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00:00:02:07 - 00:00:17:02 You're listening to Parliament Matters, a Hansard Society production, supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk. 00:00:17:04 - 00:00:36:15 Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox and I'm Mark D'Arcy. Coming up this week, the cavalry will arrive. The fanfares will blare out. His Majesty will don his crown and take his throne in the House of Lords. But what does the ritual of state opening mean? 00:00:36:17 - 00:01:03:05 Is it maybe time to move on? Old stagers and complete newcomers. Keir Starmer's ministerial team contains some surprise names, but is it really a good idea to turn newly minted MPs straight into ministers? And the loneliness of the defeated MP. What happens to those cast out of Westminster by the voters? 00:01:03:07 - 00:01:23:23 Well, Ruth, it's not even a week on since the result of the general election crystallized, we saw the exit poll and realized that Keir Starmer was going to be the Prime Minister and Labour were going to form the next government. But it seems, though, that an awful lot has happened, even in the few days since everybody recovered from their Election Day hangovers. 00:01:24:03 - 00:01:46:12 Sir Keir Starmer has wasted no time in appointing a government that contains. As I said just now, a few surprises, really. There are some old stagers plucked back from whatever role they were performing before in public to lend a bit of experience to what is otherwise a pretty inexperienced ministerial team. People like Jacqui Smith, the former Home secretary who's been given a job in the Department for Education, for example. 00:01:46:17 - 00:02:07:02 There have been some outside figures, like Patrick Vallance, the former chief scientific adviser. He's now been made a minister and seems to have a brief in charge of policy around things like AI. There's a prisons expert in the shape of James Timpson. There are all kinds of new faces, some of whom were not there as part of Labour's frontbench team before. 00:02:07:08 - 00:02:26:06 But the biggest surprise of all is that counting five newly elected members of Parliament have gone straight in as ministers. And this is something that's incredibly rare, not least because it's almost always a good idea for an MP to be allowed to find their feet and learn how to function in Parliament before taking on responsibility as a minister of the Crown. 00:02:26:06 - 00:02:44:20 And Keir Starmer has gone straight past go. This time they're not collecting 200 pounds, they're collecting a ministerial red box instead. And a car. Yes. I mean, this is something obviously we talked about on the podcast last week when you were telling us the story about Harold Wilson, who'd done the same. He'd arrived in ministerial office in 1945. 00:02:44:22 - 00:03:08:05 Similarly, Kirsty McNeill, Scottish MP who's been appointed to the Scotland Office, Alister Collins, a military veteran of considerable distinction, has been appointed veterans minister in the Ministry of Defense. Georgia Gould, who's a local council leader. But yeah, she's gone into the Cabinet Office in a co-ordination role. Then there's Miatta Fahnbulleh, who was running a think tank. 00:03:08:05 - 00:03:29:07 She's gone into, I think, the Energy Department. And, I think the most prizing for me was Sarah Sackman, who's gone in straight as solicitor general, as a, as a lawyer. Her position's particularly difficult in terms of having a support structure around her. You know, most of the the newly minted ministers will be part of a team, so there will be colleagues to kind of help them along as they go. 00:03:29:07 - 00:03:49:12 But Sarah Sackman's going to be answering for the whole law officers' department and then regular Commons question Time and Richard Herman, the new attorney general, a slightly surprise appointment and he himself will be sitting in the House of Lords. He'll be getting a peerage to do that ministerial job. So she'll be the one facing the music from MPs. And that leads onto to a bit of a wider point, really. 00:03:49:14 - 00:04:08:13 It's quite a tough ask to tell people to just start as a minister. So Harold Wilson had a terrible time when he started got a real monstering in his first speech, in his first debate, when he was countering complaints of 1945 vintage MPs about the state of MPs accommodation and had a very tough time. But at least it wasn't on television when he was doing it. 00:04:08:13 - 00:04:26:14 At least he wouldn't have had clips of that following him around for years on YouTube. And this new group will have to tread very carefully because they could quite easily be tripped over. Yeah, I mean, that's the challenge, isn't it? The learning a new job as a member of Parliament, they've got to set up a new office both in Westminster and in their constituency. 00:04:26:16 - 00:04:47:02 And then they're also now going to be asked to essentially learn the ropes of being a minister and do it, never having sat in the House of Commons, which is pretty extraordinary. And I take the Harold Wilson parallel, but as you say, he wasn't on television, wasn't really even on radio, was it? No, no. Then in those days, Today in Parliament was just a straight readout of a report. 00:04:47:05 - 00:05:06:00 Yeah. They didn't have the sort of soundclips that only came in in the 1970s. Yeah. So I don't think the House of Commons makes political careers, parliamentary careers in the way that it used to. You don't get them, but it can break them. Absolutely. And so effectively, their maiden speeches are going to be at the despatch box. So they're not... it's a rather difficult challenge. 00:05:06:00 - 00:05:25:10 And it'll be interesting to see whether they have some engagement with the Speaker about how they handle this, because they're there to answer ministerial questions, they're there to answer on debates and so on. But in normal times, you'd make your maiden speech. You talk a lot about your constituency, you acknowledge your predecessor, and so on. So a rather different thing to do at the despatch box than it is to do on the backbenches. 00:05:25:11 - 00:05:41:22 Oh, absolutely. There is no way that they can get away with a normal convention for a maiden speech that no one interrupts you and everybody says something nice afterwards. You're a minister of the Crown answering policy questions on that point. Let's go. Dartboard. That's just going to be the way it's going to be. The opposition will cut you no slack. 00:05:42:01 - 00:06:07:14 Yeah. So watch that space, because that's one of the little pitfalls that might be created by the Starmer reshuffle. He's also brought back some interesting people into government who didn't necessarily have to be there. I was very struck by the appointment of Jess Phillips to the Home Office. She had, of course, lost her place on the frontbench. She had to resign from it out when she was prepared to support an amendment over Gaza, when it was against the Labour Party line only a few months back. 00:06:07:16 - 00:06:28:15 But they brought her straight back in, perhaps as a recognition that this is someone who's a major communications talent. Jess Phillips has transformed in some ways the parliamentary debate over violence against women by the simple expedient of every year in the International Women's Day debate, reading out the names of women who have been murdered in the previous year. 00:06:28:17 - 00:06:54:02 And that is a shattering thing to listen to as that just rolls on and on. This horrible litany of lives ended, and that's been quite transformative. The only other person I can think of who's had anything like the same kind of policy effect as a result of backbench speeches is Johnny Mercer, who lost his seat at the last election, who spoke out about the treatment of veterans and kept pushing on it and eventually created a dedicated veterans office sitting in the Cabinet Office, not the Ministry of Defense. 00:06:54:04 - 00:07:11:22 That was the ministerial job, he then had, and it was his pressure pretty much, that created it. Yeah. Who else would you look out for? I mean, if you were advising backbenchers, the new MPs, you know, who would you look to to learn how to be an effective backbencher, how to, to make that kind of mark in terms of policy? 00:07:11:22 - 00:07:39:08 I mean, those are definitely two names. Somebody else it occurs to me, is somebody like Carolyn Harris, a Labour backbencher who has sort of made her mark on taking issues like the menopause and getting more sort of support for that as an example. There are some MPs who have been particularly good in terms of using a combination of debates and private member's bills, a ten minute rule bills and so on to build pressure and then try and get a private member's bill in the ballot. 