Speedy legislating
A remarkable parliamentary event happened today. Twice.
First, the Conservative MP Anthony Steen's zoomed through all its Commons stages in two and a half hours flat....completing its committee stage, report and third reading in something under 20 minutes.
In that time he gave a shattering speech on the evils of the "modern slave trade" that, he said, now trades in more people per year than the African slave trade did at its peak.
At one point, Deputy Speaker Sir Alan Hazelhurst commented that he had "stunned" the Commons with the stories and statistics he gave MPs.
For example, the current street value of a 15-year-old girl "so long as she's a virgin" is between Β£8,000 and Β£12,000. The price plunges for women over 30. There are at least 5,000 women trafficked in the UK per year.
He described how a Czech woman who thought she was going to work in a hotel, arrived in his constituency and found herself forced into prostitution in a brothel in Paignton. She escaped and only evaded her pursuers by running into a nightclub at 4am, grabbing hold of the rails around the bar and refusing to let go until the police were called.
Then there was the case of "Gabrielle", kidnapped at 14 and forced into prostitution in Italy. She had a child along the way. The friend with whom she was kidnapped died. Her attempts to escape were punished by having a tooth ripped out with pliers and with the threat that next time the gang controlling her would hang her...
She now hides in a flat, close to suicide because she dare not return to her home in Moldova and see her child, because she fears the traffickers would kill her.
His short, sharp bill, which doesn't involve spending any public money, now stands a reasonable chance of becoming law.
The Commons then repeated the trick - whizzing the Labour MP Andrew Dismore's through the House at a breathless pace.
He is seeking to allow people suffering from pleural plaques - lung damage caused by exposure to asbestos, which can be a precursor to cancer - to claim damages. At the moment legal complexities prevent it.
Mr Dismore, a former personal injuries lawyer, has made umpteen attempts to get this bill through - most recently in the last parliamentary year, when it ran out of time in the Lords. The fact that the Commons had so recently passed an identical bill helped his cause, and the bill cleared the Commons in an hour and 20 minutes - including two minutes of "detailed scrutiny" at Committee Stage. An identical bill received a second reading in the Lords on Friday, as well.
And as Commons time ran out at 2.30pm, the indefatigable Mr Dismore, a master of Commons procedure, was gamely moving yet another bill on a related issue - employers' liability insurance.
Speed legislating indeed.
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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