Today marks a year since Labour unveiled its first King’s Speech in 15 years, packed with the most bills since 2005.
To mark the occasion, LabourList was invited to speak to the Leader of the House of Commons Lucy Powell for an exclusive interview.
‘We are putting rights, power and agency back into the hands of working people’
We sat down with the Manchester MP in a large, wood-panelled parliamentary office both many MPs – and the teenage Powell avidly watching PMQs – could only dream of. Laden with books ranging from colleague Lisa Nandy’s All In to Harriet Harlan’s A Woman’s Work, and modern art all by women artists, the office is an unexpected perk of the role – alongside monthly meetings with King Charles.
Powell said many people’s first question on meeting her is what her job actually is.
She tells them it is very different to that of all her Cabinet colleagues, in that she has no department, and speaks for the government on all briefs. Calling herself and chief whip Alan Campbell a “power couple”, she is responsible for ensuring the government’s business gets through the Commons, and overseeing its legislative programme – including work on the King’s Speech itself. She is also, interestingly, charged with championing the Commons vis-a-vis the government.
Reflecting on the dozens of bills that were announced a year ago, Powell said she was proud of the whole programme of legislation – but that it is sometimes “under-appreciated”.
“Just think back to that moment a year ago. I think overwhelmingly everyone felt then and in the few days after a huge sense of ‘this is what a Labour government can do’ because we were announcing a lot of big Labour bills and pieces of legislation, whether that’s the Employment Rights Bill or scrapping hereditary peers. It’s been a real concern to members to bring rail back into public ownership – there were two big pieces of legislation we announced in that regard. Giving local communities and leaders powers over buses.
“I think our legislative programme over this last year, for me, really tells the story of the Labour government – we are putting rights, putting power, putting agency back in the hands of ordinary working people and taking on some of the vested interests that held this country back. That’s what Labour governments should be about and I think we can all be proud of that programme.”
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‘Good bread and better campaigning issues’
With the national press often selling the successes of the government short, we also asked Powell which bills merit more attention – and which legislation has gone down well on the doorstep with voters in her constituency of Manchester Central.
“I’ve done loads on some of the crime measures in the Crime and Policing Bill – which get overlooked. The ability for police to seize and crush off-road vehicles, for example – I went along with my local police team to crush some off-road bikes that have been used, because they’re a menace. It gets raised with local MPs, local councillors all the time.
“Tackling shoplifting gets raised all the time – people think that shoplifters get away with murder, because it was almost decriminalised by the last government. So giving those powers back to police to really tackle some of those things goes down really well with my constituents.
“I think some of the stuff in the Children and Wellbeing Bill, like tackling the cost of uniforms and free breakfast clubs goes down really well. And then a lot of the stuff on housing – we’re doing so much it that sort of gets lost, so bringing into effect the Awabb’s Law and extending that in the Renters’ Rights Bill to private rented houses – so all homes, whether they’re rented by a social landlord or a private landlord, have to meet decent home standards.
“In my constituency as well, I have loads of people affected by leasehold reform – Matthew Pennycook [the housing minister] is doing really good stuff on that, and we’re going to have more coming on leasehold reform. And, of course, the Employment Rights Bill, which is really popular with members.
“These are good bread and butter campaigning issues. All of those things I’ve listed, we’ve had to wait for a Labour government to do that.”
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‘Legislation takes time – but there’s not a bill not improved through its passage through Parliament’
After voters backed Labour’s promise of change at the general election, it is little surprise that the public have been impatient to see that come. So is Powell frustrated she can’t pass some of the government’s flagship legislation through Parliament quicker?
She emphasises how much change has happened already without needing legislation, from the minimum wage hike to tackling NHS waiting lists.
But she adds: “Legislation does take time. It not only has to go through the House of Commons, it has to go through the House of Lords, where we don’t have a majority – so you’ve got to box carefully to win stuff and things take longer.
“What I would say is that’s what our parliamentary democracy is all about. Other countries can be governed by executive order – we don’t operate like that, and I think there’s a real strength to that because legislation invariably gets amended, gets changed, points are considered and conceded – we’ve seen that recently with a few high profile things as well. That makes for better legislation.
“The Prime Minister absolutely loved us coming back on a Saturday and passing a bill in one day – the Steel Industry (Special Measures) Act – which is obviously a proud moment for us. I do keep having to say to him you can’t always do it like that, you’ve got to have the whole House with you to do that – and actually it was a very small bill.
