TWO examples of the oddity of events in the House of Commons occurred this week.

On Monday it was the second reading of the Finance Bill which is necessary to put into effect some of the measures in the recent Budget.

I had, in the time-honoured way, put in a formal request to catch the Speaker's eye during this debate as I wished to make some points put to me by a local accountant on behalf of some of his clients.

At the introductory speech by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury starting at 3.39pm I was encouraged that there were very few Labour back-benchers present. If MPs wish to speak in a debate they have to be in the chamber for the opening speeches and so I thought I would not have long to wait to speak.

By 5.17pm we were through the front bench speeches and the expected contribution from the chair of the Treasury Select Committee so I thought we were on course for a sensible, appropriate debate.

How wrong I was. The first three Labour back-bench speeches lasted over two hours, the longest of these just over one hour! I wonder if these members had been instructed to waste time which was pointless as all members wishing to speak were called eventually and, in my opinion, absurd as it portrayed debate in the House of Commons as a tedious, unreasonable process which is not usually the case.

Subsequently I made some points about the complexity and shortcomings of the Bill and that the Government is wrong to state that proposed changes to inheritance tax will only affect the super rich when the increasing value of houses brings more and more people into the category affected. Thus the debate continued until after 10pm when, of course, divisions were won easily by the Government.

On Tuesday the opposite happened. As very few members wished to speak and no filibusters were present, the debate on the Housing Corporation (Delegation) Bill ran out of steam soon after 6pm and so the House wasted over three hours of possible time for business!

The sad but expected death of Peter Law, the other independent MP, has occurred.

I will greatly miss his friendly and supportive presence next to me. As a previous Labour Minister in the Welsh Assembly, his experience of politics and politicians was valuable.

He bore his illness with great courage, coming to London regularly until near the end and also working hard in his constituency and in the Assembly. He will be sorely missed in London and in Blaenau Gwent.

I am writing this before the Health Committee's scheduled encounter with the Health Secretary.

I hope we will be able to take her to task for her unrealistic statements about the NHS and her denials of problems when trusts like ours are faced with hundreds of staff redundancies.