Yesterday in Parliament

The House of Lords have shown once again why we need them. They are an effective check on the government. Yesterday the fate of the corporate manslaughter bill looked like it was in jeopardy after the lords voted for the legislation to include government institutions like the prison service. The government don’t seem to want this.

The government was also defeated when peers voted to give more control over the pre-release of official figures to an independent statistics board - rather than to ministers.

Voting was 181 to 151 during debate on the statistics and registration service bill, which aims to give greater independence to the Office for National Statistics.