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Committee Corridor - the podcast for select committees - returns

Latest episode showcases Defence Committee's landmark Women in Armed Forces report and asks new MPs for their take on joining Parliament's select committees.

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Hours before military chiefs from the Army, Navy and Air Force were due to update the Defence Committee on progress towards a landmark report last week, the Ministry of Defence announced fresh measures to target violence against women and girls to “tackle unacceptable behaviours in the military.” The Chief of the British Army later told MPs that he felt ‘angry’ and ‘ashamed’ of experiences reported by female soldiers. 

The changes included a new specialist tri-service team for taking serious complaints outside the single service chain of command – one of the few remaining recommendations from the Defence Committee’s 2021 report on Women in the Armed Forces that the Government did not immediately accept. It’s another example of how select committee reports continue to wrestle change in government policy.  

In this new episode of Committee Corridor, the podcast from select committees, Dame Meg Hillier MP takes the work of the Defence Committee to demonstrate the continuing impact of select committee work.   

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To understand how the inquiry progressed through the last Parliament and hear their reaction to the latest developments, Meg Hillier speaks to Sarah Atherton who chaired the Defence Committee’s inquiry as a Conservative Member of Parliament for Wrexham and Emma Norton, Director of the Centre for Military Justice, who gave evidence. Emma continues to represent many service women who have experienced sexual assault and harassment. Current Defence Chair, Tan Dhesi MP joins the conversation to explain how the Committee is continuing to take the work forward.

Later, Meg is joined by two recently elected Members of Parliament to hear their first impressions of joining select committees and hopes for work in this Parliament. Steff Aquarone, Liberal Democrat MP for North Norfolk joined Transport while Natasha Irons, Labour MP for Croydon East joined the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. They chat about how work in committee rooms feels more like ‘real life’ outside Westminster. Plus, could ministers and leaders be scored for their transparency at select committee evidence sessions?   

The Defence Committee’s 2021 report found that the Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces were failing to protect female personnel and support Servicewomen to achieve their full potential. The Ministry of Defence took the unusual step of allowing serving personnel to contribute written evidence to the inquiry enabling female Servicewomen to share experiences from practical issues of uniform and kit to a lack of faith in the complaints process. There was distressing evidence of serious cases of bullying, harassment and discrimination and criminal acts of sexual assault and rape. Following the 2024 general election, the current Defence Committee will continue to hold the MOD to account for progress.  

Dame Meg Hillier MP, Chair of the Treasury and Liaison Committees, hosts this episode and a second on the work of the Liaison Committee, before the podcast returns in May with five episodes on key environmental questions to be hosted by Toby Perkins MP, Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee.

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Transcript

Meg: Hello and welcome to Committee Corridor. What if your experiences could directly impact government policy? If by offering your views, Members of Parliament could spotlight concerns from recommendations to bring about change and make a difference? Welcome to Committee Corridor where MPs from different political parties work together as a select committee to ask questions of real people, experts, and leaders, and put their findings to government, which must respond. 

Committee Corridor is a real place running above the House of Commons all the way to the House of Lords in the Palace of Westminster. And when Parliament is sitting, you can watch in person or online as committee members put political party differences aside to dig deep into the pressing issues of the day. 

I am Meg Hillier, Chair of the Treasury Committee. I also chair the Liaison Committee, which brings together all the committee chairs to make sure we are doing our jobs effectively. And for the first two episodes of this brand new series, I'm presenting committee Corridor. 

In this first episode, we wanted to look at select committee impact, past, present, and future. Later we'll be hearing from some brand new committee members who have taken their first steps down Committee Corridor and into the committee rooms. We'll be asking how it's going and what their wishes are for the future of select committees in this parliament. 

But first, we are returning to work carried over from the last Parliament into this one. A landmark inquiry by the Defence Committee on Women in the Armed Forces. The committee's report, Protecting those who protect us: Women in the Armed Forces from recruitment to civilian life, was a key one in the committee's history, and it involved a lot of distressing evidence from serious cases of bullying, harassment, and discrimination to criminal acts such as sexual assault and rape. 

I'm joined now by two women who played an integral part in the inquiry, before we hear from the current chair of the Defence Committee. Emma Norton is a solicitor and Director of the Centre for Military Justice, which offers independent legal advice to men and women in the armed forces and those closest to them. 

