Episode 1: responding to a pandemic

Transcript

Amy Green:

Hello and welcome to the House of Lords Podcast. I'm Amy Green. I work here in House of Lords Communications.

Matt Purvis:

And I'm Matt Purvis, Head of Research at the House of Lords Library.

Amy Green:

Together, we're presenting this new podcast from the House of Lords.

Matt Purvis:

Over the next six episodes, we will be exploring with guests from across the House, how the Lords works and what is currently under discussion. In this episode, we'll be exploring how the House of Lords has responded to the coronavirus pandemic.

Amy Green:

So, Matt, for those that might only be vaguely aware, I guess the first question we should ask is, "What exactly is the House of Lords?"

Matt Purvis:

Well, the House of Lords is the second chamber of the UK's Parliament. Essentially, it has three main jobs. First, together with the House of Commons, it debates, scrutinizes, and passes laws. Second, it holds the government to account through questions and debates. And third, it investigates policy through the work of its committees.

Amy Green:

And as you said, you are Head of Research, so what exactly is the role of the Library?

Matt Purvis:

Our mission is to provide members with excellent research, analysis, and information, allowing members to contribute effectively to the work of the House. In doing so, we are independent and impartial, so we don't take a view on the best course of action. What we do do though is provide access to online resources. We lend books. We answer members' inquiries, and we also publish briefings on bills and debates. You can find out more about our work and all our briefings at LordsLibrary.Parliament.uk.

Amy Green:

And similar to the House of Commons, the House of Lords also has a Speaker. The Lord Speaker is a relatively new role, isn't it?

Matt Purvis:

Yeah, that's right. Until 2006, the Lord Chancellor, one of the most ancient offices of state was the Speaker of the House, but the Lord Chancellor was also a government minister, and the Lord Chancellor was also head of the judiciary. The Constitutional Reform Act of 2005 changed the Lord Chancellor's role. That act also set up the Supreme Court, which replaced the House of Lords as the UK's highest court in 2009. That act also provided for a Lord Speaker. We actually spoke to the Lord Speaker earlier, and here is what he had to say about how the House of Lords has changed over the last seven months.

Lord Fowler:

My name's Norman Fowler, and I'm the Lord Speaker here in the House of Lords.

Matt Purvis:

Welcome, Lord Fowler, thank you for joining us today. Could you start by explaining to us what is the role of the Lord Speaker, please?

Lord Fowler:

Well, it's got many sides. I mean, one of its sides is that you sit on the Woolsack. You sit in the chair for parliamentary proceedings. That's one. It's the most obvious role, but in fact many of the most important roles are, if you like, behind the scenes. I'm Chairman of the House of Lords Commission, which is really the overarching body as far as the House of Lords is concerned. All the major issues come to us, so it's those two roles that go together. And above all, what is our major role I think is to hold the government to account and to ensure that the legislation going through for the public is as good as it conceivably can be. Because if that legislation is wrong, then it causes all kinds of problems outside. Some people say, "What's the role of the House of Lords? Is it really necessary?" Well, I think it is necessary. I think in the last year or so, we've had something like 2,000 amendments, and many of those have come from the government itself, putting right their original proposals. So you've got to think about that before you say, "Get rid of the House of Lords," because it wouldn't work. I think if you did do that, you would just have a battleground for claims and counter-claims. So the Lords works very hard. Like me, it's got a whole multiplicity of roles itself.

Amy Green:

Would you say that the role of the House of Lords has changed during the coronavirus pandemic?

Lord Fowler:

Yes, it undoubtedly has changed. And the reason it's changed is that we've had to make changes to respect the rules which now govern the virus. For example, we have to sit two meters apart. We have a great deal of the business take place remotely. In other words, people are there, out in their own home, and they're joining in, but they're not in the chamber. The chamber for me is a rather pale imitation of what it used to be. It used to be absolutely packed, but you can't have it packed now, and you've got to get no more than, I don't know, 30 or 40 people in. As I look down from the Woolsack, it is very, very different. So, all that's different. Questions have to be prepared in advance. We have to tell members what order they will be asking questions, and the same is true for speaking as well. So, a lot of the spontaneity of the House is gone.

Lord Fowler:

On the other hand, it's inevitable that we do that. And I think one thing which has impressed me is that the voting system here I think is much, much better than having a voting system where people take part in a long crocodile queue to put in their vote. It's much easier to do it remotely. For the vote we had the other day, I think the result of that came into me in a couple of minutes, and then I was then able to announce it to the House. That wouldn't be possible if we were all queuing up.