00:07:39:09 - 00:08:07:23 I mean, somebody like Wayne David that we talked to on the podcast previously, there's one example. One of the things that a lot of those people have in common is that they've learned to use the rule book. They figured out procedural ways of getting their issues in front of people. Stella Creasy. Stella Creasy would be perhaps almost the best example in many ways, as someone who's been able to use pressure and putting down amendments to bills and amendments to bills, almost never get passed in the House of Commons, where they can kind of set up change in the House of Lords. 00:08:08:02 - 00:08:25:00 And she understood that and worked very well with peers as well as with MPs to try and get her issues through. So those are the kind of people I would look at. I mean, Clement Attlee had some great advice that was still being quoted somewhere the other day to a young MP called Roy Mason, who later became a cabinet minister in 1953. 00:08:25:00 - 00:08:48:00 MP for Barnsley, as you say, aptly in his very characteristic way, gave very pithy advice: specialize and stay out of the bars. Still applies today? Absolutely. Both extremely good pieces of advice have something to say about something specific. Don't just get up and make generic boilerplate out party points, because the house will get bored by that and you will acquire a reputation as a bore. 00:08:48:05 - 00:09:06:09 Another good piece of advice is do not set yourself up as the court jester. Yes, the trouble with court jesters is that they don't get taken seriously. And some of the funniest people in Parliament who were perhaps quite able people as well, didn't get very far in their political careers simply because people thought that they were jokers rather than serious operators. 00:09:06:09 - 00:09:26:22 Yeah. I mean, the name that springs to mind, I think is probably Stephen Pound on the Labour Benches, who is absolutely hilarious, his speeches, to listen to. Made a great maiden speech, that was probably one of the funniest things I ever heard. And it was an account of how he desperately tried to find something distinctive to say about the amorphous tract of Ealing that he was, that he represented. 00:09:26:22 - 00:09:48:16 You know, had Van Gogh lived there? No. There's an elephant that died in Ealing, but not quite in his constituency. It staggered across the constituency border and on and on it went. It was a very, very funny speech that had a marvelous line about Eton being a kind of suburban Brigadoon that only appeared in the real world when the hangar lane generator system was in circulation with the North Circular Road. 00:09:48:17 - 00:10:04:24 I mean, I remember this because I was actually watching it, so it's the kind of duty reporter for the BBC. The night he made it, and people wondered why I was making these strange, gurgling, chortling sounds. But it didn't help. Stephen, I think in terms of his career, he was regarded as, you know, he was the funny man, but he wasn't perhaps the serious man. 00:10:04:24 - 00:10:25:15 And there is a subspecies of MPs who sometimes give the impression that they're more interested in landing a joke than making a substantive point, which can be where you go when nothing happens. And disappointment in pop in politics can be very, very corrosive. If people don't get the recognition they felt they ought to have or the roles that they felt they ought to have, they can sometimes sour pretty quickly. 00:10:25:15 - 00:10:41:15 And I seen that happen a few times. No names. No. Back to particular individuals over the years, and it's not a good way to go. So carve out a niche I suppose is the key piece of it. Somebody like Robert Halfon in the last Parliament, in the last few parliaments going back to 2010, who carved out the niches. 00:10:41:16 - 00:11:08:00 He was the backbencher that cost the Chancellor more money than anybody else because of his campaigns about tax on fuel, for example. And he kept fuel duty frozen for a very long time. And there are all these issues that you can take up, and there are constituency courses that you can take. I mean, one of my worries about the latest intake of MPs is they may just get sucked into purely local issues and not really talk about national policy, and they're there to talk about both. 00:11:08:02 - 00:11:30:22 Yeah. And I think the other thing that I'd be concerned about is that they don't... And, you know, there's this competitive environment for ministerial jobs in the future. They don't take on the role of sort of brown nosing. And they're going to get very few opportunities at Prime Minister's Questions, for example. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it was Jess Phillips I heard a few weeks ago saying that she'd only have 2 or 3 in a parliament, if that. 00:11:30:24 - 00:11:49:15 The opportunities to ask the Prime Minister a question. Well, don't waste it on a brown nosing. Oh, aren't you wonderful, Prime Minister, we've done this. We ask a serious question about your constituency or about the national issues that the country is facing. Absolutely. But not will the Prime Minister agree that my local football team is wonderful? Do you want to come and sample the brilliant local cheese? 00:11:49:15 - 00:12:08:24 You know, I mean, for Heaven's sake it's a chance in prime time to say something or do something. Yeah. And it's terrible to watch the number of MPs who squander it on some sort of trivial piece of kind of preening. Yeah, that's certainly one area. It will in some ways be a little bit easier for opposition MPs. There are so many fewer of them. 00:12:09:01 - 00:12:30:20 But the chair has to give equal shares of time to the opposition side and the government side in debates. So if you're an opposition MP, you probably have a 50, 60, 70% greater chance of being called in any given debate than the Labour MP will have. So you do have an opportunity to make your mark. And some people have done that whole careers have been built on a good opening speech. 00:12:30:20 - 00:13:01:17 I mean, Ian McLeod famously had a great go at Nye Bevan over the performance of the health service quite early on in his career. I'm not sure if it was quite his maiden speech, but he was one of the debaters who managed to make a dent on the great Nye Bevan, who's one of the dominant figures of the early 1950s, minister that was in charge of the foundation of the NHS, and that was the foundation stone of a considerable career that culminated in him being chancellor in Edward Heath's government and unfortunately then dying rather early. 00:13:01:17 - 00:13:21:16 But he built it on that. As you said Mark, it's been it's been quite a pace since the election, a new government getting into office, appointing ministers. But we're also now because we've had the election of the speaker, which passed without any controversy. Thankfully, for for Lindsay Hoyle and MPs, I mean, the pretty much finished swearing in for this week as we speak. 00:13:21:16 - 00:13:40:08 We've just heard that they have packed up for today. So maybe fish Frankel, those who come in next Wednesday. Yeah, but they seem to have made really good progress with that. So we're now looking ahead to The King's Speech next week, but we're also starting to see some of the other bits of the parliamentary jigsaw fall into place. 00:13:40:08 - 00:13:58:11 So things like the election of the deputy speakers. The speaker's indicated that that's going to be held on the 23rd of July. So the week after the King's Speech. So the runners and riders are starting to emerge. The sky isn't quite dark with hats flying into the ring yet. But there are, I think, at least three people who've put out statements. 00:13:58:11 - 00:14:16:20 The last time I looked. There's Nus Ghani, a former minister, for example, has said that she would like to have a go. Caroline Nokes, who's the former chair of the women and equalities committee in the last parliament, Conservative MP. So those are two Conservatives. And then Sharon Hodgson, the Labour MP, has indicated that she's minded to put herself forward. 00:14:16:20 - 00:14:44:10 So should I explain to listeners that there are three deputy speaker posts, two of the last deputy speakers retired in the last parliament, and the third lost his seat at the election. So, unlike the speaker, the deputy speaker's continue as party people, and they do run in the election under their party ticket. And, Nigel Evans lost his seat so that all three deputy seats are vacant, which would be an interesting challenge for the speaker to have a completely new team. And they will be elected... 00:14:44:10 - 00:15:03:00 So they've got to put their hats in the ring. And because Lindsay Hoyle was a Labour MP, the chairman of Ways and Means, the senior Deputy Speaker, will have to come from the opposition benches, as will one of the other three posts on that reserves, one post for the government side. So it's a two for the opposition and one for Labour. 