Sarah Atherton led the committee's inquiry in the last Parliament while representing Wrexham as a Conservative MP. She was the first female MP to have served in the regular armed forces, and she continues to keep in touch with the committee's inquiry. A warm welcome to you both.  

Emma: Thank you very much. Nice to be here. 

Sarah: Hello, Meg and Emma. Thank you for having me today.  

Meg: Emma, if I could start with you. Your charity, the Centre for Military Justice, which I think we'll call the CMJ, was a fairly young charity when you submitted written evidence to the committee's inquiry back in 2021, then appeared in front of MPs to answer their questions. What drove you to take part?  

Emma: Well, it was a bit of a baptism of fire. We were very young, as you say. We, we actually only set up in December 2019, and the charity had been set up to really provide independent legal advice and advocacy services and signposting, for women really, in the armed forces, who we knew from our own direct experience were having very, very serious problems across a whole range of different areas. 

But the area that we were really interested in, really wanted to support women to do something about, was the issues around sexual harassment and sexual assault. We were receiving a lot of inquiries from women who were just not able to secure justice as they, as they saw it. And then it happened around the same time in early 2020, Ben Wallace [Secretary of State for Defence, 2019-2023] rejected the recommendations of what was called the Lyons Review, which was this independent review into the military justice system. 

And so very quickly we were involved in some litigation acting for three women who wanted to challenge his rejection of that, of those recommendations. And that was around the time that Sarah was looking into these issues and wanting to convene a wider inquiry about those issues. So it was quite a good sort of coming together, I think, of the, sort of the political and the legal. And then it just really took a life of its own because as Sarah will tell you, all of these women came forward and just wanted to tell their stories. 

And so for, from that - to sort of be very quickly asked to give evidence at a committee inquiry, which I'd never done before, was really quite an overwhelming experience. But it was a very, very good experience.  

Meg: It sounds like quite a rollercoaster then, you know, establishing clearly a need with all these women coming forward to you. Can I ask, when Sarah and the committee put the report out, it found that when things go wrong, they go dramatically wrong. From your experience, Emma, would you say that's the case? 

Emma:  A hundred percent. A lot of the women that contact us…  so, a typical profile will be a woman has tolerated unacceptable behaviours for a really long time and she hasn't made a formal complaint about it and that's for lots of reasons, because they don't want to be seen as a troublemaker, they don't want be labelled as a woman who makes reports, they want to show that they can take a joke. And it may just be that they just become acclimatised to the culture and they're putting up with stuff with, they really shouldn't be putting up with, but that is the typical profile.  

And then something big happens, like something even bigger happens, like a sexual assault or like a really, really extreme form of sexual harassment, and they try and make a complaint about it and that's when the problems start. Lots of the women say to us, the sexual assault was obviously awful and terrible, but actually what was worse was the way the army, the navy, the RAF treated me or reacted towards me when I had the audacity to report it or insist that something was done about it. 

And then, what they're describing is sort of patterns of victimisation. Coming up against this really appalling kind of rape myths and victim blaming that I'm afraid is clearly a problem in wider society, but particularly acute in the very masculine environment of the armed forces. 

Meg: Sarah, can you tell us what prompted the Defence Committee to start this work and was there a reason to set up a separate sub-committee? 

Sarah: Well, I had no idea who Emma was at the time and what she was working on. I was a new MP. I'd been elected onto the Defence Select Committee. I'm a veteran myself and I was asked by the Chair at the time, Tobias Ellwood, would I look into the lived experiences of women in the military because they were overrepresented year on year in the complaint system, and the recruitment targets had also continually been missed. 

Meg: It's interesting you say that, Sarah, because you were, as you say - you served in the armed forces as a woman yourself. I think you were the first non-commissioned officer, female MP, is that right?  

Sarah: I was the first MP with a regular military background according to the House of Commons Library, and I am certainly non-commissioned as well, so I suppose there's, there's two wins there. But I, I served in the ‘80’s and it was hard. The language used was hard and it was of its time.  

Once on the committee, I was tasked with looking at the lived experiences of women in the military. But it was one of the largest committee inquiries ever undertaken in Parliament. We received 4,106 pieces of evidence and testimonials. 