Lord Fowler:

So, it has made a difference. Not all the differences are good. One or two of the differences I think may teach us lessons for the future, but not all of those. And I've been in Parliament 50 years, and I obviously am attached to the old way of doing things. What I want above all is a bit more spontaneity than we have at the moment and a bit more genuine questioning of ministers, so there are pluses and minus. But the fact is that, given where we are, given the problems that we face, I think this is the best position and the best compromise that we can reach.

Matt Purvis:

Last question. How does it feel to be the first guest on the House of Lords Podcast?

Lord Fowler:

Well, I'm delighted that you're doing it, absolutely delighted that you're doing it. One of the things that I tried to do over the last four years is to get the House of Lords much more out into the community, and I think that's absolutely essential because I think the very title, House of Lords, puts a lot of people, young people perhaps, off, and it shouldn't do. I mean, if you called it a Senate, would that make it any different? I don't know. But it's of that nature. It's just a lot of people here with a lot of experience. And I think that therefore things like podcasts, things like the leaflets that we do, newspapers we do, that is an enormous advantage, and it's not something we're going to ... You're not going to solve the communication problem in one stroke, but you can try to improve it, and you can try to get the public to understand the important role that the House of Lords is carrying on. And without that role, I think their own life would not be ... would be more complicated than it is. So I am the last person in the world to be complacent about where we are, but the more we can do, the more innovation that we can bring in the better as far as I'm concerned.

Amy Green:

That was the Lord Speaker, Lord Fowler. He's actually just celebrated 50 years in Parliament. And I'm sure we'll be talking to him more about that and how Parliament has changed in a later episode.

Matt Purvis:

Next up, we'll be talking to two members who have a lot of experience of how things have changed in the chamber of the House.

Amy Green:

Perhaps we should just explain some of the different aspects that make up the House of Lords here.

Matt Purvis:

Yeah, okay. People probably imagine when they think of the House of Lords, certainly up until earlier this year, a House of Lords debate taking place in the chamber, the chamber full of red benches and lots of members. However, the pandemic has changed how we have run debates with members taking part now both inside the chamber and remotely from their own homes.

Amy Green:

And that is something that we're calling hybrid proceedings, where we've got members both in the chamber and participating remotely. Do you want to just give us a quick timeline of how things have changed since March?

Matt Purvis:

Yeah, absolutely. So the House sat up until the end of March, rising early for Easter having sat that week the lockdown was announced pass the Coronavirus Bill. But at that point, there was a noticeable impact on the House as the pandemic developed. So the House had already slimmed down to deal with the most pressing types of business. The number of members present went down, and the Lord Speaker had also announced he'd be working from home. But the House still needed to sit physically to make decisions with the mace present. The mace in Parliament is a symbol of royal authority, and without it neither House could meet or pass laws. So that's why on the first day back after Easter, a small number of members were present in the chamber to give the Windrush Compensation Bill its second reading. From the 21st of April until the 4th of June, for a bulk of its business separate virtual sessions took place. Initially, the House sat Tuesday to Thursday and took all questions and statements, debates and so forth online with members contributing remotely from outside of Westminster. They saw the adoption of Speakers lists for almost all business items.

Matt Purvis:

There was also some innovation in procedures which saw the first virtual committee stage of a bill take place on the 13th of May, and that was one the Private International Law (Implementation of Agreements) Bill. And then from the 18th of May, the House started sitting on Mondays again, so Monday through to Thursday as per pre-pandemic patterns. However, there has been some change in the hours the House has sat, and there's been a lot more breaks between business to allow for social distancing. The House then agreed that from the 8th of June, there would no longer be separate physical and virtual proceedings, so instead we have now, as you say, the hybrid House, which allows for both physical and remote participation. To allow social distancing, a maximum of 30 members can participate from the chamber at any one time. And there's also a cap maintained on the numbers participating online. Also, finally, since the 15th of June, the House has also made decisions for a new remote voting platform, which allows members to vote from wherever they are, whether that's on the parliamentary estate or whether working from home.

Amy Green:

Yeah. So huge changes really that we've seen since March. And we're going to be speaking to Baroness Penn, who is a Conservatice whip in the House of Lords, and Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall, who's a Labour member and a Deputy Speaker, and they can tell us a little bit more about what it's been like as a member to experience all of these changes.

Baroness Penn:

I'm JoJo Penn, Baroness Penn. I've been a member of the House of Lords for a year, and I am a government whip in the whip's office.

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:

And I'm Jenny McIntosh, Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall. I've been a member of the House of Lords since 1999, and I am a Deputy Speaker.

Amy Green:

Baroness Penn, you are a whip in the House of Lords. Could you just explain to us a little bit about what that role involves?

