122 days to go until the Election and we’ll be at work for just 49

FOR the past two weeks or so, barely a mouse has stirred in the Palace of Westminster.

Apart from the traditional New Year’s Eve party on the Commons’ Terrace, the grand old building has been silent. Which is how it should be. Even MPs and peers like to celebrate Christmas with their families, away from the normal Punch and Judy knockabout of Westminster politics – especially with a General Election looming.

But with the Commons back to work tomorrow, you’d expect that there would be hardly so much as a day off between now and that appointment with the voters on May 7.

After all, we’ve just had two weeks off to recharge the batteries.

Surely now it’ll be full steam ahead, the place fizzing as David Cameron strains every sinew on every available day to get vital legislation through before Parliament breaks for the Election. How wrong you’d be. A glance at the official parliamentary calendar, set by the Coalition parties, reveals that there will, in fact, be many more days when the Commons is as quiet as Christmas – only this time without any justification.

With 122 days to go before polling day, MPs are scheduled to be sat on the famous Commons’ green benches for way under half that: a grand total of 49 days.

In practice, it’ll be even fewer after the inevitable extra breaks are added in at the last minute.

Why? Because the Tory/Liberal Democrat Coalition ran out of ideas months ago.

The paltry number of sitting days actually tells only half the story.

Even when MPs are physically at Westminster, there is precious little to do – aside from the work of backbench MPs or motions put forward by the Labour opposition. Official parliamentary records show that in the year or so up to June 2014, we had the lowest number of Government Bills since 1950.

Since last summer, there’ve been even fewer signs of activity from the Government benches – so few that Tory Chief Whip Michael Gove recently told his MPs not to bother coming in on Thursdays in future.

Take those out, and the Fridays they inevitably take off as well, and it won’t be 49 Commons’ days left for many Tories but 33 at best before Parliament is dissolved at the end of March.

Ministers may dismiss these criticisms as just partisan point-scoring from a Labour MP against a Tory-led government.

They’d be wrong. Even many Conservatives are privately embarrassed at how little they have to do at Westminster.

There are major national and global challenges that the Government should be addressing – assisted and enabled by parliamentary scrutiny.

Yes, there’s an Election coming and MPs of all colours will be itching to get out there campaigning.

But I, like so many of my fellow MPs, want to be part of an active, vibrant democratic process not a Zombie Parliament that just goes through the motions of being the cockpit of the nation.