parliamentary ping-pong

Parliamentary ping-pong, a term for when legislation is passed back and forth between two house of parliament.

In the past, controversial proposals on detention powers have bounced between the two Houses in what is known at Westminster as parliamentary ping-pong.

The power to make control orders was voted through Parliament on the evening of 11 March 2005 after a famously long session of Parliamentary ping-pong.

This will result in "parliamentary ping-pong," meaning the Growth and Infrastructure Bill goes back and forth between the two Houses until a resolution is reached.

In the latter hours of debate, a "game" of parliamentary ping-pong saw the Commons overturning the threshold amendment before being reimposed by the Lords, and being removed again.

Once the bill clears the Lords, it will be sent back to the Commons for MPs to consider peers' amendments to the government's plans; a stage known as parliamentary ping-pong.

The bill is currently the subject of a bout of parliamentary ping-pong, in which legislation is bounced between each House of Parliament until both MPs and peers agree on its wording.

The first reading of the bill was held in January 2008, and it received royal assent on 26 November 2008 following an episode of Parliamentary ping-pong on some of its most controversial issues.

In fact senior government sources have admitted to me that there is no chance at all of it passing, so we are in for a long period of parliamentary ping-pong, with the bill passing backwards and forwards between the Commons and the Lords.

MPs and peers, delivered from their longest ever session and spared a weekend of parliamentary ping-pong, were jostling for position in the taxi queues as the Home Secretary retired to his office to complete the final act of a most extraordinary week in politics.

Without the publicity his campaign sparked, the Government would almost certainly have forced the measure on to the statute book by sending it back to the Lords in a process known as "parliamentary ping-pong" and then invoked the Parliament Act to ensure it got its way, he said.

Parliamentary ping-pong 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.

There's also a slot pencilled in for consideration of any Lords amendments to bills - and after the recent defeats on the Immigration Bill and the Trade Union Bill there will have to be quite a few of bouts of "Parliamentary ping-pong" with their Lordships, in the coming weeks.

Watch our short video explainer on the TTIP Conservative trade spokesman Emma McClarkin said: "I welcome the fact that, following weeks of parliamentary ping-pong and attempts by socialist and protectionist MEPs to derail the process, we finally have a clear backing for TTIP."