At the table – with Chloe Mawson

·      How do you decide what constitutes the House of Lords when you cannot all meet in person?

·      How has life changed for women in Parliament over the last 21 years?

·      What do clerks do when they’re sat at the table in the chamber?

·      How does it feel to miss out on a tour of the Washington Post with Brad Pitt?

This month we hear from Chloe Mawson on all of these questions and more.

Chloe is the Clerk Assistant, the second most senior role in the House of Lords Administration and the first woman to hold the role since the 1600s.

‘People were going through some of the most stressful periods of their life totally away from work and then having to deliver the most extreme changes that we've seen in this place for a long, long time.’

In this episode, she explains what the role of a clerk is when they are in the chamber, creating new ways of doing business during the pandemic and her hopes for lasting changes to the way we work.

‘I really hope that we can use our experience of the last 18 months to continue to allow as much flexibility as we can while of course, ensuring that we give really good services to the House and just make sure that we don't go back to a time where flexible working feels like a risk to your career progression, because certainly at times I worried about that and I hope that we're now in a new age where that's just not the case anymore.’

We also hear from Chloe about how she first came to work in Parliament and whether clerks make good quizzers.

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