Sunset clause? More like sunrise

Their lordships may have been up half the night but few looked like they were ready for bed.

For a bunch of wreckers, they formed a remarkably orderly queue as they waited for breakfast at six o'clock this morning.

The bacon and eggs must have seemed just reward for a night's work which had seen them take a sledgehammer to the Government's anti-terror Bill. The mood was decidedly cheerful. Some of them looked far more awake than usual.

"We are defiant," said one peer. On the terror Bill - and on who could stay up the longest - the peers were clearly trouncing the Commons. Upstairs in the MPs' tea room, Labour backbenchers slumped in armchairs catching a few hours of sleep. They had finished debating at 3am.

Two hours later in the upper house, Lord Falconer had suggested the sunset clause be renamed the sunrise clause, and at 5.30am the red benches were packed for the results of the vote. For the third time in 24 hours the Lords had defied the will of the Commons.

At breakfast, conversation turned to the last time they had sat all night. "Was it the Countryside and Rights of Way Bill?" asked one peer. "Or was it the Railways Bill?"

But another had purer thoughts on his mind than the dirty business of politics. "I'd love to nip home for a shower," he confessed.