Parliamentary ping-pong (or "lutte a la corde") is a phrase used to describe a phenomenon in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, in which legislation appears to rapidly bounce back and forth between the two chambers like a ping-pong ball bounces between the players in a game of table tennis.[1][2][3]
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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.
The debates in which the Bill is considered are usually scheduled weeks or months apart. However, in some circumstances the normal legislative procedure is radically accelerated to the extent that the proposed law, or Bill, appears to bounce back and forth between the two chambers like a ping-pong ball.
However, in certain circumstances when there is a non-negotiable time limit, and the two Houses disagree vehemently on the matter, this process can be speeded up to less than six hours per cycle, and carries on until one of the sides caves in.
Usually the time limit is imposed by the end of the Parliamentary session when all business, including incomplete Bills, simply gets erased from the books and has to start again. This usually occurs at the state opening of Parliament some time in November - Parliament can continue working on the previous year right up to the night before. Another instance is just after a general election is called, when Parliament can work for a few days before it gets dissolved, and the legislation it is working on must either get completed or be thrown away.
"Lutte a la corde" (French, meaning tug of war, lit. "struggle of the rope") is an older term for Parliamentary ping-pong. Believed to derive from the Norman French, in recent times it has fallen out of common usage.
An extreme example of ping-ponging began on the night of 10 March 2005 and ran for thirty hours. The Bill in question was the Prevention of Terrorism Bill 2005, necessary to create the control order so that the 10 terrorist suspects imprisoned under recently nullified Part IV of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 could be prevented from walking free.[2] The dispute was over whether the Bill should have a sunset clause. The timetable of this session ran as follows:
The Bill received Royal assent at 7:20pm.[4]