Do British MPs sit more often than those of most other Western parliaments?

"Our MPs sit for more days than most other Western legislatures..."

Ann Widdecombe in the Daily Express, 4 July 2012

Former MP Ann Widdecombe has claimed that British MPs are a busy bunch, spending more days sitting in parliament than members of most other Western legislatures.

Assuming that we can accurately compare MPs with members of similar bodies in the Western world, can her figures be backed up?

Analysis

While we can find out how often various parliaments and assemblies sit — this doesn't necessarily let us come to conclusions about members as a whole, as most MPs don't attend every sitting. For example, a Guardian Reality Check found that as of September 2011, Roger Godsiff MP failed to attend 88.5 per cent of votes. 

However looking exclusively at how busy parliaments are as a whole, the House of Commons Library has helpfully conducted its own research.

The information on page 75 of 'Parliamentary trends: statistics about Parliament' was gathered through data from the European Centre for Parliamentary Research and Documentation (ECPRD), as well as contact with individual parliaments.

While the data only covers the 2001-2005 period and mainly concerns European countries, it gives us a general idea of how often parliaments typically sit. 

In order to come up with a meaningful average, however, it is important not to count years during which elections take place in each country. A cursory look at statistics from the House of Lords demonstrates how their sitting days dip significantly in election years:

With this in mind, we only include countries which had at least three non-election years recorded. The only bodies looked at were lower houses and unicameral (one chamber) parliaments — upper houses were excluded:

As can be easily seen, the House of Commons does indeed sit more often than most European countries, with only Greece and Italy pipping it to the post.

Conclusions

While we can say that it looks like Ms Widdecombe was correct, it's worth bearing in mind the caveats which were listed above.

For instance the statistics don't account for individual MPs and representatives, but only the parliaments which they gather in. However putting that aside, Ms Widdecombe is essentially correct. The House of Commons — or, if we prefer, its MPs — sits more frequently than comparable chambers in several other countries.