So while there will be big bills, there will not be nearly as many of them - and some may be scrutinised in draft, and fed into the parliamentary sausage machine a year later.

BBC: The year ahead in Parliament

This kind of scrutiny hearing is intended to allow problems to be teased out of legislation and improvements to be suggested, in a relatively non-partisan environment, before it's fed into the parliamentary sausage machine.

BBC: Week ahead in committees

It is hard not to think that anyone who writes more books (70-plus) than many people have read, as well as numberless articles and essays, must be at the controls of a sausage machine, yet the sausages were usually good.

ECONOMIST: Martin Gardner

There were meat cleavers, knives, wooden chopping blocks, a commercial sausage making machine, a commercial meat mincing machine and weighing scales in the room as well, it said.

BBC: Mid Wales