Baroness Penn:

Yes, of course. In some ways, it's like being a whip in the House of Commons. Both of those jobs are about getting government business through parliament, and so we have flocks of members of the House of Lords who take the Conservatice whip, in the government's case, and we encourage them to vote with the government on pieces of legislation. But in other ways, it's quite different from the House of Commons. In the House of Commons, you'll never hear a whip speak. They can't speak as a backbencher, and they also can't speak as a minister. Whereas in the Lords, government whips also stand in for ministers, so we might speak to answer questions on behalf of government, speak in debates on behalf of government, and also speak when we're trying to pass legislation, whether that's statutory instruments or bills. So we can be quite busy at times. You'll also see a government whip always in the chamber to basically make sure that things don't go wrong. In some ways, the House of Lords governs itself, but a government whip can stand up and speak to remind peers of the rules that they've agreed amongst themselves for how the House should operate.

Matt Purvis:

And Baroness McIntosh, can you tell us a little bit about your role as a Deputy Speaker?

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:

Well, the Deputy Speakers actually are almost a reverse position from the one that we've just had described to us about the whips. Because, most people, when they think about Speaker, think about Mr. Speaker in the House of Commons, and they see somebody very powerful who runs things, who can control the House of Commons, who can tell people to stand up or sit down. And the House of Lords has only recently had anybody called a Speaker. The Lord Speaker is a new-ish role. It was only invented just over a decade ago and is currently occupied by Lord Fowler. But the powers that belong to the Lord Speaker are much less than those that go with being Mr. Speaker or Madam Speaker, and the role of the deputy who sits in for the Lord Speaker when he or she is not able to preside is just to make sure that business proceeds in an orderly manner. And in that respect, we have to work very closely with the government whips because, between us, we have to manage what is, as Lady Penn has just said, a self-governing House.

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:

Just for the avoidance of any doubt, being a Deputy Speaker means that you have to be physically in the chamber. It can no longer be done remotely, so it involves sitting on the woolsack, and the House can't proceed with any business unless there is somebody sitting on the woolsack. So, in that respect, it's a very necessary job, but it has very many fewer powers than those that go with the Speakership in the House of Commons.

Amy Green:

And have you both found that those roles have changed quite a bit as a result of being in hybrid proceedings now?

Baroness Penn:

One of the strange things for me is actually I became a government whip just before the country went into lockdown and we moved to hybrid proceedings, so I don't really know what it's like in more normal times. But definitely at the start of things when everyone was remote, that was incredibly different, sitting kind of ... We always had a whip in government in the business, even when we were remote, but you were just sitting on your laptop in your kitchen, or wherever you were following proceedings. And then we had a kind of ... We have a group chat function between the Deputy Speakers and the whips and the clerks, so that if anything is going wrong we can still communicate with each other.

Baroness Penn:

We're a bit more back to normal now, I'd say, because at least for all business, as Baroness McIntosh said, you have the Speaker or a Deputy Speaker on the woolsack. A government whip's always in the chamber, and there's always a clerk there, and so we can at least kind of see each other, even though we still use this group chat function quite a lot to make sure that the show stays on the road, as it were.

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:

I would agree with all of that. Of course, the main difference is a much, much greater reliance on technology. We all of us now, as Deputy Speakers for example, have to take an iPad into the chamber with us when we go to sit on the woolsack because we can't communicate with anybody in the chamber other than using the chat function. And so some of us I think found that quite challenging, and it was certainly different, but we've got our heads around it now, and it all works quite smoothly. But of course, because it's a hybrid House, the technology also extends to people who are contributing to debates from remote parts of the UK, and sometimes that goes wrong. And so, if you're either a whip or a Deputy Speaker, you've got to have your wits about you all the time. Because if something does go wrong, particularly something that hasn't been predicted, you've got to be ready to fix it in some way or another by how you manage the House. Yep, it's been quite different.

Baroness Penn:

There's quite a lot of thinking on your feet, basically, because-

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:

Yes, I would certainly agree with that. Or, in some cases, not on your feet.

Baroness Penn:

Yes, exactly.

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:

Thinking in a sedentary position has become very necessary, absolutely.

Baroness Penn:

And just picking up on what Baroness McIntosh said about the role of technology, one of the differences is ministers. When they're responding to debates and other things, they may have their box support. And that's the names of their kind of officials from their department who are there to help find them answers to questions that they might not already have in their briefing and that kind of thing. That can often be done remotely now, so it might be done via WhatsApp. And so, as a whip, I might be sitting on the benches, and it looks like I'm looking at my phone all the time, but what I'm actually looking at is the kind of exchange between ministers and their officials for more information to respond to a debate and also the discussion between the Speaker or Deputy Speaker, clerks, and whips about if we've lost someone off the line and what we're going to do about that, or what we're going to do at the end of that piece of business, or other things. So I think, before, although you could have your phone or a bit of technology in the chamber, you weren't expected to look at it. And I'm conscious sometimes I'm actually looking at it the whole time, but it's all kind of messages about how things are operating.

