WHILE YOU WERE WATCHING THEM MOO
What Parliament Actually Did This Week
Think MPs just moo at each other all day?
Apparently not.
Stuff does get done - just not usually as performance art for the cameras.
So while everyone else was watching the political theatre, we went looking at what Parliament actually did.
Here’s what you might have missed.
THE IMPORTANT STUFF
The Government listened. Now it needs to find another 6,000 magistrates.
Something unusual happened in Parliament this week. The Government listened to criticism of proposed legislation and actually announced it would change those plans.
I know, right?! Steady yourselves.
The Courts and Tribunals Bill is intended to tackle some of the serious issues in the criminal justice system, including an enormous backlog of cases awaiting trial. One controversial proposal would have seen the introduction of judge-only trials, doing away with the traditional jury of peers in certain cases. The Justice Committee felt that the Government hadn’t adequately proven how much time this would actually save. Following parliamentary scrutiny and wider criticism, ministers have now announced their intention to remove those provisions.
A victory for scrutiny, then!
Except there’s one other small problem. The Government wants to increase the number of magistrates from approximately 15,000 in 2025 to 21,000 by 2028-29.
That’s a 40% increase.
The Justice Committee thinks that target is unrealistic, citing persistent recruitment and retention problems and a shortage of qualified legal advisers.
The Ministry of Justice disagrees. It says recruitment is accelerating and that it is on track.
But the committee has another concern: legal aid. If more criminal cases appear before magistrates, will more defendants end up representing themselves because they can’t afford a solicitor?
The Government says that most defendants charged with offences that could be tried in either court will still remain eligible for legal aid. But MPs still want clearer answers on the financial thresholds.
The question is no longer simply whether the Government will listen. It’s whether the justice system has the people, money and infrastructure to deliver what remains of the reforms.
Moo’s verdict: Parliamentary scrutiny has changed a proposed law. That’s precisely what scrutiny is supposed to do. Now comes the slightly less glamorous business of making the rest of it work.
Source: Justice Committee, 8 October 2026
Awaab’s Law: protections could finally reach private renters
In December 2020, two-year-old Awaab Ishak died following prolonged exposure to dangerous damp and mould in his family’s home. His death helped bring about Awaab’s Law, which places legal duties on social landlords to investigate and address specified housing hazards within set timescales.
But what about private tenants? What about families living in temporary accommodation? What about young people leaving care, or people living in supported accommodation?
This week, the Government opened a consultation on extending the protections to private rented properties and certain types of accommodation occupied under licence. These proposals could bring protection to millions more families.
There are important details still to settle, including which hazards should be covered, how quickly landlords must act and how the requirements should be enforced.
And enforcement is rather important. A law requiring landlords to fix dangerous conditions is only useful if tenants can actually get something done in cases where a landlord doesn’t comply.
Local authorities are already responsible for enforcing a considerable amount of housing legislation, and their capacity varies.
The Government is consulting until 18 December 2026.
Nothing has changed for private tenants overnight. The legal powers exist to extend the protections, but the detailed requirements still need to be settled and implemented.
Moo’s verdict: One of the week’s most consequential developments, and probably one of the least theatrical.
Sources: Government consultation | Read the proposals and respond
MEANWHILE, IN COMMITTEE ROOM 6…
The dog, the flea treatment and the river
Now, here’s something you probably weren’t expecting to find in a parliamentary newsletter.
Flea treatments.
Specifically, whether the chemicals used to protect pets from parasites are also ending up in our rivers.
The House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee has been investigating the environmental effects of veterinary parasite medications.
Many popular flea and tick treatments contain insecticides. They’re intended to kill parasites, but some of those chemicals can also affect other insects and invertebrates in the wider environment. The concern is that residues may enter waterways when treated animals swim, are washed or shed hair (or fur, or fleece, or other bodily material).
The committee’s report, wonderfully titled Paws for Concern: Pets, Parasites and Pollution, recommended stronger precautions. Among them was extending advice about bathing and swimming after certain spot-on treatments from four days to 28 days.
The Government has now responded.
It acknowledges that contamination is a concern, but says the available evidence does not justify imposing a universal 28-day restriction.
So we have a disagreement about how precautionary the advice should be.
There was also another very interesting question lurking in the paperwork: are we treating pets for parasites because they actually need treatment, or simply because the next dose has arrived in the post?
The committee examined the role of subscription-based treatment plans and whether routine preventative dosing encourages unnecessary use. That matters because reducing unnecessary treatment could potentially reduce environmental exposure without leaving animals unprotected.
Of course, parasites are a real concern. Fleas and ticks cause real problems and aren’t always discriminating in their choice of meal source! Decisions about treatment should be based on the individual animal and its risks. So the question is whether the current approach always strikes the right balance.
It’s a rather good example of what parliamentary committees do when the cameras aren’t looking. They take an apparently mundane subject, examine the evidence, question the regulators and force the Government to explain its position.
And occasionally the resulting paperwork concerns whether your Labrador should be allowed in the river.
Moo’s verdict: A genuinely interesting environmental question disguised as a discussion about dog shampoo.