00:15:03:05 - 00:15:28:02 Yeah. You wonder if the Liberal Democrats might feel that they might try and muscle in there and get one of their own elected as deputy Speaker, because they are on the opposition side, even if they're not the biggest opposition party. I suppose a lot will depend on who Labour MPs are prepared to vote for, because anyone wanting to get any post that's elected across the whole House of Commons better select committee chair or deputy speakership, will now have to appeal to that vast lodge of Labour MPs sitting there. 00:15:28:06 - 00:15:47:10 And this also comes into play with select committees, which we'll perhaps come on to in a minute. But I mean off a friend of the podcast, Paul Evans, who was on a few weeks ago, former parliamentary clerk and Hansard Society member. He's run the numbers, so I don't have to say. He's actually been looking at the comparison of the sort of the official opposition low points in previous parliaments. 00:15:47:10 - 00:16:10:12 So if you subtract the speaker, the Sinn Fein MPs because they don't take their seats. And then you look at how was the opposition split between the parties, you know, 1997 when the Conservatives went into opposition, they held roughly 70% of the opposition seats. And since then it's sort of been roughly 70, 75%. In this Parliament, they're down to 50%. 00:16:10:14 - 00:16:39:17 So that's the grounds for saying that the other parties have a claim to more select committees, more representation in terms of debates, and arguably, the entitlement to perhaps one of the deputy speaker posts. They'll certainly be claiming a bigger slice of the procedural pie. And in some ways, you think it might even be in the government's interest to support them in getting that, because then there's possibly not one loud opposition voice attacking them from one particular direction. 00:16:39:17 - 00:17:02:07 Maybe there are several slightly less loud voices attacking them from several different directions. So it kind of blurs the voice of opposition against them. Yeah, if you can blur or voice those, I'm sure you can. I can certainly try. And Parliament anything's possible so that the deputy speakers but the select committees, we now know the likely split is going to be so the speaker will have confirmed this now to the parties. 00:17:02:07 - 00:17:28:05 But I don't think it's been formally published. But we certainly think journalists speculating that the Labour Party is going to get 17 select committee chairs, and then the remaining ten are going to be allocated five to the Conservatives and five to the other parties. So that's, I say, not confirmed by the Speaker formally, but that's apparently what's circulating. And the party's will then be negotiating now about which committees they're going to get in their 17 and 5 allocations. 00:17:28:05 - 00:17:44:20 For the conservatives as the official opposition, a slight issue there is that they will have to supply the chairs of the Standards Committee and the Public Accounts Committee. Now, the Public Accounts Committee is a very big deal indeed. The standards Committee you kind of think, if they could palm it off on on the other parties, they would. 00:17:44:20 - 00:18:09:21 But the legislation says it has to be someone from the official opposition party. So it's actually there in standing orders of the House, but there's no kind of political premium in chairing the standards committee. Whereas, you know, someone in... There was in the last Parliament. Well, in those particularly exceptional circumstances, to be sure. But in this Parliament, unless the Keir Starmer gets himself into very deep trouble on the standards issue, I don't really see that being anything like a salient public council. 00:18:09:21 - 00:18:26:19 Very, very big deal. On the chair of the Public Accounts committee. It's been a big figure in all sorts of recent parliaments, so doubtless will be again in this one. And there is some political premium for the Conservatives about having a Conservative in that seat. We'll come on to standing orders in a moment, because we've had a question about that from one of our listeners. 00:18:26:19 - 00:18:50:02 But before we get to that, the other thing that's being talked about in the media is that the government's planning, once again unconfirmed, but planning to sit on Friday's after the King's Speech through to whenever the recess is, and we haven't got that confirmed yet. Don't expect to hear that formally until next week, but then they'll sit on Fridays in order to make some real progress with their first bills. 00:18:50:02 - 00:19:05:08 And I think that's something that certainly I don't know whether we said this on the pod, actually. But certainly you've said to me over the summer that you thought that was a likely proposition, that if the government wanted to really make progress, then that's a good way of doing so. This is effectively be sitting for five days a week. 00:19:05:10 - 00:19:21:11 It does sound like a likely thing to do. They've got a very big legislative agenda and they will want to get it moving. And also just the optics of hi, we've just been elected. Now we're heading off to our Tuscan villas. Doesn't look so great. So there is a good reason for saying, well, you know, normal people have to work into August. 00:19:21:11 - 00:19:48:20 Why can't Parliament. So I think it's an extremely sensible thing for them to do another little one if they want to grant themselves a little extra slice of parliamentary time. I do nurse sneaking suspicion that they might relegate backbench business committee debates. Typically, over the last few years, the Backbench Business Committee has selected the main business on a Thursday, which is often partly because a lot of MPs don't necessarily feel they have to stay for it and say there's no interest in the backbench motion, who will stay? 00:19:48:22 - 00:20:05:10 But if Parliament is sitting on a Friday and that kind of suggests that Thursday is going to become a full dress legislating day as well. And it may be that the backbench Business Committee gets pushed into doing debates into Westminster Hall for at least the foreseeable future, and that gives the government a bit of extra legislating time to play with as well. 00:20:05:12 - 00:20:23:00 Yeah, so we'll be talking next week on the pod about the legislative program, because we'll be recording the day after the King's Speech. So we'll get some idea of what the government's plans are. And I expect the day after the King's Speech, we'll start to see the first bills being presented, because that's certainly the way of it. In, in past parliaments, as we talked about last week. 00:20:23:05 - 00:20:38:02 And there'll also be giving a business statement, probably saying exactly what the law of the land is in terms of what, I mean, how many days they're going to be sitting on and when the September sittings are going to be, and all that kind of thing. So there'll be a much clearer idea of the parliamentary calendar in which they're going to try and pass all these bills as well. 00:20:38:05 - 00:20:56:16 A thing to look out for, I think, is, is how many of the previous government's bills do they decide to pick up or not? So we'll we'll have to watch this space. But going back to what we were talking about, you were saying about, standards committee chair can't be essentially given to the Liberal Democrats or another party because it's written in standing orders. 00:20:56:22 - 00:21:19:08 We've had a question about standing orders from Kasper Sudi. He's actually a procedural expert and I'm not sure procedural expert, but a genuine expert in the rules of Congress, the US Congress. He's had quite a bit of coverage of his expertise. He's being followed by a lot of people in and around Congress and in Washington, because he seems to know more about their rules than they do themselves. 00:21:19:10 - 00:21:41:02 but Kasper listens to the pod, follows us on Twitter. And he says most things in Parliament reset after a dissolution. What's the theory behind the principle that standing orders automatically continue from one Parliament to the next without having to be formally re adopted, as they are in certain other Westminster style legislatures? Good question. And very, very good question. 00:21:41:02 - 00:21:58:16 To which I'm afraid I don't really know the answer. I assume that the thinking is that if if the House wants to change its standing orders, or perhaps more accurately, if the government wants to change standing orders, then they will bring motions to the floor of the House to do that. And otherwise, why just have a sort of formal waving through of the previous set of rules? 