“There’s not a bill that is not improved through its passage through Parliament, and that’s as it should be.”
Facing dozens of questions at Business Questions
Powell also is tasked with facing Business Questions from MPs each Thursday – taking as many as 70 questions from across the House on any topic – as she is the only member of the government other than the PM who can speak on any issue from the dispatch box. She revealed that, since taking office last year, she has answered around 2,000 questions.
“It’s a chance to do a few more attack lines. Sometimes you can take a more comedy angle on stuff as well, but also serious issues and giving colleagues at the end of the week something to cheer about, which they really enjoy. The new Labour MPs in particular really enjoy Business Questions because they can get real cut through for a local issue or raise something they haven’t got the opportunity to raise at any other time.”
Powell said that while the Conservatives sit as the Official Opposition, “you could argue that the real opposition out in the country for us is Reform, or in some cases the Greens or the independents”. As a result, she said she makes the most of the opportunity at Business Questions to go on the attack towards Reform – “even though they might not be there”.
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The art of the parliamentary joke
For Powell, every day is a school day, even after 13 years as an MP and a year on the government benches. “I might know a lot more about procedure than a new colleague, but I’m still learning about new procedure.
“One of the real things that having this job teaches you and you do get better at is working the chamber, because I’m in there so much and I’m taking questions on all sorts of topics.
“There’s quite a lot of pressure because colleagues have got used to me coming out with good gags, good lines or good riffs, either on our opponents or on what we’ve done. It comes around very quickly – you do have to have good new material.”
So what exactly goes into the art of a good political joke in the Commons? Picking an appropriate time, having the right delivery and a perfect punch line is essential for it to land, Powell explained.
“The other week, I knew the Tories were going to do U-turns on me, so I listed back to them some of their ridiculous U-turns, massive changes in position. I said at the end they’ve had more positions than the Kama Sutra – it’s no wonder they’re so knackered.
“So they start as a germ of an idea, until you can work it so that you’ve got the setup and the punch line.
“It takes a while to get it so that you can land it properly sometimes – and sometimes it’s just better not to do them if you can’t do that. But the last year has definitely taught me how to do parliamentary jokes better.”
‘We need to be a more inclusive, more effective Parliament’
One other important area Powell is working on is the modernisation agenda, as well as improving the culture and behaviour in Parliament.
She highlighted, for example, that the role of a backbench MP had changed over the time she has been in Westminster, with higher expectations and with more demands from their constituency.
Some changes are already underway, with work to improve accessibility across the parliamentary estate, including better lighting, better signage and toilets.
“We need to be a more inclusive, more family friendly, more effective Parliament, and we have got quite a big agenda that we’ll look at over time.”
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‘You couldn’t be a Mancunian in the eighties at a state school and not join Labour’
Powell also reflected on her journey into the Labour Party, growing up in Manchester in the midst of Thatcherism.
“They were very political times, because Thatcher’s era threw whole cities on the scrapheap with deindustrialisation and no plan for what came after it. All the time through school we had teachers’ strikes, we had no resources – a comprehensive school in Manchester in the eighties and nineties, it was not a good era of education, it was not opportunity for all at all.
“You couldn’t be a Mancunian in the eighties at a state school and not join the Labour Party.”
Among some of her memories of that era are coming home from school to watch Prime Minister’s Questions (which used to take place twice a week for 15 minutes at 3.15pm) – watching the then Labour leader Neil Kinnock exchange blows with Thatcher.
It is little surprise, then, that Kinnock is one of Powell’s Labour heroes.
“What he did in the eighties, in some of the speeches he gave, he was off the cuff – can you imagine that today, giving a conference speech that hadn’t gone through several rounds of rewriting and testing?”
She also highlighted a selection of other Labour figures.
“Mo Mowlam was a great hero of mine, growing up – with what she did in that first Labour government.
“More recently, Harriet Harman is the sort of political mum to lots of us in many ways. And of course I worked very closely with Ed Miliband when he was leader.”
It is notable Powell references her upbringing, as a string of senior figure have done the same in recent days – from Darren Jones mentioning growing up on a council estate to Wes Streeting emphasising how we now have the most working-class cabinet in history.
With the Health Secretary emphasising in two speeches this week how humble backgrounds and the related determination to tilt the balance towards the many not the few drive everything the government does (and critics of all stripes demanding more “vision”), has the government finally landed on a narrative that could help thread its disparate policies together – and get the biggest King’s Speech in a generation the recognition it deserves?
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