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:

I would completely agree with that. And it does cross my mind sometimes when I'm sitting on the woolsack now that from a public perspective, when people are looking in to the chamber, what they see now is a lot of people ... They probably did a bit before, but a lot of people looking at iPads and phones. And certainly all the time that I was on the woolsack before we had a hybrid House, I tried terribly hard to pay attention to what was being said in the debate and at least try to look interested, which is sometimes hard, but it's very difficult now to avoid the perception that you're spending a lot of time thinking about something other than what's going on in the chamber, even though as Lady Penn said you actually are contributing while you're using your iPad or your phone.

Matt Purvis:

You've given us a really good description there of sort of the choreography of how hybrid proceedings are operating on a daily basis. Thinking back to sort of day one of your involvement. What kind of preparation were you involved in and were you given?

Baroness Penn:

It was quite remarkable really, I would say, the speed at which things were set up. I think back to March, and the House of Lords had just passed, I think in two days, some emergency COVID legislation to deal with the pandemic. And on the day it actually passed and got Royal Assent and became an Act, we rose ... So the House closed one week early for Easter. I think it was a very sensible thing to do given where the country was at the time. We went for the Easter break, and by the time we came back we had a virtual House operating. And so actually for a lot of people that work in the House of Lords, it wasn't an Easter break at all. There was a huge amount of work to be done to get that up and running, and it's one of those remarkable things about how quickly something can happen when it really needs to.

Baroness Penn:

And there's all sorts of things that you wouldn't necessarily think about. So, some members of the House of Lords didn't have an email address or a piece of IT equipment, and so they had to be set up with an email address and have a piece of IT equipment sent out to their part of the country. We used Teams first, when we first started running, and then we used Zoom, but no one had those. And I don't know about anyone else, but I hadn't used those bits of technology before. I started using Zoom chat to friends and stuff, but that was something I'd only ever done since the pandemic.

Baroness Penn:

And then the other thing is that, now that we have a hybrid House, lots of pieces of business used to just work by people standing up in the chamber to speak. It was a kind of informal system that you moved between parties, and you didn't have a speakers list. So now for every piece of business, we had to set up a system where you knew what the business was in advance, so you can't change things at short notice. You open a speakers list. People can apply, and then it all gets arranged. So there was all of this work that went on during what was not the Easter holidays for most members of staff in the House of Lords. And when we got back, it worked remarkably well. The only thing that I contributed to in that time is we did have a dress rehearsal of how it might work. And that was quite fun because we had a kind of fake question time with slightly lighter hearted questions being asked than usual. So, instead of being nervous, "Have you read your briefing? Is there going to be a left field question?" There are quite a few left field questions, but it was about your kind of at-home hobbies or particular talents or anything else that you had been doing during lockdown.

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:

I remember that session because I also participated. I would echo everything that Baroness Penn has just said, and particularly the enormous amount of work that was done at absolutely breakneck speed to get systems up and running between the point at which lockdown started and the moment after the Easter break when it was possible for some sort of new arrangements to be put in place. And it was absolutely astonishing. I mean, eye-wateringly fast changes that everybody had to make. And just on the very specific question about how much preparation, from the Deputy Speaker's point of view it did change a lot. Firstly, we had to work remotely when the House was operating just as a virtual chamber and wasn't broadcasting live, and that involved having to do things differently in the way Lady Penn has just described.

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:

But then afterwards, when the House became fully hybrid, it meant learning a whole new range of protocols that you had to do live on the floor of the House. And some people also, in the early stages, didn't go back to Westminster straight away. I was one of those. And so for a while we dropped out and couldn't operate effectively because that meant a whole sort of new people had to come on, so they had to learn the way things were in a hybrid House, not really ever having operated in not a hybrid House, so that was quite a challenge for them. It's a miracle to me, when you think how much people had to learn about technology and about just managing the House in a different way, actually how little has gone wrong. I mean, things have gone wrong, sometimes quite entertainingly and sometimes not very entertainingly, but on the whole things have worked, I would say, very smoothly considering how difficult and complex it was to get the system up and running.

Amy Green:

And so this is obviously a very busy time for the House of Lords, not only because of all the changes that we've been discussing, but we've still got Brexit legislation coming through and obviously coronavirus legislation. How does it feel to be involved in such an important and unprecedented time for Parliament and obviously for the country as well?

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:

I would say it feels, of course, always a privilege. I mean, how could it not be? to be involved in Parliament in any event and certainly at this time. But it's also quite scary. There's so much going on, and so much of it is really important. I mean, life-changingly important for the country and so it's a huge responsibility for everybody who's involved, no matter whether it's at a very intense level as if you're a minister, or at a slightly lower level of responsibility but nonetheless with some need to engage. And I wouldn't have missed it, but it's quite a rollercoaster ride.

