Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill [HL]

My Lords, perhaps I may intervene briefly in the gap to give a traditional and perhaps rather more constitutional view than that of the radicals opposite. I note that the noble Lord, Lord Norton, has never actually been in the other place, although he is a great expert on it. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, was in the other place, but that was some time ago. I think that that is part of the problem. Both noble Lords are somewhat out of touch with how the other place lives, moves and has its being. Having come more recently from the other place, I am certain of one thing—that the immediate response there would be, ““What impertinence! Who are they, who are not elected, to seek to interfere with our own House of Commons and tell us what to do?””. It is a great weakness and both noble Lords are vulnerable on this point. I am confident that the other place would have a strong view, not particularly on the merits of the issue but on the fact that it has been raised here. I concede that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, has a remarkable track record: some months ago he raised the issue of English questions being decided by English Members. I note that the Leader of the Opposition has apparently accepted that and it is about to become the Conservative Party’s official policy. Perhaps these proposals will follow in the same way. The noble Lord has clearly been reading that famous American book, ““How to influence people without making friends””. I am quite sure that he will be unmaking very many friends along the Corridor. There is an arithmetic logic in what the noble Lord is saying about a reduction and about constituencies of equal size—one person, one vote and one value. However, when making the point about our system being over-representative and not valid, he referred to Germany and the size of the Bundestag. He failed to note that Germany has a federal system and that, combining the number of people elected to the various Lander and to the Bundestag, there are more elected representatives in that system than in our own. Our democracy has the real merit of easy access to Members. There is an impeccable logic to the fact that the fewer Members there are, the more difficult it is to have that sort of personal relationship. The noble Lord mentioned that the Welsh quota is now 56,000; in my old constituency, it was 59,000. It was a tightly-knit urban constituency. I could almost, with some effort, walk from one end of the constituency to the other, and I cycled it from time to time. I liked to think that whenever I walked, I could meet and greet many individuals. That would be wholly impossible in a much larger constituency. I concede that it is much more difficult to carry on the role of a Member in constituencies such as Caithness and Sutherland, for example, where there are more sheep than people. My first point is that the Bill is an inappropriate one for this House. Secondly, I believe that we would lose something of substance by adopting it. Finally, I note that much has been said about the current costs. However, these are the costs of democracy. The costs of this House and of the other place are a minuscule part of total public costs, and the two Houses do something of importance. The Bill offers a piecemeal approach. If we are to have reform, then it can be discussed it in a kite-flying exercise such as this one. However, it should be considered in the round and not piece by piece as it is here.