The penultimate sitting of the House of Keys in its current form takes place today (Tuesday).

MHKs have only this week and next, plus Tynwald Day and the July session Tynwald as the remaining scheduled sittings ahead of the September general election.

So it may come as a surprise to some that only three of them have tabled questions for ministers today. It could be that others are keeping their powder dry for the final sitting of the Keys or for that July session of Tynwald.

Or perhaps they’ve finally run out of things to say.

Jason Moorhouse (Arbory, Castletown and Malew) starts the ball rolling with a series of questions covering taxation, temporary traffic lights, dog poo bins on Douglas seafront and, to ensure his constituency is not left out, what the plans are to improve beach access from Castletown promenade.

Julie Edge (Onchan) has queries about the impact of the rather damning Beamans report on the Department of Education, Sport and Culture, which advocated some major changes, as well as the situation regarding apprentices and trade qualifications.

And that is questions for oral answer covered.

Those paying attention will know we talked about three MHKs asking questions. Fear not, there is another.

Chris Thomas (Douglas Central) has no fewer than 15 questions tabled for written answer.

Why for written answer? Well it could be that the detailed nature of them means they are better suited to written answers or it could be because he’s sick of ministers pointing out that he was a key member of the Council of Ministers when a lot of these things were happening. We pity the fool who next tries saying that to Mr T.

Anyway, subjects raised include government land assets, the Manx Development Corporation, the TT Access Road, area plans, carbon neutral gas, biodiversity, residential care homes, public sector pensions, coronavirus salary support and community hubs.

After questions, the Local Government (Amendment) Bill, that includes provision for boundary changes and local authority mergers among other updates to laws, is due to undergo detailed scrutiny at the clauses stage.

There are more than 50 clauses in total, but MHKs will be keen to complete the task today as there is only one further sitting of the Keys scheduled before the general election (June 29) and they will want to ensure it gets through the third reading stage so it can pass up to the Legislative Council in the next parliamentary year.

On a similar housekeeping level, three bills return from the Legislative Council for one last glance. All three have previously passed through the House of Keys but have since been amended by the Upper Chamber and so require further approval from MHKs.

The bills are the Adoption Bill, which aims to speed up and modernise processes; the Competition Bill, covering anti-competitive practices; and the Landlord Registration (Private Housing) Bill, requiring landlords involved in private rentals to be registered.

Legislative Council aims to continue its detailed scrutiny of the Liquor Licensing and Public Entertainments Bill and, if successful, to then also complete its third and final reading. See above to explain the sense of urgency, although there have been one or two mutterings from outside that perhaps neither branch should have been rushing this and instead taking more bit more time to look at the knock-on implications of some aspects of this bill.

The final item on the LegCo agenda is the nattily titled Administration of Justice and Other Amendments Bill, down for its second reading and clauses stage.