IT’S now the three-month break when the government doesn’t have to answer questions in Parliament, or even from journalists who criticise the long holidays then take them anyway.

The Lords had been due to approve Gordon Prentice’s new law to stop people who don’t pay taxes in this country from funding political parties.

Lord Ashcroft may or may not come clean about where he does pay his taxes, and it won't stop him pouring money into seats like Pendle in order (in Mr Prentice’s words) to ‘buy the election’.

But it’s important stuff and you can read what it’s all about on the gordonprenticemp website, which surprisingly is full of all the Tory leaflets we’ve had delivered by the Royal Mail over the past year.

You can even read some of the things I said about it all in the Lords. These are unusual times.

But the promised Bill to elect the House of Lords seems to have died a death yet again. The Government have adopted a few minor reforms that my Liberal colleague David Steel (Lord Steel of Aikwood nowadays) put forward in a private member’s bill.

Under them, elderly peers will be able to retire though cynics say it’s all a ruse to get Peter Mandelson back in the Commons to take over from Gordon Brown!

There will be no more curious little peers’ by-elections to ‘elect’ new hereditary peers when one of the 92 pops his or her clogs, and – heaven forbid – the House will even be able to expel members who are put in prison!

Meanwhile, in the face of massive criticism on all sides, the Government have watered down the proposal to impose an ‘independent’ standards system on MPs.

If you ask people if MPs’ ‘privilege’ should be abolished, they will vote yes. But if you ask whether MPs should no longer have the freedom to speak up freely for their constituents, most people will say no.

It’s actually the same issue, clouded by obscure and ancient language. MPs possess their ‘privilege’ so they can represent everyone else without fear or favour.

Once again the Government had not thought it through properly as they rushed to placate the modern mob in the tabloid press.