For the first time ever, the Defence Instruction Notice was lifted, and this is an order whereby as a serving personnel, you can talk to your MP about a pothole in the road, in front of your house, but you were forbidden for talking to MPs about your service. And Ben Wallace at the time lifted the Defence Instruction Notice, so this, for the first time, gave service personnel an opportunity to be heard.  

And they really wanted to be heard and they wanted to be heard en masse. It also included regulars and reserves, and it also included veterans. And we had about half and a half split between veterans and serving - and the results were truly shocking and they were wide-ranging also, and broad in their nature.  

So, some of the evidence, just to give you a flavour, was that when women are on deployment, they, couldn't obtain sanitary products. So they were having to tear up clothing to use for sanitary towels.  

When they were firing in foxholes, there was a requirement to have your hair in a bun, but then you couldn't fit your helmet on your head properly and securely and appropriately with a bun. At the same time, you are in a firing position, wearing men's body armour, which obviously didn't fit the female form, the boobs, the hips, the waist. So it would lift up exposing organs from underneath your arms. So not only are you trying to fire at the enemy with your helmet tilted over your eyes, but all underneath your arms, was exposed. 

This was just jaw dropping for someone like me to think that, yes, I accepted that in the ‘80’s but things hadn't moved on. There was no neonatal, perinatal, postnatal health policies were no female specific health policies at all. A lot of women were leaving, not because they wanted to, because they couldn't balance being a wife, a mother, a soldier, aviator, or sailor. They could just couldn't balance those roles.  

Six out of ten women wouldn't complain if they had a complaint. And you were four to six times less likely to get a conviction for serious sexual assault or rape in a court martial compared to the civilian courts. But interestingly, having said all that and there was an awful lot more, nine out of ten women would recommend a career in the military. 

Meg: Well, that shows a real dedication, doesn't it? That people still believe in it even with these challenges.  

Sarah: Absolutely.  

Meg: You then produced your report and as a result, and part of that, you brought the ministers and key military leaders back before the committee for an annual follow-up. Did you see any progress? 

Sarah: So initially we saw progress, albeit glacial progress. It was very, very slow, with the sort of low hanging fruit aspects of the recommendations we made. And the Ministry of Defence [MOD] accepted most of the recommendations. Nearly all, but, but not all. So things like, health, female health policies, wraparound childcare kits and equipment. It's taken years Meg, for this to come in, but it is, by and large, and broadly there. 

There are some concerns about body armour actually, the designed new body armour. They didn't just go to our NATO allies and say, well, that's working for you, we'll adopt that. The MOD procured their own, and there is some concern about body armour not actually doing the job it was meant to do. 

Over the last few years, there's been a lot of initiatives put in place. I'd like to think that these initiatives were now reassessed to make sure they are making the positive impact on the ground. I think some of them probably aren't, but change has been made in those areas, but there are still areas, which we have problems with. From the feedback I get, and I still get service personnel contacting me at least once a fortnight asking for help although I'm no longer in Parliament, which actually says a lot for the welfare systems that are in place in the MOD, if they think that the only place they can turn to for help is me. So that speaks for itself.  

But I feel that there's been a bit of backsliding on the culture, the bystander culture, and if anything, I think that's probably getting worse. 

Meg: It's interesting you mentioned the bystander point. Perhaps I can turn to Emma on that because certainly when you, you know, in other campaigns, for instance, around school bullying, the role of the bystander has been critical. You presumably are getting these complaints, Emma? As long as Sarah is getting them as a former MP, you must still be getting them through the charity? Are you picking up that issue as well where people perhaps aren't standing up for colleagues who have put into this difficult situation?  

Emma: Absolutely it, it's leading to victimisation. And the MOD is wonderful at appearing before a committee and saying, we accept we could do better. Here is a whole range of wonderful things that we're going to bring in and Sarah's absolutely right to call it low hanging fruit. It's often, I have to say, a misrepresentation of what they're actually going to do. And I can give some examples of that.  

But the issue about bystanding is so frustrating because that's been one of their flags, hasn't it, Sarah? It's like ‘we now have active bystander training, it's amazing and it's part of your, the Army's values and standards. You're going to stand up and you're going to call it out.’  

Well, we get calls regularly from women who are calling it out. And who then all of a sudden are finding their own work called into question and who are being targeted and being made themselves to be the subject of complaints because they're seen as a pain in the neck. 