Baroness Penn:

I totally agree with that. I mean, some of the legislation that we're passing, or actually a huge amount of what we're discussing and passing at the moment has a huge impact on people's lives, and we're doing that in a totally new and different way of working at the same time, so it's incredibly important that we were able to get something up and running that allowed us to carry on operating, but it is different from what's come before. At the same time is trying to deal with issues of real profound importance. I think one of the things that I also feel kind of pretty lucky for is that we were able to set up this way of working that has allowed us to continue in what I feel is a very safe environment. It's something that a lot of thought and work has been put into that as well, I think. The kinds of laws that we're passing are things that I wouldn't have imagined in my first 10 years in this House would be things that we would be passing, and now it's the reality of people's lives.

Matt Purvis:

You described so far your experiences of the hybrid House and identified the fact that it's enabled the House to keep going, and the speed of change as well. What do you think are some of the main benefits and drawbacks of the move to a hybrid sitting?

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:

I think that the most obvious thing, which is both a benefit and a drawback I think, is the switch to remote voting. I think that nobody would have imagined the House of Lords, or actually the House of Commons, although they've done some ... They don't yet do remote voting. But nobody would imagine the House of Lords setting up and running a remote voting system. I think that's the biggest thing that's happened. It's changed the way a lot of people engage with the House.

Baroness Penn:

And I think one benefit from some of the remote working, whether it's contributing remotely or voting remotely, is that for particularly those who don't live in London, where the traveling is a significant burden and a difference compared to those of us who do live in London, has made things easier, but I have to say I do really miss the in-person interaction. I think it's harder in the chamber to have really good debate because you have to operate just to speakers lists for very, very good reasons, but it's harder to pick up on the points that other people have made and respond. And I think the other thing is that you miss a lot of the informal connections, a lot of the conversations that you might have with people from your own party, but also people from across the House from all sorts of walks of life. That informal interaction informs you much better. It builds better relationships. I think it leads to a better way of doing things. And so, although it's been totally necessary, I think we have ... We do miss out on some of those informal interactions, which I think also for new people that have joined the House, particularly after myself, I think very hard to get to know how the House works and people here without some of that informal interaction as well as the formal interaction.

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:

I would completely agree with that. I mean, just physically being in the House at the moment is a very, very different experience from how it was before.

Amy Green:

Do you have any favorite moments from remote proceedings or hybrid proceedings so far?

Baroness Penn:

I think for me one of the things is that ... As I said at the start, I became a government whip almost as lockdown was happening, and so the first time that I ever spoke from the dispatch box was actually me sitting at my kitchen table, looking at a screen, which it had benefits and disbenefits. I think I was probably less nervous than if I was in a chamber full of everyone ... Question time is the busiest time of day. Every seat is normally full, and so in some ways it was less intimidating. I've had a graduated apprenticeship at the dispatch box, so now I've done it in person but in a socially distanced chamber. And I've also had to do it where the minister that I was whipping for, so I wasn't expecting to speak, dropped off the line a few times. And eventually that became a permanent dropping off, and so I had to stand in and finish his speech, so it's given me quite a lot of practice in maybe a less intimidating environment than a chamber full of people. So hopefully when we go back to normal, I'll have had a few kind of trial runs at this kind of thing.

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:

I should say that Lady Penn displays the confidence of an old timer at the dispatch box, pretty remarkably for somebody who's only been there for a year, so obviously the lessons have been well learned.

Amy Green:

Yeah. You've only been here a year, Baroness Penn. It's actually a year this month, isn't it? So, happy anniversary. Happy one year. How has your experience been so far?

Baroness Penn:

So I had completely forgotten that it would have been a year until you reminded me, and it's actually flown by, maybe because it's been a very unusual year. Just after I started, there was a kind of ... The election was called, and that happened. And then in February, we left the EU. And then in March, we were into a kind of national lockdown because of a global pandemic. But I came to the House of Lords having been working in Number 10 for the previous three years. And so, in some ways, maybe this year was unusual, but I'm learning that maybe usual years or more normal years in politics are more hard to come by nowadays, and so I don't expect next year or the year after to be any more kind of predictable, but it's been great. I've really enjoyed the experience. And for me it's a different experience, going from being behind the scenes and an advisor to actually, as I said, kind of speaking with my own voice, and that's been quite a change.

Matt Purvis:

And Baroness McIntosh, you joined the House in 1999.

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:

I did.

Matt Purvis:

Just before the House of Lords Act was passed.

