House of Lords Podcast: at the table with Chloe Mawson

Transcript

Matt:

Welcome to the House of Lords Podcast.

Amy:

In this episode, we speak to Chloe Mawson, who is the Clerk Assistant of the House of Lords and the first woman to hold the role since it was created in the 1600s.

Matt:

Welcome to our July episode. We’ll be getting straight to our interview with Chloe Mawson, who is the second most senior person in the House of Lords Administration, shortly.

Amy:

It’s also the start of the summer recess today, the 23^rd of July. It’s been a busy end to the first part of this session with new reports from the Lords Economic Affairs Committee on the Bank of England’s use of quantitative easing, the Communications and Digital Committee on freedom of expression online and the European Affairs Committee on the rights of citizens.

Matt:

Yes, you can read more about all of those at parliament.uk/lords. It’s also been a busy time in the Lords chamber with eight days of line by line checking of the Environment Bill at committee stage, plus checks of bills on leasehold reform and animal sentience. You might have seen in the news that the government has agreed to accept a Lords amendment on greater welfare rules for certain marine life like octopuses, squid and lobsters.

Amy:

If you watch any of the checking of these bills online – you can watch meetings of the Lords and its committees for free on the web – you’ll see a member of staff sat at the big table in the centre of the Lords chamber.

Matt:

It won’t be either myself or Amy, but it could well be Chloe Mawson-

Amy:

- Maybe one day Matt, one day.

Matt:

Chloe is one of the clerks that can often be seen at the table during proceedings. She was recently appointed to the role of Clerk Assistant, which as we said was created in the 1600s. Here she is explaining what the title really means and what it is like being a clerk in the Lords.

Chloe:

I'm Chloe Mawson, I am Clerk Assistant in the House of Lords.

Amy:

Chloe, welcome to the podcast. First up, could you tell us what the Clerk Assistant does?

Chloe:

Absolutely, Clerk Assistant is a pretty uninformative job title but I am actually used to having pretty uninformative job titles because, before I got this job, I was Clerk of the Journals. Clerk of the Journals is a job that includes many interesting and important responsibilities, and 2% of those was going anywhere near the journals. So even that wasn’t a great job description. Clerk Assistant probably less so, I think it comes from the fact that the Assistant deputises for the Clerk of the Parliaments and has been known as the Clerk Assistant since the 1640s. Nowadays, the key aspects of the job that I have just taken over are ensuring the effective running of the chamber and Grand Committee and select committees through leadership and oversight of the parliamentary services functions. This means I manage the heads of office of the committee office, legislation office, journal office, Black Rod’s office, the Library and Hansard.

Chloe:

The things that I'm responsible for that I see as pretty key in this job include overseeing the development of procedural skills and knowledge in the House, both in terms of staff, but also in terms of training the deputies on the woolsack and whips on their frontbench duties and civil servants where they need to understand more about the House. I also sit regularly at the table and I oversee the production of the core procedural documents, such as the woolsack brief and the order paper, the minutes of proceedings and other things like that. And then I think the final thing I really emphasize is that I am co-owner with the Commons Clerk Assistant of the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme, and ensuring that that, still relatively new, scheme is a success for everybody in the parliamentary community.

Amy:

And you mentioned there that you sit at the table in the chamber, if people watch the House of Lords online or on TV, they'll see a clerk working at that table. In that role, what are you actually doing when you're sat there?

Chloe:

So whenever the House is sitting, a clerk must be at the table, which is the table at the centre of the House between the opposition and frontbench government despatch boxes. The clerk at the table is there to advise on procedure, to answer any questions members have on procedure, to ensure that daily briefs that are given to the Lord Speaker and his deputies on the woolsack are being followed, and to ensure that it's very clear what decisions the House is taking. We're also responsible for recording those decisions of the House so that there is a clear record of, for example, what amendments have been agreed, what amendments have been disagreed, what amendments have been withdrawn. And that means that we can then make sure that the master copies of bills are correct and the legal records for decisions the House takes in the form of minutes and journals. We also do other things that don't sound like a big responsibility, like operating the clock and recording the attendances of members.