Meg: And I mean, Emma, the Government did announce changes to the complaint system at the committee's most recent session. Do you think that those initiatives will create any meaningful change? 

Emma: We're going to have to wait and see. We have to greet it with some degree of cautious optimism, but healthy scepticism as well, because it was announced very, very late in the day, Just as recently as three weeks previously, the Ministry of Defence's position has been that they are not going to introduce an independent aspect to the service complaints process. They were very, very clear about that on the penultimate day of the Jaysley Beck inquest. That was their evidence. And then all of a sudden, following three weeks of very intense press pressure, largely driven by the Beck family on what are you going to do to improve things for the service complaints process, all of a sudden they come up with this and they announced it at midnight the day before their witnesses are giving evidence before the Defence Committee where they knew they were going to get a grilling.  

It's incredibly concerning, and I'm a little bit sceptical about it, however, we have been calling for years for there to be an independent body that would oversee and handle serious service complaints. Sarah's committee called for the same thing some years before that, the Wigston Review called for the same thing. And our point was you need to take the handling of these most serious complaints, not all of them, but the most serious ones away from the single services because they cannot be trusted to mark their own homework. 

Now on one analysis that may be what they are now proposing. They're calling it a tri-service body. I don’t know what that's going to look like. I don’t know who's going to populate it. If it's just the same people with the same attitudes, with a different hat on, then clearly that's not going to work. So there has to be meaningful independence. 

One of the things that concerns me is that they didn't give this job to the Armed Forces Commissioner. So they're in the process of designing and and passing through Parliament, an Armed Forces Commissioner who's going to be properly, genuinely independent. Why not give that job to that body when it is set up? And it, it concerns me, and I'm a little bit cynical that they haven't done that, but I do think we do need to recognise that it is, it's further than they've ever gone before.  

Meg: Look, I mean, the report concluded ultimately that the Minister of Defence and Services were failing to help female personnel achieve their full potential which is, as you touched on Sarah earlier, quite, you know, tragically sad. Do you think that the report has helped to change the situation? What, as the chair of that inquiry, are what are you proudest of Sarah?  

Sarah: I think the biggest success that I haven't actually achieved and would like to achieve is to have all rape cases heard automatically in civilian courts. That's what I was really, really aiming for. I'm proud of everything that we've done, because there are a lot of women and men out there that have been trying for years, but weren't in that position that I was in, stood in the chamber, you know, asking very difficult questions of ministers, and being able to challenge service chiefs, in front of the camera. 

I was able to do that. There'd been lots of people who've been trying to enact change and just came across this brick wall that Emma has spoken about. So there, yeah. So, rape in civilian courts we didn't achieve. I would like that to have happened. And also the adoption of the term Military Sexual Trauma. Because when a term is adopted, it's acknowledged. When it's acknowledged as policy change and there's funding put behind it, they haven't adopted that term of MST.  

On the back of this inquiry, I spent a year with the OVA [Office for Veterans’ Affairs] and experts in the field looking at the needs of female veterans. And of course, military sexual trauma is a frequent feature in the lives of female veterans, and we did some excellent work. We pulled on all the brains and the expertise we could in the country and produced this recommendation - the strategy with recommendations and the OVA were behind it at the time. We were at the point of launching the very first female veteran strategy, but there was a delay and the delay was … the MOD didn't like the term MST, and of course the general election was called. It fell, and the minister has now announced that they're not going to rebrand and launch that. They're just going to refine the veteran strategy to have acknowledgement of females in it. So that is something that's a missed opportunity.  

Meg: Emma, if I can turn to you, you know, you've got a good, a strong legal background. You're a director of the Centre for Military Justice, but what do you think you got from having the House of Commons, the Defence Select Committee, conducting inquiry on this that you wouldn't have achieved on your own?  

Emma: Oh, I mean, a huge amount. I mean, essentially what Sarah's work did was bring this issue into the public domain in a way that had never, ever happened before, and it did that in an incredibly effective, well evidenced, measured way that has had a number of really important effects. Not least, it has enabled women to feel like they're being heard. Sarah was talking about feeling like they're banging a head against a brick wall. That's exactly right. And that's how women who contacted me, contact me always, always feel like they're alone and they're isolated and they are trying to function as best they can in an institution that is not capable of delivering justice for them. 