00:21:58:21 - 00:22:18:15 Yeah, it is. It's about, I think, that executive control over the rules. I mean, I am always astounded by the degree to which MPs show so little interest in the rules of the House and the rules which govern what can happen and when and how. And they only ever care about it when they suddenly discover they can't do something they want to do. 00:22:18:16 - 00:22:37:14 That's happened a lot during Brexit. Of course, you know, when procedurally they were inhibited, all things were discovered in standing orders like the the power of the humble address or, you know, after the parliamentary expenses scandal, the urgent question, these things were rediscovered and came to prominence. But generally they show very little interest in how a place operates. 00:22:37:16 - 00:23:00:21 I suppose in a way, if you've just come in and you take an awful lot of stuff, it's just a given. Yeah, yeah. Until maybe you learn a bit later on, as you say, that there are things you want to do, and suddenly it's discovered that standing orders forbid it. There's only ever been, I think, five possibly six formal reviews of the standing orders and five of those were requested by the government, and the other was requested by the clerk of the House of Commons, Robert Rogers, who's now Lord Lisvane. 00:23:00:21 - 00:23:17:04 in the House of Lords. I mean, when he did his review, he wanted, for example, to ensure gender neutral drafting of the standing orders. So the speaker wasn't he? He wasn't he. Yeah. And which, you know, given that we've had Betty Boothroyd, it shouldn't be. And, you know, it could well be a female speaker next time. 00:23:17:09 - 00:23:36:10 But that hasn't been done. I mean, all the proposals he had to introduce to the standing orders were not adopted. The Procedure Committee showed not much interest in this kind of thing because there's not much political value in it. There's no brownie points in it. Quite a tortuous, process to review hundreds of pages of the standing orders. 00:23:36:12 - 00:23:56:04 Interestingly, in the House of Lords, they have a sort of plain English version which we really need for the House of Commons, I think. Yeah, that would be very clear, very helpful. But Lucy Powell, who's now the leader of the House of Commons, has spoken in the past about how she wants to improve the process of lawmaking and that would naturally spill over into changing the rulebook. 00:23:56:04 - 00:24:13:12 So at some stage, maybe someone is going to take a more systematic look at this and perhaps the modernization committee, which is going to be set up, which she, unusually, as a cabinet minister, will chair, may be the venue for doing some of that and suggesting changes that perhaps have to be processed through the procedure committee or somewhere as well. 00:24:13:12 - 00:24:29:05 But the rulebook could evolve. Yes. Well, funny you should say that, because that's something that society has been looking at over the last year with the grant from the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, that we've been looking at how you might amend the standing orders, how you might improve them, how you might make them more accessible, looking at the customs and the language. 00:24:29:05 - 00:24:45:24 So we will be putting in a submission to, to the Modernization Committee, because it is one of those ways in which it's not just about opening it up to the wider public, so also opening it up to MPs themselves so they can better understand what they're doing, because they do find some of the language and then the complexities of it archaic. 00:24:45:24 - 00:25:06:11 I used to slightly annoy some of the parliamentary clerks by describing them as like a Bronze Age priest class or whatever, sort of consulting the sacred tablets and muttering incantations under their breath. But I'm afraid I don't think it's an unfair thing to say, because you have got kind of decaying layers of tradition and rules that govern the operation of the commons. 00:25:06:11 - 00:25:26:22 And you do wonder if sometimes it just needs all to be tidied up rather comprehensively. Yes. And I think, I think other legislatures do sometimes do a better job. The New Zealand Parliament, for example, recently reviewed it. Standing orders had a rules review committee, looked at it, reviewed them, came up with their proposals, and then they've been put to the rest of the group of MPs to adopt. 00:25:27:03 - 00:25:43:18 And I think there should be a rules review committee at Westminster for the House of Commons that looks at this either at the beginning or at the end of every Parliament, makes a recommendation that can be adopted for the next Parliament as a a legacy. But I fear this falls under my usual rule about big ticket political reforms. 00:25:43:18 - 00:26:10:06 Unless there's a massive head of steam behind change, which usually means because something's become inconvenient to one party or the other. Yeah, it probably doesn't get done. Things don't happen just because conferences of political academics think it would be tidier if some change was made. Unfortunately, yeah. Sadly. So time now, Ruth, to take a quick break. when we're back, we'll be talking to parliamentary historian Daniel Brittain about the mysteries of the state opening of Parliament back soon. 00:26:10:08 - 00:26:43:11 Okay. So at the moment we're standing between two great moments of parliamentary ceremonial. We've already had the first rites of the new parliament with the swearing in of MPs. And before that, the election of the speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, was returned unopposed, you might say. And still to come is the big enchilada of parliamentary ceremonial, the state opening, His Majesty the King, the Household Cavalry, the trumpets blaring, the procession through the building which is actually designed very much around the ceremonial a state opening. 00:26:43:13 - 00:27:02:15 And here to explain it all to Ruth and myself is Daniel Brittain, parliamentary historian. Daniel, welcome to the Pod. Thank you. First of all, I suppose the question that always crops up when you look at this ceremonial are men dressed as playing cards and rouge, dragon suivent and silver stick in waiting, and all these other figures pop out of the woodwork. 00:27:02:16 - 00:27:25:05 Isn't this all in the 21st century getting horribly archaic? Yes, it can look archaic, but I think ceremony does play an important part in our national life. I take the David Steel line on this. When he was the presiding officer at the start of the Scottish Parliament, there was a lot of chat about do we need a big ceremony of the Queen opening Parliament? 00:27:25:05 - 00:27:47:06 Do we need all the golden coaches coming out? The crowd on the sword? And if we have to have the Queen, she could come in a taxi, declare it open, and then we could all go home and then it would cost a 10th of the price, or maybe even less. David Steel was absolutely insistent that there would be a ceremony. 00:27:47:08 - 00:28:16:18 And he did that because the Scottish Parliament was a big thing, and it had to be recognized as such. And the opening or perhaps I should say, reopening after a few hundred years was a big event. Yeah, I happened to be in Edinburgh on the day and the coaches were all out and the mounted troops of the Household Cavalry and the crown and the scepter and the sword, which has since rather got too fragile to use, were taken out of Edinburgh Castle. 00:28:16:20 - 00:28:41:16 The heralds in their ancient tabard and it was a huge ceremony. I was in the royal mall and there were colossal crowds, and the next day the press coverage was jubilant. They could see it was a big event. The ceremony made it an important event, but state opening of Parliament. I mean, the King's Speech, that is a big event at Westminster anyway. 00:28:41:18 - 00:29:00:07 Yes, and always has been. So what does it add at Westminster? I can understand it at the start of a new Parliament and of a new institution, I can almost understand it at the start of a parliament after a general election. But we have this at the start of every parliamentary session, so 4 or 5 times we will have it now before the next general election. 00:29:00:09 - 00:29:19:00 Isn't it all just a bit too much, and shouldn't it look a little bit more like, well enter the 20th century, Never mind the 21st. You're right about the 20th century, because it was Edward the Seventh who sort of formalized the version of state opening that we have now. I'm not going to disagree with you. Yeah. 00:29:19:02 - 00:29:44:02 terrible. I think it has a value. I think new MPs who have been watching the formal opening by the Royal Commissioners of Parliament this week and the election of the speaker and then the state opening, it will all seem so odd, and they will probably say so publicly. It looks like they've returned to school. And this is morning assembly on a really grand scale. 00:29:44:04 - 00:30:13:14 but it does actually demonstrate our Constitution in multicolor. If we had a different constitution, I'm sure we wouldn't do this. But when you look at the election writs, which are all announced to the Privy Council meeting from the clerk of the Crown to the various returning offices throughout the land, the Crown is actually at the heart of the election to Parliament and the formation of a new parliament. 