and also this thing of setting up great british railways, which they called the "guiding mind" for the railways, so it could sort of oversee everything rather than everything being split up amongst different companies — i mean, that's something they inherited from the previous government. like, grant shapps, when he was transport secretary, had started work on that, what, about two, two and a bit years ago? so, a, these things can take quite a lot of time when people are expecting a big bang and, b, actually quite a lot of stuff today was inherited from the last government. and i think, you know, you could see this in �*97, you could see it in 2010, you can see it now — when a party has had a long stint in government, part of the process of the opposition becoming electable again, even if they don't quite admit this in as many words, is accepting quite a lot of what they spent many years opposing in the intervening period, because they have to appear reassuring to people who've spent years voting for the other lot. and so you get all sorts of that. now, there's some particular

examples in here of stuff thatjust fell off the end of the table at the end of the last parliament and did have pretty widespread cross—party support, like the gradual ban on smoking, like what's known as martyn�*s law, this idea of improving the safety of public venues, which is pretty much a straight cut—and—paste job. but, yeah, the broader thrust of stuff, as you say, it contains all sorts of evolution as well. and then it's interesting when you talk about things that are left over from the last government, like reforming the private rented housing market, which took the government, the last government, ages to get around to doing, and they still never even finished it. and i do wonder, is itjust one of those things where, 0k, this government's picked up the baton on things like no—fault evictions, but what was it that stopped that happening in the last government? was it lack of time? was it there being quite a few conservative backbenchers who were landlords? or was itjust that that's a system that's really difficult to reform? and this government might run into exactly the same problems as the last one.

completely. we're talking about in england, with these rental reforms, and exactly that — you know, do they run into that trouble? because i think there's a recognition on all sides of the political divide now that, in the way that perhaps a generation ago, talking about the rental market might have seemed like talking to a small—ish chunk of the electorate, now it's a massive, massive chunk of the electorate, so there's a political incentive to sort of be seen to get it right. and yet, if it had been that easy with an 80—seat majority for borisjohnson and, you know, liz truss and rishi sunak — i know that majority shrivelled — it would have happened, which does suggest it could be quite difficult. but then, you know, we should say this over and over again because it still feels novel — labour got a colossal majority. so all this stuff... where's this document that they gave me here? oh, the ioo—page thing? all this stuff, hundreds of pages of stuff about what they want to do... that's going to happen. ..well, its reasonable to assume that most of it will. because if they want it to... i mean, some of it, they might

decide that they haven't got the will for, or it gets overtaken by events or, you know, whatever — something else gets in the way. but if they want this stuff to happen, most of it probably will. yeah, gone are the days when 25 backbenchers could hold the government hostage and say, "we're not going to let this get through unless you amend it in this way." can i give you an example ofjust how on it the government are, or some people might say how sensitive/defensive they are? i was on the bbc news channel a couple of hours ago — i'll be honest, plugging this podcast — and i was chatting to matthew amroliwala and he said, "oh, what's something that caught your eye?" and i was like, "actually, plans for digital identity." so, buried in this document is a bill about data and online services. and in it is the idea of verifying your identity online and the government sort of giving a stamp of approval to you having an online digital id. now, very quickly, i received an email from the dsit department saying, "we are not introducing digital government ids."

now, i'm pretty sure i didn't exactly say that they were, but they're obviously very worried that the spectre of id cards through a digital back door is being is being introduced. and it is a sore on the back of long time labourites because it was something tony blair was really keen on and ran into a lot of opposition. it's kind of a fundamental, isn't it, argument within politics about the role of the state? you know, back then, it was about literally a kind of card in your pocket. now, the advocates of something equivalent in a digital era is that... are we not kind of heading towards that world anyway because of the multiple logins and ids that we all need for this, that and the other? and would it not, so say the advocates, therefore be sensible? but it still opens up all of those old arguments about, as critics would see it, a meddling state, an overweening state and all of that. hence, i suspect that... yeah. what they actually say is happening is it's kind of like

amping up your government login for using public services, like your driving licence renewal and things like that. so kind of adding more bells and whistles to that and also just getting more into the regulation of the market, where you can sign up for kind of verification services online. but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck... and also you can imagine that's something that a opposition party of the conservatives would get their teeth into. and no amount of clarification from the dsit department will stop them claiming that it's an infringement on the people's freedom. no, and the very fact you had that call, that email tells you about, as you say, the sensitivity as they see it, around this kind of stuff and how they're going to be careful around the language and defining the scope of it. this is always quite a hard question to answer because it's about something that's not there, but what was not there, but that caught your eye for its absence? so, a couple of things. social care.

