about where projected spending is going over the next five years.

But in reality, I'll have to be reacting to it in very much in real time. Obviously though as a committee we look at all of these issues all the time and I've got good advisors and we can sometimes divine what might be coming. Though I have no inside track, I should stress. I don't get called into the treasury and told what's in the budget in advance in any way whatsoever.

No, no hints even

Mark D'Arcy: so no chance to rearrange your portfolio before the budget,

Meg Hillier: but yeah, no danger of insider trading. I could tell you that for sure.

Mark D'Arcy: So essentially you'll have an idea that the chancellor might do this and he might do that and you'll have remarks prepared for either contingency

Meg Hillier: A bit of that, because obviously there's a certain limit to what he can do.

So if we look at the challenges of the war in Iran, the [00:03:00] impact on fuel bills, for example, some of the things that have been done un under the Prime Minister has talked a lot about supporting people with the cost of living. A lot of that's already been announced over the summer. So is then it begs the question of what more can be announced.

So there are very limited options open to the chancellor. And of course, actually good thing this time there have been very few leaks, much less speculation around the budget. So real tight control over that, which I think is a good thing for the country, gives me less to play with. and of course I can always come up with if I want to, my wishlist of what I'd like him to have done.

But realistically, I look, I've spent a lot of time looking at public spending. It's a very tight situation. He's gonna have to make very hard judgements. So I don't think there's gonna be a big giveaway budget with lots of rabbits out of hats. That's my hunch because if I were in his seat, I wouldn't have much, there's not much money to play with. Really.

Ruth Fox: And your committee, Treasury Committee, Meg, always does a, an inquiry into the budget and into major fiscal events. What difference does it make.

Meg Hillier: I think the, the essence of select committees is that we do these things in public [00:04:00] and the Chancellor of the Exchequer in charge of the nation's finances has to answer for his actions.

But also we do know that sometimes when budgets hit the real world, especially in this case where it's been very, tightly held down in the, treasury and maybe he hasn't been tested, I don't know, with real world partners, then something can unravel. And some of us still remember that the George Osborne Pasty Tax, John Mann, a member of the Treasury Select Committee at the time started a series of questions about when did you last by a pasty chancellor George Osborne looking a little bit surprised he'd come to talk about the nation's finances.

he's being asked what pastries he'd eats. And of course that became a very big issue that, VAT was being charged on hot food and unravelled. So there are those sort of things that can happen in the fortnight between the budget and when the chancellor appears in front of us, which will be on the 11th of November.

Mark D'Arcy: And one of the things that often happens in a budget is that the chancellor will give predictions and projections of what they're going to do with spending. And often you find that the enormous painful spending cuts are back loaded right to the distant [00:05:00] horizon somewhere in three or four years time when maybe the chancellor won't be the chancellor anymore.

And so you have to probe how realistic some of those ideas of great savings in the future really are.

Meg Hillier: indeed, and I think actually I think it was Rachel Reeves first budget was a very big projection about the amount of tax money would come into the ex Exchequer to, to the government from taxpayers by improving tax compliance.

So making sure that people are paying the tax that they're due. And it was, the figures ramped up very dramatically of that five year period. So that gives us a very obvious course of work as a committee to say, that was promised. How are you delivering on those targets? So the other thing that is important to do is to measure what the Chancellor unveils and all of the data and so on behind it on the 28th of October with what was unveiled in previous years to see if there are any changes.

less money for a department here or more money for a department there. And also if he making, he's making announcements about anything that will happen. You look to look at the, the numbers to see how much money will be attached to that. 'cause sometimes the numbers [00:06:00] announced in the budget are the ones that wants the chance wants in the public domain.

Our job is to dig a bit below that for the ones he doesn't. But I think one of the thing things here is the budget has got a job to play, but the spending review will be one of the interesting things coming up that way next spring, which will detail how departments will spend listeners money and their taxes on things.

And that with a new Prime Minister, I think that's gonna be one of the areas to watch.

Ruth Fox: And that's a question for this budget. Given the challenges you've highlighted earlier, is it gonna be dramatic change of course, or is it actually gonna be steady as we go to get to next spring and to the comprehensive spending review and this 10 year plan that we're awaiting this autumn, so that then on the basis of those sort of big strategic proposals that then we see more dramatic change next year?

Do you think that's what's likely to happen?

Meg Hillier: I think that's not an, an unfair assumption. I think that it's certainly, I sense. Perhaps it's 'cause we haven't had leaks and, speculation that there aren't gonna be very big surprises in the budget. As I say, it's quite difficult financially and lots of [00:07:00] discussion about where you can raise money.

There aren't many options open and obviously the last chancellor raise money from various forms. You can't keep going back and dipping into the same pots. And then as you rightly highlight, Ruth, we've got a new Prime Minister, we've got all these various plans, the 10 year plan, he has a vision for the long-term future.

And I have to say I do think long-term planning in politics is a good thing, but in the meantime, the chancellor's got to deal with the here and the now and the challenges for each department. I think what I'd like to see is each department be really rigorously held to account for the spending it's already doing because you can lose money very quickly if you're not got your eye on a project or a Secretary of State comes in you and says they're gonna revisit what they're predecessor did.

Thinking of a few things there. Hs, two few defence projects along the way. Billions can literally be wasted if you don't do that well. So I think I would hope that, when it comes to the spending review, that there's gonna be a sort of an iron discipline on managing existing government projects as well as any money that might move from one department to another.

Mark D'Arcy: That brings us to a point about your personal experiences on the committee corridor because [00:08:00] before you were in the Treasury Committee, you chaired the public accounts committee for quite a long time, and that sounds like the voice of someone who's chaired the public accounts committee and has sat there doing all those sessions about what's going wrong with HS two and what's going wrong with assorted weapons projects that have produced pieces of sort of freeform metal sculpture that don't actually work yet.

Meg Hillier: indeed and we've seen and too much of that look, one of the, the great things about politicians, maybe your listeners may or not agree, is that they're enthusiasts and ambitious for things. We all want everything to happen yesterday. But yeah, with my rather boring captain sensible money, on actually you can't just do that without the money attached to it.

I think it's taxpayer's money, they, people work hard to give it to government, expect it to be spent well. But with the current type fiscal situation, managing the money that's already being spent is even more important than it ever is Because if you don't, if you waste money or spend more money on a project that's underway because it's not being well managed, that's less money to spend on new things.

And we've got a Prime Minister who's laid out very clear agenda for what his vision is and the things he wants to spend money on. in order to do [00:09:00] that, we've gotta make sure that public spending approach is very rigorous.

Ruth Fox: And what's the House of Commons role in that then in terms of you say, you'd like to see more rigorous sort of accountability around departmental spending, what's actually happening now and in the near future as well as the, the longer term.

