Parliament

What with an energy crisis, a fuel crisis and a food crisis, you would think MPs have enough on their plates. But word reaches Mr S that our long-suffering elected representatives have now been hit by a shortage of crucial goods as the supply chain chaos resonates in the halls of Westminster.  Ministers used to working late on the parliamentary estate – burning the midnight oil on a diet of KitKats and Mini Cheddars – will have been horrified to discover that their favourite snacks are currently denied to them, as they work to tackle Britain's various crises.

Today was the first PMQs clash between Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer in a packed Commons chamber. Starmer tried to pin down Johnson on whether he could guarantee that no one would have to pay their home to fund their care. Johnson dodged the question. But Starmer was limited by the fact that Labour can’t say how it would raise funds for the NHS backlog and social care, allowing Johnson to claim that Labour has no plan. Starmer is a naturally cautious politician, but his caution is leaving the field clear for Johnson on social care. Things would have been more difficult for the Prime Minister today if Labour was explicitly backing a tax on assets.

This morning Playbook has revealed details about the plans – codenamed Operation London Bridge – for the sad day when the Queen passes away. But while the outlet's excellent write-up reveals much about the preparations involved for Her Majesty's death, Steerpike noted that one detail about the behind the scenes work was somewhat glossed over: advanced plans for the royal coffin to lie in state at Westminster Hall. Codenamed ‘Operation Marquee’ – a moniker last used for the Queen Mother’s ceremony in 2002 – the plans have been kept tightly under wraps for decades and will run with military precision, judging by its expenditure. Between 2010 and 2020 some £2.

The bars at Parliament have played host to many scenes over the years – plots, arguments, merriment and even fisticuffs – but rarely to an empty house. But for much of Covid, the watering holes of Westminster have been remained closed, in line with government guidance. And now Mr S has found that the restoration of our liberties and the collapse of Covid cases has failed to prompt a surge in sales; sobering news when one considers how some within the estate are itching to close its taverns. A list of the top 100 bar items sold between January to July reveals a dismal return of 2,967 items sold for an estate which employs approximately 3,000 people. Clearly, many are still reluctant to shed virtual working and mix in the fleshpots of SW1.

Today’s Commons debate on Afghanistan was unusually and surprisingly good. It had the benefit of speeches from many MPs who had themselves served tours of duty in the country, or were veterans of military action elsewhere. It had the advantage of a former Prime Minister speaking with all the authority of someone who knows just how difficult these matters are, rather than the criticisms of backbenchers who had only run their own constituency office. It was a full day’s session operating under usual rules, rather than the hybrid parliament of the past year and a half. This meant that MPs could intervene on speeches, amid the normal hubbub of the Chamber. So what did we learn from the government in today’s session?

It is very easy to dismiss Wednesday’s recall of Parliament as a pointless exercise in handwringing that sums up the way most MPs approach foreign policy. There will certainly be plenty of frustrating hindsight on offer from politicians who haven’t taken a blind bit of notice of Afghanistan right up until the point where they scent an opportunity to bash the government. But there are also important questions to be answered that cannot wait for the normal return of the Commons in September. The first is whether there is any likelihood of British and NATO troops returning to the country.

Is the new normal here to stay? For the sake of our parliamentary democracy, let's hope not.  There is little doubt that holding the Government to account has been made harder by the imposition of restrictions during the pandemic. During the Covid crisis, politicians have been too keen to treat parliament as a normal workplace; the truth is that it isn't and never will be.  If ever there was a good excuse for an 'us versus them' rule exemption, surely it would have been to honour the public by ensuring scrutiny and pushback against the Government removing people’s liberties so easily. Instead, parliamentary proceedings have taken the hybrid form of in-person and Zoom proceedings. This is an unhappy compromise for which we are all worse off.

Things are looking tight this morning for the government’s vote on aid spending. Ministers were hoping that springing the vote on rebels at the last minute might help to peel away some softer MPs, and there's a list doing the rounds this morning of 14 backbenchers who’ve said they are supporting a compromise which would mean the government committing to restoring the 0.7 per cent target when economic conditions improve, using OBR forecasts to gauge when that is.

