Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home with me Alan Tolhurst.

This week, we're unapologetically getting into the weeds of parliamentary procedure

and shining a light on little understood, but sometimes hugely important part of a legislative system.

As regular listeners will know, the citadine bill will return to the Commons later this month for MPs to vote on at second reading. But despite having massive

potential implications, the legislation underpinning the change is not being brought in by the

government, but by a backbencher, using the private members' bill mechanism. So, what is it? How

does it work? What is it uses and limitations? Why is it often a source of

controversy? We need to discuss that. I'm delighted to say I'm joined by the two

Doyens of PMBs in UK policy circles, Dr Daniel Gover, Senior Lecter in British Politics

at Queen Mary University, and Dr Ruth Fox, director at the Hansart Society, as well as an MP

who has our own private members bill going through the process,

Liberal Democrat MP, Ros Savage. And later in the episode, we'll hear from two former conservative MPs,

Virginia Crosby and Dean Russell, who together managed to get a long-awaited bill about tips of hospitality staff

onto the statute book about how they did it. But first, I'll start with you, Ruth. Can you just explain what a private member's bill is

and how they can be introduced by MPs and why? Yeah, so private members bill is a bill that is

brought in by a backbencher. It's not a government bill. And there's specific time set aside in the House of Commons, specifically 13

sitting Fridays, about sort of 65 hours of time altogether through the course of each session

to consider them. And although the legislative stages for private members bills are called

exactly the same as those for government bills,

so the first reading, second reading, committee stage report and so on, in practical terms,

the rules for procedure for those stages are different.

And as a consequence, you have with private members bills this pressure of time for consideration of the bills and rules for debate that help single MPs or a small group of opponents to a bill to effectively try and talk out or filibuster it.

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