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:

Indeed, I was there. I was there as it passed its final stages. And yes, that was quite an amazing event in itself, but it was a long time ago, and the world was very different. I mean, you can start with the fact that when I came into the House of Lords, the Labour Party was in government, and therefore I was sitting on the side of the House that Lady Penn and her colleagues are now sitting. And also at the time, I had a full-time job outside the House. And so my experience of being in the House at that time was quite different because it was a much more part-time part of my life. I tried to be as much of a contributor as I could, but I had other responsibilities. So yeah, it feels very, very different now in so many ways, but it's still a huge privilege to be there, and that's something I shall always, always be grateful for. The opportunity to do it has been absolutely life changing and remarkable.

Amy Green:

Baroness McIntosh, Baroness Penn, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. It's been really interesting talking to you.

Baroness Penn:

Thank you for having us.

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:

Thank you indeed. It's been a privilege.

Matt Purvis:

Next up, you spoke to Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top about how the House of Lords committees are responding to COVID-19, didn't you?

Amy Green:

Yes. And Baroness Armstrong is the chair of a relatively new committee, the Public Services Committee. And they've been investigating what public services have learned from the pandemic and how we can prepare for the future.

Matt Purvis:

And if you've not really heard about committees before, they are smaller groups of members that meet away from the chamber. Lords committees investigate public policy, propose laws and government activity. And there are a few committees currently looking into different aspects of the coronavirus pandemic. There is the COVID-19 Committee itself, which is looking into long-term implications and life beyond the pandemic. There's also the Science and Technology Committee, Economic Affairs Committee, Constitution and EU Committees, which are also looking into the impact of the coronavirus on their specific area of interest, such as the impact on jobs or the science of the virus and the pandemic itself.

Amy Green:

Here's what Baroness Armstrong had to say about the focus of her committee.

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top:

My name is Hillary Armstrong, Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top, and I chair the new Public Services Select Committee in the House of Lords.

Amy Green:

Baroness Armstrong, what is the role of a select committee?

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top:

A select committee in the House of Lords is there to sometimes look at legislation and the impact of legislation. Sometimes it's to just consider issues that are there and make recommendations that the committee then will hope the government will listen to, other relevant organizations will listen to. It's to try to look at things in depth and come up with recommendations, and we have several different sorts of select committees in the Lords, some which are committees that go on more than the life of a single topic. For short hand, I call those standing committees. We don't actually use that phrase. And select committees really became established in the Lords around scrutinizing what was coming out of the European community and then European Union. So the Lords was always seen as the body in the UK that kept hold of whatever was going on. And now because that's gone, the Lords are now looking at different things and different ways of developing policy and developing ideas and holding the government to account through other select committees because obviously once the United Kingdom has left the European Union, we won't have European Union committees anymore.

Amy Green:

And you're currently a chair of one of those committees, the Public Services Committee. What are you currently looking at at the moment?

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top:

This is a new committee. We were set up in February. And by the time we started to meet, COVID ... We had the first COVID patient in the UK, and we were looking ... The committee is essentially going to look at cross-cutting themes across local government. The Lords does not try to replicate what is looked at and the manner of committees that they have in the Commons where they look at each department and hold the minister for that department accountable. This was meant to be cross-cutting, looking at the future of public services and particularly what reforms were needed to ensure that people were getting what they need from public services as customers, as consumers, as citizens.

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top:

And we were looking at all sorts of interesting possibilities of what we might consider for our first report, but it became very clear that we really couldn't look at anything in public services without taking COVID and all of its implications into account. Because the public sector by March was really gripped with, "How do we respond to this pandemic? What is our role? How do we at local level cooperate between health and social care?" for example. "What do we do about schools?" All of those issues are important. But in the longterm, we want to look at particularly the reform of public services and how public services go forward. But for this inquiry, we've looked at, "How has COVID taught us about public services? What have we learned about public services from the pandemic?" And so we've looked right across the board at about how ill-prepared we were because we didn't have enough invested in early intervention and in prevention of problems. You know, if we'd done more about obesity early on, if we'd done more about tackling poverty and inequality, then the consequences of the pandemic would not have been as harsh. And that's the sort of thing that we've looked at in great detail.

Amy Green:

And I suppose it will probably be the case then for quite a long time that anything you look into, you will need to take COVID-19 into account now. You can't look at anything like public services without taking this into account.

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top:

Well, from the interesting things like inequality to what might seem the more pedantic things like data and data sharing, obviously what's happened in COVID has been really important. So we heard, for example, from homeless people who were initially put into accommodation, taken off the streets. Many were given a mobile phone, and somebody would ring them every day. And they talked about how they were being looked after, and they felt more secure, and they felt safer, and how good that was in the early stages. But then as things went on, new people were finding it much more difficult to get into services, so they have set the tone for what will need to happen in the future. And so the whole interaction of the services to the user has become very much more clear, and in some cases quite stark. So, again, we heard from people who had long-term health conditions about how abandoned and stranded they felt because they needed particular diets which the local food bank and food provision couldn't give them. They couldn't afford to do weekly shopping online because there are minimum spends. None of us had thought about that. The minimum spend for an online delivery is 40 pounds, and for many of them that was far more than they would normally spend in a week. And so, we've learned a lot. And yes, there are going to be implications for the future in all of these things.

