Overpaid and underworked

I have blogged more than once on the reduction in working load on MPs at Westminster, pointing to the rubber stamping of the 85% of laws heaped upon us by Brussels, and the devolution of powers and responsibilities to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Yesterday on his blog, John Redwood added a further reduction on loading. This is the vastly reduced debating time given to many government bills, which are "timetabled", that is with limited time for perusal and debate in the House of Commons.

John Redwood has unearthed the following figures:

Between 1947 and 1997 ( that is 50 years) there were 136 such timetabled bills, or an average of under three each year.

Between 1997 and 2007 (that is 10 years) there were 438 such bills, or an average of 44 per year.

Thus the executive have indeed been busy, some would say too busy, in an unending stream of legislation which has passed on to the Statute Book, often ill-digested and badly in need of tidying. Parliament, on the other hand hand, has increasingly been given insufficient time to debate and iron-out some of the anomalies and inconsistencies.

The result is that all the Brussels laws imposed on us and the domestic laws which have been limited in consideration time, have left all opposition MPs and many government MPs, little more than rubber stampers.

As far as Westminster duties are concerned, our MPs are becoming part-time workers.