Graham Brady has been re-elected as chairman of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers. Brady, who has been chair since 2010, saw off a strong challenge from the former minister and whip Heather Wheeler. Brady’s victory is a sign of the mood on the Tory backbenches. Wheeler’s supporters argued that Brady had been too public in his criticisms of the government’s approach to lockdown. That Brady won despite having voted against the government multiple times is a sign that Tory MPs are not in a particularly deferential mood towards No. 10 and that they want someone independent-minded to represent them. Several MPs told me they were voting for Brady because they knew he would be unafraid to deliver tough messages to No. 10.

Update: Commons speaker Lindsay Hoyle has announced that a vote on the aid spending amendment has not been selected. Hoyle says the amendment is out of the scope of the current bill, meaning Boris Johnson will avoid a potentially difficult vote on the issue – for now. Hoyle suggested the government should give MPs an opportunity for a vote at a later date on restoring the foreign aid pledge to 0.7 per cent of gross national income. As preparations get underway in Downing Street for this week's G7 summit, trouble is brewing in the House of Commons. The government is facing a potential defeat on a vote it didn't want to have: the cut to the foreign aid budget.

I used to write a lot about sex and gender here. I don’t do so quite as much these days for a few reasons, one of which is that the issues involved are now better recognised and better handled by people whose job it is to deal with the complexities of policies and conflicts of rights and arguments. An example of that came at the weekend when Baroness Falkner, the new chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, told the Times that women should not be penalised or abused if they believe that transgender women do not become female by dint of their professed identity. ‘Someone can believe that people who self-identify as a different sex are not the different sex that they self-identify,’ she said.

Today, for the third time in as many months, MPs will vote on an amendment to prevent the costs of removing cladding and fixing other fire safety defects being passed on to residents. For some time now, thousands of British homeowners have been left fearing for their lives and facing ruinous bills after fire safety issues following the Grenfell Tower fire were identified in tens of thousands of tall and medium rise buildings across the country. In most cases, building owners have been able to charge individual flat owners to fix the defects, even though their apartments were signed off as safe under government regulations at the time.

Campaigners for LGBT+ rights have recently been most occupied with proposals to ban gay conversion therapy and the rights and wrongs of such a move. But could another battle soon be underway on an appropriately military subject? The Armed Forces had a ban on homosexuality until 2000 when the Blair government lifted it following a ruling in the European Courts of Human Rights. Veterans dismissed or forced to resign for their sexual orientation or gender identity before this date often suffered loss of ranks or pension. Some were given criminal convictions or placed on the Sex Offenders register, affecting them to this day.

Like a tongue searching for an absent tooth, I keep wondering if I’m missing anything from my two decades as a lobby hack. Friends, of course, and perhaps the vast, grey field of sloping slate as seen from the Times’s parliamentary office. That empty and silent space, the roof of Westminster Hall, seemed austere and indifferent, a mental refuge from the babble beneath and within. The opposite aspect, towards the crumbling guts of the Palace of Westminster, elicits more complicated memories. I arrived in the press gallery aged 30 to take a job as Westminster correspondent for a clutch of provincial papers. On my first day my new colleagues took me to tea at 4 p.m. in the dining room. There was also a bar with its own barflies and a barman named Clive.

This is a story about politics and influence and openness. It’s also about the drive for trans rights and some of the people involved in that push, but in a way, that’s secondary. Because the issues involved here and the questions raised are bigger even than sex, gender and the rest. This is, in the end, about how rules and laws and policies are made, and who gets a say on that. A lot of this story is about something called an All Party Parliamentary Group. APPGs are, as the name says, groups of MPs and peers who work together to investigate, report and campaign on a particular issue. They are not parliamentary bodies in the sense of being part of the legislature; unlike select committees, they have no constitutional status or legal powers.

It’s a different game at PMQs. With fewer than 40 members present, the debates feel more like a committee meeting than a full-throated parliamentary session. It’s bad for democracy if the highlight of the parliamentary week looks so static and uninspiring. When the weather cheers up they should move to a secure location outdoors, (like the gardens of Buckingham Palace), where more members could attend and the sessions would be livelier. Meanwhile, MPs are chafing under the restrictions. They’ve started to mess about like schoolkids in detention. They play games. They needle each other. They stretch the rules, and they dare the Speaker to shut them up or tick them off. Today they debated border closures.