so this massive issue that governments constantly say they want to sort of grapple with and then realise it's really complicated and confusing and controversial and often don't get around to — and expensive. so where are they going to go on that? ithink... well, they say they want to pull together some sort of cross—party thing to try and work out a solution. on things that are not as hulking as that, but are nonetheless interesting, the idea of expanding votes to 16 and i7—year—olds that labour have talked about is not in this plan. to all of this, they say, "look, this is about a first session of parliament, not the whole time between now and a next general election." and then house of lords reform... yes, they say they want to get rid of the remaining hereditary peers. and, yes, they have this idea that peers should retire at the end of the parliament after they have turned 80.

but quite a lot of the other stuff around the house of lords, which kind of added up to a wholesale reshaping of the upper chamber, is not there either. so again, as i say, they would say, "well, hang on a minute. you know, this isjust the start." and in terms of volume of planned legislation, there's no disputing that this is pretty hulking. but in all of this, whether it's the stuff around the digital id stuff or the stuff around social care or all of this, is... never underestimate this in politics, the sort of folk lore memory that rattles around in the most devoted to a party's cause, where they try and learn what they perceive were the lessons of a failure from last time. and so what those who cast their minds back and have minds long enough to go back to 1997 say, a lot of them, is that tony blair didn't use his first majority as effectively as he could have done, because a political party, a government is never, is rarely more powerful than in its opening months, particularly if it's got a massive majority. and so you need to strike and strike quickly. now they'd say they're doing that given how... a0 bills. ..yeah, all the bills

and all the rest of it is. but you do wonder when...you try and imagine a hindsight moment looking back to now, how will theyjudge that, given, you could say, some of the things that are not there? now, before chris sat in that seat, the occupant of it was lucy powell, who is the leader of the house of commons. so she was, a, involved in the festivities today, in the kind of ceremonial bit, and, b, she'll be very involved in making all this legislation get through parliament, because that's one of the roles of the leader of the house of commons. here's my conversation with her. do i call you madam leader of...? madam leader? no, you call me lucy. 0k, good. just... i mean, it's a day for, like, for, like, process and, like, titles and things. what was your actualjob today? because, like, leader of the house of commons, you've got, like, a role kind of like in the constitution of the country. yeah, and so i was in the procession. so...| think i'm sort of the representative of the commons in that sort of procession and hierarchy and leading the monarch and the queen

in and out and all of that. so obviously the lord chancellor, the justice secretary, shabana mahmood, who's a very good friend of mine, she sort of wears the robe and she holds a pouch that's got the speech in. and then i walkjust ahead of her, with the speaker of the lords. so, yeah, i'm not sure if it's the leader of the commons bit or the lord president of the council bit of myjob that that is... oh, yes. because remember when penny mordaunt, your predecessor, was globally famous for holding the sword at the coronation? that was as president of the council. yes, yes. this is turning into a seminar! but it's interesting when you say about shabana being your mate. what is it like when you're there with your mates and colleagues and people you've kind of fought in the trenches with, but then some of you are dressed up and, like, the king and queen are there and there's a carriage? so there's kind of the very formal, but you're also doing it with your pals. yeah. i mean, and i wasjust really... i mean, i've put a lot of work into getting us ready for the king's speech —

you know, what that legislative programme looks like, getting those bills ready, you know, agreeing it all and kind of the whole programme, writing the speech. you know, all that, i've been sort of heavily invested in it. and so today i actually just wanted to enjoy it as a participant and, well, a punter, really, just kind of... so a few people said to me, "you were just sort of smiling the whole way through and a bit too happy." but, yeah, so i was very emotional about it. but it was lovely seeing my good friend there as the sort of bearer of the speech and the pouch and everything. there was a few whispers along the way. it was just... for me, the funniest bit was when the king talked about setting up the new football regulator, and it cut to lisa nandy, who's the culture secretary. and, like, the smile on herface, she was... i think the professionalism had, like, taken a bit of a back seat there because she was obviouslyjust really pleased to be there. that was quite an interesting little kind of human moment. so when you say that you've been involved in preparing the speech, does that mean during the election campaign you were

working on this stuff? been working on it for months. since, like, january? yeah. yeah, so taking our policies and thinking about how they would be implemented. so obviously the treasury and others think about, you know, their fiscal kind of implications. we've been thinking about the kind of legal, parliamentary, legislative implications. what would a bill look like? what would the different packages of things? going through that with, at the time, the shadow secretary of state and other teams and trying to really make sure that we... what we didn't want this king's speech to be was either short and just top line orjust really a sort of shopping list of vague things we'd quite like to do. you know, they really had to meet the bar of being a bill, and you know the document that comes with it — it's like 300 pages. it's got all the sort of details about each bill. and that's a lot of work which normally, in government, any government at any time,