And the report of the Defence Select Committee really vindicated those women. It really vindicated them and it enabled them to give that testimony, which was so powerful. We supported a number of women to give evidence in writing. It was only in, it's important to mention it was only in writing. Mr. Wallace would not want to have those women giving evidence directly in front of the committee. I notice. But he was willing to grant them that. And that was an incredibly powerful, powerful thing, and that evidence will always be there. It's always public, it's always going to be there. And, and I think that was really, really brilliant. 

And in some recent evidence that was given to the Defence Select Committee, the minister in question has made very clear that he is not presently minded to act upon those recommendations from the Lyons Review, from the Atherton review, that would have, created a legal presumption that in most cases, serious cases of rape, serious sexual assault should go to the civilian justice system.  

And that is an incredibly disappointing turn of events given their very clear position when they were in opposition. And I think when you look at the statistics for completed rape trials at court martial, and you compare them with the statistics for completed rape trials at Crown Court, those figures are markedly different, not just a little bit different. If it was a little bit, we could probably, there could be some wiggle room, perhaps some explanations. They are markedly different and the Government is going have to come up with some very good explanations as to why they consider that to be an acceptable state of affairs for women and men who suffer these kinds of crimes. 

Meg: Well, clearly, this issue is not dead and buried, and it's good to know that the current Defence Committee is picking up where Sarah Atherton's inquiry left off. But look, if I can finish on this point, Sarah, you were very clear, as a committee, you know, to make the specific point of thanking all the service personnel and the veterans who contributed to the inquiry, Can you tell me why you think that was so important?  

Sarah: Yes. So there's something called career fouling. So when, women complain, they, and as Emma touched on earlier, they tend to find opportunities close to them, counter complaints, harassment, bullying of their own. So women are very fearful of actually mentioning a complaint. Six out of ten don't complain for that reason. But they'd had decades of this pent up frustration that no one was listening to them, no one was taking them seriously. They were disempowered. They didn't know where to go, and suddenly they had an opportunity to do that.  

So in one breath, they wanted to contribute, but on the second breath, they were very scared to contribute and they had to put their trust in me, someone they'd never met before, that I was going to handle their data anonymously and appropriately.  

So when they came forward and I read some of the evidence and some of these women phoned me up and phoned my team up, some of them were suicidal. But myself as a new MP, but I have been 27 years as a nurse and social worker, I could not just put that phone down. I needed somewhere to go and to send and to signpost these women.  

There was only one charity that came forward to help me, and that was a charity up in the northeast called Salute Her - a charity run by females for female service personnel. At that time, I phoned them up and they said, yes, we'll help you. And they were a life saver for me running this committee. At that time, they had 75 women on their books and they deal with, they manage the high end problematic cases of sexual assault, military sexual trauma. At that point in 2021, they had 75 people on their case caseload. They've got over 5,000 now since this work began. 

That's how I wanted - that's why I wanted to say thank you. That's why I wanted to say to these women, we did it together. It wasn't me. I just happened to be the front of house. We did it together, and you can take solace and credit in how we've improved the situation, not just for them, but for service women of the future. And that's why it's incredibly important to me to say thank you. 

Meg: Well, can I thank you both as well. Emma Norton, the Director of the Centre for Military Justice and Sarah Atherton, who led this groundbreaking piece of work. You've really clearly made a difference, and it's been very interesting to hear your thoughts on this today, but I think we can all agree there's still work for the current Defence Select Committee on this issue. Thank you very much.  

I'm joined now by Tan Dhesi, the Labour Member of Parliament for Slough, who is the current chair of the Defence Committee.  

Tan, this inquiry began life in the last parliament under a different chair and different membership. A new committee in a new parliament doesn't have to pick up the work of the former one, but you did. Why was it important to return to this inquiry?  

Tan: When I became chair of the Defence Committee, I wanted to make sure that the new committee picked up the important work undertaken by the previous committee but left unfinished because of the general election. A lot of time, effort, and taxpayers’ money had been expended on it when a previous committee had not only conducted an extensive inquiry, but held the previous government to account for progress every year since 2021.  

It was clear we needed to continue to hold the government to account, especially given the findings of the service inquiries into the tragic deaths of Gunner Jaysley Beck and Officer Cadet Olivia Perks, the non-statutory inquiries into unacceptable behaviours in the Red Arrows and submarine service, and allegations of a hostile and toxic culture with respect to women within the Ministry of Defence. 

