Outgoing members still have six sitting days and a long list of bills.

The chamber of the Assembly was half empty on Tuesday afternoon when the clerk read out the order paper for the remainder of the session. Around the horseshoe of green benches, a dozen members who will not be returning after the election sat with folders on their knees, listening to the list of business they still have to get through. There are six sitting days left before the dissolution, and the list is long.

Under the Assembly’s standing orders, any bill that has not completed all its stages by the final sitting falls and must be reintroduced from scratch in the new term. That rule has turned the closing weeks into a scramble, with members, whips and officials trading time on the floor in the corridors outside the members’ tea room.

Seventeen bills, six days

According to the clerk’s office, seventeen government and private members’ bills are still in progress. Four are at their final reading and need little more than a vote. Others are further back. The business committee, which sets the timetable, has agreed to extend two of the sitting days to nine o’clock in the evening, but even with the extra hours there is not enough time to debate everything.

  • The Housing Standards Bill, setting minimum insulation levels for rented homes – final reading scheduled for Thursday.
  • The Harrow Moor Access Bill, reopening historic footpaths across private land – committee stage incomplete.
  • The Ardle Bridge Tolls Bill, scrapping charges on the river crossing – awaiting a report from the finance committee.
  • The Public Records Amendment Bill, extending the deadline for releasing cabinet papers – broadly agreed, likely to pass without debate.

The arithmetic of the chamber makes things harder. With 61 seats and no party holding more than 24, every bill needs support from at least two groups. In the final weeks those coalitions have become looser, as members who are standing down feel less bound by party discipline and those fighting marginal seats try to avoid controversial votes.

“There is a peculiar freedom at the end. People who have voted with their group for eight years suddenly discover opinions,” said Gwendolyn Harker, the Assembly’s longest-serving clerk, who has overseen four previous dissolutions. “It makes the timetable very difficult to predict.”

The swing votes from the hills

The two independent members representing the hill towns have found themselves unusually in demand. Their votes can decide whether a bill reaches the threshold, and both have been open about using that leverage. One has said she will support the housing bill only if it includes a grant scheme for older farmhouses, which are hard to insulate. The other has tied his vote on the bridge tolls bill to a commitment on rural bus funding.

Ministers have so far resisted both demands publicly, but officials privately expect at least one concession before Thursday. A government source said the housing bill was the priority and that “small amendments” were possible if they secured its passage.

What is likely to fall

The Harrow Moor Access Bill looks the most vulnerable. It still has eleven amendments to work through at committee stage, and landowners in the north of the region have lobbied hard against it. Its sponsor, a backbench member who is not standing again, has asked for one of the extended evening sittings to be given over to the bill, but the business committee has so far declined.

Supporters of the bill say they will try again in the next term, but campaigners fear that momentum will be lost. Ramblers’ groups have spent three years building support, and a new Assembly will have different members, different priorities and a new committee to persuade from the beginning.

There is also the outgoing members’ own business. Valedictory speeches traditionally take up most of the final afternoon, and the Speaker has asked members to keep them under five minutes. Few expect that request to be honoured.

By the time the session closes next Thursday evening, the calendar will have decided much of what this Assembly is remembered for. Bills that make it through will become law within weeks; those that do not will join a long list of measures that ran out of days rather than votes.