Environment Bill enters "ping pong"

The Environment Bill left the House of Lords last week after completing its Third Reading. It will now enter the stage know as ‘ping pong’, where each House considers amendments put forward by the other and either agrees them, disagrees them or makes alternative proposals. The Bill is then sent back and forth until both Houses reach agreement on the exact wording.

Initially, 15 amendments from Peers will be put before MPs from 20 October. A number of Peers voiced that the Bill had been significantly improved by the amendments proposed in the Lords. Baroness Jones of Moulescoomb pressed on Government minister Lord Goldsmith: “This Bill, as it stands now, is ambitious. But the Bill we had originally was a terrible Bill and that is why we so heavily amended it—it is quite unusual to amend a Bill to this extent. I hope that the Minister is going to push very hard, with the Treasury and his colleagues in the Commons, to make sure that they take out very few, if any, of our amendments.”