Still more developments in the news you should keep abreast of in your revision. We had a discussion about Parliamentary priviledge last week – so I hope you noticed on Friday that the 3 dodgy MPs  (and  a Lord) went to court again still pleading this as a defence to their expenses fiddling. But the judge decided otherwise and threw it all out.

We also spoke about the EU trying to have oversight of the UK budget. Not surprisingly George Osborne has responded negatively to this and said that there is no way he will be allowing ‘peer review’ of his budgets by the powers that be in Brussels. Bear in mind too that the first Budget of the new Government is happening next week and the new institution that has been set up (under Sir Alan Budd) to provide independent monitoring of the budget process.  

Finally, with reference to my previous note about the new system of  electing select committee chairs by secret ballot, you may have seen that Margaret Hodge was successful in the vote to chair the powerful Public Accounts Committee.