I promised to take another look at the whole process that is commonly referred to as ‘parliamentary ping-pong’, when we came to the final exchanges before the long summer recess.

On Monday, the Lords were examining two major Bills, which could have resulted in further shuttling up and down the corridor between the two Houses.  First, we were presented with a much revised package to try to prevent multi-millionaire tax exiles from buying up political parties, or individual parliamentary seats.  This had been produced by Ministers after reluctantly accepting a previous defeat in our House.  The original amendment to the Political Parties and Elections Bill was tabled by a Labour backbencher, Lord Campbell-Savours, along with Liberal Democrats.  After initially resisting this reform, Jack Straw and his colleagues in the Commons accepted that it was both desirable and workable.

So when the new package arrived yesterday, I gave it warm support, only expressing concern that it should be both fool-proof and should not provide new loop-holes.  The Conservative spokesman, Lord Bates, spent half an hour trying to undermine these reforms.  Had he been successful, pressing the matter to a vote, then the whole Bill would have had to go back again to the Commons.  However, nobody else supported him and the reform went through unscathed.  So no ping-pong there.

Then we came to the very controversial Parliamentary Standards Bill, the Government’s attempt to clean up the process by which MPs claim their allowances.  Despite hours of complaint and concern that the Bill was being rushed through, with major changes along the way, we had a very curious episode at the bitter end.  In the Commons, the Conservatives spokespersons argued strongly for a ‘sunset clause’, so that the legislation could be properly reviewed after a set period, bearing in mind its speedy preparation and passage, and the very important issues that it raised.  We persuaded the Leader of the House of Lords to insert a limited procedure for reviedw and renewal, but this was still inadequate; in particular, it would face MPs and Peers with a ludicrous choice between full acceptance and complete rejection.  Anxieties about this were echoed again last week by a number of speakers in the Lords, notably Lord Strathclyde, the Conservative Leader.

So I confidently proposed an amendment late in the debate last night to modify the Government’s proposed shortcut review to make it more thorough, in the form of a new sunset clause.  To my amazement, the Conservatives backed off.  Whether this was because they wanted to go home (or many had already done so) or because they didn’t want to rock the boat, was completely unclear.  Most abstained, but some even voted for the Government.  Anyway, the result was that there was no major issue to send back to the Commons.  So no ping-pong there either.

All in all, I am afraid that I have no useful lessons on this curious procedure to report.  Perhaps we’ll have some better examples at the end of the current parliamentary year when everything has to be sorted before the Queen comes again for the State Opening on November 18th.