Refreshed by their short break, MPs and peers return to the fray this week. It’s rather a slow week in the Commons with MPs seemingly easing themselves back in to work. The Commons has sent most of its significant bills on to the Lords, and will have little in the way of lawmaking to do until amended versions of those bills start being sent back for their perusal (although there are some promising-looking select committee sessions). But over in the Lords, peers are wrestling with a very big bill indeed.
Tuesday is reserved for dealing with the legal aid, sentencing and punishment of offenders bill – which has been thoroughly filleted by our peers. When David Cameron and Nick Clegg entered office in May 2010, they made an explicit commitment that their government would protect the most vulnerable. Yet they are now in danger of cutting legal aid for the young, for disabled people and for victims of domestic violence. The government has hitherto ignored the advice of an extensive range of academics, charities and legal experts, including representatives from all parties and the crossbenches in the House of Lords. All have provided evidence that the social costs of this bill will be frightening and the fiscal savings minimal or non-existent at all. The government has only avoided further defeats – it has already suffered 11 – over this bill as Liberal Democrat peers turned out in force to support the coalition’s agenda. Removing legal aid for the most vulnerable? Truly, the Liberal Democrats are taking up the moniker of the nasty party.
MPs will sink their teeth into the finance bill, the detailed measure implementing the budget. With the pre-Easter debate swirling about pasties and pensioners, not to mention income tax allowances and child benefit, the finance bill should provide quite a political dogfight. With George Osborne’s budget, and the furore surrounding the petrol panic, the government’s reputation for competence has taken a severe knock – and may never recover.
The government saw fit to release no fewer than 31 written ministerial statements at the end of the last parliamentary session. The logic was that with the Easter break imminent, nobody would bother to read the hundreds of pages of government communications all issued on a Tuesday afternoon. The statements covered everything from Afghanistan and the health and social care bill to taxis and fire extinguishers. This coalition promised the ‘most transparent government ever’ but can still seemingly pick good days to bury bad news, to coin a phrase.
For Labour the key now is to keep the pressure on the government. Conservative ministers, in particular, have made uncharacteristic mistakes in the past few weeks. They have up until now been coalition mistakes, not Labour scalps, which have heaped pressure on the incumbents. With each passing week the Labour party looks like it has truly mastered the rigours of opposition. This is not to be underestimated: it arguably took the Tories a decade to get to grips with it. Ed Miliband will have the opportunity to attack the prime minister on Wednesday afternoon, and, given the recent weeks, there is a wealth of issues to choose from. The short parliamentary session between Easter and prorogation will have to be strong from the Labour benches, for in two weeks’ time the nation votes.
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David Talbot is a political consultant, tweets @_davetalbot and writes the weekly The Week Ahead column on Progress