00:30:13:20 - 00:30:40:18 Now, it doesn't take any part in the proceedings and we don't feel it day to day. But it is the Constitution in action. Just one story about when they send the writs out to the returning officers. I remember speaking to a previous deputy clerk of the Crown and he said, you'll be amazed at the number of returning officers or acting returning officers who fill in their own name as the returned MP. 00:30:40:20 - 00:31:03:06 And and that's what I spy in my first week after the election, dealing with what I mean, one of the things about this ritual of the state opening of Parliament is it looks as if it's been there forever. It looks as if it would have been recognizable to medieval kings. But, well, actually it is a Victorian or maybe Edwardian kind of reimagining of how state opening ceremonies used to go. 00:31:03:06 - 00:31:27:02 And it's about as authentic as the illustrations in one of those Narnia books, evoking the Middle Ages. You were doing okay up until that last point, actually. You can find illustrations from Henry the Eighth opening the Parliament, and even earlier kings. And in there you will see all the elements that we have now the Earl Marshall, the Lord Great Chamberlain, the Crown, not the cap of maintenance until Henry the eighth. 00:31:27:08 - 00:31:45:08 So the other symbols of state. So for our listeners, what is the cap of maintenance? Cap of maintenance is a very, very important object in, in the, in, in, British Constitution. It's a sort of cap. I think you'd be a bit embarrassed wearing it. Is this this kind of lump of red cloth on a stick that was carried... the squirrel on a stick. 00:31:45:10 - 00:32:08:16 For our state opening fans. No. It has. It's sort of the interior of a crown, basically. Is the, in the edge and the red bonnet. It was a present. Henry the Eighth, for being good on the Catholic faith. So you might think it was a little bit misplaced. As a Catholic. And remember he was defender of the faith. 00:32:08:16 - 00:32:30:21 That's where it came from. And that's where he got the cap. The cap of maintenance when he was alive. Used to live in the Duke of Edinburgh study at Buckingham Palace. And they would dig it out for every state opening, because it's not part of the Crown jewels, it is proudly displayed. If you really didn't like the cap of maintenance, sure you could get rid of it. 00:32:30:21 - 00:32:56:16 But then no monarch has given up the title defender of the Faith. Now, I think Charles wants to be defender of faiths, doesn't he? He's rather laid off that, hasn't he? Yeah. I mean, for instance, the coronation would have been the perfect opportunity to say that. And they didn't go down that route. Well, the opening blast of ceremonial for this new parliament, if we can backtrack a bit, was the sitting of a royal commission to call MPs to elect a new speaker, and that took place in the House of Lords. 00:32:56:16 - 00:33:16:22 And MPs was summoned there to watch this ceremony. And what you saw was basically the group leaders in the House of Lords with Angela Smith, who's now the leader of the House, sitting in the center in a tricorn hat. The men had cocked hats and of course, at regular intervals during the reading of the royal writ, they had to doff their hats. 00:33:16:22 - 00:33:38:07 And, the general consensus seems to be that this is some pretty substandard doffing, low marks, both for technical merit and artistic impression. If you're going to do a ceremony, you've got to get it right. And I'm afraid I do rather agree with you that the technical merit and artistic impression at this time was not of the high order, and they were rehearsed. 00:33:38:09 - 00:34:00:03 So goodness knows what happened at the rehearsal. Or maybe they were so stunned by the rehearsal, they were sort of too frightened to do anything. Yes, you get so low and synchronized hat doffing, which is a major art which should be maintained for the nation. And when do you have to doff? Well, you doff collectively in greeting to the commons. 00:34:00:05 - 00:34:23:20 It's a bicorn hat or a fore and aft hat. So you take off your hat and project it forward towards the Commons, who in return bow to you, the Lord commissioners. So this is when the speaker well, and they arrived at the bar of the House, I get to pick you up there Ruth, because there was no speaker at that stage. 00:34:23:22 - 00:34:50:15 Well, it was the father of the house on the first visit. There's quite a lot of doffing that goes on. But the first doff is greeting the Commons led by the father of the house in greeting. The reading clerk then names all the royal commissioners, and as they are named, the reading clerk bows to that royal commissioner, and that royal Commissioner doffed his hat. 00:34:50:15 - 00:35:10:21 You rather got to hope that they don't have tennis elbow or anything at that point. I mean, I do agree that they were pretty poor doffers on this occasion. There was no synchronization, no synchronization. And we have sat in a studio at BBC Parliament and tried to do this, and it's tougher than you think. There was a real master of the art of a doff, and that was Lord Strathclyde. 00:35:10:23 - 00:35:33:12 He had it down to a tee, took off his hat beautifully massive forward projection of the hat and then placing it back on the head with a degree of intense seriousness. And I do maintain that. Difficult to do, sir, but you've got to do it properly, and I can't be sure this was the top one. Just to explain what all the Royal Commission is. 00:35:33:12 - 00:35:52:12 How are they appointed? Who are they? Your listeners might be sort of thinking, who on earth are all these people we get? Doffing royal commissioners at the start of a parliament, and we do also get them for the prorogation, the annual end to the parliamentary session. And they are appointed by the Queen... they are appointed by the King. 00:35:52:17 - 00:36:19:16 Take you up on that Daniel. Yeah. After 70 odd years, it's quite hard to take to remember. They're appointed by the King to go and open Parliament and prepare it for the state opening. And by preparing it means take the oath and appoint a speaker. In fact, in the instructions read out by the lead commissioner, who, of course, is now the Labour leader, the Lord Privy Seal, you can go into that one. 00:36:19:17 - 00:37:01:05 Let's. Angela Smith. She says this. We have it in command from His Majesty to let you know that as soon as the members of both houses shall be sworn, the causes of His Majesty calling this Parliament will be declared to you. And it being necessary that a Speaker of the House of Commons should be first chosen, it is His Majesty's pleasure that you, members of the House of Commons, repair to the place where you are to sit, and there proceed to the choice of some proper person to be your speaker, and that you present such a person with whom you shall choose here for His Majesty's royal approbation. 00:37:01:10 - 00:37:22:01 So, Lindsay Hoyle, come on down. Yeah. And it could have been done by the King, but George the Third was the last one to do it, the ceremony in 1790. So they are very much preparing the way for the start of the proceedings. Well, we've had a question about this from, from a listener, Nigel Fletcher, who is the head of the Center for Opposition Studies and in fact, give him a plug for his book. 00:37:22:01 - 00:37:51:21 He's written a really good book about leaders of the opposition. And Nigel agrees with us that the hat doffing during the Royal commission, this was, in his words, very shoddy. But then he's got a question why did only a small delegation of MPs obey the first summons to attend the Lords for the reading of the Commission? So basically, normally MPs would trip out behind the father of the House or the speaker and the crowd in around the bar of the House to watch proceedings, but actually only a few did. 00:37:51:23 - 00:38:09:24 More of them attended the second summons when the speaker went down to the House of Lords. For, as you say, the royal approbation, the approval from the monarch, and he says, it seemed rather odd and disrespectful for the most of the Commons not to bother at first with what was, after all, the first gathering of the whole new Parliament. 00:38:10:05 - 00:38:26:22 Have you any idea what went on? I don't know what went on. I mean, these things do vary. There weren't that many members of the House of Lords present. I thought they put on a round table show. Generally, I think they might have been too terrified. Right. But more than half the members are new. Many more turned up for the approbation. 