Show Notes
How do you respond to a Budget you’ve only just heard, and spot what the Chancellor would rather you missed? Treasury Committee Chair Meg Hillier joins us to explain how she prepares for Budget day and how her Committee tests the promises behind the headlines. She weighs the benefits of Budget secrecy against the risk of policies going untested, argues for tougher scrutiny of sensitive defence spending, and explains why Parliament needs to look beyond the annual set piece event to how public money is actually spent. Her central challenge: can MPs and ministers give long-term financial choices the attention they deserve?
The Chancellor’s speech is only the beginning. Ruth and Mark offer a “cut out and keep” guide to what happens next: the days of Budget debate, the Ways and Means resolutions and the Finance Bill that turns the announcements into law. How can some tax changes take effect that very night? What can MPs amend and how does the Government limit their options? It’s your essential companion to following the Budget through the Commons.
Beyond the Budget, we discuss Darren Jones’s striking evidence to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. His account of trying to make Whitehall work across departmental boundaries raises an uncomfortable question: are constitutional safeguards protecting accountability, or being used to resist change? From funding the Government’s missions to getting departments’ financial systems to talk to one another, he describes a system in which even apparently straightforward reforms become a battle. Jones argues that senior civil servants have become more political without facing sufficient parliamentary scrutiny. But where should responsibility lie when ministers’ ambitions collide with officials’ advice about what the constitution permits? We explore his challenge to Whitehall’s accountability arrangements and his concerns about scrutiny of increasingly powerful mayors. ____
🎓 Learn more using our resources for the issues mentioned in this episode.
❓ Send us your questions about Parliament:
✅ Subscribe to our newsletter.
📱 Follow us across social media @HansardSociety / @hansardsociety.bsky.social
£ - Support the Hansard Society and this podcast by making a donation today.
Parliament Matters is a Hansard Society production supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.
Presenters: Mark D’Arcy and Ruth Fox Producer: Gareth Jones Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Parliament Matters
Are House of Commons select committees equipped to meet the new challenges facing parliamentary scrutiny? Liam Byrne, the Labour former minister leading a review of the committee system, joins us to explore whether committees have the powers, resources and support they need in the modern scrutiny environment.
Former veterans minister Johnny Mercer joins us to discuss his new book, No Way to Run a Country: An Outsider’s Journey into the Heart of our Broken Politics, and his struggle to change veterans’ policy from inside Westminster and Whitehall.
Recorded at Queen Mary University of London as part of Student Week, welcoming students at the start of the new academic year, this special live edition features three expert guests: historian Dr Robert Saunders; Private Members’ Bill specialist Dr Daniel Gover; and historian Dr Catherine Haddon, a senior fellow at the Institute for Government and former Queen Mary student.
MPs have rejected the assisted dying bill – but why did a proposal they had previously supported lose this time, and what happens now?
Andy Burnham made his despatch box debut as Prime Minister in the House of Commons this week with one of the longest ministerial statements on record and a promise to strengthen the Prime Minister’s grip on Whitehall while transferring power and resources away from it.