Parliament ended a few weeks ago for the general election campaign; an epilogue is, I feel, merited.
Of the 17 Bills that were covered in the weeks of operation of this blog, 16 of them made no further progress and now exist only as bits of history in the Parliamentary archives. The remaining bill, the European Union (Amendment) Bill, progressed through the Lords and eventually received Royal Assent, as you are probably aware.
The draft Constitutional Reform Bill went before Parliament the next year as the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill; in the “wash-up”, the period just before Parliament is suspended for an election and Bills have to be quickly dealt with, most of the radical provisions - including those on reform of the voting system, House of Lords reform, and the right to protest outside Parliament – were removed at the behest of the House of Lords. The thus abridged Bill recieved Royal Assent on the 8th of April 2010.
To paraphrase Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield) for the final word: “If the [reader] is disappointed, that is just tough.”
