Labour's welfare meltdown - Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 99

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Labour's welfare meltdown - Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 99

4 Jul 2025

It’s been a bruising week for the Government, as a Labour backbench revolt forced ministers to gut their own welfare reforms live in the House of Commons. We explore why Sir Keir Starmer appears to have such a poor grip on parliamentary management. Plus, House of Lords reform expert Professor Meg Russell explains why the hereditary peers bill may be a once-in-a-generation chance to tackle deeper issues — like curbing prime ministerial patronage and reducing the bloated size of the upper chamber. And in Dorking, faith and politics collide over assisted dying.

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Has the Government’s complacency in managing Parliament finally caught up with it? It’s been a difficult week for Ministers, as a backbench Labour revolt forced a dramatic U-turn on plans to cut billions from Personal Independence Payments. With Rachel Reeves’ financial strategy in tatters, questions are mounting about Keir Starmer’s authority — and whether weak parliamentary management is to blame. We explore how it all went wrong, what it reveals about No.10’s approach to Parliament, and what needs to change to stop further unravelling.

Is the Government missing its last chance at real House of Lords reform? As Ministers push ahead with plans to remove the remaining hereditary Peers from the House of Lords, new polling from the Constitution Unit at UCL suggests the public wants more ambitious change. Professor Meg Russell joins us to warn that the current legislation could be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to enact deeper reforms — including curbing the Prime Minister’s power to appoint new Peers and reducing the overall size of the House of Lords.

Plus, church and state collide over assisted dying in Dorking. Liberal Democrat MP Chris Coghlan has been barred from receiving communion at his local Catholic church due to his support for Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. Is this an unacceptable case of religious interference in politics, or simply the inevitable fallout when faith and legislation collide? Ruth and Mark explore the implications and ponder the precedents from both Britain and the United States.

Finally, we tackle listeners’ questions on why primary legislation was needed to implement the Government’s welfare reforms, inquorate votes in the House of Lords, the ability of Peers to amend the assisted dying bill and the mysterious books beside the Mace.

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Our guest

Professor Meg Russell

Meg Russell is Director of the Constitution Unit and Professor of British and Comparative Politics at University College London (UCL). Having previously worked at the House of Commons and the Labour Party, she joined the UCL Constitution Unit in 1998. Her work since then has particularly focused on the UK Parliament. From 2001 to 2003 she served as a special adviser to the then Leader of the House of Commons, Robin Cook. She has also advised the House of Lords Appointments Commission, the Wright Committee on Reform of the House of Commons, the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, and the Lord Speaker’s Committee on the Size of the House of Lords. She has been Academic Secretary of the Study of Parliament Group and a member of the editorial board of the academic journal Political Quarterly and the Hansard Society’s journal, Parliamentary Affairs. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2020, and in 2021 was named Political Communicator of the Year by the Political Studies Association. She is author of numerous works, including Legislation at Westminster in 2017 and The Parliamentary Battle over Brexit in 2023.

Resources

Constitution Unit, UCL

Public wants House of Lords reform to go further: to limit appointments and the size of the chamber
Meg Russell, 10 reasons why the hereditary peers bill should be amended to constrain Prime Ministerial patronage and the size of the House of Lords, 1 July 2025

Transcript

Please note, this transcript is automatically generated. There may consequently be minor errors and the text is not formatted according to our style guide. If you wish to reference or cite the transcript copy below, please first check against the audio version above.

Intro: [00:00:00] You are listening to Parliament Matters, a Hansard Society production supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk/pm.

Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox.

Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark D'Arcy. Coming up this week,

Ruth Fox: The Chancellor cries on the front bench after Labour MPs wreck her financial strategy.

Mark D'Arcy: The public wants wider Lords reform on the government's plan to get rid of hereditary peers.

We talk to Lord's expert, Meg Russell,

Ruth Fox: And religion collides with politics as an MP is denied holy communion because of his vote for the assisted dying bill.

Mark D'Arcy: But first, Ruth, let's talk about Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, and more particularly about the collapse this [00:01:00] week of her financial strategy. The Chancellor was seen shedding tears during Prime Minister's Questions seated next to Keir Starmer, and whatever was behind that set the markets a tremble that the possibility that she might be removed.

But what was really going on, the really big news about this week was not whatever was going on with Rachel Reeves' life, and we were assured that this is a personal matter that wasn't to do with politics. The real big news was the way that Labour MPs basically blew a multi-billion pound hole in her financial calculations.

The savings that she had hoped to get out of personal independence payments and social security cuts were more or less sunk in the Commons. And now she has a real problem.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, well, dare I say it, Mark, we saw live this week that Parliament matters. Ouch. And you know, MPs are not lobby fodder. And big rebellion, even when the government filleted its own proposals on the [00:02:00] floor of the House of Commons as was happening, during the debate itself.

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