Parliament Matters

The Government’s plan to restrict the right to a jury trial for certain defendants cleared its Second Reading in the Commons this week – but the fight is far from over. The proposals in the Courts and Tribunals Bill are already provoking fierce criticism, including from a determined group of Labour backbenchers.To explore what’s at stake, we speak to barrister and former Director of Public Prosecutions, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven. We explore why legal experts are alarmed by the changes, what the reforms could mean for defendants’ rights and the criminal courts system, and whether Ministers might yet be forced into compromise.Meanwhile, the Bill to remove hereditary Peers from Parliament has now passed through the Lords. We examine the late-stage deal that helped ease opposition in the Upper House, while Mark takes aim at what he calls the “total bosh” used to defend hereditary seats, dismissing it as little more than romantic nostalgia.This week the Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle has also been in combative form. He has once again rebuked ministers for briefing the media before informing MPs, ordered a member out of Prime Minister’s Questions, and publicly criticised the Government’s Chief Whip. His anger follows an extraordinary Commons episode in which Government whips reportedly stretched out a vote to prevent the Conservatives securing a vote on a Statutory Instrument. One member apparently feigned illness in the voting lobby while MPs in the Chamber audibly counted down to the cut off time for another vote – the “moment of interruption” – at 7pm. The Speaker is now demanding apologies and even hinting that Government whips might need a refresher on how to manage parliamentary business.And finally, the Government has begun releasing official papers relating to Peter Mandelson’s appointment as Britain’s Ambassador to Washington. Do the documents support the Prime Minister’s version of events – or raise new questions that could deepen his ongoing leadership troubles?____ 🎓 Learn more using our resources for the issues mentioned in this episode. ❓ Send us your questions about Parliament: ✅ Subscribe to our newsletter. 📱 Follow us across social media @HansardSociety / @hansardsociety.bsky.social £ - Support the Hansard Society and this podcast by making a donation today. Parliament Matters is a Hansard Society production supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Presenters: Mark D’Arcy and Ruth FoxProducer: Richard Townsend

In this episode we continue our special series tracking the progress of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, the Private Member’s Bill that would legalise assisted dying in England and Wales.With Committee Stage in the House of Lords progressing slowly – and time in the parliamentary Session running out – we talk to Conservative Peer Lord Harper, a prominent opponent of the legislation and one of the Peers who has been heavily involved in the lengthy Committee debates.Critics argue that the scale of amendments and extended scrutiny in the Lords amounts to a filibuster designed to run down the clock. Harper rejects that characterisation. He insists that Peers are fulfilling their constitutional role as a revising chamber by probing serious flaws in the Bill and raising concerns about safeguards for vulnerable and disabled people.Harper argues that the Bill – unusually large and complex for a Private Member’s Bill – arrived in the Lords in poor shape after too many issues were left unresolved in the Commons. He contends that organisations ranging from medical royal colleges to disability groups believe the legislation lacks adequate protections.In his view, the real problem lies with the legislative process itself: a measure with major implications for the NHS, the courts and devolved governance should have been introduced as a Government bill following full consultation and more detailed policy development before reaching Parliament.Our conversation explores whether the Lords’ scrutiny amounts to legitimate legislative examination or procedural obstruction. Ruth and Mark press him on the fact the tactics used by opponents are in practice preventing the Lords from ever reaching the stage of making actual changes to the Bill. They explore the limits of the Private Member’s Bill process, and what might happen next – including the possibility that MPs could attempt to revive the legislation in a future Session and even use the Parliament Acts to force it through.As the Bill’s prospects hang in the balance, the episode examines what this contentious debate reveals about Parliament’s procedures, political strategy, and the role of the House of Lords in scrutinising major social legislation._____🎓 Learn more using our resources for the issues mentioned in this episode. ❓ Send us your questions about Parliament: ✅ Subscribe to our newsletter. 📱 Follow us across social media @HansardSociety / @hansardsociety.bsky.social £ - Support the Hansard Society and this podcast by making a donation today. Parliament Matters is a Hansard Society production supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Presenters: Mark D’Arcy and Ruth FoxProducer: Richard Townsend

