Clear the Lobby: What Laws are MPs voting on this week? W/C 26th April

Welcome to our weekly feature courtesy of Sebastian Salek, the brains behind Clear the Lobby, working to bring you all the laws MPs are voting on this week, and explained in plain English!

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Hey team.

This is probably the last week of the parliamentary year.

This usually happens every spring, and divides the government’s term in office into five sessions of roughly one year each.

There’ll be a short recess before the State Opening of Parliament on 11 May. It’s a big ceremonial event where the Queen comes to Westminster and delivers a speech outlining the government’s priorities for the next session.

You can read more about the event here, though obviously this time it’ll be scaled back because of the pandemic.

This week’s agenda has a feeling of tying up loose ends.

MPs face a raft of bills that the Lords have amended.

They include the Domestic Abuse Bill, where one issue is whether to have a “stalker’s register” of serial domestic abuse and stalking perpetrators.

Time is also built in later in the week for any extra consideration of Lords amendments. Remember, most unpassed bills get dropped at the end of a parliamentary session.

There are also a series of motions to approve throughout the week.

They include updating the list of high-risk countries for which financial services companies need to apply a higher standard of due diligence, and introducing the new system of quarantines and testing for incoming travellers.

Until next week. In the meantime, feel free to tweet me, or just reply to this email.

Sebastian (@sebastiansalek)