Amy Green:

Your public inquiry has come to an end now. Were there any sort of striking things that came up in the sessions that ... You touched on it there, things that you were sort of surprised by, or different people that we perhaps don't necessarily normally hear from?

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top:

Well, we were able to talk to a huge range of people, people who've got very important positions, from the Children's Commissioner, the head of Ofsted, senior people in the NHS, senior people in local government. We were able to talk to them, but we were also able to talk to service users about their experiences of these events. And all of the committee became very clear that you need to involve service users in the design of services and in the evaluation of how those services work, and that's quite new in this country. It happens in some of the charities much more than it happens in mainstream services, and so we learned a lot about that. But we also learned about, as I say for the homeless, changing the regulations at the beginning was really helpful for them, but we have regulations so that we have high standards, and so that's another thing we've got to think about, and we are thinking about. How do you get non-bureaucratic system that is responsive, but that also guarantees a standard of care, a standard of attention that we expect?

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top:

So, there are all sorts of things that came out. We interviewed a minister from Taiwan because they've handled the virus in a remarkable way, using a lot of data sharing with the public and special apps, not just so that they know if anybody else has been infected that they're near, but so that they can understand what the data means and so on. They've done a lot of animation. And that was fascinating. And then we talked to someone who was working with one of the committees in New Zealand. And again, New Zealand have had a very particular way of, through their public services, tackling the virus. And then we also talked to someone who was chair of the Health Committee in the Bundestag in Germany. So we were able to get glimpses of how other countries were working. And for us the big thing was how much more, in other countries, they tended to devolve responsibility to local government and to local organizations. And so, again, that's something we're thinking through in terms of our recommendation.

Amy Green:

Yeah, it's really interesting that you get that sort of worldwide look at it because of course this is something that has effected absolutely everybody everywhere around the world, and there's certainly lessons that we can all learn from each other.

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top:

Yes, absolutely. And we need ... It's quite difficult because culturally at the moment Britain is leaving a lot of international cooperation bodies, but what you learn in these sorts of things is, even if you're doing that, you have to find ways of learning from and using good practice, otherwise you just lag behind everybody else.

Amy Green:

And of course you're not just chair of this committee. You've also sat on other Lords committees. How have you found that the work of committees and just the experience of being a member on them has changed over this year and during the pandemic?

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top:

Well, as I said, the main thing is we're moving from largely a committee system which has been built around scrutiny of what was coming out of the European Union, and there were six sub committees and a main committee on European Union affairs in the Lords, but we've had for several years now committees that just look at a special subject for one session of parliament, and I served on two of those. I served on one looking at adoption three or four years ago, and I've recently also served on one looking at gambling and what calm there is for some vulnerable people in gambling. So, what we do is, you get a report, you send it to the government, and you then engage with the government and with other stakeholders to try and make sure you get the changes that you've been able to look at.

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top:

But the Lords also has a very influential committee around the constitution where, when any bill is published, they look at that bill to see whether it holds up against all of the precedents about our constitution, because we don't have a written constitution. And the main thing is in the Lords that you've got to come to consensus. The Lords does not look well on or tolerate minority reports, and so you've got to come to a consensus, so that means that a lot of work is done in committees, but it is cross-party and bringing in crossbenchers and non-affiliates and so on. And the key thing is, how does the chair hold them together in ways that can get a unanimous report? Because if it's not unanimous, if you've not got everybody onboard, then it's going to end up with nobody listening to it.

Amy Green:

So I suppose a big part of your job as the chair then is just getting these members to be able to work together and to come to a good outcome for the committee?

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top:

Yes. I probably drive the clerks mad by the amount of consultation that I want with members because I've got ... On the committee are some very good quality members with vast experience both working and running public services and of being ministers too, so I know there is an enormous amount of knowledge and experience among the membership of the committee, and it's my job to actually make sure they're able to feel that they've been able to give of their best and that they've been really involved in the decisions that are being made. And when you're doing everything remotely, that has its challenges, but that's what we're working towards.

Amy Green:

How have you found that move to the sort of virtual nature of doing everything now?