What can Parliament do? 'cause one of the criticisms including at the society is that, scrutiny of estimates, scrutiny of spending is really incredibly difficult.

Meg Hillier: Yeah. so the public accounts committee changed the way it looked at estimates and called in secretaries of State who came back dipping into the taxpayer fund asking for more money because they'd miscalculated.

And that did meant we actually got, fewer requests for extra top ups. That's what the estimates are. But we are actually as the Liaison Committee, so that's the committee of committee chairs, which I also chair on the committee corridor. We're looking at the remit of select committees, and that's everything from pre-commencement hearings, but also, one of the areas is there is that departments budgets are supposed to be examined by the relevant departmental select committee.

There are 18 departmental select committees and then there's various other committees. And so they have a role [00:10:00] too, I think, in watching how that money is spent. And I know that the, justice committee when Sir Bob Neal was chairing it, always held those civil servants to account, they come out slightly, looking at tell Bump into the permanent Secretary and say, where have you been?

And they'd been challenged in the committee room by the justice committee about the spending, details of their budget. And I think that's a really important aspect. It's not just down to the money committees, if you like, it's all committees need to be asking about money.

Ruth Fox: And can I ask you about you, you were saying earlier about leaks and the chancellor might avoid being told off by the Speaker.

Next week we'll have to see what happens if any leaks next Wednesday morning. But it said that the chancellor coming from the MOD has applied military grade security to the planning of the budget and the work that's been done. What are the risks of that? 'cause it seems to me that if people are not able to talk to each other about some of these issues, things might fall through the cracks.

Meg Hillier: Yes. I think one thing, having emails [00:11:00] marked so that you know where they've gone, that's a good thing. But I think that you raise an important point there. And we actually challenged the permanent Secretary at the treasury about this on the Treasury select Committee after the leaks of last, of recent years.

And he said the danger is if you keep the circle too narrow, the challenge is that you don't then test ideas and you can't always see the interaction between things. So that is a judgement that the chancellor has to make. But I think there's an awful lot of damage done by speculation. We saw people sometimes send through sensational commentary.

It wasn't always of course down to the treasury or, politicians or Parliament or the government, but sometimes that sensational commentary can make people withdraw their pension pots, make decisions about divesting a property or assets. And these are big life decisions that shouldn't be made just because you read something in the newspaper or you've heard a rumour on the grapevine.

So I think he's trying to be responsible is my feeling about this. I haven't spoken about it, but there is a, challenge that you've got to also allow a safe space for people to dress test things. And in the hallways of the treasury I've been in there, it feels very long way from the [00:12:00] streets of Hackney South and hor.

And I think that's the challenge is how you get Whitehall to be a sure is testing things against the real world.

Mark D'Arcy: And speaking of the, chancellor, having previously been the defence Secretary, one of the challenges, a political challenge for him is that having resigned from Stan's government over what he said was underspending on defence, he surely gotta find a way to get many billions more into the defence budget in this budget or his personal credibility is gonna be toast, isn't it?

Meg Hillier: I think this budget's not where we will see that big change. That will be the spending review. There will be some clues in there in terms of departmental budgets, but those things can be shifted around a bit, around the spending review. But I think he's very clear on his position. And he's not wrong.

We live in a very dangerous world. We do need to be looking very seriously at defence spending, but he's not just always so about more money. The measure of defence spending by percentage of GDP is an international measure because that's an easy way of comparing across countries. But actually part of the measure in the UK is making sure that the money that the Ministry of Defence has is spent.

[00:13:00] and, I've been pushing for a special committee to be set up to look at some of those, sensitive areas that don't get enough scrutiny because they can't all be in the public domain and we should not. And I was very clear about this when I looked at public finances on the public accounts committee, just because something's a difficult thing to look at, shouldn't be the case that it is not examined in detail by actually Parliament, because Parliament can hold Whitehall to account on its spending.

And I think we need to see that. So yeah, we'll face that challenge, but I think we'll see more detail in the, spending review. I think that's really where the action's gonna be.

Mark D'Arcy: I'm intrigued about this special committee. Are you talking about something that looks at stuff that's too secret to be discussed in public sessions?

So this could be defence, I suppose it could be the funding of the security services, that kind of thing.

Meg Hillier: Absolutely. And there's been a lot of movement to try and get this established because, for example, when I was on the public accounts committee originally seller field, which is our nuclear decommissioning hub, it's, not a nuclear PowerPoint.

It's decommissioning centre. And it was seen as very difficult to examine. It's very difficult stuff. And how can you look at whether [00:14:00] money's being spent properly as the value for money? And actually my predecessor, Margaret Hodge said, yeah, we should look at this like any other project. And I think that same for Ghost of the Defence, just because it's got a bit of grey paint on it, doesn't mean it's somehow separate and different and shouldn't be examined in detail.

And so I hope that this will be finally getting off the ground soon.

Ruth Fox: As chair of the Treasury Committee now, have you learned anything about how sort of the government puts its, financial ideas together about project management on things that you perhaps didn't know or didn't appreciate so much on the other side of the, the spending process as chair of PAC?

Meg Hillier: I think probably from this perspective, I see more of the, if you like the spin in the attempt to explain it. 'cause I was as chair of the public accounts committee, you have in front of you the civil servants who are responsible. They're the accounting officers responsible for every penny their department spends and they have to account for that in public.

With the process of the, the budget and the sort of things that the Treasury Minister is dealing with. I'm dealing more with the politics of it, rather than just the numbers. So that's the difference I think. I see. And, it's just a different sort of pace [00:15:00] because political priorities can suddenly pop up and you have to deal with them in a way where, whereas in my previous role, I was looking at ongoing and historic spending and learning lessons, trying to get Whitehall to learn lessons about what had gone wrong.

Mark D'Arcy: And do you ever get, if you like gotcha moments where the chancellor or some treasury minister throws up his hands and says it's a fair cop so society to blame, we better go out and change what we were proposing. That, that doesn't seem to me to be something that happens very often.

Meg Hillier: No, it doesn't. I mean the, the famous Pasty Tax is one example of that.

And every chance is probably praying that they don't have something like that happen on their watch. That is things have been tested, to destruction before they're announced in public. And actually it's not our job. gotcha's a, it's a cheap politics if you like. What we really wanna see is. That there's a proper plan and that they're sticking to the plan.

we're assessing the government on its own promises and saying, have you achieved what you set out? And we can then critique that. But that's part of the reason, the chance that comes in front of us to explain his approach to justify his decisions. And as from his point of view, I'm sure he wants [00:16:00] to reassure the taxpayer and various other bodies that he's doing a good job.

And our job is to test him on that. I do remember, without telling Tales Outta School, that it can be quite nerve wracking for a new member of Parliament. we had a, we were elected in 24, new government coming in after 14 years to challenge their own ministers about their own decisions.