Meg: You recently gathered the Chiefs of the Army, Navy, and Air Force to assess their progress against the committee's report. How will you take this work forward?  

Tan: The fact that all three service chiefs gave evidence together hopefully shows the seriousness that the armed forces senior leadership and the government give to these issues. 

Sometimes you can achieve a result as a parliamentary select committee simply by showing focus and promising to take evidence. And in this case, we achieved a result. Even before the session took place, the Government announced that morning, and I'm sure the timing was no coincidence, that they were making fundamental changes to the services complaint system, finally taking cases of bullying, harassment and discrimination out of the single services chain of command. 

This is in line with one of the handful of recommendations from Sarah and the committee's original report that hadn't previously been agreed and implemented, and is an important result, not just for our committee, but also for those campaigners and families given so much energy and care to these issues over the years. 

We want to ensure that government follows through on its promises and that policies are implemented fully. Change needs to be felt on the ground by the service women themselves, and that will be what we will be looking for throughout this parliament. It's clear that progress is being made, but there's still work to do. 

Meg: It’s clear that progress is being made, but there is still work to do. 

More than half of the House of Commons is represented on select committees. We are cross party groups of MPs tasked with following the work of a particular government department or an issue spanning policy such as the environment. Following a general election, membership of select committees is worked out in proportion to the results. This means that Labour has the largest number of committee spots followed by Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. Sometimes smaller parties are allocated committees too, usually to reflect their interest in particular topics.  

So, what's it like to take your seat in a committee room for the very first time? I wanted to speak to some newly minted committee recruits to hear their first impressions and what the future of this parliament looks like to them.  

So let's get started. Steff Aquarone is the Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for North Norfolk and has joined the Transport Select Committee. Natasha Irons is the Labour Member of Parliament for Croydon East and joins the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. Welcome to Committee Corridor.  

Can I start with you, Steff? Can you tell me what it's been like so far, being a member of a select committee?  

Steff: Well, it's been really reassuring actually because the things that matter to rural communities like mine appear to have caught the attention of the committee and be the sorts of things that we're actively looking at. So, I know a lot of the grumpy books about Parliament say that one of its few redeeming features is the work of select committees, and that's certainly been my experience so far.  

Meg: So what are you looking at that's particularly useful for your community?  

Steff: Well, we've looked at quite a few things very briefly as they've emerged. So obviously Great British Railway, the delays to the driving tests, things like this, But the two big first initial inquiries that we are right in the middle of, at the moment are about rural public transport, connectivity, and the impact of street works, which isn't uniquely a rural thing, but certainly affects communities in my constituency. 

Meg: Well, certainly quite different for you, Natasha in Croydon, but what have your first impressions been of the select committee corridor?  

Natasha: My first impressions have been really positive. I think it's been really good to see sorts of cross party working and you know, we are all on that committee because we've got an interest in culture or we've got an interest in how, you know this, this country tells stories about itself and finding the common ground and the things that we all really care about.  

Meg: Both of you are actually on committees where the chair of your committee is from another party. So Steff, of course, the chair of the Transport select committee is Ruth Cadbury, a Labour MP. And Natasha, your chair is Caroline Dinenage who's a Conservative MP. Has that caused you any challenges or has it defied expectations? Steff, perhaps start with you. 

Steff: It just feels like I'm working with colleagues, genuinely. I think, if anything, we are all slightly aware of the party movements, particularly with something like Great British Rail. And I sense my colleagues take seriously the job, which is ultimately to scrutinise  government implementation, government behaviour, government policy. And I think if anything there's a sort of hyper consciousness around that that makes cross party working really viable.  

Meg: And what about you, Natasha? I feel like being on a committee is the closest thing I’ve found in Parliament to being in a normal job. It is a sort of the bit that, you know, when you're in an office, out in the real world, you work with people who you don't necessarily agree with. You have very difficult political views perhaps, and perhaps you don’t even talk about your political views for the, for the sake of the goodwill in the office. 

It’s quite nice to be backed up when you disagree, perhaps with something the government's doing, by other people from other parties because you, you know, you're not, you're not sort of a lone voice in your own Parliamentary group. So it's good to sort of check in with people who aren't on your side. Just be like, am I thinking this is, you know, perhaps not the right thing as much as I think it is. And often you can be because you're, you're sense checking it for somebody else really.  

