The Commons Weekly: Thursday 5th – Wednesday 11th March
PMQs really have become a farce. In other news, we have decided to present The Commons Weekly in reverse date order starting with the most recent news from that cockpit of brilliance.
Wednesday 11th March
At PMQs the Speaker briefly awoke from his slumbers to rebuke the PM for trying to reconfigure the weekly event as Questions for the Opposition. Starmer is leaden at the best of times and has a tin ear for a supposedly distinguished former prosecutor, but his “answers” to Mrs Badenoch’s questions today represented a new rhetorical and logical low for the former DPP, who no longer even pretended to answer the repeated question about how increasing fuel duties can conceivably assist the affordability battle. Instead, the PM ploughs on (and on and on) about whether Mrs Badenoch has changed her position on the UK joining the US-Israeli war on Iran. It’s the faux moralising that is the most difficult to stick. Ghastly.
Nevertheless the PM clearly thought that he had a really good point (public opinion supports my reluctance to assist American bombing of Iran), even though he had mistaken the purpose of the forum he was addressing. Badenoch scored quickfire goals on Andy Burnham and Phil Shiner and remained cheerfully in command. 5-1 to the Opposition at the final whistle. However, TWOP sunk in to a slough of despond over the talentless vacuity of the entire performance.
It is sad to admit that it was really rather a relief to get to the lugubrious Jones (Bristol North West, Labour) Chief Secretary to the PM – what a job that must be – and his statement at 14:20 about the release of the Mandelsoniana now laid before the House. Rather than witter on, TWOP is going to actually read the blessed thing. It is only 147 pages, but there are probably thousands more to come after PC Plod works out that there is nothing that helps or hinders their separate attempts to build a Misconduct case against his Lordship. See the Humble Address Return in full here.
[ADDED TO SAY: The Mandelson files released are a damp squib as they do not cover the back and forth of question and answer over the supposed “vetting” process which seems to have been of the “fireside chat” variety unsurprisingly. The PM can no longer claim that he was not informed of the already-public knowledge of Mandelson’s continued relationship with Epstein, but details of exactly what he knew and what he judged he could ignore are not revealed by these documents.]
Tuesday 10th March
The Courts and Tribunals Bill passed its Second Reading in the House of Commons more easily than the appearance of some Labour sceptics of the curtailment of the right to jury trial might have suggested (304 v 203 with only 10 Labour dissenters.)
Natalie Fleet (Bolsover, Labour) who is herself a survivor of abuse, made a passionate and effecting speech focusing on the impact of delayed justice has on the victims and families of victims of sexual abuse.
Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North, Labour) who is also a rape victim followed with a passionate speech outlining that trial speed was only one of a number of changes that victims of sexual abuse and rape needed to see in the way the police and legal system responded to these cases. She drew attention to the recommendations Rape Crisis England & Wales made in their November 2025 report “Living in Limbo”, which TWOP can now attest is a difficult read, but worth the effort.
While both Labour members supported the Government’s proposals for changes to jury trial, it seems worthwhile to point out that if the Government decided to spend more on the court system – more judges, more courts, more trials – then the backlog could be reduced rather than throwing the proverbial baby out with the Magna Carta bathwater for what even the Government optimistically estimates might deliver only a 5% reduction in trial delays. Simples: keep juries and spend more on the court system. Thank TWOP later.
The House also had to listen to the government’s revised “plan” to introduce a kind of digital ID. However, it seems that this has been diluted to a meaningless app as the lowest common denominator that ministers can agree, rather than the much more ambitious plan initially announced last September. Mike Wood (Kingswinford & South Staffordshire, Conservative) Shadow Cabinet Office Minister, became splendidly if rather absurdly splenetic about potentially being refused a cup of Costa coffee as a rather convoluted argument against ID checks.
It will be interesting to see whether Mr Wood is equally splenetic and ineffective about the levels of illegal immigration at a later date. An eight-week “consultation” for a voluntary app seems to abandon the compulsory ID cards our French “partners” insist would address the relative ease with which illegal immigrants obtain work in the UK. Plus ça change.
Monday 9th March
On Monday Rachel Reeves (Leeds West & Pudsey, Labour) Chancellor of the Exchequer came to the House to make a non-statement on the economic consequences of the situation in the Middle East. Perhaps her most convincing moment came early on in her statement: “The economic impact of the situation in the Middle East will depend of course on its severity and its duration. The movements that we have already seen are likely to put upward pressure on inflation in the coming months.” This did not appear to shock anyone in the chamber and presumably has not alerted the country at large to anything they had not worked out for themselves already. Daisy Cooper (St Albans, LibDem) pointed out: “The statement does not include a single concrete announcement” proving that the LibDems remain convinced that it is the Labour Government’s intention to do anything at all about anything, ever. Sweet.
Thursday 5th March
In response to a statement about consular services in the Gulf by The Hon Hamish Falconer (Lincoln, Labour) Parliamentary Under-Secretary F&CDO and Nepo-Pol, Dame Priti Patel (Witham, Conservative) Shadow Foreign Secretary got rather hot and bothered about the Foreign Secretary’s indecisiveness. Dame Priti’s name-calling (“weak and feeble Foreign Secretary” etc) was generally unappreciated, particularly by Lady Nugee (Islington South, Labour.) Nevertheless, Dame Priti did ask the obvious question about what the Foreign Secretary had been doing in Washington 10 days previously if she had not obtained advance information about the proposals for the US-Israeli strike “Why was Britain so woefully unprepared?”
This question seems reasonable. The answer appears to be that while the Government is terribly worried, about everything really, it is not actually capable of clear or speedy decision-making about anything at all.
Thank you for reading and please check out our instagram @theworldofukpolitics,
Alex
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