And as I put it to people, if they're in that job, their job is, they would expect to be challenged rigorously. And I think John Healey is a parliamentarian as well as a minister. And he will not be frightened of any of the questions we've got to ask. But, and I'd be surprised if he couldn't answer anything.

Very surprised. 'cause I'm sure he'll be very well prepared.

Ruth Fox: And is the budget therefore a teachable moment for MPs, as chair of the Treasury Committees, there are opportunities for you to help build the financial literacy of members of Parliament?

Meg Hillier: Oh, that's a good point. I think, yeah, the, there is a real opportunity there.

'cause you've tried to encourage people to look not just at the announcements on the day, not the thing that mentions their constituency, not the physical thing that's gonna be built somewhere, but what's the long-term plan? And actually, if you look at some of the wicked issues facing us, defence is partly about [00:17:00] infrastructure and physical things, but it is also about investing in people, personnel skills.

These are longer term things to deliver. If you look at this, this whole debate about welfare and social security, this isn't about physical things. It's about a long term trajectory and a plan. So I think that's where I think I call, I talk a lot about slow politics and that's really saying that we need to be thinking about the 10, 20 years hence, and making decisions now that will solve some of these.

Things that either are now wicked issues or will become problems. So for an, an example would be what are we doing about the birth rate in the uk it's at 1.41, it's fallen every year for the last three years. What are the consequences of that? And there are financial consequences because we won't have people to pay for the care of, an ageing population 'cause there won't be enough children and the young adults growing into work.

So there are a lot of things like that actually, if you look at some of these projections, you look at the OBR B'S forecasts and especially the OBR B's long range one, which doesn't come out at the same time as the budget. You can see these problems. And I think that's for me was like the political financial literacy that you need.

You don't need to know how to read a spreadsheet. You need to be looking at the problems coming forward. [00:18:00] Then there are clever people in the Treasury and elsewhere that can come up with hopefully some of those solutions.

Mark D'Arcy: What's your impression of how financially, how fiscally literate the House of Commons is at the moment?

Do you think there are enough people on those green benches who really grasp the issues facing the chancellor? Or are they all, as you say, gonna be focused on whether something's being done for their constituency or their pet cause? Oh, there

Meg Hillier: are some very, very capable individuals. I think about, members and chairs of other select committees.

So there's been a lot of discussion about defence spending and some, people like Alex Baker, the MP for DER Shot is very on top of the, detail and has really delved into how defence could be funded in different ways and with different partners. Probably knows more about that than almost anyone in the House.

So certain there are certain MPs out there who really look into that and dig into that. Obviously some people have their areas of specialism, but I think that we don't as a house though, have enough opportunity to debate the real budget, which is the whole of government accounts, the money that government spends across the piece.

We talk about the budget [00:19:00] with a capital B and we have a debate about that for a week. We never spend as much time on the actual day-to-day real money behind what's going on. the trajectory on pensions, the, cost of the NHS and how those sort of things interact with each other. The, health liabilities is a huge risk for this government of future governments 'cause that's just going ballooning in cost.

These are the things we should look at. We've tried to do some more of that, but then you need a minister properly briefed to come and answer very detailed questions on their budget. And I think there is a bit of a gap there. And I've been a minister, I talk to ministers and often there isn't enough rigorous oversight of the budget and that's not denigrating my colleagues, it's just the system's not really set up for them to have to expect to answer questions on the budget in detail of their department, which is I think, a gap in the system.

Mark D'Arcy: Rather interesting thought. Meg, healer, thanks very much indeed for joining Ruth and me on the pod today.

Meg Hillier: Thank you very much.

Mark D'Arcy: So Ruth, a very interesting interview there from Meg. What did we learn from it?

Ruth Fox: The thing that interested me was about leaks because this has been a long running problem, particularly [00:20:00] of course for the Speaker about budget secrecy.

We know that John Healey has apparently applied lessons from the Ministry of Defence about how to deploy military level security to ensure that there are not the leaks of the kind that we've seen in the last couple of years. But a consequence of that is that does it mean that some of the issues do not get stress tested within the treasury because there isn't a sharing of information either within the department or indeed across departments.

Yeah. Meg was suggesting that, was a concern,

Mark D'Arcy: clearly a balance there between, if you like, need to know. Yeah. And being sure that things are canvased sufficiently widely, that any glaring problems with them are identified and they don't make it into the budget without those glaring problems being addressed.

Obviously this is an issue that's bedevilled. The last couple of budgets, the run up to each of Rachel Reeve's budgets had almost wall to wall coverage of the blood chilling options that she was contemplating to strip the middle class to the bones. And this time there's been an awful lot less of that.

There's been a bit of speculation, but not the [00:21:00] kind of authoritative sounding leaks of the chance's, intentions that bedevilled his predecessor.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. So it'd be interesting to see, does it work or in fact, do we actually see some problems emerge as a consequence. And while we weren't doing the interview, mark your eyes lit up when Meg started to talk about a committee to investigate essentially secret sensitive defence spending.

Mark D'Arcy: There's been talk for a while of having some kind of urgency committee. That would examine large items of spending that for one reason or another, usually security reasons couldn't be canvased in public, discussed in public session. And given that ginormous sums have been directed, for example, towards the intelligence services and ginormous sums are apparently going to be needed to upgrade the armed forces and ginormous sums may need to be spent on civilian resilience.

And there's vast amounts that go into the nuclear programme that are never discussed openly. There's an awful lot of items that could do with a bit of scrutiny and Meley [00:22:00] was making the point that, again and again, we've seen big military programmes bedevilled by changes in specifications and intentions, and can we add on this particular bit to this particular military system?

And oh yes, of course we can. It only cost you an extra couple of billion. Those kind of discussions going on all the time. So having Parliament, putting its finger a little bit more powerfully onto the spending decisions around these secret items might be no bad thing. And it was one of the things that really leapt out to me, that whole interview was several times she came back to the theme that controlling spending more effectively, getting rid of really egregious waste would do an awful lot of good to the chancellor's sums.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. last time we interviewed Meg for the podcast, we titled the episode, Parliament Waste Finder General. So she's, still living up to the, to

Mark D'Arcy: the title. she's still living there. she said she's been on both the big money committees, the public accounts committee, and now the Treasury Committee.

So she has an interesting set of views to deploy here, and I think it's very important they do that. I [00:23:00] imagine what we're gonna get outta this as a, some group of fairly senior, probably privy Councillors, ex minister types sitting in private to discuss stuff that is never really openly shared with the public for, as I say, one reason or another.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Yeah. The other thing that I thought was interesting is she confirmed that she doesn't get the budget information in advance as chair of the treasury Committee. Sometimes if she, intimated, people do assume that, but no, she doesn't, get consulted, canvassed on issues unless, unless she does.