Meg: And of course Natasha, you were elected by your fellow Labour MPs to be on the, on the role. Steff, how did you get to be a member of the Transport Select committee from the Liberal Democrats? 

Steff: Same. I did a lot of early canvassing, 'cause it was one that I was really keen to take part in.  

Meg: Ah, so you actually had to go and seek out votes from your colleagues. Yeah, which is a really interesting way of building relationships with brand new colleagues. I think I'm, I've got proportionately even more new colleagues than Natasha has, given that, we only had a small number before the election. Now we're at 72 Lib Dem MPs.  

I really agree with what Natasha's just said. I think the reason why perhaps it's slightly easier is that when you are obviously in a select committee looking at the effectiveness of what the government is doing, it's not just politicians you are scrutinizing, it's also government departments and external agencies, and you're hearing evidence from people who really know their stuff. 

And also by that stage the policy is written. So you know, we're not, we're not the House of Lords, we're not sense checking policy. We might have different views about whether Great British Railway is a good thing. Actually someone who thinks it isn't a good thing could make a really good interrogator of all the people who are going about doing it. So it doesn't really matter which side of the decision you're on, if you're scrutinising whether it's been effective or not, actually, that's a really healthy thing to come to, from all sides really.  

Meg: And, in your experience, I mean - I'll go perhaps to Natasha first - what does the public think about select committees? Does it come up on the doorstep in Croydon?  

Natasha: You know what, it has actually. My local bowls club were really keen to understand if the committee were, were going to look at the future of bowls and, you know, the loss of community clubs - what that means for things like loneliness, especially for elder gentlemen in, in communities like mine. So it has come up and, and I've been really surprised by that because you can feel quite detached from, from people's everyday lives. But you realise actually when people have an interest in something and a passion about something, they will find out who they need to speak to about it and they'll find a way of raising it. And it's, it's quite nice to feel like I'm actually able to connect that work with my constituents.  

Meg: That's great. What about you, Steff?  

Steff: I think that somewhere in North Norfolk, there's a telly stuck on Channel 65 or whatever it is.  

Meg: Surely they're tuning in Steph just to see you perform.  

Steff: I don't know. I think if people do watch BBC Parliament and, because we, we meet generally for our public sessions on Wednesday mornings, there's a fair chance there's nothing else that BBC Parliament couldn't, couldn't find to put on then. So they go to us. And, I get texts saying like, stop checking your emails, and that sort of thing. I'm not checking my emails on in select committee meetings, I'm working out the perfect gotcha question, of course.  

But no, people will occasionally see it. I think it's one of those things that very politically tuned in and interested people will probably take an interest in. My constituents probably don't care quite as much about my clever questioning as they do about whether they going to get a bus somewhere they want to go. And so, I really hope that that is the kind of lasting outcome of this work. Not viral social media clips of squirming, skewered witness, providers - but actual improvements in the way that public transport is delivered, for instance.  

Meg: Well, Natasha, in your committee is also pushing at some of the things that government's doing. Do you want to give us a flavour of some of those and, and what you think about this, in the moment impact versus the sort of longer term impact to make sure that things actually change for the better for your constituents. 

Natasha: We've had a joint committee actually about AI and its impact on copyright. The government's just completed a consultation into that. And it's really interesting to get the views of colleagues and to hear from creatives and people within the tech sector to see, you know, how these two industries help each other and how in many ways can supercharge the future of, of both of them, but then can also bump up against one another. 

And there is concern within the creative sector around things like consent and remuneration, and it's really fascinating to sort of, be at the centre of that and, and kind of hear that debate.  

Meg: Do you find that your colleagues are now beginning to approach you as experts on transport or, or culture, media and sport. 

Steff: Nah! 

Meg: So Steff, have they not yet recognized you as as an emerging expert in the area of rural transport?  

Steff: I think mercifully, I have an actual expert in my other colleague Ollie, who comes from a rail industry background, so, on rail we're covered. Perhaps I'm getting a bit more of a rep as a bus fan, which you may have already gathered from this conversation. 

