The idea that Parliament is a conventional working environment for MPs and Peers is of course completely ridiculous. Whilst some of them work very hard on behalf of their constituents or the nation as a whole, others use this role to further their careers or strengthen the political party that ensures they get elected (or appointed). The real hard workers are not the 650MPs and 800 Peers but the 3000 or so people who keep the estate and the administration going whether the MPs and Lords are sitting or not. On top of this is the challenge to keep the various buildings operating with some degree of consistency. It is well known that the Houses of Parliament are in desperate need of major repairs and the Summer period will act as a time when a huge amount of work is scheduled to be carried out, that if disrupted will cost the nation large sums of money and place the facilities team in a very difficult position. When MPs are not sitting in the House, those who are committed to their constituents will be working hard in the constituency and the rest will use the time to relax, to plot their next political moves and in some cases to earn some extra money.

Releasing Parliament a few days early when there is a huge amount of work for it to do over Brexit along with many other priorities seems at best a bit strange and is more likely hiding something deeply concerning. Of course in order to finish their work at Westminster early means that the House will have to vote for it. This in itself is an odd form of behaviour, after all inviting workers to vote to go home early wouldn’t happen in any other setting. If one was to try to translate this sort of proposal into a parallel that the rest of society would understand if  you suddenly decide to send people home early from work, there are two possible reasons. The first is that their own health or behaviour is so damaged that they are failing to achieve anything positive or may simply collapse at the office. Perhaps they are suspected of stealing items from work? However in these cases the idea that the person would choose to go home early is inconceivable. The alternative is either the work that was scheduled has all been completed early and rather than pay people to sit around waiting for the next set of materials to arrive, they may as well be rewarded for working so hard, or else the company is heading for collapse and you are sending them home so that they will receive their P45 while the business premises are being stripped out and new owners are moving in. Asking people to vote to go home because they have done well and the work is completed early may not be necessary in most places, but could certainly occur in a setting where the employer took the workers views into account. Asking them to vote to go home because the business has just been sold is hardly likely to occur, particularly if there is a lot of work to continue. Of course if orders have dried up then perhaps the going home early option will assist most of the people to work out what is happening and enable them to apply for new jobs. However it is improbable that the Government intends to close Parliament permanently, and it is clear that there is an incredible amount of work to do, so perhaps the reason why the Government wants to end Parliament early is so they can carry on working without any scrutiny or challenge. After all that is what Parliament is supposed to do.

So any MP who votes to go home early will need to explain why they have done so or else it will be assumed that they are partially responsible for any of the problems that emerge over the Summer! It seems hard to offer an alternative and to carry on working for longer periods would potentially be a huge challenge, however one option is to refuse to let MPs leave Westminster until a credible and widely supported set of proposals are agreed. Clearly that could take several decades at the current rate of progress, although we are due to leave the EU by next March!