Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank all the Peers who took part in this debate. I am encouraged by it. I am aware that you cannot bring in a major constitutional change by a Private Member’s Bill, but at least one has got the debate going. I am grateful for the rather sympathetic reply that the Minister has just given. When I introduced my Bill on English votes for English laws, the noble and Learned Lord the Lord Chancellor got up and raved for about half an hour about how all human liberty would be at risk if my Bill went through. The Minister is not a raver—in fact, she was rather encouraging in what she said. I thank my noble friend Lord Norton for his contribution. He is one of the great constitutional experts in the House, and when on these Benches we raise constitutional matters we know perfectly well that if we make mistakes—and none of us is perfect—they will be carefully and gently corrected by my noble friend. I am glad for the general support that he gave my Bill. I know that he wants to be more ambitious and have a much smaller House of Commons. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, also supported the general concept of a smaller House of Commons and raised the question, which I found quite interesting, of how flexible the size of a constituency should be on the grounds that the population changes all the time. That reminded me of a speech in the Commons by Michael Foot, faced with a Boundary Commission that was going to mess up Ebbw Vale, which had virtually become a corrupt rotten borough because it was so small. Michael Foot came out with the very traditional, almost Conservative, view that these were old traditions, communities and customs and that people were living there all together who must not be disrupted. It was a defence of Old Sarum, basically. I still fundamentally believe that one vote should have the same value everywhere in the country and that there should be a standard electoral quota across the whole of the United Kingdom. I was encouraged, too, by what my honourable friend said from the Front Bench—