What role does Parliament play when the UK is involved in military action? In this week’s episode, we explore the evolving practice of parliamentary war powers, sparked by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s response to recent military developments in Iran and the Middle East, where defensive action was authorised before any Commons statement or vote. We discuss the royal prerogative, the uncertain post-Iraq convention on parliamentary debate before offensive military action, and whether a meaningful distinction exists between defensive and offensive military action. We also examine new legislative attempts to codify Parliament’s role and the political and military realities that shape whether MPs get a say. Plus, we discuss the long-running constitutional saga over hereditary peers, as the House of Lords prepares to consider Commons amendments to the Bill to oust the hereditaries at the end of this parliamentary Session. The Government has unexpectedly published a Ministerial Salaries (Amendment) Bill which would increase the number of paid ministers in the House of Lords. This may be linked to the amendment in the Hereditary Peers Bill originally proposed by the Conservative Peer, Lord True, that would prohibit future unpaid Ministers from being eligible for membership of the Upper House. It is possible that the ministerial salaries legislation is being synchronised to ease the passage of the Hereditary Peers Bill. Along the way we also touch on MPs’ pay which is on track to top £100K by the end of the Parliament, staff funding tensions, defence estimates scrutiny, and what the Spring Statement tells us about the government’s economic direction._____🎓 Learn more using our resources for the issues mentioned in this episode. ❓ Send us your questions about Parliament: ✅ Subscribe to our newsletter. 📱 Follow us across social media @HansardSociety / @hansardsociety.bsky.social £ - Support the Hansard Society and this podcast by making a donation today. Parliament Matters is a Hansard Society production supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Presenters: Mark D’Arcy and Ruth FoxProducer: Richard Townsend

After the Greens’ triumph at the Gorton and Denton by-election we ponder the implications for Parliament. Could the result tempt more MPs to switch parties? Does this heap fresh pressure on the Prime Minister? Will party leaders need to rethink how they treat opponents whose backing they may need after the next election? And with the three largest parties in Parliament securing less than 30% per cent of the vote in the by-election between them, could it spark a move to introduce electoral reform?As the controversy surrounding Peter Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor rolls on, Conservative MP and former Security Minister Tom Tugendhat joins the podcast. He makes the case for a new parliamentary “super-committee” to investigate what went wrong, from the former Prince’s appointment as a trade envoy to Mandelson’s move to Washington,  and to consider how better to protect the constitutional monarchy from future embarrassment.Plus, Ruth and Mark can’t resist dissecting the extraordinary chain of events that saw Mr Speaker Hoyle and his Lords counterpart, Lord Forsyth, unexpectedly caught up in the arrest of Lord Mandelson.And with the Chancellor’s Spring Statement due in the coming week, as well as a series of votes to authorise billions of pounds in public spending, a lot of senior MPs have serious concerns about where the money is going in a series of government departments. So will Ministers face tough questioning during the coming Estimates Day debates or will the money be quietly voted through? Watch this space._____🎓 Learn more using our resources for the issues mentioned in this episode. ❓ Send us your questions about Parliament: ✅ Subscribe to our newsletter. 📱 Follow us across social media @HansardSociety / @hansardsociety.bsky.social £ - Support the Hansard Society and this podcast by making a donation today. Parliament Matters is a Hansard Society production supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Presenters: Mark D’Arcy and Ruth FoxProducer: Richard Townsend

