FOR most, there's only one kind of bill - the nasty piece of paper that turns up in a brown window envelope with a demand for money to pay the council tax or for the gas.

For those of us in Parliament, there's two kinds. The ones we have to pay and proposed laws.

Why these two very separate ideas should have the same word, I don't know. But regularly at the start of the day's business in the Commons there's a slot for the Presentation of Bills.

Just before we packed up for the summer break in late July, there were two new Bills presented like this.

One - the Component Manslaughter Bill - aims to make it easier for the courts to convict senior managers and others in a company when there has been a terrible accident - like a rail crash or a refinery explosion - and people have been killed, through the negligence of the company concerned.

The second - the Welfare Reform Bill - aims to reform part of the social security system, in particular the system of invalidity allowances for the longer term sick and disabled.

The Presentation of a Bill is the easiest bit. No debate, over in seconds.

Then the work starts. First there's a general debate (which actually lasts about six hours) on the floor of the Commons, on the principle of the Bill.

Any MP can attend and speak if there's time. How many turn up depends on how controversial the Bill is, and particularly whether the debate splits down party lines.

If the Bill gets through the debate then normally it goes upstairs' to a committee.

This committee is known as a Standing Committee', though the last thing about it is that it either meets standing up, or that it's a permanent committee.

For each Bill there's a new committee appointed - the Ministers and their Shadows and the whips, the backbenchers from the government and opposition parties.

Time and again when constituents of mine have got wind of a Bill, they've come to see me to say they don't agree with it, or they want something added.

It's at the committee stage, when a Bill is supposed to receive its line by line examination, that representations like those by the public should be most useful. To a degree that is true.

But there has long been dissatisfaction with the Standing Committee System.

It's 20-30 MPs, in a committee room, having an adversarial go at each other; and the proceedings can degenerate into unseemly yah-boo' politics.

As Leader of House I chair an all-party Select Committee called the Modernisation Committee.

We've been looking at how we can make better laws, in particular what to do about these Committee stages.

Our consultations are being announced this morning.

They won't hit the headlines, but they will make a difference.

In place of the Standing Committee, there'll be new Bill Committees which will start by taking evidence, holding hearings on the Bill concerned, before moving on to a line by line examination.

It should make a big difference to the quality of what we do, to ensure the public's views are better taken account of.

And, who knows, it might mean we will become more familiar with double meaning of the word Bill'.