So, there was another vote in the House of Commons today on the bedroom tax. Labour brought forward a motion to abolish it, having abstained from the one the SNP and Plaid Cymru filed back in February according to the Bain Principle.

With many Lib Dems abstaining this time, the motion failed by just 26 votes. Dozens* of Labour MPs had failed to turn up to support the motion, including 10 (ie 25%) of the party’s Scottish MPs – Gordon Brown, Jim Murphy, Douglas Alexander, Pamela Nash and Ann McKechin among them.

Someone else didn’t make it either. Can you guess who, readers?

Yes, the “deputy” leader of Labour in Scotland and MP for Glasgow Central, Anas Sarwar, had something better to do with his time than vote against the bedroom tax.

Readers might find that curious, given the big fuss he made recently in a televised debate with Nicola Sturgeon about the subject, going so far as to wave a draft bill in her face, theatrically offer her a pen and demand she sign it.

We’re sure Mr Sarwar had a good reason for not showing up at his workplace, as no doubt did Mr Brown, Mr Murphy, Mr Alexander and the rest. Ms Nash probably just had some problems with her printer again.

Maybe that’s it. Perhaps all of them were trying to print out another fake document to waft around, rather than doing anything useful to justify their fat taxpayer-funded salaries. Or just to hide their shame behind the next time they have the brass neck to attack anyone else over the coalition’s most hated policy.

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*At the moment we don’t have a full list of non-voters. But we can do some arithmetic.

There are 650 MPs in the Commons. 363 belong to the Tories and Lib Dems, leaving 287 opposition ones. 258 of those are Labour, leaving just 29 from the smaller parties.

Two Lib Dem MPs voted with Labour’s bill, meaning that the effective opposition maximum was 289. The actual Aye vote was 226, so 63 opposition MPs failed to show. With just 29 MPs coming from smaller parties, that therefore means that at least 34 Labour ones didn’t turn up – and in reality at least 43, since we know that all six SNP MPs, two Plaid Cymru and one Green voted with the motion.