IT is well known that the House of Commons is not a family-friendly working environment.

Attempts have been made in the last few years to ease the situation where MPs sit late into the evening often finishing in the early hours of the morning.

Such hours make it impossible for all but a handful who live around London to get home to their partners and children or to return to their constituencies except at weekends.

Some might say that since the Commons sits for an average of 155 days per year MPs actually have more days off than they do at work but this ignores the time many spend in committees and their constituencies.

Declarations of outside earnings by MPs - who are already well paid compared with most of their electors and have good pension provision - show that a fair number manage to combine their parliamentary duties with collecting significant amounts of cash from public speaking, consultancy work and directorships.

There is no doubt that Burnley's Peter Pike is genuine in his call for Fridays to be made a non-sitting day so that MPs can work in their constituencies.

His suggestion that the move would enable them to foster closer links with businesses and schools is an important one which some MPs like him would no doubt usefully use.

The problem is that there are others who would merely see it as another opportunity to increase their outside earnings.