Why is Britain’s first female cabinet minister almost invisible in our political memory?In this episode we are joined by historian and author Nan Sloane, whose new biography of Margaret Bondfield has just been published, to uncover the remarkable and largely forgotten story of this pioneering figure. Bondfield – a working-class trade unionist – became the first woman to serve in the British Cabinet yet is rarely mentioned alongside figures such as Nancy Astor or Ellen Wilkinson. She did not enter politics through the suffrage movement. Instead, she rose through the male-dominated trade union movement, often as the only woman in the room. Born into a large working-class family in Somerset, she left school at thirteen to work in shops where staff were legally treated as domestic servants and endured punishing conditions. Driven by a fierce commitment to social justice, she became a powerful organiser, accomplished public speaker and a leading national figure within the labour movement.Elected to Parliament in 1923, she made history in 1929 when she was appointed Minister of Labour, becoming the first woman to serve in the Cabinet and the first female Privy Counsellor. But it was, as one colleague put it, the worst job in government. In the grip of a deep economic crisis, unemployment was soaring, the national insurance system was stretched to breaking point, and painful decisions had to be taken. By 1931 the crisis had split the Labour Party and brought down the Government. Bondfield lost her seat and never returned to Parliament. Rather than being remembered as a trailblazer, her legacy was overshadowed by economic crisis and party division. Was she a pioneer, a pragmatist caught in impossible circumstances, or a woman judged more harshly than her male colleagues? In conversation with Nan Sloane, we explore Bondfield’s character, her relationships and international networks, and the political choices that shaped both her career and her reputation.Nan Sloane, Margaret Bondfield: The life and times of Britain’s first Cabinet Minister (Bloomsbury Publishing)🎓 Learn more using our resources for the issues mentioned in this episode. ❓ Send us your questions about Parliament: ✅ Subscribe to our newsletter. 📱 Follow us across social media @HansardSociety / @hansardsociety.bsky.social £ - Support the Hansard Society and this podcast by making a donation today. Parliament Matters is a Hansard Society production supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Presenters: Mark D’Arcy and Ruth Fox Producer: Richard Townsend

What happens when you lose the party whip? A conversation with Neil Duncan-Jordan MPLabour MP Neil Duncan-Jordan joins us this week to reflect on his experience as one of the new intake’s most prominent rebels. He describes defying the whip over the means-testing of the Winter Fuel Allowance and proposed disability benefit cuts, the fallout from his suspension from the Parliamentary Labour Party, and the personal and political pressures that come with rebellion. He also discusses his relationship with the Whips and explains why he has twice called for Sir Keir Starmer to step down, most recently in the wake of the Mandelson affair. In this week’s episode, we also assess Starmer’s increasingly fragile position following the Mandelson–Epstein controversy, examining the risk of further damaging disclosures about Mandelson’s contact with Ministers and the potential implications for the Government’s legislative programme. We untangle the constitutional confusion surrounding proposals to strip Peter Mandelson and other disgraced peers of their titles, exploring weaknesses in the House of Lords’ Code of Conduct, and the broader dangers of legislating in response to a single scandal. Gordon Brown has called for sweeping “root and branch” standards reform – from a new anti-corruption commission to greater use of citizens’ juries on parliamentary standards and enhanced select committee scrutiny of ministerial and other public appointments. Ruth and Mark question whether such changes would genuinely rebuild public trust, pointing to nearly two decades of Hansard Society polling showing consistently low levels of trust in politicians and in the effectiveness of the political system. They also argue that the current focus on expelling disgraced Peers from the House of Lords misses a fundamental issue: the Prime Minister’s largely unchecked power to appoint them in the first place. We return to the slow progress of the assisted dying bill in the House of Lords, where disagreement continues over whether the pace of debate reflects legitimate scrutiny or amounts to filibustering. Some MPs are calling for accelerated Lords reform in response – but would a wholly elected second chamber be more likely to block legislation rather than less? Finally, we discuss two significant reports from the Procedure Committee: one recommending against the introduction of call lists for debates in the Commons Chamber, and another proposing changes to the way select committee chairs and deputy speakers are elected in the House of Commons. 🎓 Learn more using our resources for the issues mentioned in this episode. ❓ Send us your questions about Parliament: ✅ Subscribe to our newsletter. 📱 Follow us across social media @HansardSociety / @hansardsociety.bsky.social £ - Support the Hansard Society and this podcast by making a donation today. Parliament Matters is a Hansard Society production supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Presenters: Mark D’Arcy and Ruth Fox Producer: Richard Townsend

