COMMONS ‘HIGH JINKS’ ARE HERE TO STAY...THANKS TO THE SNP

ANY hopes among MPs that the grandstanding stunts and blockading tactics that brought mayhem to the Commons during the last parliament had gone away were dispelled this week.

OnTuesday, SNP MPs staged a noisy protest against their exclusion from a vote about NHS funding in England. Under the “English votes for English laws” rules, Nicola Sturgeon’s Westminster cohort was sidelined from the decision.They reacted to the ban by posing with placards in a division lobby and repeatedly intervening in the debate to complain about the alleged unfairness even though MPs from the rest of the UK are similarly excluded from decisions taken in the Scottish Parliament.

Senior MPs suspect the outbreak of parliamentary guerrilla warfare is an early taste of far more disruptive behaviour to come.With

Ms Sturgeon intensifying her demand for a second referendum on Scottish independence in the run-up to elections for the Edinburgh assembly in May, her party’s 56 MPs are understood to be readying a campaign to bring maximum chaos to parliamentary proceedings at Westminster to press their case.

Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle is understood to be aware their expected high jinks will be an early test of his authority in the chair.

Since taking over the role, Sir Lindsay has signalled his desire to maintain order in the chamber through good humour and a spirit of co-operation rather than the hectoring of his predecessor John Bercow.

The SNP mischief-makers are likely to stretch his patience, and that of the rest of the chamber, to the limit.

LORD Naseby has tabled a parliamentary written answer to raise an issue of vital importance to members of the upper house. The Tory peer demanded to know what consideration the Lords deputy speaker had given “to the re-introduction of hot toasted sandwiches in the House of Lord’s Bishop’s Bar?”