Chloe:

Operating the clock is strangely, I find, the most stressful thing about being at the table because you forget to press the reset button when someone starts speaking because you're listening to the speech or recording the decision and actually nothing causes more cross faces in the chamber than forgetting to reset the clock at the right time. Then there are a few ceremonial aspects, well... not ceremonial but you take messages down to the Commons wrapped in ribbon, march down to the Commons and present it. You receive messages from the Commons. You read out the first readings, bills and other things like that. In hybrid House, there's been other duties as you're this link between the hub that is getting all the virtual participants ready and the House, and you're conveying messages between two and making sure everything's lined up ready to go and everyone knows of any problems.

Amy:

You were one of the main people responsible for enabling the House to carry on functioning during the pandemic. You said there were slightly different arrangements in hybrid proceedings, what was that like having to rapidly shift a long-standing institution to a whole new way of working?

Chloe:

It was extraordinary. It was so different from anything I've worked on before, because seemed to happen so quickly. First of all, you were just hearing on the news that there was this virus that was not even in this country and then, 'Okay, look it might be coming.' And then, 'Oh my gosh, it's here.' We're all being told to stay in our houses, and we've got to find a way for Parliament to operate at that point fully virtually or as close to fully virtually as we could get. There were of course huge challenges in terms of working out how the House could work virtually, legally, what decisions could be taken in a virtual setting and what did actually require a formal sitting of the House.

Chloe:

And also in terms of sort of developing the practical ways of doing that at extreme pace, when many staff were also juggling, whether it be homeschooling or supporting vulnerable friends and relatives, and people were going through some of the most stressful periods of their life totally away from work and then having to deliver the most extreme changes that we've seen in this place for a long, long time. I think overall, it was a really positive story because it showed that we could pull together and work collaboratively and make things happen. And lots of members and staff became much more digitally savvy and learned skills that would actually set us all in really good stead going forward.

Chloe:

And in terms of how we worked as an administration, it really opened up opportunities for staff who had not previously had opportunities to get involved with how the chamber works and supporting the core functions of the House, they had many more opportunities to do that. We worked much more collaboratively across the board, and that was really good. And I hope it's something that we can build on, even as we come out of hybrid House.

Amy:

It's obviously been such a stressful period for everybody, but a silver lining, I suppose it has really enabled that sort of rapid change I don't think any of us could really have imagined before this. I mean, I don't think anyone would ever have thought we'd have been doing remote voting or anything like that in the House of Lords.

Chloe:

If there hadn't been a pandemic and instead someone had said, 'Let's explore remote voting, maybe we'll do some remote voting,' it would have been a two to three-year process I expect to get the funding in place, get the project structures in place, work out whether it's bicameral or not bicameral, get it prioritized against all our other priorities, make sure we have the right resources, consult members. And as it was, I think it was delivered in six or seven weeks from the idea to deliver it.

Amy:

You mentioned before that some decisions had to physically be made in the chamber, how exactly does that work? Are there specific rules for what dictates what has to take place in the building itself?

Chloe:

There aren't. When we were facing all these decisions, as we designed the virtual House and then the hybrid House in March and April last year, we had to try and decide what constitutes the House. The standing orders make it so that the House can pass legislation and the House can make decisions, but what is the House? Nowhere really defines that. I mean, clearly we'd have a quorum of members, but it doesn't have to be this chamber, the House has sat in other rooms at different points in the history. And if we would be subject to something happening terrible to the palace and we couldn't access the chamber, we have plans where Parliament can sit elsewhere.

Chloe:

So we had to make a decision what it was that constituted the House. And what we really needed to do was be sure that wherever decisions were made about legislation, we wouldn't end up later in a court challenge that legislation didn't have a sound basis because there was a challenge to our decision about what constitutes the House. So we could access the chamber and the quorum is three for the House to make decisions. So we decided that while you could have all sorts of debates in a virtual setting, the actual formal decisions on legislation, on standing orders, needed to be taken in the chamber with the quorum of three and that's what we did to ensure that we were safe from challenge.

