Parliamentary tiddlywinks

Parliamentary tiddlywinks is a rarely used stage of the legislative process in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, in which members of each of the two chambers can propose amendments simultaneously rather than alternately as in the usual process. It can be invoked if the House authorities conclude that Parliamentary ping-pong is stuck in an endless rally. The name is based on the similarity to "squopping" in the game of tiddlywinks.

Procedure
The British Parliament is bicameral, consisting of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The rule is that before a Bill can receive the Royal Assent and become law, it must be passed in its final form by both the Commons and the Lords without changes. If one of the Houses makes any change or amendment to it, the other House has to agree to those changes, or make counter-changes of its own, in which case it returns to the other House.

If disagreement between the two Houses results in effectively the same amendment or amendments being agreed and then reversed three times over, then any member of either house can propose switching to the tiddleywinks procedure. In practice, however, it will be successful only if the Chief Whip concludes that there is a cross-party consensus for the procedure in at least one of the houses.

Once the procedure begins, the leader of each house announces that it is open to any member of either house to propose amendments to the Bill, though they cannot propose amendments to provisions that have not been subject to amendment in the last ping or the last pong. In theory, the amendments should be aimed at breaking the deadlock - in practice, the opportunity is often used by backbench members of either house to publicise unrelated issues which they have been unable to pursue by other means. The amendments for debate are selected by a joint meeting of Lords and Commons whips, and the two chambers then consider them simultaneously. If there are any proposals that are found to be acceptable to both houses, then they can be adopted by a single vote in the House in which the Bill was first introduced.

History

The tiddleywinks procedure is infrequently used nowadays, as party discipline has improved and it is less usual to have disputes between the centrist House of Commons and a House of Lords largely appointed at the behest of party leaders. The procedure was often invoked during the twentieth century, when there were frequent conflicts between the two houses, particularly during periods of Labour government: proposals for reform of land-ownership or wealth taxes could often command broad support in the socialist-dominated Commons, but be opposed by the landowning interests in the then hereditary House of Lords. Aneurin Bevan was heard to rage during the latter stages of debate on the Railways Bill (1948), "if we go to tiddlywinks on this we shall lose our mandate to rule and then who shall be the masters?"

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