Alexandra Meakin

POV: you’ve been hiding under the Palace of Westminster for hundreds of years.

See what we uncovered during recent surveys of the Palace as we prepare for its restoration.

Matt Chorley - Do It Yourself - BBC Sounds The government's new asylum strategy, Americast and will parliament ever get renovated?

📻Dr Alexandra Meakin (@ameakin.bsky.social) told BBC Radio’s Matt Chorley that delaying essential repairs to the Palace of Westminster risks safety, pressing for urgent action despite rising costs.

Clip begins at 51:10

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

A photo of Barbara Castle outside of the House of Parliament- copyright belongs to the Parliamentary Archives.

This week is Road Safety Week & a chance to talk about Barbara Castle!

Barbara was Transport Minister for three years yet she was able to introduce the Breathalyzer, a proper integrated transport strategy & more!

This was done despite fierce opposition.

📸 Photo from the Parliamentary Achieve

Assessing the House of Commons Backbench Business Committee 15 years on Unit Director Meg Russell and Hannah Kelly argue changes are needed to get back to the Wright Committee’s vision of it helping facilitate a more responsive and independent House of Commons. 

NEW BLOG: Assessing the House of Commons Backbench Business Committee 15 years on

Unit Director Meg Russell and Hannah Kelly argue changes are needed to get back to the Wright Committee’s vision of it helping facilitate a more responsive and independent House of Commons.

Westminster marks 10 years of e-petitions with keynote by Professor Leston-Bandeira Professor Leston-Bandeira gives keynote speech in Westminster on the 10th anniversary of e-petitions to Parliament.

📰 Westminster marks 10 years of e-petitions with keynote by Professor Leston-Bandeira

🔗 Read more here: essl.leeds.ac.uk/politics/new...

A reminder that @randr-answers.bsky.social posts ever time the Restoration and Renewal Client Board provide a written answer to a parliamentary question.

It is not a noisy account.

So depressing. Scared to take a decision because of the sums involved, when it’s costing £1.56m a week in maintenance? It was clear years ago that a full decant would be quickest, cheapest & easiest way to do the urgent necessary work to this much-loved building. Some just don’t want to move out

Imagining @ameakin.bsky.social being lead into a TV studio at the age of 80, muttering Jesus wept lads, and heading to the pub

"I'm sure another options appraisal/review/board meeting is definitely necessary" as the building starts smouldering...

Final decision on fate of crumbling UK parliament delayed to 2030s It’s a fire-hazard that’s prone to tumbling masonry — but fear of a public backlash is again delaying repairs to the world famous building.

As always the brilliant @estwebber.bsky.social is on top of the latest R&R delays - my lack of surprise is set out in the article... www.politico.eu/article/fina...

Quite literally peak House of Lords

Appointment: 11 November 2025 The King has been pleased to approve the following appointment.

The King has been pleased to approve the appointment of Dr Alan Whitehead CBE as Minister of State in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

Alan did the shadow ministerial portfolio for 8 years before the election!

This is brilliant news! Congratulations @ckskm.bsky.social - what a fantastic first female Clerk of the Parliaments!

I think its now got to be the case that respectable people should just refuse to appear on panels with Goodwin, even if that means cancelling on the BBC at short notice.

👋 Come and join my team! I’m looking for a new Caseworker and Constituency Support Assistant, to be based at my constituency office in Reading.

If you’re interested, check out the full job description on my website: yuanyangmp.org/vacancies/

rain in October in London

The utterly beautiful red white and blue Parliamentary Christmas jumper with Santa's sleigh flying above the Palace of Westminster

Thanks to @ringwiss.bsky.social for the heads up that this year's Parliament Christmas jumper is an absolute stunner 😍 www.shop.parliament.uk/products/big...

📣 We are very excited for this year’s @psa-parliaments.bsky.social annual conference taking place at the University of York!

📝 More details and registration:

psaparliaments.org/annual-confe...

