Specific and Limited Chaos

Inside Briefing with the Institute for Government

Institute for Government

News, Politics, Government

4.6 • 252 Ratings

🗓️ 11 September 2020

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As Boris Johnson attempts to feed the Withdrawal Bill into a shredder marked “Internal Market Bill”, what does it mean for the rule of law, civil servants and the devolved nations when a government tries to abrogate international law? And as a new IfG report shows the Government’s plans to reach zero carbon by 2050 are way off track, what does it need to do to meet this ambitious target – and what will it cost? “I can’t see any way this gets through the Lords in its current form.” – Alex Thomas “The nature of the law is, you don’t get to choose when to follow it – because it’s the law.” – Raphael Hogarth “Some of the rationale for this is reasonable and some of it is Mad Max chaos and destruction.” – Alex Thomas Presented by Bronwen Maddox with Maddy Thimont-Jack, Alex Thomas and Raphael Hogarth. Audio production by Alex Rees See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Winside Briefing, the podcast from the Institute for Government. I'm Bronwyn Maddox.
0:16.8	The government has said it's willing to break international law. Its most senior lawyer has quit.
0:22.0	Its latest piece of Brexit legislation brings some real strains to the very existence of the United Kingdom.
0:29.0	Here to cut through the noise, and there really has been a lot of it, is a podcast line-up which hasn't known a week like this since, well, the last one.
0:35.8	Alex Thomas, who heads our civil service work, is joining us.
0:38.5	Hi, Alec.
0:39.5	Hi, Bronwyn.
0:40.6	Hello, Raphael Hogarth.
0:43.1	Hi, Raphael.
0:44.1	Hello.
0:45.1	And senior researcher Maddie Timot-Jack, who leads our Brexit work.
0:48.3	Hi, Maddie.
0:49.1	Hello, Bronwyn.
0:50.1	Well, joining me to discuss what the government's up to and where all this goes next. And as if the government didn't have enough to be getting on with, the threat of climate change is not going away.
0:58.4	Ministers have set themselves a very ambitious net zero carbon target, but a new report we've put out this week says reaching it is a harder challenge than getting Brexit done or tackling the COVID-19 crisis.
1:10.3	And we warn that the government is way off course.
1:13.0	We're going to speak to one of the authors about what the government needs to do now to get back on track.
1:18.5	So let's call on today's podcast with a name that even our erudite listeners might not have been concentrating on at the beginning of the week.
1:24.7	Jonathan Jones, he's the permanent secretary at the government legal department, for now at least. On Tuesday, he became the eighth permanent secretary this year
1:32.8	to announce a departure from the government. Alex, tell us what his job was. So he is the
1:39.9	treasury solicitor and head of the government legal department. So that means that he's got a whole
1:45.9	variety of functions, but sort of chief among those are to be the boss of all of the government lawyers
	...

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