Hello and welcome to Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home.

I'm your host, Alan Tolhurst, and after last week's extraordinary election results,

this week has seen hundreds of new MPs and their staff descend on Parliament,

all starry-eyed as they step into the Palace of Westminster, many of them for the very first time. So what's it like as a new MP, what training is on offer for them and their

staffers, and should more be done to prepare our new cohort of legislators for life in Parliament

as they're thrown in at the deep end. So later on in part two, we'll speak to Alice Lilly from

the Institute for Government about the training they put on for new MPs and ministers. But with me in this first part, to discuss all of that, I have a fantastic group of guests with me.

Starting with Dan Tomlinson, who was elected last week as the new MP for Chipping Barnet,

along with one of his Labour colleagues, Sarah Owen, who was first head of the GMB Trade Union Committee branch in Westminster, which represents MP's staff, and also Ellie Varley, who

wasn't until Parliament was dissolved recently, head of communications in the office

of the formatory MP, Deanna Davison.

Before I start, just a quick apology for my hoarse voice, I somewhat over-celebrated

Ollie Watkins' winner last night for England and I'm a little croaky, but we shall endeavour. So Dan, starting with you. What of the first few days been like?

It's been wonderful, to be honest. There was a big moment on Monday where the PLP gathered and there wasn't a room big enough in Parliament. So we got escorted over and to church house, this sort of big round

room. And there were hundreds of people in there. And I was sure that the room was full of staffers,

too. There were just so many people. And then they called us together for a picture. And it turned

out that actually there were that many Labour MPs. And that was a sort of a big moment of realizing, my gosh, there were a lot of us. We take up a lot of space.

We did the training for new members in the chamber on how to refer to Honourable and Right Honourable and all this.

Yes. Don't dare get that wrong.

And we have however many on the Labour Ventures that there are new ones, 200 or something.

And there were no seats left.

So I think though I didn't realize how small the chamber was.

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