Tynwald members will today have the chance to debate amendments to the government’s flagship document, the Programme for Government.

They will be asked to ’receive’ the 2019/20 report, moved by Policy and Reform Minister Chris Thomas.

It is the third year of the Programme for Government. We’re still not 100% certain of its purpose, other than to give Liberal Vannin rottweiler Lawrie Hooper lots of material for written questions - largely along the lines on whether various government departments have managed to complete what they pledged to complete within the timescale they pledged to complete it within and mostly followed by questions about why they have not managed to â?¦ etc.

This latest report actually has ’amendments’ in its title. A lot of these appear to be to the deadlines originally set for tasks for the government to carry out. How many of these deadlines do we think have been brought forward?

In fairness, other amendments include the withdrawal of actions from the Programme for Government, because they have been completed. But it’s not likely they will feature highly on the agenda of backbench barbs today (Tuesday).

Mr Thomas will also give statement on planning policy. Changes to planning law have just gone through the House of Keys, although the Bolsheviks in Legislative Council - fresh from defying the Keys over charities legislation - may still throw a spanner in the works.

Perhaps Mr T’s statement will be: ’I pity the fool MLC who thinks they can mess with my planning bill. There’ll be a Programme for Government action about abolishing unelected chambers before you can say, "laboured 80s television reference".’

Elsewhere on the agenda, Tynwald will be asked to support significant changes to two local authorities’ structures.

One would see Port St Mary go down from nine commissioners to five and the other would see Douglas Council replace its current six wards with four. The really significant part of the latter is that the number of councillors per ward would remain at three, meaning a reduction in size of the council from 18 members to 12.

As for question time, well Daphne Caine (Garff) will be on her feet quite a lot.

In addition to wanting to know whether there has been any progress towards more of the BBC in the Isle of Man, she will ask Treasury Minister Alfred Cannan whether he supports the purchase of electric buses by Bus Vannin.

Given that it has been at least a day since Bus Vannin tried out a new fleet of buses, this question is timely, and given also that government department in charge - Infrastructure - has a vision of many more electric vehicles in the Isle of Man, you’d hope for a ’yes’ in his answer.

Mind you, DoI has previously mentioned it is rather important that any electric buses can reach their destination - and, presumably, back - before running out of power. So any yes will have to be qualified.

Former children’s champion Mrs Caine has, of more recent times, appeared to have become champion for the home educators community.

Today she asks her favourite minister - that’s Graham Cregeen at education - what policies are in place to make certain that any home or private education register will be compliant with data protection rules, ensuring it is accurate, up-to-date and not kept longer than necessary.

The Garff MHK has previously demonstrated her concern over the holding of data on children by tabling questions that demanded school-by-school breakdowns of particular year group attainment levels - not to mention childhood obesity numbers - in formats that sparked concern that individual children could be identified.

Of course, parliamentary answers remain on public record forever.

Meanwhile the Artist Formerly Known as the Quiet Man of Tynwald, Jason Moorhouse, once more has a number of questions to his name, including the qualification for being classed as a high net worth individual - higher than a backbench MHK’s salary, that’s for sure - and what progress is being made on the use of LED street lighting.

There are actually more questions tabled for written answer tabled than for oral answer at today’s sitting. There are three possible explanations for this: their complex nature means it makes more sense to ask for a written reply; an outbreak of laryngitis in the corridors of power; or Tynwald members are as tired of the sound of their own voices as we are.