When Lord Goodlad’s committee on working practices in the House suggested we should normally sit at 2.00pm rather than 2.30pm I had thought it rather non-contentious. Turns out not! Quite a lot of murmurings from the back-benches about rushing lunch guests through lunch, as if they couldn’t start their entertaining half an hour earlier. And most people just grab a sarnie and eat it at their desks or in one of the various bars/cafes although Quentin Letts has a different scenario figured out in the Daily Mail at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2002404/Peers-puddings-SOS-for.html. I suspect that even this minor shift of timetable will prove too much for the House.

So what hope for those of us who think parliament should sit normal working hours (that’s 9 to 5 or 6 in my book)? I still can’t understand why it’s necessary to sit in the evenings. Far more people would participate in debates and votes if the hours were civilised and peers might even get out to the cinema or even stay at home for a nice dinner in with their spouse! I suspect the real reason is that most MPs and peers who live away from their families during the week would prefer to have their evenings occupied with parliament than fill in the evening hours elsewhere; Westminster is a cosy enough club. The afternoon start allows peers with other jobs to work elsewhere in the morning, including Ministers, who work in their departments in the morning and then lead the maddest of lives in parliament all afternoon and evening. But the hours create a false sort of pressured timetable that implies the matters we are discussing are urgent, and they almost never are. Of course there are urgent foreign affairs issues, natural disasters and cataclysms that need time for urgent debate but most of the business is not like that. Reforming education, welfare and the health service are best considered in the cold light of day.