28 days passes
Aye: 323
No: 290
Passed by 33 votes.
That’s still a long time but I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies. As I’ve said before - your yearly holiday entitlement might just cover it. Dark-skinned men with beards should cancel that fortnight in Lanzarotte now.
Posted on November 9th, 2005 at 5:13 pm
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Can anyone explain to me the Commons procedural issues that lead to a vote being taken on 28 days, but not on 42 days or 60 days?
It sounds to me, sitting four thousand miles away, as if there was another of these problems like the one we had with House of Lords reform, where MPs have to vote tactically on different amendments rather than getting to decide which option was most popular. I’m wondering if we need some possibly straightforward procedural reform to allow the Commons to be able to make choices where there is a spectrum of possiblities, as in this case.
Owen
Owen, essentially they vote on the proposal, and any amendments tot he proposal. In this case, Winnick proposed 28, and no one put forward an amendment between the two.
They do have systems to allow for multiple option votes, but they’re complicated so they don’t use them often; let me know if you want me to write up a full summary, I think I’ve got the texts on it somewhere.
28 days is too long, long enough for a zombie plague to wipe out London for a start, but it’s a damn site better than 90. Here’s hoping the Lords brings it back down to 14 and we can have a nice knockabout delay.
Matt
Thanks. I’m not advocating something longer than 28 days: I’m just interested in whether the Commons voted as it did because that was what it wanted, or because that was how the procedural technicalities panned out.
Why were there no intermediate options? What happened to Janet Anderson’s 60 day amendment?
Owen