The shorter and shorter Parliament

Taking a moment from an otherwise pleasant vacation to do some math...

Here is a quickly put-together line graph of sitting days per year for Parliament—as tabulated by the House of Commons website—over the last forty years or so. In case the trend isn’t clear enough, here are the average number of sitting days by decade.

1970s. 142.7
1980s. 153.2
1990s. 119.6
2000s. 111.1

There were three elections in the 70s, three in the 80s, two in the 90s and four in the 00s.

By the previously established schedule for 2010, Parliament will be skipping a total of 22 sitting days as a result of prorogation. If it sticks to the rest of the schedule, Parliament will sit for a total of 114 days in the next year.