And she's not able

to tell us.

Mark D'Arcy: That, that was my thought, that if I were the chancellor and I were canvassing some budget option, I think it would have to be done on the most serious sort of privy council terms. Never must this be revealed. So even if, she was canvassed, she certainly could tell us about it, I suppose potentially, she may know things that are market moving information, so you have to be incredibly careful as a politician when that sort of dynamite is placed in your hands.

Ruth Fox: But take her at a word, perhaps [00:24:00] she's not consulted. So one person, interestingly, who does get the budget a little bit in advance, so assuming the Burnham government operates as previous governments have done. John Healey will go to cabinet the morning of the budget next week and present it to the cabinet, be laid out in full.

And then there'll be discussion. Then he'll appear in Parliament. But apparently Nusrat Ghani, the principal deputy Speaker, chairman of Ways and Means, she apparently receives the budget a little bit in advance because she will have to chair the debate. So

Mark D'Arcy: yeah. I suppose that would be incredibly difficult to do if you didn't have some idea what was coming up.

Yeah. I can see that might happen. But again, it's all under the strictest Privy Council terms. But I often wondered, incidentally, what would happen, or the chancellor, and you go to the cabinet the morning of the budget and you're looking forward to your moment of glory in the photo call outside Dining Street where you raise up your budget red box before the assembled snappers of Fleet Street.

what would happen if in that [00:25:00] cabinet meeting someone says, study on, you can't possibly do that. And there was a bit of an uprising. Yeah, I don't think it's ever happened. it's the sort of thing that might nearly have happened to de Healey during the very straightened period of the seventies when he was presenting crisis budgets at roughly 15 minute intervals.

But, I just find myself wondering, surely it must be at least technically possible for the cabinet to stay set or up with that we're not going to put, and the Chancellor ends up having to resign on leave at the budget

Ruth Fox: extremist. there were those stories, of course, weren't they in the Blair years where the relation between Blair and Brown had broke down to such an extent that actually Blair didn't know what was in the, in the budget, in, in full until it was presented.

And I have to say, I do find that very odd as a, Secretary of State with collective responsibility around the cabinet table, I would want much more information and knowledge about what was coming. Not just about my own department Yeah. But about the strategic thinking across the piece. So

Mark D'Arcy: you, shouldn't just be presented with a fater company.

Yeah. And a position of either you trigger political catastrophe or you go along with it. With it. Yeah. that's the sum of your choices. Yeah. [00:26:00]

Ruth Fox: with that Mark, we take a break and then come back and talk about what will actually happen in practise in the chamber and then in the committees after the budget is presented next week.

Mark D'Arcy: 'cause there's quite a complex chain of events to explore and to the outside watch up, perhaps watching a budget for the first time, it's not always the easiest thing to unravel. So we thought we'd provide a kind of cutout and keep guide to the way that budgets work. Join us in a few moments.

Ruth Fox: See you then.

We're back and, Mark, let's go through our, cutout and keep guide to the budget process. I think it's important that it's a complex mixture of procedure, constitutional principle. Things come down from the midst of historical time and I think we should look at it probably in four parts.

It helps to think about it. Goal

Mark D'Arcy: could be broken up into three parts, but the budget needs four.

Ruth Fox: Budget four. So we've got the financial statement, we've got the budget debate itself. We've got the Ways and Means resolutions, and we've got the Finance Bill. So we [00:27:00] start with the financial statement that will be delivered by the chancellor, usually held on a Wednesday after PMQs.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, it's usually that. And you immediately get to the point the PMQs is normally the big event of any parliamentary week, but it's totally eclipsed by the budget. And there's always a little bit of ritual attempting to tease outta the Prime Minister a bit of what's going to be in the budget, which the Prime Minister will ritually reply.

You only have to wait a few minutes and you'll find out. Yeah. T he so it, it totally eclipses the normal PMQs badinage.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. So the first thing to note is that the Speaker will step outta the chair and be replaced by the principal Deputy Speaker Nusrat Ghani, the Chair of Ways and Means occasionally the Speaker has done it, I think the last time I think was 1989 possibly, but it's generally the chair of Ways and Means.

And again, this is a historical inheritance dating back to, to the time of Charles I, when the, the Speaker was seen as a tool of the monarchy. And yeah.

Mark D'Arcy: And so Parliament would resolve [00:28:00] itself into a Ways and Means committee when discussing financial issues so that the, the Monarchs place person couldn't be chairing the debate and steering it in the direction the Monarch wanted.

So it's a, it is a relic of the ancient tensions between the monarchy and the legislature. And it also just reflects the fact that the Commons has always held the financial purse strings always made the big decisions on tax and spend. And actually in some ways, that's what the English Civil War was about, when the Monarch tried to find ways around that.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Yeah. And then one of the things that will dominate the budget discussion will be, no doubt, the report from the Office of Budget responsibility, the OBR, but the Commons has to have a, process, a procedure to have those documents formally laid before the House. So you get the Treasury Red Book, you get the Office of Budget Responsibilities report, you get any other supporting documentation from the Treasury, and there will have to be, therefore, a motion tabled by the government [00:29:00] to enable those documents to be produced.

So a whip will move a motion for an unopposed return before the Chancellor speaks. And an interesting auditor hear as well, if the Chancellor were a Secretary of State, then you'd get a humble address. We've talked about that on the podcast in the past. A humble

Mark D'Arcy: address to the Monarch to, yeah, get these documents released.

But because the Chancellor is not a Secretary of State and therefore a Secretary of the Monarch,

Ruth Fox: you get a motion for an unopposed return.

Mark D'Arcy: Not a lot of people know that.

Ruth Fox: that's what people come to this podcast for.

Mark D'Arcy: Absolutely. And our Acts on everybody, there'll be a short test at the end of the pod.

Ruth Fox: So when we've got those two steps outta the way, then the chancellor can stand up and give his speech, the update on essentially the state of the economy, the outline of the tax plans. But,

Mark D'Arcy: but the first question that everybody's asking is what's going to be in the glass placed in front of the chancellor at the Despatch box for them to drink from?

Ruth Fox: Yeah.

Mark D'Arcy: Because normally in the Commons, you're allowed to sit water if [00:30:00] you need it, but Chancellors delivering a budget, have a special dispensation to drink alcohol.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. As I recall on the podcast last year, for last year's budget, when I asked you what, you thought Rachel Rees would drink, you said S.

Mark D'Arcy: there's been a long range of, of drinks. Some people have had whiskey, some people have had whiskey and water. I think Nigel Lawson used to have a white wine spritzer during his great budgets in the 1980s. And William Gladston when he was chancellor and he used to deliver three four hour budget speeches, had a revolting concoction of sherry whisked into an egg yolk.

