Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I shall reflect on his distinguished career, but I was surprised that he failed to point out to your Lordships that he has had some experience of a small constituency and made no protest at the time. Let me turn to his article, a copy of which I have with me. I am not sure whether the Times is compulsive reading on either side of your Lordships’ House, but I can imagine the conversation that took place between a senior journalist on the Times and the noble Lord at the beginning of October: ““Ken, what’s your view on the coalition?””. ““Oh, I am broadly in favour of it””. ““Good. Knock us out a thousand words for 4 October””. Being the sensible man he is, my computer says the article is only 985 words, so I hope the Times does not ask him for a rebate for the words he has missed out. The very readable article about this legislation appeared under the headline, "““Stop worrying and learn to love the coalition: A Tory government with a tiny majority could not achieve what we are able to do now””." The noble Lord then set out exactly what the coalition hoped to achieve. I have to say that the article is not entirely accurate, and again I hope that there will not be a demand for his fee to be returned. However, it is eminently readable, as one would expect given the talents of the noble Lord. He said: "““It begins to look as if the chances of one party having a significant overall majority will only come about if an incumbent government is greatly unpopular””." We might test that theory over the next few years. He went on to say, "““as it was in 1979 to the benefit of Margaret Thatcher, and in 1997 to the benefit of Tony Blair””." Again, that rather ignores the lessons of history. I seem to recall that Tony Blair, if I can call him that in your Lordships’ House—repeating the noble Lord’s words—was pretty successful in 2001 as an incumbent and did not do too badly in 2005, again as an incumbent. I am not sure about the accuracy of that part of the article but I am sure about the part I am about to read out because, despite the emollient words from the Leader of the House to which I have referred, the noble Lord, Lord Baker, went on to say: "““The greatest prize for the Tories is yet to come: constitutional change that will eliminate Labour’s 8 per cent advantage at every general election. This will be achieved by equalising the votes in each constituency to around 76,000 and by reducing the size of the House of Commons by 50 MPs””." That brings it down to the 600 figure that my noble friend Lord Dubs was accused of mentioning and the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, was afraid to mention, or chose not to mention, during the course of his speech. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, went on to say in his eminently readable article: "““MPs of all parties are coming to accept that there will not be an election in 2011 or 2012, when the British public will not want to be diverted from enjoying the Olympic Games””—" to get rid of this lot, some of them might be prepared to be diverted— "““and celebrating the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee””." I was around for the silver jubilee, as was the noble Lord, but it did not stop us having by-elections and a continuance of the normal political toing and froing. The article continued: "““In 2013 the rewards of austerity are still likely to be meagre, so an election in 2015 looks odds-on. This coalition has staying power””." For the sake of the noble Lord’s colleagues in another place, he had better hope that that is right because, in the short term, the coalition is going to be unpopular.