spends months developing their next king's speech pipeline. and obviously we'll have another king's speech in a year, 18 months or something like that, and we'll go through that process in government. so, we had to do that from opposition. so we did that quietly, sort of behind the scenes. and then we've had a, you know, fantastic sort of support from the civil service in the last week or so to really then get that into some final shape. oh, yeah, it's a big production. what bills get introduced first? and what's your money on passing first? ooh! well, you'll have to sort of wait... this is such a westminster pub game! it's the sort of thing we discuss in the pub after it, isn't it? well, that... that's obviously been the... in a way, one of the biggest challenges was thinking about, "what could we introduce early?" because that really meant a lot of work had to go into that ahead of today, so that we've got some bills ready. so we've already... so once the bill is kind of in the programme, it then comes to, you know,

a committee and we really sort of check it's robust and it's good and it's... you know, it's going to make good law. we've got high standards and expectations we've got about legislating well. we don't want to see hundreds of amendments being laid by the government. we don't want to see shoddy bills that we've got to kind of repeal and think about again, which we've seen a lot of that over the last few years. so we've got very high expectations, high standards. so, yeah, we do have a couple of bills that will be ready. and in the usual way, i will announce some of those to the house of commons tomorrow in my first business statement. 0k! oh, so business questions has got a reputation around here as being a bit of a kind of like knock—about where, like, you have a laugh with your opposite number. is that tradition going to continue or is this a more serious time now? well, i took it quite serious as the opposition person to penny mordaunt, actually. i didn't do the kind of levity because i sort of took... i mean, i can do that, but it'sjust that i took

the view that, actually, we were discussing very serious issues. we were discussing, you know, a parliament in disrepute, we were discussing kind of scandals and sleaze and, you know, a parliament that had run out of road and a very threadbare legislative programme and all of that and all these big crises happening in the country. and ijust thought, "they're not really a joke, actually. " you'll continue that serious tone? yeah. and there's a lot of stuff we're going to be doing, as you'll have heard in the king's speech today, setting up a modernisation committee of the house of commons to look at standards, culture — you know, can we work more effectively? and i want to take the whole house with us on some of those issues, so that's what we'll be trying to do. are you going to shut down the bars, not to pick something really superficial? that's my second drinking reference in one interview! but there's rumours, yeah, you're going to shut down the bars in parliament as part of that. that's not in the scope, that's not in the scope. there's plenty of other things, look, in terms of tightening up on the standards and expectations for mp5. you know, rebuilding some

of that trust in politics, rebuilding respect into parliament. you know, i'm going to be making sure that ministers come to parliament to make their announcements first and that they're held to account and scrutiny. oh, so if someone goes on bbc breakfast and says, "this is what i'm going to announce later," you will give them a ticking—off? i will be, and i'll be joining forces with the speaker on that, yeah. that could make you quite unpopular with your pals. yeah. i mean, unless they're, you know, immediately going to parliament to do that, but, you know, i think we saw many, many major announcements never even coming to parliament in the last iteration. so, you know, that is what the expectation is of... interesting. because politicians do find it quite tempting to announce things when they want to, and... i'll see how you get on that. 0k. we can reconvene on that. ok, looking at the detail... ok, so the reforms to planning — have you got, like a one—sentence version about, like, what it is you're actually going to do to change the planning system that means more stuff gets built? because i'm yet to hear, like, the simple one—sentence version.

well, that's because it isn't... like, there is no one silver bullet. there's a range of things we need to do. i mean, we are unashamedly pro house—building. we need to build more houses, more homes of all types — more affordable, more council, more homes in the places that people want to live and where they want to live — and we need to address the housing crisis. but that is not to say that what we want is a sort of developer free—for—all. absolutely not. so we are talking about enabling, you know, faster decisions, faster sort of building and regeneration around these local plans. so where they're developed locally, on a sort of more strategic basis, you can move faster and you can build on that. and obviously that also means working alongside new infrastructure. so where you've got new transport going in or you've got other new infrastructure, you know, being able to then build homes associated with that

or alongside that... so, a more strategic approach to it. well, because some of the headlines are like, "ministers will have more powers to overrule planning decisions to insist that homes or data centres or roads are built in areas where there's opposition." is that not a fair description, then? is that an exaggeration? i don't think that's a totally fair description. you know, we do want to see sort of strategic plans coming to fruition. we're reinstating... we've taken early steps to reinstate the housing targets. so they're notjust national targets, they're kind of local and regional targets as well, so it means that that local areas have to show how they're going to meet those targets, so it's enabling that to happen faster. so it's not kind of speculative, developer—led sort of plans, which is how our planning system has worked to date, individual developers choosing to put in planning applications for individual,