Oh, it sounds repulsive. And you imagine on a sweaty day that could get pretty noxious pretty quickly. Yeah. But, anyway,

Ruth Fox: well speak. Speaking of Gladstone and his long speeches, apparently he gave the longest budget speech. that's always the question. Also, how long will the chance of speak for?

So Rachel es how much do

Mark D'Arcy: they have to say?

Ruth Fox: Yeah, Rachel Reeves last year was something like an hour and 20 minutes, and Nusrat Ghani has been putting some little videos out, ask me [00:31:00] questions about the budget process. And, she saved me a bit of research on the longest and shortest speeches on the budget.

So apparently Gladstone, he did a, a speech that lasted five hours. Can you imagine?

Mark D'Arcy: Gordon bennett

Ruth Fox: Disraelis was apparently the shortest at 45 minutes. So Rachel Reeves and Jeremy Hunt coming in at one hour 20 is quite, is pretty reasonable really. But yeah, we'll see how long John Healey speaks for.

How much time will he fill?

Mark D'Arcy: I suppose part of the conundrum with John Healey's budget is that it relates to various other events that will come along later on. It's a sort of smoother of the way for the spending review that's due in the spring and the 10 year plan that Andy Burnham is going to announce at some point, possibly before Christmas.

So those are all events that have yet to come that the budget kind of main lines into and may provide a few hints about their content. So the budget no longer quite stands alone in the way that it used to, is it is the point here and the batting order is that it is that the chancellor delivers [00:32:00] their speech for however long it takes.

And while that's happening, the leader of the opposition is sitting opposite, trying to figure out what to say in response because the leader of the opposition has to get up as soon as the chancellor sits down. Pretty much. I think the Speaker has a few words to say, just to allow 'em to catch their breath.

Ruth Fox: There's some motions to be me

Mark D'Arcy: motion. We'll come on to in a moment. Motion to be moved, as you say, will be coming onto that. But the, it's probably the single most difficult gig in the parliamentary year. Yeah. Is being the leader of the opposition, having this enormous body of information thrown at you and having to process it, make sense of it.

Find something politically coherent to say, all in real time, you are often speaking at the despatch box, trying to deliver your preliminary remarks and all pieces of paper being handed to you saying, this is the point to make about this, and this is the point to make about that little file cards, perhaps being handed by a chain of conservative MPs next to you all originating from some group of researchers who are back in the leader of the opposition's [00:33:00] room in a corridor behind the speaker's chair somewhere.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. And going back to our earlier discussion with Meg Hillier, this is where the, the question of leaks also becomes quite pertinent because if you, there's been a lot of leaks, it's easier for the leader of the opposition to work out what the lines of attack may be. If there haven't been many leaks and you're not sure what's coming.

It's a little harder on the day.

Mark D'Arcy: It's just a, an absolutely awful job to do anyway, because there's a limit to how much you can usefully say about all this vast body of information that's just been hurled at you minutes after having heard it. And as I say, you may have a group of pointy headed researchers in the background somewhere doing a bit of processing, but you have to talk and weave their talking points.

They supply you with into your speech as, as they come at you. And I, really do sympathise with leader, any leader of the opposition faced with this task because it is an absolute nightmare. And sometimes if you do it very badly, that is used in evidence against you for quite a long time afterwards.

Neil Kinnick once bombed very badly responding to one of the Conservatives [00:34:00] budgets in the 1980s and took a long time to recover from that. He tried to crack jokes and it didn't quite work, and no one has ever heard the last of it.

Ruth Fox: between the chancellor sitting down and the leader of the opposition standing up, there will be a brief interlude blink, and you miss it almost, where the government will have to move two motions formally.

Now normally a motion is moved with notice. So it, appears on the order paper that you know, as soon as the House rises, the order paper for the next sitting day is produced motion would normally appear on that order paper so that the House has notice of what's coming. But for the budget doesn't have to, so it'll be moved without notice and there'll be two motions moved.

So the first is a Provisional Collection of Taxes motion under the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1968, which essentially gives provisional statutory authority as of midnight on the day of the budget for any tax [00:35:00] changes detailed in the motion that the chancellor deems necessary to introduce straight away.

And this is essentially for things like, if you're gonna raise taxes on alcohol or fuel or something that's

Mark D'Arcy: cigarettes.

Ruth Fox: Cigarettes, things that are market sensitive and you don't want people stockpiling to,

Mark D'Arcy: and then you don't get any of your lovely new taxes for quite a while until they've Yeah.

Drunk all the alcohol and smoke all the cigarettes or whatever. Or you used all the petrol.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. So we'll get that first. And that provides the temporary statutory authority until the Finance Bill gets royal ascent, which, and

Mark D'Arcy: More on the Finance Bill in a moment.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. And then the second motion is a Ways and Means motion on which the debate on the budget will then begin.

There'll be dozens of these Ways and Means motions 'cause every tax change and so on will require its own individual motion, which becomes a resolution of the House. But only the first one is debated and only the first one is amendable. All the other ways means motions will be put to the House forthwith.

So you know that famous phrase means [00:36:00] no debate and can't be amended. But we'll come to that in a minute. The detail of those Ways and Means motions because the type of motion that is tabled first will affect the scope of amendment, not just in the debate. And in that first resolution that will be decided by MPs in the week following the budget.

But it will also have implications for the ability of MPs to amend the Finance Bill.

Mark D'Arcy: But what we get in the meantime is the budget debate and the early batting order, we alluded it to it when we were talking to Meg Hillier, is that you get the chancellor followed by the leader of the opposition.

Followed usually by a, a very senior government side MP. Normally someone like the Treasury Select committee chair, in this case, Meg Hillier, who quite clearly is going to be the third person to speak. Then they go to the leader of the Liberal Democrats as the third party. And then the order, it just bats between the opposition and the government side with various senior figures from various other parties getting former, their end, former Prime Minister

Ruth Fox: Rishi Sunak,

Mark D'Arcy: former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, you could imagine might well feature former, Prime [00:37:00] Minister and indeed Chancellor Rishi Sunak.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, those kinds of, senior

Mark D'Arcy: Well, the tragedy that former Prime Minister Liz Truss isn't there to share her wisdom with us as well, but we'll leave that for the moment and this will bounce back and forth between the government side and the opposition side in the traditional way, and the debate will extend over a further three days beyond budget day itself.

And the debates will be loosely themed on the other days, but the themes for those days aren't announced early because that would give a clue to the content of the budget. So we'll have to wait. It is of course possible for MPs to speak on other matters than the supposed theme during a given day, but the general idea is to give some kind of structure.

To the budget debate as it extends over those subsequent days.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. And the shadow chancellor will open the debate on day two and then usually get relevant secretaries of State, depending upon what the themes are on the subsequent sort of third and fourth days of the budget debate. Usually treasury ministers, I think, do the wind up study.

