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A fashionable - and dangerous - fad

Mark D'Arcy | 15:26 UK time, Thursday, 14 January 2010

Nicola Roberts, Julie Morgan and Andy BurnhamTo one of the Commons dining rooms on Wednesday, for an event to launch the to ban under-18s from using sunbeds in tanning salons.

The argument is that as well as gaining a fashionable tan, they can also acquire skin cancer - even the life threatening malignant melanoma. Use of sunbeds by under-18s increases their chance of developing skin cancer by 75%, according to - and they're particularly concerned about unstaffed tanning salons where young people can over-use coin-operated sunbeds.

With a supporting cast including the Health Secretary Andy Burnham, and Nicola Roberts of Girls Aloud (who spoke about the pressures on teenagers to look good and use sunbeds to achieve a desirable tan), Julie Morgan is hoping to rush through her bill before the music stops, when the general election is called.

She is co-operating with her Labour colleague Brian Iddon, who has a second reading debate on his Tenants Rights Bill on the agenda in the Commons on 29 January, just before her bill.

They want a brisk debate on Mr Iddon's bill, to allow sufficient time for her to have a full second reading as well. If both bills do pass into the committee stage, where they receive detailed consideration before returning to the full Commons, they believe their chances are good.

And they hope that between them, they can muster the 100 MPs necessary to quash any attempt to talk out either bill, by stretching out the debate until time runs out, without a vote being taken. If 100 MPs are there to support a motion that the bills be put to a vote, they can then be forced through.

At the moment no-one knows whether such brute force will be necessary. Julie Morgan claims strong cross-party backing, and the support of public opinion. And certainly, it is unusual for a cabinet minister to give such a strong public pledge of support - complete with photographs posing with other prominent backers - to a private member's bill.

Doubtless he'll be asking the party whips to help out - in both houses. Because passing the Commons will not be the end of the affair. Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, the Crossbench peer and public health specialist, stands ready to pick up the bill in the Lords, but if the election is called, its fate will depend on what's known as the "washup", the streamlined process by which unfinished bills are put into law by agreement, before Parliament is finally dissolved.

With all party support its chances should be quite good, even with the clock ticking.

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