Amy:

And when the House comes back after the summer recess, it's expected that most members will attend in person again, but there will, of course be some changes to the way that business operates. We sort of touched on it there, but do you think the pandemic has enabled us to learn much about the best way to operate in a modern world?

Chloe:

In some ways, yes. I think we've found more efficient ways of doing things, typically behind the scenes in supporting the chamber. And we've certainly found more inclusive ways of doing things that the House has already decided to keep, so the decision that physically disabled members will be able to continue to contribute virtually. That is a much more inclusive way of working. I think there are still many factors at play when decisions are made about how the chamber should operate, and maybe there isn't a best way, there's just an evolving way that reflects the times, and that the skills that we have, but we've certainly all got much more digitally capable, both as administration and members, and that is going to open up opportunities to continue to work in a much more joined up way.

Amy:

You've not been in the role of Clerk Assistant very long yet but when you found out that you were going to be appointed, did you have any goals in mind? Anything you want to achieve during your time in the role?

Chloe:

I hoped that I can work with the Management Board to continue to work towards building a place of work where everyone feels valued and respected and supported and enabled to do a really good job. I hoped that I can build on the work that's been done to establish the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme to continue to instill confidence that that is a really independent and effective scheme, but also that there's more that we can do in the area of culture change, that if we get it right over the next few years actually might mean we don't need the ICGS or the ICGS is never used because we've actually changed the way that we work across the board, that there's just a lot less need for an Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme.

Chloe:

I think that it's important to me as a woman that when I first started in the Lords, there weren't a lot of senior women, so to build on the things that allowed me to get here in terms of flexible working opportunities for all staff and schemes to help people who've been on career breaks to get back into the workplace in a supportive way. Those kinds of things are really important to me in terms of priorities for the next few years.

Matt:

So if I can take you back to the beginning, as it were and talk about your career path to Clerk Assistant, you mentioned the Clerk Assistant sort of job description there and the fact 'Clerk Assistant' doesn't tell you an awful lot about what the job is. So I can imagine, but correct me if I'm wrong, that wasn't a sort of longstanding ambition from childhood that you wanted to be Clerk Assistant when you were growing up, what inspired you to join the Lords in the first place? How did you get here?

Chloe:

By accident really, I was in my final year at university and I wanted to become a clinical psychologist, but I couldn't afford to go straight into postgraduate study. So I really needed a job that would pay something that I could then save towards doing postgraduate study, so I applied for lots of graduate schemes and one of them was the Civil Service Graduate Scheme, and at that time there were multiple boxes: 'I want to work for the Home Civil Service, the European Civil Service, the Foreign Office, Parliament', I think even the Secret Services were on there. And I think I ticked every single box because I really, really wanted a job, and then it was about a yearlong application process. And as I went through each stage, I started to focus on what I would want out of all those choices if I was offered the job. And I thought I'll go to the Department of Health and work on mental health policy because I wanted to go and be a clinical psychologist and that would be really good background.

Chloe:

And then it became clear that actually you don't have that kind of choice. If you're getting through the Civil Service Graduate Scheme, you cannot really even choose the government department you end up in, let alone what policy area within the department you might end up in. And as I ticked all the boxes, I was invited to come to Parliament for a day as I got towards the end of the application process, so that I could see what the place was like, and I just fell in love with the building and sort of buzz and the atmosphere. So I decided on a whim that this would be my first choice, the Commons or Lords because I didn't mind. And then I was offered Lords and I started and I thought, 'Okay, this will be great, I'll do this for a year or two, save the money, do the postgraduate degree,' but I've always really enjoyed it. And the longer I stayed, the more interesting the work became, the more friends I made, the more I valued my colleagues. And now we're 21 years later, I haven't started that postgraduate degree but you never know, one day.

Matt:

You mentioned some of the things that helped you get to where you are now, flexible working was one example you gave, how difficult has it been to get to Clerk Assistant? You mentioned joining the House 21 years ago, what was it like for women in Parliament back then?

