Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me if I do not. I have a great deal to do, and not much time in which to do it. The Labour party's position on the referendum on the alternative vote strikes me as ridiculous. Labour supported an AV referendum before the election—it was in the party manifesto—but Labour Members are not supporting it now. They are hiding their opportunism behind the fig leaf that the proposal is contained in a Bill that plans a boundary review to provide more equally sized constituencies and more equal votes. The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) has criticised us for not presenting our proposals in a stand-alone Bill. Given that both our measures concern the election of Members of Parliament to the House of Commons, it seems perfectly sensible to link them. I remind him that he presented proposals for an AV referendum in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010. That was hardly a stand-alone Bill. It also included measures relating to the civil service commission, the civil service code of conduct, the ratification of treaties, amendments to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, the tax status of Members of Parliament, financial reporting to Parliament, freedom of information, counting of votes and the Act of Settlement.