00:38:26:24 - 00:38:52:06 I don't know if the whips put out a message. You know, I had a theory which when Keir Starmer arrived in the House, he greeted Rishi Sunak and they were clearly talking. And Keir Starmer turned and pointed towards the doors. And I did wonder afterwards whether they decided for all MPs not to to go to the Lords, partly because it was so packed, partly because so many of them were obviously new into their seats and it was all unfamiliar. 00:38:52:08 - 00:39:11:05 But also time. Keir Starmer had got a plane to catch. To Washington. There was that. I mean, I was wondering if he would actually be there. Of course he has to swear in. He has to swear in. You get the speaker first, then the father of the house and then the prime minister. So the honest answer, Ruth, is, I don't know. 00:39:11:07 - 00:39:29:10 They'll certainly all be cramming there for state opening. And there were good numbers for the approbation. Yeah, but ceremony has got to be done. Well, otherwise it does look silly and that is the danger of it. It might have to do it with a straight face, but you've got to do it well, well don't you? You were talking about there being lots of new members milling about. 00:39:29:10 - 00:39:45:12 Give us a taste of the atmosphere, because this must be a very strange moment for the 300 odd new MPs to come into the wacky world of Westminster, most of them will be completely unfamiliar. Do you get any impression of what it was like for them? Were they all happy, smiling faces? I'm beginning to get an impression, Mark. 00:39:45:12 - 00:40:09:22 I've been in the Houses of Parliament quite a lot over the last two days, and there's really two very, very nice things. One, I've seen lots of new MPs going around with their family, and the place is crawling with young children at the moment. The spouse is very proud to see it. Of course, they'll soon resent the long hours and everything, and the children are very, very excited. 00:40:09:22 - 00:40:32:14 That's the nice thing. And I was at a reception for MPs last night and waited. Finished. Most of them. Didn't know how to get to where they wanted to get to, and they were very kind, very thoughtful about, you know, I showed an awful lot of people how to get to Westminster Underground station or Westminster Bridge or Lambeth Bridge or wherever they wanted to go. 00:40:32:16 - 00:40:56:13 Although, funnily enough, quite a lot of people seem to know how to get to the red line pub. That seemed to be one they recalled earlier. and I mean genuinely warm, lovely, friendly, a bit stunned by it all. now as they progress in their careers, maybe some of that will wear off, but you are inevitably hardened. 00:40:56:15 - 00:41:19:16 The longer you do the job. Daniel, one of the things that, observers outside think is we're fabulous, both both parliament and the monarchy, fabulous at ceremony, and state opening is a really good example of that each year. But actually we've not always been good at it. We know it really greatly deteriorated in Queen Victoria's time because she didn't take part. 00:41:19:22 - 00:41:45:16 She was in mourning for the death of her husband for a very long time. I mean, she didn't deliver the speech for the last 35 years of her reign. So Edward wanted to change all that. And I think we have to credit the present arrangements to Edward the Seventh. He was interested in ceremony and gold and glitter. He was very keen on that start off with, and had been very displeased with the shambolic mess it had become. 00:41:45:16 - 00:42:08:14 Queen Victoria's coronation hadn't gone that well, and that was right at the start of her reign. So yes, we weren't always very good. He spent a lot of time sorting out his first. And in fact, I'm going to see the papers for it in, Windsor the day after state opening. He invented the second throne for the consort. 00:42:08:16 - 00:42:31:03 And in his first state opening, there was colossal interest that the sovereign was actually back again. And you mentioned about how there weren't so many MPs at the very start. They absolutely rushed on to the Lords to get a place because it was so novel. They hadn't seen anything like it. Two MPs were badly injured and attended by doctors and one went to 00:42:31:04 - 00:43:01:15 St Thomas's Hospital. State opening has never been so popular as it was in 1901, so it starts to take the present form from then. It was regarded as a big success. Other monarchs haven't had on their first outing always a colossal success. George the Fifth was absolutely petrified about it. It made him sick, he said. But he was actually the first king of the 20th century to actually wear the crown. 00:43:01:15 - 00:43:29:19 Well, there you'll see illustrations of Edward's seventh, where he never did that. George the Fifth wore it for the first time in 1913. I don't know why that was colossally heavy. I suppose maybe that was why I think the most disastrous first state opening was George the Sixth in, 1937. So the current king's grandfather. Yes, because they did it all by timing and not by what was actually going on. 00:43:30:00 - 00:43:52:11 So there was a time for the Lords to assemble, the time for the Commons to assemble, and there was a time for Black Rod to go down and collect the commons. And they didn't actually look at the reality on the ground. George Essex and Queen Elizabeth left the robing Room a couple of minutes late, and the Commons had already arrived. 00:43:52:13 - 00:44:16:07 The Commons found themselves bowing at an empty throne. it didn't look great. No. And the Lord Great Chamberlain was very much in charge of it at that stage. And, he had a little word with him before the next one. Well, there we go. Modern Britain. You're glad you asked now, aren't you Ruth. Well, Daniel Brittain, thanks very much for joining us on the pod. 00:44:16:11 - 00:44:39:10 Well, thank you both very much for having me. Thanks, Daniel. I think, Mark, we should take a break there just for a moment. and when we come back, we'll be talking to the former conservative MP Paul Masterton, about what it's like to lose your seat at the general election and what happens next. Back in a moment. If you're enjoying the pod and think like Mark and I do, that Parliament matters... 00:44:39:16 - 00:45:00:09 Why not join the Hansard Society? This year we celebrate our 80th anniversary, and throughout the year we'll have a number of special events to mark this important milestone. For as little as a cup of coffee each month, you can join us and follow in the footsteps of our first members, Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee. And if you're enjoying the issues that we're talking about on the pod, you'll also be getting our special members only Despatch Box newsletter. 00:45:00:09 - 00:45:22:13 Each week, we bring together the best news and stories about parliaments here in the UK and around the world. You can join by going to hansardsociety.org.uk. Hundreds of MPs lost their job on polling day, or at least in the small hours of the Friday morning, and those MPs are now busy coming to terms with what they do next. 00:45:22:13 - 00:45:49:10 Personally, career wise. Now the all consuming life of Westminster is behind them. Someone who went through that experience five years ago is the former Conservative MP Paul Masterton, one of a very small number of Conservatives who actually lost their seats in the 2019 election. Paul, thanks for joining us today on the pod. First thing I'd like to ask is when do you know as an MP that you're going to lose your seat? 00:45:49:12 - 00:46:16:10 Is it before the moment when the returning officer sidles up to you and says, bad news? Yeah. So unless it's very, very tight, you will know in advance. You may know the moment the election is called that you have no chance just because of the way the political winds have been moving. But certainly through the campaign, as you and your team are knocking on doors and you're speaking to voters and you're kind of collecting the data, you can get a sense that something is or isn't right. 00:46:16:12 - 00:46:31:12 And I think one of the challenges that you find and we saw this, I think, with the Labour Party in Scotland back in 2015, and it happened to lots of Conservatives this time round, is that where you have seats for a long time being very, very safe, the actual data isn't there because these are just seats you're used to winning. 00:46:31:14 - 00:46:48:23 So you often don't have quite as good as grasp, whereas in the seats that tend to change hands a little bit more or are a little bit closer, because you're constantly working them so hard that election time and in between election times, you can get a much better sense of the winds shifting. Look for those candidates who are in races that are much closer. 00:46:48:23 - 00:47:09:09 It may not be until the exit poll comes out, or it might be at the counter itself when they're seeing votes being bundled. Or as you said, in situations where it's very, very tight, at the point the returning officer calls you behind the stage to read the result out. And what's that moment like? It's not great. it's not it's not great, as an understatement. 