Tangled web
The mammoth is the gift that keeps on giving. It covers all kinds of different and controversial subjects, and has already been massively amended by the Lords.
My spies tell me it's now in a terrible procedural tangle, after their Lordships defeated the government over the issue of secret inquests in sensitive cases where, for example, there might be national security implications.
Somehow the House failed to pass what are known in the trade as the "consequential amendments". The result? The bill still contains clauses referring back to a section of it that has been removed. It's a mess.
What next?
And apparently it can't be resolved by passing the necessary tidying-up amendments at Third Reading - the House officials say that would be out of order. So the only alternative is to sort things out in the process of "ping-pong," where changes made in the Lords are cleared (or not) with the Commons.
And that could be tricky, because "ping-pong" amendments are only supposed to relate to matters of disagreement between the two houses.
So not only will the parties be playing their usual games of legislative brinkmanship, in the run-up to , the end of the parliamentary year, but they'll also be walking a precarious procedural tightrope.
Should be fun.
I'm Mark D'Arcy and I'll be writing about what goes on in the chambers and committee rooms at Westminster.
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