Political Week Ahead - Monday 23 April 2012

A Week Of Revelations Ahead At Westminster..
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No sooner than MPs returned from their Easter break it was announced that they're going to have another week off, starting from next Monday. It can't be long before there are endless media reports on how the Commons never appears to be at work, HuffPost is only surprised they haven't come already. Their next break from Westminster is called prorogation - the gap between Parliamentary sessions which always comes before the Queen's Speech, which is on the 9th of May.

Before then there's a couple of big set-pieces, the first of which is due later this morning on Lords reform - you can read a full briefing about what that involves here.

Tuesday should be quite entertaining because Russell Brand is giving evidence to MPs on the government's drugs strategy. The comedian has always been open about his use of drugs, but is now clean and the patron of a drugs charity. Will he play it straight or succumb to the temptation to try to make the MPs laugh?

Straight after Brand, home secretary Theresa May makes an appearance before the same Commons committee. This is unlikely to be amusing for anyone; May is under incredible pressure to justify her actions over Abu Qatada's arrest and deportation last week. We're unlikely to know by Tuesday whether the Grand Chamber of the European Court has allowed Qatada's latest appeal, but with Labour accusing the home secretary of making a hash of things, it's likely to be high on the list of MPs questions for her.

Management of the economy will take centre-stage on Wednesday morning when the GDP estimate for the first quarter of 2012 is released by the Office for National Statistics. There have been so many predictions from various wise men and women in the run up to this - some like the international think-tank the OECD think we're going to go back into recession. But the majority of the think-tanks expect there to be some growth.

For George Osborne growth of anything below 0.3 percent would be very difficult, because the economy shrank by that amount in the last quarter of 2011. A very low figure would immediately be spun by Labour as a net loss over the six-month period, and fuel speculation that unemployment is going to continue to rise inevitably towards three million. It will just heap more misery upon the chancellor, who continues to get a terrible press even from Tory newspapers over last month's Budget.

A growth figure above .03 percent would be more encouraging for the Chancellor, although all expectations are that if we do end up with that then Labour will begin to talk of a "jobless recovery", as experts told HuffPost a few weeks ago.

In the Commons it really is the last gasp of the Parliamentary session, and much of what little time remains is earmarked for consideration of Lords amendments, most significantly on the Legal Aid reform Bill. Last week the Commons over-ruled the Lords on most of its amendments to Ken Clarke's plans and sent them back.

The Lords now has to decide how far it wants to push the government on this. They will never admit it publicly but many believe the issue of Lords reform itself could prompt their Lordships to start being difficult and blocking things for the sheer hell of it. We might get an indication of whether that's correct this week.