Yes.

Mark D'Arcy: It's generally treasury ministers doing the windup. The [00:38:00] chief Secretary or someone like that will do the wind up.

Ruth Fox: The day of the budget itself is day one of the debate. We'll then have the Thursday next week. It is day two. And then the government's announced today as expected in the, the business statement that, the following Monday and Tuesday, the second and 3rd of November will be days three and four.

So it's really that evening of Tuesday, the 3rd of November, where the critical votes will take place on the, Ways and Means motions.

Mark D'Arcy: And those are not the end of the story because later on further down the line, the government presents a Finance Bill, which puts the other budget measures into effect.

And that is taken as a normal piece of legislation in the Commons going through all its various stages. And that can be done within quite a leisurely timetable. There is a point at which the Provisional Collection of Taxes motion expires. And if a Finance Bill hasn't been passed by then, there'd be trouble.

You'd have to give the money back

Ruth Fox: Yeah.

Mark D'Arcy: From the tax increases.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. You

Mark D'Arcy: never happened.

Ruth Fox: You've gotta, you've gotta pass your, I think your, Provisional Collection of [00:39:00] Taxes motion has gotta be passed within 10 days of the sitting days of the budget. And then you've got to have second reading of the Finance Bill within 30 sitting days of the resolutions having been passed.

And that Provisional Collection of taxes resolution remains valid for seven months. So essentially you've gotta get your Finance Bill in within that seven month period. But let's just go back a little bit to this vexed question of the Ways and Means motions and whether MPs can amend the motion and the bill.

Because one of the things to look out for is that first motion for the charging of income tax or will it be what's called an Amendment of the Law motion? It's expedient to amend the law with respect to the national debt and, whatever else.

Mark D'Arcy: The importance of that is that an Amendment of the Law motion, which is something that used to happen quite a lot,

Ruth Fox: used to be the norm.

Mark D'Arcy: Used to be the norm, is something that gives a much wider scope Yeah. For subsequent debate. Whereas if you are just debating a particular tax change that narrows down what it [00:40:00] is in order for MPs to talk about. Yep. In the budget debate and there was quite a kerfuffle when I think it was the conservative governments of a few years ago, decided not to have the amendment to the law motion.

And people suddenly thought, aha, this is bad. This limits the scope of the budget debate. And the opposition complained a very great deal about it. And now the opposition is the government and they're doing it

Ruth Fox: well. They

Mark D'Arcy: certainly did it last couple of times and may well do it again.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, the Procedure Committee of the House of Commons complained about it to the chancellor when it was Rishi Sunak doing it.

And, in fact, we at the Hansel Society wrote to the then Chief Whip Johnny Reynolds last year to complain about it. David Davis, the conservative MP, wrote to the chancellor, he takes it up quite regularly. So look out for him complaining if it is indeed a, a motion about income tax, not Amendment of the Law.

And he got a letter back from, the Chancellor last year, which essentially said, although this does limit the scope of new topics that can be raised in the debate, it also [00:41:00] means the government is seeking parliamentary approval only for the measures it intends to include in the subsequent Finance Bill.

This also puts limits on the government as it means that a further Ways and Means resolution would need to be debated and agreed by Parliament. Should the government wish to include further tax administration and relief provisions within the Finance Bill not already covered by an existing resolution.

Gosh, this is a more transparent approach. Up to a point, Lord Copper.

Mark D'Arcy: So those are some of the most important nuances about the debate. And one interesting question in my mind is how much difference this three days of debate will then actually make.

Because every now and then, and again, you mentioned it in that Meg Hillier interview earlier, every now and then there is some nugget in the budget that everybody focuses on.

This is a phenomenon I first noticed years and years ago in my days working for the Leicester Mercury, where I cover the budget meetings for Leicestershire County Council, and a billion pounds worth of [00:42:00] expenditure would be waved through. And they then have a five hour argument about paperclips.

And, sometimes that's what happens with budgets. You wade through the big sweep of, what the budget is attempting to do, and then you get into an argument about the pasty tax and a relatively small scale tax on, in this case, the sale of Cornish Pastis and other baked goods in places like Greg's.

And that is okay, it's an issue. It matters to some people, but sometimes it seems like a displacement tactic, frankly, that people just want something that they can latch onto and this is it. So the question in my mind really is, what's the thing they latch onto this time? Because it may well be that some piece of total trivia dominates the headlines for much of next week.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Yeah. I think, what we'll find out next week, we can discuss that in more detail and we can also, once the Finance Bill emerges, we can talk through the process for that in a little bit more detail. But one thing to look out for is that the Finance Bill will be presented for first reading immediately after the Ways and Means [00:43:00] resolutions are approved on that Tuesday evening, 3rd of November, the title would be read out.

But look out for one thing, the Speaker will ask, second reading what day? And somebody will say, tomorrow, just a warning listeners, it will not be tomorrow. It will not be.

Mark D'Arcy: Again. This is one of those rituals who's inner meaning is lost in the midst of parliamentary time.

Ruth Fox: Be very unusual for it to be tomorrow.

It's a, it is a procedural device to get it on the, listed on the future business of the House papers, yes, we often find that with bills after second reading, it's not tomorrow.

Mark D'Arcy: And the scheduling of the Finance Bill probably means that it'll come about in a few weeks time and have a leisurely passage through the Commons.

And then of course, it's more or less waived through the House of Lords, because by constitutional convention peers do not interfere in money bills. So they will have a brief debate on it, possibly, but a very brief debate and then take all its stages in one day. And batter bim. Yeah. It'll be law of the land.

Ruth Fox: There's that wonderful phrase in Erskine May about the House of Lords not interfering in [00:44:00] finance matters that to do otherwise would be unparliamentary and tend to the destruction of parliamentary government.

Mark D'Arcy: Certainly tend to the destruction of the upper house. Bear in mind that, more than a hundred years ago now, a vast constitutional crisis was triggered when the House of Lords then dominated by the Conservative and Unionist party interfered with Lloyd George's people's budget.

And I think it was two or three general elections later and, long running constitutional crisis later the First Parliament Act was passed and the House of Lords had its wings clipped.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Should we come back in a minute? Mark and, talk about Darren Jones's appearance before the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, where he told them that he tried several times to abolish his department cabinet office only to be told by the civil service that he couldn't because it was unconstitutional.

Mark D'Arcy: A surreal moment on the committee corridor. We'll be talking about that in a moment.

Ruth Fox: See in a minute.[00:45:00]

Mark D'Arcy: We are back. And Ruth, one of the interesting events on the committee corridor this week where frankly most committees were looking ahead to the budget in various ways, was a session of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, PACAC for short, where they had as their special guest, Darren Jones.