speculative decisions. this is a more strategic and sensible and kind of local approach. and then also, we're going to be reforming this compulsory purchase order element around land value, which will enable local councils and local areas to really take on town centre regeneration and things like that in a more holistic way than they currently are able to afford. and does that include things like not allowing landowners to inflate the value of their property, so it's hard for a local authority to buy off them? absolutely, which is what we're now seeing is, like, international investors buying former shops and former places in town centres where a lot of the shops are closed and things like that, because if a council wants to buy it off them, it has to pay not just the value that it's worth today, it has to pay the value that it'll be worth once it's been developed and once that whole area is much

nicer, which the council is also doing the investment in, so this sort of...value thing. so we think this will free up a huge amount of opportunity for town centre regeneration and planning and building around infrastructure projects as well. just a few other details things — for example, the fair deal for care workers, which will be legislated for. now, some people call that kind of collective bargaining, which you see on the continent quite a lot, where it's like groups of people in a whole profession get together and negotiate with the employers en masse. is that what's going to happen with care workers? for example, will we see a special minimum wage for everyone in the care sector as a result of that? possibly. ithink, look, it's it's long overdue — care workers having the ability to get fair pay. and that's part of our package for social care. it's part of our employment rights package. and that detail will come shortly. are there going to be

government digital id cards? i think we've ruled that out. 0k. well, there was something in there... this is like an a—level! you're asking me... you're the professional! i know, i know, but... welcome to being leader of the house of commons. i know — you're prepping me for business questions tomorrow! i'm not sure that's myjob, but anyway, happy to contribute to our democracy. 0k. what did you say to people who look at the king's speech and there's stuff that they really care about, but that's not in the speech. so i'm thinking child poverty. there's not a lot of stuff in there about improving the nhs or cutting waiting times, for example. well, look, i mean, ithink by any comparable measure, this is an incredibly ambitious king's speech programme for a new incoming government that's sort of not had that lead—in time to do it, in terms of notjust the scope and the number of bills. but, you know, some of these are big issues that we're taking on, from workers' rights to planning, to growth, to setting up gb energy

and unlocking all of that, the national wealth fund, house of lords reform. the list goes on. i mean, there's a huge amount of things in this king's speech, and then, you know, fulfilling some of those promises that other people have failed to do — to the victims of hillsborough, martyn's law. and, you know, i'm really proud of some of those things that are in this king's speech. so what i would say is, firstly, this is a programme for our first session. it's not for the whole parliament. it's just for the first session. and you know what the difference that means. so that's a year, 18 months, possibly longer sort of session. we will have another king's speech thereafter and possibly another one there after that. so, there's plenty of time to do some of our other manifesto commitments that are not in this king's speech, and we will do that. a lot of things... like, votes for 16—year—olds, which wasn't there today? exactly.

and, you know, there's lots we can do that doesn't require legislation. i mean, health care, i think is a prime example. when you try and legislate around health care reforms and things, if you look back in history, that's usually been pretty bad news and quite difficult and not had the outcomes that people want. so getting down waiting lists and, you know, increasing those appointments — 40,000 more gp appointments a week — is one of our key objectives. you know, that doesn't take legislation. that takes freeing up the system, it takes reform, it takes ensuring that we've got the workforce in place and all of those kind of things. so there's a lot we will be doing alongside this. this isjust our legislative programme. and, i mean, iwouldn't want to put a percentage on it, but there's a huge amount that happens outside of that. a procedural point — can your backbenchers table amendments to the king's speech in the next few days? so, for example, when people say,

"oh, maybe we'll table an amendment to stop arms sales to israel," or some backbenchers saying, "oh, we'd quite like to lift the the two—child benefit cap, this might be our way of doing it," is that possible or are they barking up the wrong tree? well, they can. i mean, you can lay amendments to the king's speech. and because it's so general and there's so many issues in it, it does lend itself to amendment. obviously, the speaker will select any amendments for voting, and that's usually an amendment that the opposition, the official opposition want to push, perhaps an amendment from the third party and, you know, possibly one other or so in that. but people can put amendments down to the king's speech. but you just have to remember, they're not guaranteed to be selected to be voted on... probably not. ..which is the same with all amendments in any legislation. yeah. is there anything that you're particularly disappointed you weren't able to get into this king's speech this time around? and i know you said there's going to be two or three more,

potentially, in this parliament, but is there anything you're kind of like, tonight, "i wish we'd got that in"? no, i'm kind of really happy with where we got, knowing that, actually, there's lots of other bills in that pipeline now already for the next king's speech, or potentially later in this session that... obviously there's a last line in the king's speech that says, "and my government will introduce any other measures that it wishes" or something like that at the end. so we'll see where we get to. but, you know, if there becomes some parliamentary sort of space available, there are a number of my colleagues absolutely knocking the door down with some really important pieces of legislation, further pieces of legislation that they want to do, which are in that pipeline. now, you probably won't want to answer this question because conversations with the monarch are sacrosanct, but, i mean, you spend more time probably with the king than most mps because of your various jobs. is he really into politics? can you tell if he's interested in politics? well, he's very...

