Caught short

Piteous scenes at today's meeting - or rather, attempted meeting - of the East of England Regional Select Committee.

These new regional committees have been set up to bolster accountability and regional thinking, and so keen were the East's 56 MPs to question the minister, Barbara Follett, that, er, just 16 of them turned up. Tantalisingly, this was just one member short of a quorum, so every time the committee room door swung open, necks craned and uneasy smiles flashed, in the hope that the new arrival might be an honourable member who could make up the numbers. "At one point I thought they'd press-gang anyone, MP or not, who strayed in," my informant told me.

Alas, the meeting was not to be. And not for the first time. The committee has yet to manage a single quorate meeting - and having turned up to the last attempt, in Bedford, where she gamely responded to informal questioning, Ms Follett may never now experience their forensic powers of interrogation.

Instead, she got a nice thank-you for making the effort.

UPDATE: I'm rightly upbraided by commentator Ermine Yaks (I assume that's some kind of anagram?)

This all took place at the East of England Grand Committee - not at the much smaller select committee. The distinction is that all the regional MPs are eligible to attend the grand committee. Oops.

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