It has been a bruising week for the Prime Minister after the House of Commons backed a Conservative “Humble Address” demanding documents on Sir Keir Starmer’s vetting of Lord Mandelson for the Washington Ambassadorship. We explain how the procedure works, what role the Intelligence and Security Committee may play in decisions on disclosure, and how legislation to strip a peerage could be introduced. Plus, the latest on the Restoration and Renewal of Parliament as yet another report lands with a new set of costings.______🎓 Learn more using our resources for the issues mentioned in this episode. ❓ Send us your questions about Parliament: ✅ Subscribe to our newsletter. 📱 Follow us across social media @HansardSociety / @hansardsociety.bsky.social £ - Support the Hansard Society and this podcast by making a donation today. Parliament Matters is a Hansard Society production supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Presenters: Mark D’Arcy and Ruth FoxProducer: Richard Townsend

This week we explore one of Westminster’s strangest constitutional hangovers: why MPs can’t simply resign. With the Gorton and Denton by-election triggered by Andrew Gwynne’s departure, listeners asked the obvious question – why the medieval-sounding detour via the Chiltern Hundreds (or its less glamorous cousin, the Manor of Northstead)? We trace the rule back to 1623, when the Commons barred resignations, and to later fears about MPs being bought off by “offices of profit” from the Crown. The workaround – appointing an MP to a Crown office that disqualifies them – still survives, complete with modern legal “fudges”. Along the way, we revisit colourful resignations and near-resignations, from mass Ulster Unionist walkouts to John Stonehouse’s attempted disappearance and Gerry Adams’s objection to being handed a Crown role he didn’t want.In this episode we also check the Government’s legislative scorecard as the Session edges toward its expected May close, with several dozen bills already on the statute book and many more still in play. We explain “carry-over” motions – how some bills can leap across prorogation – and why the Government has produced surprisingly few bills for pre-legislative scrutiny compared with the first Session in recent previous parliaments.Finally, the focus shifts to the Armed Forces Bill, the five-yearly legislation rooted in the Bill of Rights that renews the legal basis for military discipline and Parliament’s consent for a standing army. Labour MP Jayne Kirkham joins us to discuss how her Ten Minute Rule proposal secured Royal Fleet Auxiliary access to the new Armed Forces Commissioner, and what it’s like learning the ropes on bill committees as a new MP._____ 🎓 Learn more using our resources for the issues mentioned in this episode. ❓ Send us your questions about Parliament: ✅ Subscribe to our newsletter. 📱 Follow us across social media @HansardSociety / @hansardsociety.bsky.social £ - Support the Hansard Society and this podcast by making a donation today. Parliament Matters is a Hansard Society production supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Presenters: Mark D’Arcy and Ruth FoxProducer: Richard Townsend

The assisted dying bill – properly known as the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill – is facing an extraordinary procedural logjam in the House of Lords. More than 1,170 amendments remain to be debated, organised into 89 groups for debate, yet only 20 of those groups have been reached after seven days in Committee. With just a handful of sitting Fridays left before the end of the Session, Lord Falconer has warned that the Bill is very unlikely to complete its Lords stages in time. In a letter to Peers, he has floated a list of possible compromise amendments but has also, for the first time, strongly indicated that the Parliament Act may need to be invoked to override the opposition of a small group of Peers and secure the Bill’s passage in the next Session.Although rarely used, and never in relation to a Private Members Bill, the Parliament Act has been deployed before on highly contentious measures, most recently the Hunting Bill in 2004. Using it to force through the assisted dying bill would require intricate choreography in both the Commons and the Lords, as well as major political decisions about whether the government formally takes ownership of the Bill or whether it continues as a Private Member’s Bill. It would also raise difficult questions about how amendments are handled, and how far MPs and ministers are prepared to go to assert the primacy of the elected House in the face of sustained resistance from a small but determined group of Peers.In this episode, we explore how the Parliament Act works, how it could be used in this case, and the political and constitutional trade-offs involved in relying on it to deliver this legislation.____ 🎓 Learn more using our resources for the issues mentioned in this episode. ❓ Send us your questions about Parliament: ✅ Subscribe to our newsletter. 📱 Follow us across social media @HansardSociety / @hansardsociety.bsky.social £ - Support the Hansard Society and this podcast by making a donation today. Parliament Matters is a Hansard Society production supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Presenters: Mark D’Arcy and Ruth FoxProducer: Richard Townsend