Nick Clegg tells us that a new committee of MPs and peers will produce a draft bill on an elected second chamber by the end of the year.

I shall believe when I see it.

The bloated Lords, even after losing most of the hereditaries in 1999, remains second in size only to the Chinese National People’s Congress. The Chamber was recently topped up with another 56 new peers.

Some may take advantage of the recent change in the law that allows for resignation. The former Conservative Vice Chair, Lord Laidlaw, is standing down to retain his status as a tax exile. (See earlier blog post)

Lord Ashcroft has stated publicly that he will give up his non dom status and become resident and domiciled in the UK for tax purposes.

He says he expects to be sitting in the House of Lords for many years to come.

He and his fellow peers have a few months to consider whether being an unelected Member of Parliament for two or three more years (assuming we get the promised elected second chamber) is worth giving up his treasured non dom status.

It would be good to hear Lord Ashcroft state on the record that he has been in touch with the Revenue and Customs to end his non dom tax status.

When he was moving the Government amendment on the exclusion of non doms from Parliament on 1 February 2010, the then Justice Minister, Michael Wills (yes, you've guessed, now a Peer himself) said this:

"The vast majority of parliamentarians do pay full UK taxes, but there has been widespread popular concern about the exceptions to that rule. The net result of these proposed changes would mean that MPs and peers were liable to pay the same taxes as the vast majority of UK taxpayers, regardless of their actual common law status in the UK. The new clauses will come into force from Royal Assent, so they might apply to the next Parliament.

New clause 85 provides that all MPs will be deemed resident, ordinarily resident and domiciled from taking up their seat in this House upon taking the oath. Therefore, only those who are full UK taxpayers may sit and vote in this House. In the other place, all those appointed after the Bill receives Royal Assent would be aware that if they accepted a life peerage and a seat in the other place, they would be deemed resident, ordinarily resident and domiciled for tax purposes.

It is not possible to change a person's resident, ordinarily resident and domiciled tax status part way through a tax year, so in both instances MPs and peers would be deemed to be resident, ordinarily resident and domiciled for the whole of any tax year in which they were Members. That means that they would be deemed as such from the start of the tax year in which they took up their seat and to the end of the tax year in which they stood down.

We acknowledge that the situation is different for incumbent Members of the House of Lords, who will be unable to resign from the House until the provisions in part 3 of the Bill come into force. As such, new clause 86 provides for a transitional period of three months during which incumbent peers can give notice in writing to the Clerk of the Parliaments that they are not willing to be subject to the deeming provision, and from that point their membership of the other place would cease.

Peers who remain Members of the House at the end of the three-month transitional period would automatically be deemed resident, ordinarily resident and domiciled for tax purposes."

Elsewhere…

I see that Lindsay Hoyle, the jovial and popular MP for Chorley, has just been elected a Deputy Speaker – as has the Ribble Valley MP, Nigel Evans.

I am delighted for them. But how on earth will they manage? I know them well. They have strong opinions and enjoy speaking out. The Commons is the perfect platform.

And yet they choose, for their own reasons, to give this up to become Deputy Speakers where they must keep their views to themselves.

I know someone has to do it.

But it is a high price to pay.