Currently, Parliament does not meet for a long enough period of the year. Far too much of its time is spent with MPs effectively being “on holiday”. Of course, much of this “holiday” is nothing of the sort – the majority of MPs will be busy doing work in their constituency instead.

It does look really rather poor the amount of time they spend away from Parliament at the moment. They had a 24 day break for Christmas 2009 and currently take a 12-week summer break. 3 whole months! That’s a quarter of the year in one go.

Parliament should meet at lot more. And MPs simply deciding “oh, go on then, we’ll sit in September” is not good enough. There needs to a full and substantial change in Parliament’s meeting culture. It needs to meet more often, scrutinise the government deeper and more effectively, and give the people confidence that they are actually doing their jobs.

Why not make the standard being that Parliament is in session whenever the schools are in? That still gives them 12 weeks a year “holiday”. Which should be enough for them to work their their constituency (since they don’t have to be in the Chamber all day every day) and have personal time to go on holiday. Certainly it’s more than most of us get.