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top:

I think running a committee in these circumstances is quite difficult because I'm someone who likes to watch and see how people are receiving news. I'm always someone who you can read anything on my face. And I know everybody's not like that, but I want to see if they're engaged, if they really think something is important or if they really feel this person is not giving them anything useful. And when you're doing that remotely, it's very difficult to see that because you've got an array of faces rather than in a room where you've got everybody looking at each other and working together and so on. But it is as it is, and it means that ... In many senses, it's all gone very well, and we have managed to get over. The beginning, we were fairly stilted. We'd go from the agreed allocation of questions, and there wasn't much follow-up, and actually there's always better questions coming in follow-ups than the initial question. But we've got through that now, and we've got over that, and people are much more used to the technology, so I'm sure that we'll be using technology of some sort for a long time to come in these committees.

Amy Green:

Yeah. I think it's something we're all getting used to still, isn't it? It's obviously not just your committee that's actually looking into coronavirus. We've got a dedicated COVID-19 committee, and there are some other select committees that are also running inquiries into it at the moment. How have you found that? Do you find that you're sort of competing for the same evidence, or do you worry that perhaps your findings might not get as much attention as they might otherwise because you're competing with all these different findings?

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top:

No, I don't really feel that at all. There's a committee called the Liaison Committee, which has got the great and the good on it. It has the Deputy Speaker. It has the leaders of each of the groupings in the Lords, and it has some chairs on. And they agree, the different committees that are going to be operating. And the clerks also have a great network, and they share with each other just what committees are going to look at and what their concentration is going to be on. And that means that actually if I hear that another committee is looking at something that I think we're looking at, I would just talk to the chair and just make sure that we were doing things in a different way. And you do that because you don't want witnesses to feel, "This lot don't know what they're doing. I've already been asked that by another committee." We are doing different distinct pieces of working. And the glory of the committee that I'm chairing is that we can look across the board. There is a committee that's been looking at the health aspects, and so they're much more specific about it. And the COVID-19 Committee is mainly at the moment looking at what this means for the future for how we will deal with pandemics and so on. So, we all take a different aspect and try to make sure we don't step on each other's toes.

Amy Green:

And, of course, before you became a member of the House of Lords, you were an MP. You've been in the Commons, an MP for Northwest Durham, so you've obviously got a wealth of experience across Parliament. What would you say has been the most striking difference between your time in the Commons and in the Lords, and also in government? You've held government positions as well.

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top:

Yes, I was in government for 10 years. That's the biggest difference; I'm back in opposition now. I had 10 years in government, 10 years in opposition, then 10 years in government, and then back into opposition when I was in the Commons. And I've been in the lords since 2010, and it's back into opposition. It is not as combative in the Lords. I used to be, in the Commons, I used to try and persuade people to go onto the European Scrutiny Committee, and it was always quite difficult. It was always the people who were fanatical one side or the other who wanted to go on. And most people who wanted to just take a pragmatic view of what a piece of legislation meant and what a European council come up with, they used to find those meetings very difficult. But when I came to the Lords, of course the European Union Committee was much more important, and I had three years I think it was on that, and it was much more thorough and very good, cross-party working and so on. But even in the Commons, I only had a little experience on select committees, but that was ... You did work together because you knew that a minority report wouldn't have the power that a unanimous report would have. So, it's different, but very different roles.

Amy Green:

And so the report from the Public Services Committee is being written up at the moment I think, and obviously due to be published in the coming weeks.

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top:

Yes.

Amy Green:

So what do you hope happens next?

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top:

Well, we will have a program of making sure people know about the committee and about its report. So the report will go to government. We will also I'm sure ask for time for the report to be debated in the Lords, and we will do some follow-up with some of the groups that we engaged with over the period of the report, so that we can meet with them and talk with them about how we pursue some of the recommendations. The government tries to respond to select committee reports in about two months, and we wouldn't have a debate on the floor normally until that response from government had come. We were very disappointed that the secretary of state, Michael Gove, said he didn't think it was appropriate to come to the committee because what we were looking at was material for a public inquiry. And we think he sort of misunderstood what we're about. Because what we want to do is not have an inquiry into COVID, but let us find out what we've learned from the experience of COVID in public services that needs to be implemented quickly as well as stuff that will take a long time to be implemented. But we nonetheless hope that we can have engagement with government as well as with, as I say, the outside world on what the recommendations are. And then of course we'll have to decide what we look at next.

Amy Green:

Baroness Armstrong, it's been lovely talking to you. It's been really interesting hearing all about your committee. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top:

Great. Thank you very much.

Matt Purvis:

And that's it for this episode of the House of Lords Podcast.

Amy Green:

Thank you to all of our guests for joining us in this, our very first episode. If you enjoyed listening, please don't forget to subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.

Matt Purvis:

And we'll be back next month with more from the House of Lords. If there's something you'd love us to explore, you can tell us by tweeting @UKHouseofLords and include the hashtag #HLCast.