Now, Darren Jones had been the chief Secretary to the Treasury in the Keir Starmer years, and then was promoted to a completely new, and if you like, bespoke post that was created for him as Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister working at the heart of government with a sort of coordination of government policy role.

And this was at a time when Keir Starmer was talking about the importance of having mission led government with cross-cutting groups of ministers working to achieve particular policy aims like Safer Streets, which might involve ministers from several departments all working together. And this proved to be a bit more difficult than everybody had imagined, and Darren Jones came before the committee to explain how [00:46:00] mission led government worked with the added dimension now of why it didn't.

It became a rather surreal session.

Ruth Fox: It did. Yeah. And a lot of it came back to this concept of constitutional accountability to Parliament and the arguments of that being deployed by the Civil Service to say why things couldn't happen, for example. Why did the mission boards not really work? one of the reasons was that they hadn't got a handle on the money because the money flowed through departments.

And having cross departmental funding of these mission boards was difficult apparently, because he was told mission boards could not be constitutionally accountable to Parliament in the same way departments are. Which as we've talked about in the past, a lot of this scrutiny of financial matters is more performative than substantive in many respects.

Mark D'Arcy: absolutely. I'm afraid that the amount of financial scrutiny of the way that money is distributed around government is really pretty limited. And it was taught for a while of creating a budget committee that would examine such issues for that. [00:47:00] That I'm afraid came to nothing, I think effectively.

'cause no government really wants to be scrutinised in its big budget decisions. So it came as a little bit of a surprise to find that internally in the corridors of Whitehall Punctilious arguments about parliamentary sovereignty were being deployed to stop ministers doing this. Not least 'cause we are forever seeing government departments dropped into the blender.

Yeah. With other departments merged. Demerged broken up, abolished on a regular cycle. in the last reshuffle, the, the Department for Science and Technology was scrapped and it's content's folded mostly into the business department. So it's not an unusual thing when governments want to do something.

for that to happen. And I don't think the cabinet office, which, Darren Jones says he was trying to abolish and trying to abolish several times, has any special constitutional status. It's nowhere written down that there must be a Cabinet office.

Ruth Fox: Not that I'm aware of. And what the committee didn't have time to get into was, how had he gone about trying to abolish the cabinet office?

And simply [00:48:00] saying, the senior civil service said to me basically, you can't do this because it's unconstitutional. Didn't really get into the question of, had they raised concerns about what are you going to do with the functions of the cabinet office? How are you gonna rearrange them? You can't just abolish it.

So we didn't get into that level of detail. But he said, there were times I was told I couldn't do things because of the Constitution. And I'd reply with, the Constitution is unwritten, so if I decide to do something, it changes, therefore, why can't I do it?

Mark D'Arcy: And by the act of deciding to do it, you rewrite the Constitution, presumably.

But what fascinates me about this is the extent to which arguments like this seem to have slowed down occasionally, almost paralysed Keir Starmer government. Remember, this is a government that came in with an absolutely towering parliamentary majority. It would've been the envy of Tony Blair. It would be the envy of Margaret Thatcher.

It'd been the envy of everybody since Clement Attlee.

Intro: Yeah.

Mark D'Arcy: This was a government which included such luminaries as Keir Starmer himself, a former, in effect permanent Secretary as Director of Public Prosecutions in the role he [00:49:00] had before he entered Parliament, he was heading a government department. It included Sue Grey, the quintessential Whitehall Fixer as his chief of staff.

It included Pat McFadden, who had been at the centre of government in his days as Tony Blair's political Secretary, and had been around, seen everything throughout the new labour years. And these guys looked just about as experienced a, a set of Whitehall managers as you could possibly conceive of. They hit the civil service and bounced.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. The other thing that interested me about his evidence was the degree to which he alluded the civil service relied on the cabinet manual and that, for example, when he was appointed as Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, which was this new appointment. We'd not had it before. And there seemed to be a sense of befuddlement almost about how it was going to operate because it wasn't articulated in the cabinet manual.

Now, bear in mind, the Cabinet manual has not been updated since what, 2009 10. the new [00:50:00] Cabinet Secretary, Antonia Romeo, who's made it a, a commitment to get it updated and the committee that Darren Jones was appearing before will have a, role in scrutinising it once we, do get the new updated draught.

But I was struck if the Civil Service are relying on that quite so much, then they might have gone to the trouble of updating it in between. 'cause an awful lot's happened in, in, in the last 15 years. And I don't think you can rely on any changes that you might want to make being explainable through the cabinet manual before you can make them.

Mark D'Arcy: yeah. And there was this fascinating description by Darren Jones of how there would be questions about, as Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister in this new post, do you actually have the power to do whatever it is you're trying to do at the moment? Do other ministers have to obey your Dick tax? Are you speaking with the voice of the Prime Minister?

The answer to those questions was mostly yes, but it had to be underlined by sending an email to the relevant minister saying, yes, I do have these powers. And the Prime Minister says, have these powers. And maybe you get the Prime Minister to actually sign off on saying you have [00:51:00] those power. But the problem was you had to do that every time a minister changed.

As we know, ministers can change quite a lot. So the next minister along has to, get a, a similar email in order to understand where the authority is flowing from.

Ruth Fox: Yeah.

Mark D'Arcy: And that gets complicated as well.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. It was also interesting that he was using written statements to the House of Commons, north to Parliament.

'cause they'd be repeated in the Lords as well as a way of setting out for the record so that could be referred to, which is, an interesting perspective. But throughout all of this was that sense that he doesn't think the senior Civil Service are accountable either to ministers or to Parliament.

And he, explicitly said, there is a big debate for us in Parliament about how the government can improve accountability within government.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah. And, apparently the cabinet Secretary wants to take some powers to be able to direct permanent secretaries more effectively. And so legislation may have to flow on that in due course.

And that will be fascinating for the real pointy heads amongst us who follow the inner workings of government. But what I take from it is that there may [00:52:00] not be a written down constitution, but there's a kind of small galaxy of documents and codes of practise and procedural handbooks that guide people.

And if they're allowed to get outta date, hilarious consequences ensue. Nobody really knows what they're doing anymore. And a document dated back to 2000 and, nine 10, so that the late brown, early Cameron years is probably not a great guide to how governments functioned 16 years on.

Ruth Fox: So going back to what you were saying about the new cabinet Secretary, he, Darren Jones raised the suggestion, there's gonna have to be a bill, put to Parliament, or that the cabinet Secretary wants a bill to direct to the permanent secretaries.

And he's saying she's not going to be going to Parliament herself. she's a civil servant. So somebody within the government is gonna have to present that. So interesting question, for example, for Louise Hay, is she and the cabinet Secretary aligned on, what they want? Because if they're not, then again, you're gonna run into this sort of managerial dispute at, the centre.

