Wash-up over as expenses parliament sits for last time
By Ian Dunt and Alex Stevenson
The expenses parliament has sat for the last time, after the government successfully got a series of last-minute bills onto the statute book before Monday’s dissolution.
The wash-up process concluded as several highly controversial pieces of legislation received royal assent.
MPs, many of them standing down at the next election, were summoned to the Lords to hear a message from the Queen – written by the government – as she gave royal assent.
Among the MPs who will not be returning to parliament who attended in the Lords were former unionist leader Ian Paisley, Tory grandee Sir Nicholas Winterton and Labour diarist Chris Mullin.
Much of the crucial negotiations took place yesterday, the first day of wash-up, as party whips frantically negotiated behind the scenes in a bid to secure the clauses most important to the leadership.
The bills going through the House on Wednesday – with the exception of the digital economy bill – were of an altogether less controversial variety. Thursday’s bills were subject to damaging and protracted backroom battles which culminated yesterday, however.
The Tories claimed a victory on the children, schools and families bill, whole clauses of which were dropped due to Conservative opposition.
A school report card replacing the league tables with grades was a victim of backroom deals, as was a series of pupil and parent ‘guarantees’ which Tories said would impose an additional new level of bureaucracy on teachers.
The loss of Labour’s guarantee of one-to-one tuition and catch-up for every child falling behind was described as “hugely disappointing” by children’s secretary Ed Balls.
“By sabotaging our bill the Tories seem determined to deny children the extra help they need and would set back our drive to keep standards rising in every school,” he said.
“If Labour is elected children will get this support – and that’s a guarantee.”
A Conservative spokesman said elements of the bill which “posed a direct threat to the professional autonomy of heads and teachers and to the freedom of parents” had been targeted.
Measures for the compulsory registration and monitoring of home educated children, branded “draconian” by the Tories, have also been dropped.
The financial services bill, which is working its way through parliament this afternoon, was neutered as one of its biggest measures – setting up a proposed Council for Financial Stability bringing together the Bank of England, Treasury and the Financial Services Authority – had to be dropped.
And the crime and security bill was the centre of an extended war of words between home secretary Alan Johnson and shadow home secretary Chris Grayling.
Wednesday began with Mr Johnson attacking his Tory counterpart angrily for pledging to oppose sections of the bill on the DNA database.
The Crime and Security Act 2010, as it is now known, gives police powers to retain DNA information for convicted offenders indefinitely – and for them to retrospectively take DNA samples from violent and sexual offenders returning to the UK following conviction overseas.
“I will not let the Tories block the DNA clauses in the crime and security bill – it is too important to let this issue slide and I will be unrelenting in my drive to get this through,” Mr Johnson said.
Mr Grayling then suddenly emerged to say the Tories would not be opposing those clauses, because the indefinite retention of DNA had already been branded illegal by the courts. The statement caused confusion among many commentators, because the court case in questions happened months ago and is unlikely to affect current political discussion.
Hours later, Mr Johnson re-emerged to shoot back: “Chris Grayling is obviously a man with a great future behind him.
“Having been involved in a whole series of gaffes he is now so weak that he has been forced to eat his words on the crime and security bill.”