00:47:09:09 - 00:47:35:21 And it's very difficult because as the outgoing MP, you know, I always take the view that you have a responsibility to your wider team and particularly to your staff, who of course, lose their jobs with you to kind of hold your head up and be a sort of graceful and good loser. But you are kind of just having everything sort of taken away from you very publicly, or it feels very public and with a great sense of immediacy. 00:47:35:23 - 00:47:52:08 I suppose the public side of it is that you then have to go on the stage and other people cheer because you've lost. Yeah, exactly. And I think for me it was very important both when I arrived at the time and I kind of knew the seat had gone before I arrived to keep my head up, to try and keep my team spirits high. 00:47:52:09 - 00:48:22:16 Kind of made it with a sense of sort of grace and good humor and to kind of reflect that. Well, this was the last time I was really going to see anything on stage in a public forum about being an MP and what it meant to me and what I took from it. so I wanted to make sure I went out in a relatively stylish, manner and not be one of those people who uses it as a sort of pulpit to start ranting about this, that and the other thing which is tempting, you know, this is tempting as tempting in that moment to think, I'm just going to burn all my bridges. 00:48:22:16 - 00:48:42:06 But I think it's important to give the whole process of democracy the kind of respect that, you know, be a good loser and a good winner. I think, Paul, that was a mark of this election that quite a lot of the Conservative MPs that, and indeed the SNP MPs that lost their seats, actually made some really, really quite impressive concession speeches, really rather classy. 00:48:42:08 - 00:49:02:14 But what happens next? So you basically head off home, you, you get a few hours sleep. Are you then contacted by the House of Commons authorities and told about the arrangements, just to sort out your offices? Does the party contact you? What happens? I think you may be covered in this thing. When you're successful, you come off the stage and you get an envelope. 00:49:02:16 - 00:49:18:11 When you lose, you just walk off the stage, that's it. And it's up to you whether or not you wish to speak to any of the media that are present. My case, I didn't. I just took a final photo with my team and then left. So you literally you just leave, you just leave and you go home and that's you. 00:49:18:11 - 00:49:51:02 You're no longer an MP. Sort of mid-morning you get an email from the House of Commons, inviting to you... Well, in 2019 it was called the Non Returning Members Hub. So we start saying it's slightly ominous.. So we'll be sort of funnelled together and sign off one by one. And you have a week basically to get yourself down to London and go through that process and to clear, clear your office and anything you leave in your office after that week is destroyed, basically, as they kind of need to make room for all the new MPs. 00:49:51:04 - 00:50:11:12 Also, the morning after the election, if you've lost, you'll get a call from party leaders. So, Boris phoned me sort of around about lunchtime, which was kind of sort of standard, kind of very sorry, blah, blah blah. Rishi will have had to spend a long time making those calls. I'm sure John Swinney had to spend a long time doing the same thing. 00:50:11:14 - 00:50:33:06 And that's really it in terms of that kind of day one and across the first weekend phase, until you actually come back down to Parliament to to sort things out. I didn't receive any additional contacts other than personal contacts. So MPs from across the House, from journalists and maybe people that I worked with on campaigns or particular organizations which kind of reach out and check in. 00:50:33:08 - 00:50:50:13 But other than that, one email from the House of Commons authorities, that's that's really the only form of contact you get. So what practical steps could the parties have taken that might have made that experience a little bit easier on you? I mean, some people presumably might get offered a peerage, some people might get some sort of quango job. 00:50:50:13 - 00:51:12:14 You know, I guess your seat on the Whitefish Authority or whatever it might be, but most people presumably don't get that. Yeah. And I think obviously it was a strange one in 2019 because obviously, broadly, the party did extremely well in this kind of large celebratory mood. And I don't know if that therefore meant that they were less bothered to acknowledge and are inclined to look at the people who had lost. 00:51:12:16 - 00:51:35:07 But, you know, from speaking to some colleagues in the Labour Party who, obviously Labour Party had big losses in 2019, a lot of them found the same, that there wasn't kind of any real storm system in place, because actually what happened was the party was had gone into sort of a state of despondency within itself. I think it's a mistake for existing MPs to think they're owed something. 00:51:35:09 - 00:51:53:22 I mean, perhaps a seat in the House of Lords or to be parachuted into, you know, a board somewhere. I don't think that was realistic or fair. I think for me, what I would have just been expecting from them was a little bit more, I guess, pastoral support, a little bit of an acknowledgment from the party that this had happened and that it wasn't great. 00:51:53:22 - 00:52:14:17 And actually we were going to look after you. And the other particular challenge with snap elections generally, but with 2019, the timing of it was two weeks before Christmas, and that's a very difficult period of time to lose your own job and to be making your staff redundant. And in 2019, the wind up period was still only two months. 00:52:14:19 - 00:52:39:10 So it's been extended now, but it was only two months, which is when you take account of Christmas is not a long time to to get yourself sorted. So for me, we quite quickly ran into financial issues because I didn't have something else sorted by the end of the two months. And I think the party had had more recognition of actually what the personal consequences are to losing your seats would have been nice. 00:52:39:12 - 00:52:58:14 You know, when I said basically all I received was a sad face emoji from the party chairman after I lost my seat. I wasn't joking that that was literally the extent of what I received. So that kind of pastoral care is strongly missing. And this just sort of, I guess I just wanted someone to recognize and acknowledge that this had happened. 00:52:58:14 - 00:53:22:22 And amongst all the other successes, and for somebody to tell me it was going to be all right, and if the worst happened, you know, there would be things in there to kind of make sure I didn't lose my home. I was able to pay electricity bills and stuff like that, none of which was forthcoming. And that's something I think that Charles Walker, the departing conservative MP for Broxbourne who was chair of the administration committee in the last Parliament, has tried to address, isn't it, because he's very conscious of it? 00:53:22:22 - 00:53:45:03 He was expecting, obviously, a large turnover of Conservative MPs. He's made sort of great efforts in the last Parliament to try and get some of these issues addressed, at least from the House's perspective, if not by the parties. So that you mentioned the extended period of time for you to sort of settle your affairs is a like you're sorting out your constituency office, closing it down, you know, departing staff and so on. 00:53:45:09 - 00:54:08:24 It's been extended from two months to four, I think. Have you picked up any sense amongst your fellow Conservatives who've lost this time as to whether or not the situation has improved? Yeah, I think it has, because the four months provides you more of a buffer. And then certainly when I left, the very clear advice that I was getting from people who were you were kind enough to give out, particularly people who'd been through it before, was take your time. 00:54:08:24 - 00:54:32:14 You need to decompress. You need to take a breather. You need to give yourself some space to work out what you want to do next. Two months is actually not a lot of time to do that. Any time if you're left alone. Kind of over the Christmas period, as I mentioned, whereas I think four months does a lot of people coming out to actually just take a little bit more time to work out what they want to do without feeling this kind of looming cliff edge. 00:54:32:16 - 00:55:02:05 I think what's really interesting about some of Charles's and his committee's work, and he was kind enough to ask me to be a witness on that inquiry, is to see what extent the actual practical bits of help are effective. You know, I'm not sure whether departing MPs really need help with writing their CVS, but I think the kind of broader support around it and just the knowledge that it's there might actually almost be more valuable than the thing itself. 