Sitting together in the House of Commons the 56 SNP MPs take up a big chunk of the green benches.

Ensuring they sit together and attend chamber business in numbers makes it obvious to the Tories opposite and the Labour MPs to their right they mean business.

Already their numbers have forced a rethink and change of direction on some issues with the fox hunting vote the most recent and controversial.

Another issue that the government has had to rethink is English Votes for English Laws or EVEL.

The SNP opposition to EVEL however has attracted support from others in Wales and Northern Ireland and what started as a response by the Prime Minister to the independence referendum and more powers form Scotland on the morning after the referendum has become a UK issue.

But who decides what is an England only issue? Many devolved areas have cross border implications. Well that would fall to the Speaker and many have sought to curry favour with him by suggesting it puts too great a burden on that office.

Others have commented on what they see as hypocrisy of the SNP who until the fox hunting debate had always avoided taking part in votes they decided were England only.

For the party now to oppose a move that simply legislates for one of their principles is a politically motivated u turn it has been said.

The EVEL issue is supposed to answer the decades old West Lothian question by Tam Dalyell who said with devolution why should Scots MPs have a say on English only matters like education and health when English MPs have no say on those issues in Scotland.

But the proposal by the UK Government raises more questions than it answers.

It may be playing to the section of the English electorate exasperated by Scots demanding more powers and to those who feel Scotland is subsidised by the rest of the UK, i.e. England.

If so it may have helped David Cameron win the General Election, but it still leaves anomalies.

It will create difference tiers of MPs, able to vote on different bills and be a huge change to Westminster politics.

MSPs vote on devolved matters because it is the Scottish Parliament that has responsibility for those matters.

There is no equivalent in England and in the absence of an English parliament the EVEL proposals seek to create an ad hoc English parliament within the current UK House of Commons.

It also makes it highly unlikely that there could ever be another Prime Minister from a Scottish constituency.

Shambles doesn’t begin to describe it.