When a White Paper is issued, it is often accompanied by a statement in the House from the secretary of state of the department sponsoring the proposals.
A White Paper is sometimes produced following the consultation process which is undertaken when the government issues a Green Paper.
First Reading
On the day of presentation, a “dummy” copy of the bill is placed on the Table. Once it has been
presented, each bill is allocated a bill number, which is printed on the bottom left-hand corner of
the front page in square brackets (e.g. [Bill 4]). Each time the bill is re-printed (for example, after
the committee stage), it is given a new number.
This First Reading stage also forms the House’s order to print the bill, which is done for the House
by the Stationery Office.
Explanatory Notes are also published to accompany the bill, although they may not always be
available as soon as the bill itself is published.
Second reading
Second reading is the main debate on the whole bill in which MPs debate the principles behind bill. The debate usually focuses on the main points rather than the smaller details. At the end of this a bot is taken in the same way as before. Obviously there must be a majority in favour for the bill to progress any further.
Committee stage
At this stage there is a detailed examination of each clause of the bill. This detailed examination is not carried out by the whole of House of Commons but is done by a select committee, which is a group of MPs specially chosen for that Bill. Generally committees consist of between 28 and 40 MPs. The committee is chosen specifically for that bill and will therefore consist of MPs who have expertise in the subject area of the bill. At this stage the committee can make amendments to the bill.
Report Stage
At this stage the committee reports back to the whole House of Commons any amendments that were made at the committee stage. These amendments be accepted or rejected by the whole house. If no amendments were made at committee stage then the reports stage will be cancelled out.
Third reading
This is the final vote on the bill. It is almost formality since a bill which has passed through all the stages above is unlikely to fail at this late stage.
There is no set time period between the consideration of amendments to the Bill and Royal Assent – it can even be a matter of minutes after Ping Pong is complete.
The bill is sent to the House of Lords which check the Bill in a similar way to that of the Commons. The commons must agree on the next bill. If the lords allow their bills amendments are printed and must be considered by the Commons. If commons does not allow this then they will send a letter explaining the matter.
Once it has gone through all of these stages it will go through the other house and will repeat and then goes to Royal Assent.
Royal Assent is the Monarch's agreement to make the Bill into an Act and is a formality.
This bill is in the second stage in the pre parliament. It is a private members bill.
