The charge sheet gets longer by the week and the latest furore is over the plans to reduce the number of MPs to 600 (from the current 650). An analysis in The Guardian today shows the Liberal Democrats are getting very cold feet about this reform which is already largely opposed by Labour. I'll put my cards on the table: I have always been in favour of reducing the size of the House of Commons and equalising the size of constituencies as this piece from February 2007 argues.

Reduction in the number of MPs is, of course, the other half of the reform proposals put through in the first year of this government, the first part being the referendum on the alternative vote. Having made an horrendous mistake in rushing into holding this, Nick Clegg and his party are now just waking up to the consequences of accepting the remainder of the package.

To me much of The Guardian's analysis rings true. Without the cushion of the alternative vote the Liberal Democrats will struggle to win in many of the new, larger seats but this doesn't mean they should be pushed into a corner and be made to look as if they are now opposing the reforms. As a party they already have enough problems with former leader Lord Steel lining up as one of the leading opponents of reform of the House of Lords.The Liberal Democrats once thrived as the party of reform and if they can't keep hold of that mantle then there will be very little left to enthuse potential supporters.

So, where will the debate over the reduction of seats take us?

At a national level it will be about the government holding its nerve and limiting the rebellions among backbench Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs who find they have signed up to abolish their own seats. Labour seems likely to continue to cast itself as the leading anti-reform party and I expect will vote against the final package.

At a local level there will be all sorts of fun and games as endless reviews of proposed new boundaries are heard. There will be all manner of specious arguments about natural boundaries, community links (or non-links as the case may be) and accusations of gerrymandering bandied about with depressing ease. Most of it will be nonsense. Indeed, it has already started with one senior Labour source quoted today in The Guardian complaining that the 'rule' that Parliamentary constituencies shouldn't cross London borough boundaries will now be broken. The only problem is that Labour and Tories accepted that this rule should go back in 1997 - just look at the constituencies on the edge of east London that bizarrely cross the boundaries of the boroughs of Waltham Forest and Redbridge. Of course, that wasn't gerrymandering and didn't break any imaginary rules. Expect alot more of this hypocritcal nonsense between now and when the final proposals are put to Parliament in two years time.

I still think that the realisation among Liberal Democrats that many will be without seats steadily increases the prospects - still small - of the next General Election being a 'Coupon Election'. This may turn out to be a neat way for the Tories to resolve the inevitable battles where two sitting Tory MPs face each other across the ballot box. It would be a small step for the 'coupon' to be extended to favoured Liberal Democrats who the Tories think have a better chance of beating Labour, returning us to the days of the National Liberals and splitting the Liberal Democrats much as the old Liberals were split in the days of Lloyd George and Asquith.

This is another significant milestone in a 25 year campaign by insurance law experts to modernise our insurance contract law, creating a better balance between consumers and insurers. It has been vigorously promoted by the Law Commission and has support right across the insurance industry following the final recommendations from the Commission and its Scottish counterpart for reform back in December 2009. The new government's silence on the issue was broken earlier this month and next week's short debate will be the start of what many will hope is an smooth and relatively quick Parliamentary passage.

At this stage, it is hard to see where any opposition could come from - hopefully, it stays that way.

Last Monday, Baroness Turner, a Labour peer and long time deputy chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Insurance & Financial Services, asked the government what it was doing about the problem of tracing employers' liability insurers and eventually forced the government minister, Lord Mackenzie, to admit that it was looking at establishing an employers' liability bureau - an insurer of last resort - to deal with the still unacceptably high proportion of insurers that cannot be traced. Lord Mackenzie said that a mere 52% of insurers were traced by mesothelioma sufferers despite all the mechanisms put in place.

By Wednesday, this apparently reluctant admission by a government minister that a fund of last resort was being actively considered was replaced by an upfront announcement and a promise to come back with more information soon. This came during a debate initiated by Labour MP Alison Seabeck on asbestos-related illnesses in Plymouth when junior Justice minister Claire Ward promised more information on a possible employers' liability insurance bureau shortly.

She also told MPs that the government had held a meeting of medical and legal experts on 15 October to see if it was possible to hammer out some sort of consensus on pleural plaques and that a decision on this would also be announced shortly. There is a bill being promoted by former City minister Baroness Quin to reverse the House of Lords' judgement that pleural plaques are not a compensatable condition which has all party support and is waiting a date for a second reading debate. A similar bill was making its way through the House of Commons before the summer recess but ran out of time and a judicial review is currently underway in Scotland. There was also an Early Day Motion on the subject tabled in the House of Commons last week.

It does look as if the insurance industry is on the back foot on this one and many will consider that perhaps it is time to give in graciously over establishing a fund of last resort given the dreadful state of employers' and insurers' records. Pleural plaques is a more difficult  issue, easy to be emotional about but hard to be objective. I think that it is right that society, through Parliament and the courts, is asked to make a reasoned decision on this and that the insurance industry's viewpoint is heard. The argument may be slipping away from the industry but people do need to recognise that this is not a hard-hearted stance but a logical position to take in the face of the medical evidence.