But Lord Kirkwood, who proposed the motion, said it was simply a "tidying up exercise".

BBC: NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Lib Dems toughen leadership rules

But her refusal to say whether she felt the system needed completely rethinking or just "tidying up" appeared to irritate the committee.

BBC: Money

He said the supply resolutions were normally a technical tidying up exercise, but that the debate had been turned into "a bit of a mess".

BBC: Spring supplementary estimates

It is said to appeal to people who enjoy tidying up.

ECONOMIST: Games and the Internet go well together

Ratan Tata spent his first ten years at the helm of the family company tidying up its rambling and often decrepit Indian businesses before turning his attention to foreign markets in the late 1990s.

ECONOMIST: A new breed of multinational company has emerged

For Hungary's ruling Socialists, the long job of tidying up after the status law has been all the more irksome, since they were not even the ones who invented it, though they did support it in parliament.

ECONOMIST: Hungary

By and large, businesses welcomed this tidying up, even though they will pay more tax during a four-year transition to a new system of payment, under which big firms will pay tax quarterly on a current-year basis, rather than in arrears as now.

ECONOMIST: Gordon Brown’s progress | The

In the Lords peers continue to wade through the detail of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill - at the moment the committee stage seems to consist mostly of tidying up the ramifications of their removal of the central proposal in the Bill, the elected Police Commissioners.

BBC: Viewing guide: What's on in Parliament in coming week

It was clear from the contributions on Monday night that a lot of senior backbenchers simply didn't believe the protestations of the deputy leader of the House, David Heath, that the government had put forward the changes as a mere tidying-up exercise, and they were alarmed to note that ministers and parliamentary private secretaries were being whipped to support the changes.

BBC: The end of the 'Westminster Spring'?