Mark D'Arcy: One of the interesting things is 'cause Darren Jones's post as Chief [00:53:00] Secretary of the Prime Minister, has been abolished. So he's the only person ever to have occupied that particular seat. And that particular seat may have been dismantled. Yeah. So to speak. Now. And in so far as there is a successor to that role, it's been folded into the role of First Secretary of State, which is held by Louise Hay, who sits as the cabinet Minister in the Cabinet office.

Would she be the logical person to bring forward such a bill? We don't really know at the moment. We don't know if it's even gonna happen, but if it does, I would guess that it would be under her aegis.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Yeah. Another issue that Darren Jones raised in his evidence was this, this vexed question of how mayors and local authorities are gonna be held to account.

If there's gonna be more power and money devolved to them by the Burnham government. If you recall, mark, this is something we discussed with Liam Byrne last week on the pod in his role as chair of the Liaison Committee, sub-in inquiry into the effectiveness of select committees and what sort of powers and, new approaches they might need for the future.

And Darren Jones was raising exactly those kinds of issues. where's the [00:54:00] accountability?

Mark D'Arcy: li by talked about the Gordon Brown era innovation of having regional select committees. So there'd be a, an East Midland select committee that would look at East Midland's issues. So might be looking at how the, the Mayor of Nottingham and Derby is using their powers or the Mayor of Greater Leicester or something like that.

That's a model you could well use, but they would have several different cities to look at.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. And I think the other problem with them is if in certain regions and parts of the country, they'd be dominated by one political party.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah,

Ruth Fox: That would become a problem about, if essentially Labour MPs, scrutinising, labour mayors, for example.

Talking about accountability to Parliament what did you make of the speaker's outbursts this week? Personally directed at Michael Shanks, the energy minister who had to attend the House to make a, statement on the government's announcement about the Rosebank Gasfield being opened up.

But really the speaker's remarks were directed at the Secretary of State Miatta Fahnbulleh, who was not in the House [00:55:00] for the statement. It had all appeared in the media that morning and the Speaker was irate. The, the House of Commons had not been informed first, and I think it's fair to say in the phrase he lost it.

Mark D'Arcy: The Speaker was certainly very angry indeed. The trouble with that is that the Speaker has been very angry indeed at a succession of ministers over a succession of announcements that have taken place outside the Chamber of the Commons. And it hasn't made a blind bit of difference. The minister will get up and be deferential.

We take on board what you said, Mr. Speaker. Of course, we respect the House taking a small onion from their pocket. They will continue expressing their remorse. Then they'll go and do the same thing the next time around. Or another minister will do the same thing and the next time around and the Speaker will throw another tantrum and on it will go.

And the only effect it seems to me of doing this. Is that it makes the Speaker look. I'm, afraid, a little bit irrelevant because he's not able to.

Ruth Fox: It makes him look weak.

Mark D'Arcy: Indeed. It makes him look weak because he has no way to enforce his will on this. This may be a convention, but it's a [00:56:00] convention that is, as I say, more honoured in the breach than the observance.

Ruth Fox: it, its a commitment in the ministerial code. So it's a commitment from government to Parliament. It's not something that Parliament has formally required or the House of Commons has formally required of ministers. It's what the, it is set out in the ministerial code that the government and the Prime Minister essentially issues to ministers.

I don't think we've had the update of the ministerial code from the, Burnham government. Yet, as you say, the Speaker does not have the powers to enforce something on, on, on the government in this way. So it makes him look weak. The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, again, the committee that Darren Jones appeared before, earlier this week, it did a short inquiry at the request of the Speaker on this question of how ministerial statements are being made too often to the media rather than to the House first.

And it recommended that there should be changes to the wording of the ministerial code around this. But interestingly, it did not suggest what wording it wanted. And I think you [00:57:00] can read quite a lot into that because if it had been clear as a committee what it thought the government should sign up to, then I would've expected that you'd have had words drafted in that report and a, a forceful recommendation.

It didn't.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah.

Ruth Fox: And it's essentially then been kicked back into the lap of the government of the Prime Minister to determine what changes to the ministerial code wording should be made.

Mark D'Arcy: We're in the territory, Dr. Watson, of the dog that didn't bark in the night.

Ruth Fox: Yeah.

In consultation with the committee.

We haven't seen that yet, as far as I'm aware. So watch this space. I suspect it won't go very far at all because they simply can't agree. And we all know that the opposition, if they get into government, will do exactly the same thing, because

Mark D'Arcy: indeed oppositions complain about governments doing this and then do exactly the same thing when they're in office, as in so many other parliamentary sins.

Yeah. That's the way it works.

Ruth Fox: But it was also a very odd occasion for the Speaker to get so angry about because it was a market sensitive announcement. So in most [00:58:00] circumstances, this kind of announcement will be one of the categories that you would exempt from a requirement to come to the House first because it's market sensitive.

Mark D'Arcy: You'd make it first thing in the morning Yeah. Before the market's open. Certainly knew about it. And you didn't cause a jitter in the middle of the day.

Ruth Fox: yeah. And I didn't see it myself. 'cause I was on a, a long train ride from Glasgow to London, been up at Glasgow University earlier this week, so I didn't see PMQs Live, but I asked a family member who religiously watches it every week, what, their impression was.

And he said he thought if he'd been Michael Shanks and the Speaker had spoken to him, in that tone, he'd have said, who do you think you are? To which my response was, I'm the Speaker of the House of Commons.

Mark D'Arcy: John Bercow, back in the day, used to take his revenge for announcements made outside the House of Commons by allowing an urgent question.

Yeah. And then allowing the minister to be interrogated far longer than would normally be the case. I remember once, I think it was Greg Clark, who was then a sort of medium sized minister in the coalition government being [00:59:00] kept on his feet for hours on end. And at the end of it all, John Bercow did a very sort of Paxman esque.

Yes. the minister may wish to remember that this is what happens when these announcements are made outside the Commons from the opposition benches. And, so the most the Speaker can do is allow our minister to be put through the ringer.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Yeah.

Mark D'Arcy: And that may be not be enough if it's a junior minister, it may not deter secretaries of State from allowing their junior ministers to suffer.

Ruth Fox: Miam are maybe getting a bit of a slice of that next time she peers in the House. with that march, we call it a, a day for today, and we'll be back next week by which time we will know what is in John Healey's budget.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah. And Roy Jenkins used to talk about how futile it was sometimes to riffle through the dry leaves of old budgets, but this one may be a barn burner.

Ruth Fox: Indeed. It may. Indeed. And with that listeners, if you've enjoyed the podcast, my usual, appeal to you to rate and review us on your podcast app, particularly if you're on Apple and Spotify, [01:00:00] because it really helps, grow our audience. And with that, we'll see you next week.

Mark D'Arcy: Goodbye.

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