Sources: Lords inquiry and Government response, 8 October 2026 | Original committee report
ANSWER THE BLOODY QUESTION
Freedom of Information. Please wait while we obtain clearance.
Freedom of information requests are supposed to allow the public to find out what public authorities are doing.
Generally, authorities are expected to reply promptly and within 20 working days, although certain circumstances can affect the deadline.
So an MP asked the Home Office a fairly straightforward question: how many proposed FOI responses were sitting within its communications and special-adviser clearance processes, and how long had they been there?
The Home Office supplied figures extracted and validated on 28 September. They included:
- 22 cases in the Communications Directorate review process that had been there for more than 40 working days.
- 53 cases within the wider special-adviser referral process that had been there for more than 40 working days.
The second figure covers a wider process, including cases at different stages. So the categories shouldn’t be added together as if they represent entirely separate piles.
The Home Office also pointed out that it received thousands of FOI requests annually and that these cases represent a relatively small proportion of its overall workload. Fair enough. But 40 working days is approximately eight working weeks. That’s a long time for a proposed response to remain within an internal review process.
The figures do not prove that political advisers deliberately obstructed requests, nor do they establish that every recorded case breached its legal deadline. They do, however, raise an obvious question about why some responses spend so long awaiting an internal review.
Question answered? Yes. With numbers, a table and some important caveats.
Question resolved? Not entirely.
Source: Home Office written answer, Question 29242, 8 October 2026
And while we’re asking questions… Where did all the gamebirds go?
MP Julie Minns asked the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs about non-native gamebirds released for shooting. Specifically, she wanted to know whether the numbers being imported and released aligned with the numbers subsequently recorded in shooting bags.
The department’s answer was rather short. It does not hold information about gamebird hunting bags.
Now, that doesn’t mean that nobody records what birds have been shot. It means the department itself does not hold the particular information needed to answer the question. Which leaves a rather interesting gap. If large numbers of non-native birds are released into the countryside, how confidently can we account for what happens to them?
Some will be shot, some will die from other causes, and some may survive. The ecological implications of these outcomes are worth understanding.
Question answered? Technically, yes.
Useful answer? Well, we’ve established what the department doesn’t know.
Sources: UK Parliament, written questions 26738 and 26737, answered 7 October 2026.
COMING DOWN THE TRACK
The AI companies are coming to Parliament
The Commons is preparing to question major AI developers about the risks associated with increasingly powerful systems. Written evidence has already been submitted and the next oral evidence session is scheduled for 13 October.
The interesting questions concern how companies assess risks, what safeguards they put in place and whether voluntary commitments are enough.
And, crucially, who gets to decide whether a system is safe?
The company developing it?
An independent regulator?
The Government?
Or some combination of the three?
This is one we’ll revisit once MPs have actually questioned the witnesses. Because written evidence is one thing. Having to explain it to a committee is quite another!
Sources: AI safety hearing, 13 October 2026; OpenAI written evidence (PDF); Anthropic written evidence (PDF)
The Budget is coming. Everybody has a shopping list.
The Budget is scheduled for 28 October.
Ahead of it, organisations across the country have submitted representations to the Treasury, asking for changes to taxes, spending and other policies.
The House of Commons Library has assembled a reading list of publicly available submissions.
Interestingly, the Treasury doesn’t routinely publish one comprehensive collection of all the representations it receives.
The Library’s list is therefore useful, but not necessarily complete.
It’s a reminder that Budget decisions don’t emerge from nowhere. Long before the Chancellor stands at the despatch box, organisations have been arguing their cases behind the scenes and in public.
We may return to some of those requests after the Budget to see who got what they asked for.
Source: House of Commons Library - Budget 2026 representations: Reading list, 8 October 2026
THEY VOTED ON WHAT?
Nothing.
Again.
Parliament has been in conference recess, so there are no new Commons divisions to report.
The MPs will be back shortly.
Presumably refreshed, energised, and ready to resume mooing at each other.
MOO OF THE WEEK
FOUR DAYS OR 28? THE DOG IS NOT CONSULTED.
This week’s award goes to the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee.
Because somewhere in the machinery of British democracy, an entirely serious parliamentary investigation has produced a disagreement about how long a dog should stay out of the water after receiving flea treatment.
Four days?
28?
The answer involves insecticides, environmental monitoring, veterinary prescribing, subscription business models and the health of aquatic ecosystems.
The committee thinks stronger precautions are warranted. The Government says the evidence is insufficient to justify a universal 28-day restriction. Both positions are now recorded in parliamentary documents, available for anybody to read.
And that is precisely why Moo exists. While everyone else was watching the political theatre, Parliament was investigating whether the family dog might be inadvertently poisoning the local river.
Moo.
While You Were Watching Them Moo is an irreverent look at what the UK Parliament actually does when the cameras are pointing elsewhere.
The jokes are ours. The facts come from published parliamentary and official sources, linked throughout.
No party gets special treatment. If it’s consequential, peculiar, revealing or buried in a parliamentary PDF, it’s fair game.
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