But it's really interesting to hear Natasha talk about, sort of her perspectives through DCMS committee on things like data remuneration for creatives, because my only experience of that has been through the Bill committee on the data use and access bill, where obviously I made several impassioned grandstanding speeches which were all courteously ignored by the government. And that's very useful for me, you know, as a practice spokesperson on issues that I care about.  

Meg: Natasha, what about you?  

Natasha:  No one’s coming to me for my expert opinion, but I do feel as if being on, on the select committee has made it easier to, you know, try and get time in with ministers and discuss issues on there and I think that's been really helpful.  

I mean, another thing that I'm quite passionate about is young people and youth. In this country, we've seen a 73% cut in the funding for youth services. And that's something that my committee can look at some point. And as the government is, is planning to do things around youth services and youth provision, it feels like a, it being in a really good place right now to ask the right questions around that. So just make sure that the consultation that's going out at the moment actually is a genuine consultation with young people. And what does the sector actually think? What do, what the youth workers actually think? We've had a massive decline in youth work as a practice and in terms of making sure those people are trained and, and paid properly. So it, it feels like a really interesting place to be.  

Meg: And Steff, you're getting a lot of young people engaged in things like rural transport and do you think Parliament could be doing more to engage with that group? 

Steff: Well, the point of public transport is that anyone can use it, but it's particularly valuable for young people trying to get to work and to training opportunities and even just to, to statutory education.  

But I think actually, I've been really impressed by the work that the House is done on school visits. I've really enjoyed receiving, between me and my colleagues. I think about, we've got nearly half a dozen I think we've either received or got booked in. That's a long way to come from North Norfolk to, to visit parliament. But it's a really important experience, especially for people at primary school age, I think when it just starts to make it part of their, their world and how they think about things. 

I've had some astutely brilliant bits of correspondence from some of the pupils that came from some of my, my primary schools. But yeah, bus buses matter to everyone. But, but especially older and younger people. 

Meg: Fantastic. Look, and I just wanted to finish by asking if you think, if you had a wish or prediction for the future of select committees, what would it be? 

Natasha: I suppose I, my wish would be that people viewed British politics more through the eyes of a select committee rather than the sort of boo hiss sort of life that the chamber. I wish, as a nation, we thought of our decision making processes and our, our parliament more like the behaviour we see on select committees than we, than we do in the chamber. 

Not to, you know, I'm not, not saying it's not fun and funny to sometimes sit in there and, and hear people scream at each other. But I think a select committee, like I said, just feels more like real life and feels a bit more how you would do real business outside of this place.  

Meg: So, less yah boo than Prime Minister's Questions. Steff, what about you?  

Steff: I really support that and my expectation and my wish are probably two slightly different things.  

I expect Select Committee will have a solid ongoing role, because of the role they play in accountability and the fact that they're seen as quite good governance.  

My wish would be that we got to score every minister and head of department who was a witness and had some sort of league table at the end of the parliamentary session. 

Meg: Ooh. That's going to scare all the witnesses who are listening to Committee Corridor. 

Steff: It's going to make them want to come on and, and visit us and, and earn, earn the badge of honour. Unfortunately, I don't think that's ever going to happen, so that's okay. But, far far better than trying to like, vote on something and make it mandatory to, then it just becomes another extension ofthe balance of parliament. 

But I think if we could somehow incentivise witnesses to be credible and honest and transparent and to set aside party politics in the way that I think committee members and chairs do, I think we get a little bit more out of - and that's not because I want to try and trick them - it's because I think we'll just get more value out of hearing the truth spelled out a little bit more candidly. 

Meg:  Well, amen to that. I think we would all agree. We want our witnesses to give clear evidence and can I thank you both for showing such enthusiasm for the valuable work you do as members of select committees on the committee corridor.  

So there you have it. In this first episode of the new series, we wanted to bring you the story of a select committee inquiry that continues to deliver impact - and to look forward to future developments on Committee Corridor. 

My thanks to all my guests for sharing their insights and to you, our listeners for tuning in. 

Next time on Committee Corridor, we'll be looking at the work of the Liaison Committee ahead of our session with the Prime Minister on the 8th of April. 

It is good to be back. We have a selection of brand new episodes for you, turning over new themes and inquiries right up to the summer recess.  

Please like and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. 

You can find all our previous pods by searching UK Parliament plus Committee Corridor. I'm Meg Hillier and this has been Committee Corridor. 

Thank you for listening. 

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