Behind the scenes of Lords Hansard

08/15/22 • 30 min

House of Lords Podcast: Lord Speaker's Corner

How do you know what a member said in the House of Lords, or Commons?

And did you know that you could once be arrested for reporting what was happening in Parliament?

In this month’s episode of the House of Lords Podcast, we meet the team behind the Official Report, known as Hansard, who ensure written proceedings are made available and accessible to the public each sitting day.

We hear about everything from the history of Hansard, why you might hear ‘can I have some ears please?’ in their office, the unusual name of where the reporters sit in the chamber and what they do if a member bursts into song.

Find out more about House of Lords Hansard

Read 'The History of Hansard' by John Vice and Stephen Farrell (PDF)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do you know what a member said in the House of Lords, or Commons?

And did you know that you could once be arrested for reporting what was happening in Parliament?

Find out more about House of Lords Hansard

Read 'The History of Hansard' by John Vice and Stephen Farrell (PDF)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

Private Members’ Bills

Did you know that it’s not just the government that can propose new laws in Parliament?

This month we are looking at how members campaign for change via private members’ bills. These are bills that can be introduced by any member of the House of Lords, who is not a government minister, to change the law.

Amy and Matt speak to Lord Farmer, Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Lord Wills about their bills, covering subjects from child benefit to preventing suicide to creating an advocate for the victims of major incidents. They each explain what they are trying to achieve with their proposed law, and why they have put them forward.

We also speak to Alasdair in the House of Lords Legislation Office and Ed in the Lords Library about the process for putting forward a bill, why they tend to be shorter than government bills, and how they can be about more than getting on the statute books.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Next Episode

'A gloriously ordinary life': how to improve adult social care, and implementing the Children and Families Act

This month we speak to two members who have been leading investigations into improving adult social care and how the government has incompletely implemented the Children and Families Act.

‘A gloriously ordinary life’

‘We cannot keep asking families and friends to step up and take more and more responsibility for the adult social care services, while denying them some basic rights in terms of fair benefits and fair access to work.’

First, we speak to Baroness Andrews, who has been chairing the Lords Adult Social Care Committee. The committee's recent report, titled 'a gloriously normal life' has just been published. It makes several recommendations on what the government needs to do to improve social care. Listen to Baroness Andrew's interview to find out what the committee found as it spoke to people with lived experience of caring or care, and what the committee now wants the government to do.

‘What we heard from carers was the privilege of caring and how much they got out of it, how much they'd learned, for example, from growing up alongside a disabled child or how much they had learned from seeing their parent become a slightly different person from the one that they had been brought up with. It was a positive experience in terms of love and duty for so many, but most had never had a choice, and what we looked at as a consequence of that is what is going to happen in the future when there will be two million people in the next decade aging without children.’

· Find out more from the Adult Social Care Committee

‘A failure of implementation’

‘Sadly, we found that, due mainly to a lack of real focus on implementation and monitoring the implementation of the Act, it's really been a missed opportunity. And so many of the reforms as envisaged, just haven't taken place or haven't had the desired impact.’

Then we speak to Baroness Tyler of Enfield. Baroness Tyler has chaired the Lords committee investigating the government's implementation of the Children and Families Act 2014. In this interview, Baroness Tyler explains how a lack of scrutiny has meant the Act has failed to achieve its desired purpose and what the government can do to fix it.

‘We feel it's been a real missed opportunity to improve help, support and protection, particularly for vulnerable children and their parents.’

· Find out more from the Children and Families Act Committee

Committee Corridor

Interested in hearing more about Parliament’s committees? Listen to the House of Commons Committee Corridor podcast. Visit parliament.uk or search wherever you get your podcasts.