Chloe:

So I joined in autumn 1999 and at that point it was actually really different to now, even though 1999 is not the dark ages and in many areas of life, I don't think it would have been that different to be a woman in an organization versus a man in an organization. When I think back now, I'm not even sure how aware I was at the time, but I remember I was stopped a lot more in the corridors, 'Can you show your pass?' a lot more than my male colleagues were. I remember a senior colleague at his retirement party, he had hired a few female clerks and at that point, although there had been female clerks, there hadn't been many and he'd definitely hired more than others. And in his retirement speech, he turned to us, we happened to be standing together and he said, it's been an experiment that I've hired so many women, it's still an experiment and the results are not in yet, but one thing we do know that they've brought to the organization is pulchritude. And I didn't know what pulchritude meant, and I was standing in this party thinking, 'Oh, maybe that means incredible intellectual acumen or creative thinking.' And his speech ended and I turned to a colleague and I said, 'What's pulchritude?' And they said, 'beauty'.

Chloe:

The experiment's out but he does at least know that you're a bit more attractive than the other people he could've hired, and I don't think that would happen now at all. Nobody would think it was okay to say that, but those kinds of things happened. I remember when I had my second child, another long-departed colleague said to me, when I announced I was pregnant, 'Oh, with one child, you can have a career and be a mother, but with two, you'll probably find that you need to stay at home now.' And again, you'd never get that now. And this is not that long ago. My second child is 12. So there were certainly things like that that I encountered.

Chloe:

On the other hand, I had so many great opportunities here and so many fantastic managers who did encourage me. And I benefited from being able to work part-time, compressed hours, job share, you name it, I've tried it. And quite often they were things that hadn't been tried before and I did have to negotiate them and push them a little bit, but I was given them and they allowed me to build my career and balance that with family, and overall it's been an incredibly positive experience for me. Not only has it been a positive experience for me, but it's just really good to see that it's now much easier across the organization to get all those kinds of flexible working deals. And again, the pandemic I hope has meant that those will become even easier for everyone to access, not just women, not just mothers, but everybody so that they can find ways to progress their careers while balancing all sorts of other important parts of their lives.

Matt:

And of course your counterpart in the Commons, that role's also held by a woman. So has the glass ceiling finally been broken in Parliament or is there more to do?

Chloe:

Huge strides have been made. I mean, as you say, both me and the Clerk Assistant in the Commons are women. Black Rod is a woman. Not too many years ago, there were no women at all on the Lord's Management Board, then we had our first women, but it was through getting a non-executive, it wasn't someone who worked here who managed to work their way up to Management Board level. But now we've got five women on the Lords Management Board, we're nearly at parity. So huge, huge strides were made. I think that there is still a lot to do, we still have a significant gender pay gap that needs to be addressed. And I worry that in general, not just in the Lords, but across the working world, COVID has put a sharper focus on gender inequality and women are more likely to have to or have been more likely throughout the pandemic to have to adjust their working hours because of lack of childcare support and lack of consistent schooling.

Chloe:

And so the flexible working that we have been able to all explore during the pandemic, I think will be key for women going forward because it allows people to balance paid and unpaid work in a way that works for them. And so I really hope that we can use our experience of the last 18 months to continue to allow as much flexibility as we can while of course, ensuring that we give really good services to the House and just make sure that we don't go back to a time where flexible working feels like a risk to your career progression, because certainly at times I worried about that and I hope that we're now in a new age where that's just not the case anymore.

Chloe:

I guess the last thing I would say is that although the glass ceiling has been cracked, if not totally smashed for women in Parliament, there are still other glass ceilings, and there's a lot of work we need to do to make the same progress. For example, for colleagues from BAME backgrounds, as we have made for our female colleagues over the last few years. And definitely one of the things that I'm really excited about now that I have a voice on the Management Board is that I have a voice that I can use to push for that kind of progress.

Matt:

Chloe, your husband is a Clerk in the Commons, is there much inter-House rivalry? If there isn't, this is the time to stoke some I think.

