by Angela Smith
After the extended Whitsun recess, the new parliamentary session gets well and truly underway this week for those of us on the red benches, with three Second Readings of new Bills, Labour-led debates on the floor of the House and the continuing scrutiny of government through the Lords daily question time and secondary legislation debates in committee.
First up of the Second Readings is the Financial Services Bill, debated later today, and attracting Labour’s many economic experts. It will be an opportunity for the minister, Lord Sassoon to once again, to wide derision from our benches, try to lay all the blame of the country’s economic woes at the door of the last government. Unless of course, he’s keeping up with current Tory thinking, which now seems to have shifted the blame onto the Eurozone.
Local Government Finance and Civil Aviation are the other Second Readings in the Lords this week, tomorrow and Wednesday respectively. Both bills will excite wider interest, but the increasingly pressured financial environment in which many of our local authorities now operate has the potential for the council funding Bill to become the most high profile piece of legislation this side of the summer. Labour are also fortunate in that not much gets past our Lords lead on the issue, Bill MacKenzie.
