This is a global original podcast.

Hello and welcome to full disclosure, a podcast series conceived to let me spend a little bit more time than is ordinarily available with interesting interviewees.

Although, of course, during the lockdown, some of the parameters of engagement have changed somewhat, not least the fact

that I don't get to spend any time at all with these people at the moment because they are on

the other end of a telephone line or similar technology. Delighted to tell you that today,

my guest is Jess Phillips, who hasn't really had much of a lockdown at all, Jess, I don't

suppose. No, I don't suppose.

No, it feels like it ended a long time ago for me.

And it was nice to be back at home in Birmingham.

I won't lie, but it's the amount of work that was needed doing in the early stages,

it didn't feel like a sort of quietening really at all. what's it like being back in the house now when on the on the sort of occasions when your ticket it's like being

at the deli counter in the co-op isn't it when your ticket comes up and you find yourself actually

back in the chamber it is very very odd there's no spontaneity at all, which I think favours the government.

And it's very hollow. There's no staff here really, like our parliamentary staff. So it's very empty.

And you can't have meetings in Parliament and there are only the main debates in the chamber.

So you sort of sat around mostly, like just waiting to vote.

And I, you know, and then all your meetings are on Zoom anyway.

So it's sort of pointless being here.

Apart from that, it's great.

We're going to talk.

We're going to cover all sorts of ground, not least the, the domestic violence bill, the domestic abuse bill that you're championing at the moment.

But I want to take a broader sweep, if I may.

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