00:55:02:07 - 00:55:23:16 And obviously these are also sort of packages that you get as much as you could. And so I certainly get the sense that MPs and these are looking at engaging with them seriously. The test, I guess will obviously be kind of what that advice actually looks like and what it produces, because, you know, every MPs a little bit different, they've got different experiences and you know, they're in different parts of the country. 00:55:23:16 - 00:55:47:03 And a lot of the kind of natural posts or most frontline political roles would be, you know, solely based in London and for lots of MPs, they're not going to want that. So, you know, the idea well get a job with an agency or get a job in public affairs or something. It's not necessarily going to suit if you hear from the red wall or wherever and you don't want to move. How long did it take you then to decompress and start on a new path? 00:55:47:04 - 00:56:04:21 I mean, what are you doing now? It took me a little bit of a while. Lots of bad timing. It sort of didn't help. But just as I was ready after decompressing over Christmas Covid hit. So for those of us that left in 2019, we kind of then came out to find opportunities and pathways that had been opened rapidly. 00:56:04:21 - 00:56:23:10 Closing again. I ended up having quite long period of unemployment until the October, the following October. And actually I made the move over to the dark side. So I moved over into the civil service. And that was because actually, again, taking advice that I'd been given, I worked out sort of what it was that was important to me and what drove me. 00:56:23:10 - 00:56:43:23 And I knew I wanted to stay in and around politics, but I didn't want to be in party politics because I wasn't very good at it. And to be fair, and I didn't want to move, you know, I was settled in, based in the west of Scotland. So I knew that was kind of leading me towards civil service, third sector type roles. 00:56:44:00 - 00:57:04:05 And I was kind of looking up to secure a role, with one of the communications teams for the Ministry of Defense, which is where I still am today. I really enjoy it because I guess I had that, slightly longer than I would have welcomed, forced break to really think about, actually, what do I want. That helped me because I think otherwise. 00:57:04:07 - 00:57:27:05 You know, I was a lawyer before I went into Parliament. I could have just rushed straight back to where I was before. But for me, psychologically, I couldn't really handle that because that was like admitting the time I was in Parliament was a waste of time, and I was just going back to do what I did before. And having gone through what you've gone through, what advice would you give to former conservative colleagues of yours also who are now having these experiences? 00:57:27:07 - 00:57:46:03 Yeah, I think just don't rush if you can and not all of them will be able to, because the financial pressures give time to work out what it is you really want and what you want to do, and it may be that actually, through your time in Parliament as a campaigner or constituency MP, you can find causes or whatnot. 00:57:46:05 - 00:58:05:11 I also think be careful about what you take. You know, I did have calls and coffees with various people about opportunities, and it became clear that actually they weren't really interested in me as a person or the skill set, and just kind of wanted the numbers and my mobile phone that would be advantageous to their business and their client base. 00:58:05:13 - 00:58:25:10 You know, again, some people may be happy to go down that route, but that was the sort of thing that didn't make me comfortable. So I think, don't rush, take your time and don't panic. You know, it is rubbish what's happened. It does kind of hurt. It does take time to get over and process. But you will be all right. 00:58:25:10 - 00:58:44:04 And there is support out there, whether that's kind of on a 1 to 1 basis from other former colleagues, people like me who are happy to chat through. There are formal processes in place. If you get in financial difficulty, there's the House of Commons support fund and stuff. But yeah, you know, it will be all right. Have you had any of those conversations? 00:58:44:04 - 00:58:59:20 Have ex-colleagues been ringing you up? You know, Paul, I've lost my seat. What do I do now and what have you said to them. Yeah. So I've had a couple sort of reach out both sort of through the election and since and you know, there's a few people that I just kind of wanted to check in on just to kind of say, you know, I'm here if you want to talk it through. 00:58:59:22 - 00:59:19:09 And a lot of them just want somebody to speak to. You kind of want somebody that they feel unload a bit of that initial emotional stress and worry and response response, too. And I'm always very happy to do that. You know, I'm by no means some sort of like, career or recruitment expert or strategist to sort of tell people, you know, what job they should or shouldn't take. 00:59:19:09 - 00:59:37:23 But I think, and these sort of situations, people just kind of, just getting someone to feel they can talk to in, in confidence and unburden themselves a little bit of emotion and pull. I mean, I think some of our listeners might be thinking, well, you know, lots of people lose their jobs. Lots of people have to face these issues. 00:59:37:23 - 00:59:56:19 And we hear this week, a third of Dyson's staff, the manufacturer is a looking at the possibility of redundancy. Why are MPs different? Why do they need extra support? You mentioned there the House of Commons support fund. I mean, you know, why do they need this kind of, additional support? And the first thing is, I would agree. 00:59:56:19 - 01:00:18:12 I would say MPs are no different, you know, different to anybody else. But that works both ways. So that doesn't mean, you know, when an MP loses their job, they're not deserving of any less sympathy than anybody else. You know, because you're an MP, that somehow doesn't mean, nobody should care about you. Ha. That's funny. Whatever. It's not about suggestion that MPs are somehow more special or more important and deserve lots of extra help. 01:00:18:12 - 01:00:40:03 I think it's just a recognition that this is something that happens as part of our system, and it's not nice, and it's perfectly right to expect there to be some levels of sort of support and help available. The House of Commons fund is something which all MPs pay into every month out of their salary, and it's basically a kind of trust fund that's there for current and former MPs and their families if they get into 01:00:40:03 - 01:00:58:03 sort of financial difficulty. You can make an application basically for a payment out the fund in a similar way to the other charities and sectors have got sort of similar, similar funds and arrangements. And so I don't think it's about special treatment or the MPs deserve some sort of extra special sympathy. I think it's more the opposite. 01:00:58:03 - 01:01:23:18 I think it's about recognizing that there should be the same level of sort of sympathy and understanding for the many bodies of jobs as anybody else does, and a particular emphasis on the parties as well. Yeah. And I think as well for the staff, particularly constituency staff, who are often less innately part of political. And it's also harder, you know, I think if you're a staffer in Westminster, it's usually a little bit easier to either find a placement with a new MP or to pick up a kind of London based job. 01:01:23:18 - 01:01:53:13 If you, if you've been a constituency office member somewhere, it can it can be quite, quite a challenge. So I think recognition that there is this whole ecosystem around an MP which collapses when a seat changes hands. I think, you know, a lot of people I think, assume that the staff just move to the new MP. You know, they don't realize this, particularly when especially with it's a new party, it's a complete whole scale change over dilemmas and difficulties that hundreds of former MPs are now facing. 01:01:53:13 - 01:02:12:07 Paul Masterton, thanks very much indeed for joining us on the pod. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Paul. Well, Mark, I think that's all we've got time for this week. so we'll be back next week, same time to take a look at the government's program of new laws, as revealed in the King's Speech, new laws for the coming year and the challenges that they're going to pose for Parliament. 01:02:12:09 - 01:02:20:12 So we'll see you then. See you then. 01:02:20:14 - 01:02:41:22 Well, that's all from us for this week's episode of Parliament Matters. 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