Ruth Fox: Yeah and just going back to that question of the state of the public finances, I'm gonna speculate that one decision that will not be made probably by Parliament, before Christmas, but really ought to be is the future of the restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster. Again, another theme that we keep revisiting. We have been told in statement after statement that a vote will be held on the future of the restoration and renewal program, and whether or not MPs and peers are going to leave the Palace of Westminster to enable the refurbishment work to take place over a number of years or not, or whether there'll be a partial decant, the Lords will move out and the Commons will move into the Lords. So a number of different scenarios are in play. We are promised that there will be a report and a vote by the end of this year. But given that the leader of the House of [00:37:00] Commons and a key figure on the restoration and renewal governance side has recently changed, of course, once Lucy Powell was removed from cabinet and replaced by the then Chief Whip Officer Alan Campbell. I do rather think that, that again could be kicked into the long grass a bit further. Mark D'Arcy: It's one of these things where they keep promising there'll be a debate in due course and a report in due course, and then it doesn't appear and it's just kicked, as you say, further and further into the long grass. And in the meantime, the Palace of Westminster is essentially being held together with spit and sawdust and running repairs. And there's a risk of fire or some structural collapse and bits of gargoyle falling on people, sewers, whatever it might be, breaking, the sewers bubbling up. I would say that that turns the place into a living metaphor and all sorts of disasters could befall it. And of course, when you have the state opening of Parliament, just imagine what would happen if the lights went out in the middle of that, leaving His Majesty stranded in darkness as …

Love an R&R shout out on the @hansardsociety.bsky.social Parliament Matters pod - and completely agree with @ruthfox.bsky.social & @darcyxtip.bsky.social about the prospect of getting the promised vote before the end of 2025. Listen/transcript www.hansardsociety.org.uk/news/parliam... #WestminsterRR

And yet a reasonable chance that those 24 years will prove to have been faster than the current restoration and renewal process

Four years ago today, we lost Sir David Amess — a dedicated MP and a kind, generous man.

There can be no place for violence or hatred in our democracy.

We remember his service, his warmth, and his commitment to others. 💙

#SirDavidAmess #PublicService #NoPlaceForViolence

The History of Parliament team were very sad to hear of the recent death of Professor Michael Rush.

A pioneering scholar of parliament, Professor Rush's work on the social background of MPs and resulting Database stands as a fundamental source for generations of historians and political scientists.

Michael Rush and the Database - The History of Parliament We were sad to hear recently of the death of Professor Michael Rush of the University of Exeter. Michael was a pioneering and indefatigable scholar of

Michael Rush and the Database historyofparliament.com/2025/10/15/m...

If we can’t even talk in general terms about MPs’ workload- which MPs of all parties agree is v casework- heavy and getting heavier- without a lot of responses being to assume that MPs are not telling the truth/just whinging/ working on the wrong things etc- then I think we’re in a bad place

SHOCK POLL: NIGEL FARAGE WILL BE PM TOMORROW IN an amazing poll conducted by The Pointless Polling Company, it was revealed that voters' intentions may well change over the next three and a half years and at present it's 100 percent impossible to guess what the next government might look like. However, 99 percent of journalists agree that it would be much more fun if we had an election tomorrow and everybody resigned and everything was chaos and Farage had a go at being PM, just for the hell of it, because it was so much fun when Brexit happened and then the government kept falling every five minutes and we could write endless pieces about (cont. p94)

Private Eye offers up an excellently scornful commentary on the relentless polling. It’s become ridiculous and has oversimplified our politics to dangerous levels of stupid and irresponsible.

Really interesting- and, I think, welcome- to see MPs sharing this kind of data about casework.

Casework is largely invisible (other than to the constituents it helps!) compared to what MPs do in the Commons chamber but is a huge part of MPs’ workload, and it’s really hard to get robust data on it

Thousands more university jobs cut as financial crisis deepens University workers will vote on national strike action this month over a 1.4% pay offer made in the summer.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Text box stating: 61k pieces of maintenance work completed

I feel it says quite a lot that this was a stat contained in the House of Commons' 2024/25 annual report 'year at a glance' section.

(Worth saying that the election meant that some additional maintenance work could take place but that is still... a lot of maintenance work)

Yep, but it's a brilliant way to show how the building was absolutely not designed as a legislature! And @satisfactory20.bsky.social's insights are always worth sharing 🙌