Chloe:

I don't think there is a huge amount of inter-House rivalry. I mean, there's a bit of sort of gentle ribbing when one of us feels that our House has done something particularly noteworthy. You can't see it because this is an audio podcast, but on my office wall, I have a picture of all three of my children as babies. Each of them wearing the same babygro, which has a portcullis across the front, and they're all printed in black and white. And we printed them in black and white because then you can't tell whether it's a red or green portcullis. So you don't know which baby supports which House. But I have to say it because I knew you were going to ask this question, I did ask my children over breakfast this morning if they could work for the Commons or the Lords, which they would work for. And the two youngest said the Lords, mainly because there's more gold, and the oldest said the Commons. So that was where they'd ended up having watched us for their whole lives.

Matt:

And probably understanding financial privileges.

Chloe:

I'm sure she was massively driven, by that!

Matt:

I've got a very twisted sense of what young people know and feel about Parliament, haven't I? Anyway-

Chloe:

I think even my nearly 15 year old child with one Commons clerk parent and one Lords clerk parent, and multiple visits to Parliament and all these things could not tell you about financial privilege. So I'm sorry to disappoint you.

Matt:

Don't worry, I'll be teaching one of the Purvis clan all about it when they're listening to me finally. Final question, what's your most memorable or favourite moment from your time working at the House so far?

Chloe:

So many, I mean, I've worked here for 21 years as I've said. I've made so many friends and I've learned so much from colleagues and from members. I met my husband here, I've christened my kids in the chapel, I used the nursery child care. I've got so many memories that I cherish from the last 21 years. I think work-wise you do. There's always a buzz when you are closely involved with advising at pace when things are developing that are in the national news agenda and you feel a real sort of buzz or I certainly get a real buzz from that. And there's been a lot of that in the last few years around passage of Brexit legislation or the 2019 prorogation, you see all the cameras rolling and the protesters shouting and you're running around and you just... There's a lot of adrenaline and it's great.

Chloe:

I've worked on some really big events in Westminster Hall that I have always found exciting in terms of the addresses, whether that be from the Queen or the Pope or Obama or others, I've really enjoyed working on all those and seeing all those people. I think on committees, you learn so much when you're a committee clerk, running inquiries in depth in areas you've never thought about before and suddenly you've become incredibly expert in that area for a few months. And of course, sometimes committee visits make really good memories.

Chloe:

I think my favourite committee visit memory was a visit with the Communications Committee at that point, chaired by Lord Fowler before he became Lord Speaker, and we were looking into the ownership of the news and the influence that owners of news organizations have over their editors. And we met Rupert Murdoch long before the Commons Committee met him in the big high profile evidence session in Portcullis House. We met him in New York and we also went to the Washington Post and were sitting down with the editor of the Washington Post to talk about the future of investigative journalism and lots of important things like that when he told us that Brad Pitt was in the newsroom and was about to have a tour of the newsroom, and would we like to join Brad Pitt on the tour? And the chair said, 'No, we've got to get on with this conversation.' So I never got to do the Brad Pitt newsroom tour which is a huge sadness. So that would have been my favourite memory, but I didn't get to live it.

Matt:

I'm not sure we can top that really. One final thing actually I was going to add as you're talking there about knowledge and sitting on committees and learning so much, of course, a former Clerk of the Parliaments won Mastermind some years back, do all clerks make brilliant quizzers?

Chloe:

If they do, then I'm not a proper clerk because I'm terrible at quizzes. And in fact, my absolute nightmare would be going on to a quiz in public, especially on television, like Mastermind, and in the general knowledge being asked something about Parliament and then not being able to answer it and to being discovered as some massive fraud. So you will never see me on Mastermind or in fact at any quiz whatsoever because I'm not very good at them. On the other hand, my husband is, so maybe Commons colleagues are good at quizzes, I don't know.

Matt:

Well, Chloe, thank you very much, that was brilliant. Thanks for joining us on the podcast.

Chloe:

Thank you very much for having me. I really enjoy listening to the podcast, so it's an honour to actually be invited to come and talk to you all.

Amy:

And that’s it for the summer episode of the podcast. We’ll be back in the autumn with a new series.

Matt:

In the meantime, you can get in touch with us by leaving a comment wherever you get your podcasts or tweeting @UKhouseoflords. Tell us what you’d like us to cover in the new series, subjects you would like to hear more about, what topics you’d like explained, or which members you’d like us to interview.