i would say... i mean, i would say this anyway, but, i mean, he's very across everything and, you know, he's obviously acutely interested and aware of current affairs and developments and things like that, absolutely. and, you know, it's been such an honour to have got to meet him over this last sort of week or so, a couple of times now... did you get to wish the queen a happy birthday? i didn't know it was her birthday until afterwards, actually. cake can wait for another day. oh, talking about other male celebrities, jd vance, right, trump's pick for the nominee for vice president — they've been talking about it a lot on americast, our sister podcast — they unearthed this clip that he gave a couple of weeks ago where he talks about the labour government almost being like an islamist government. i mean, what's your reaction to that? well, he's just totally wrong and ignorant, really, isn't he?

but you're going to have to work with them if they're elected. yeah, but, i mean, ijust think that's not... you know, that's not a reflection... i don't know when he said that, how long ago he said that. but, look, i mean, ithink what's happened to trump, president trump this week, you know, is really appalling and shocking and we condemn it completely. and the prime minister spoke to donald trump over the weekend to express the whole country's sympathy and good wishes. and of course, you know, what happens in another country is their democratic choice to make about who they want to vote in, but obviously... people are going to kind of make wrong statements about our country. then we'll have to... and last, last question — are there enough seats in the house of commons for all the labour mps? no. so what are you going to do? i can't remember the figure, but, i mean, the number of seats... there's never enough seats, but obviously it's particularly acute at the moment. i think there's about 200 seats

or something on each side. so... yeah. so the people were filling up, filling up... so, actually, there's just not enough seats for the number of mps, full stop, let alone which party you're talking about? yeah, i don't think there is. that's not a very good design, is it? yeah, well, probably the number of mps has grown overtime, i imagine. it obviously has been around for a while. but, yeah, no, colleagues were sitting on the side seats and sitting up the steps, some colleagues had gone up into the gallery to sort of get a better view. but having all these new mps is absolutely intoxicating, really, because there's so many of them across all sides of the house, and they are so kind of thrilled to be there, excited to be there, got so much they want to do in the job. and, you know, you can't helpjust be excited by it whenever you go in the chamber. last, last question. i was listening to another podcast presented by some very old political hands, including one of your old colleagues, ed balls,

and they were sort of suggesting that it takes like at least a year for a new mp to learn the ropes. and i was wondering, is that a slightly patronising way of looking at it? or does it take a good chunk of time tojust get good at being an mp, or can you do it straightaway? look, i think it's all... every day is a school day. i would say for me even, you know... you're running the place! yeah, well, yeah, every day, you find, "0h, does that how that works?" or "is that where that thing belongs?" or "is that what you need to do for that procedure?" and obviously i'm kind of maybe right in the weeds, even more so than a newscast audience would appreciate, and for a new mp, it might be more some of the sort of basics. but, no, i think people come in and you can hit the ground running. i'm expecting tomorrow in business questions a number of the new mps to be asking for statements and debates on particular issues for them, and most of them are just sort of ready to get going with it and,

you know, get on with the job. there is no real training in thisjob. there's no realjob description. we all have to find our way in some regard, but i think we've got some fantastic new mps coming in, and it's going to be great. well, thanks for coming into our studio on such a busy day. thank you for having me. and we recorded even more material, which you can hear in the podcast edition of newscast, which is available wherever you get your podcasts. but thank you very much for watching this edition of newscast. bye! newscast from the bbc.

welcome to newsday. reporting live from singapore, i'm steve lai. the headlines... the white house says joe biden has covid, but the symptoms are only mild. donald trump prepares for his nomination acceptance speech at the republican national convention on thursday night. before that — it's the big night for his vice—presidential pick, jd vance. this is the scene live in milwaukee. we'll have the latest as the republican party sets the stage for those headline moments. in the uk — pomp and circumstance, as charles delivers the first king's speech of the new labour government. and a new drug increases lab animals life spans by nearly 25%. scientists hope it can slow human ageing, too.