Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, if the noble Lord was speaking on medical matters, I would be very reluctant to tangle with him in argument, but I think that some of the doubts he expressed about the Bill are simply not right. The new boundaries will not be set by central diktat but by the Boundary Commission that has a long history of independence from political parties and will have to take account of what people make as local representations. I have been to several public inquiries over boundary changes, and everybody who has been to them knows that the only people who bother to turn up are political parties wrapping up self-interest in high principle and trying to get boundary changes that suit them. The boundary commission can receive representations, it has longer to consider them and geographical features are one of the things that it can expressly take into account. The Bill corrects a fundamental unfairness in the discrepancies between the sizes of constituencies. It is that that I want to address. I realise that the first part of the Bill dealing with the alternative vote on the referendum is a price that is being paid for coalition government. It is very important to the Liberal Democrats. I am perfectly happy that there should be a referendum. I will vote no in it because I think that the present system is much better, and I am slightly surprised that the Liberal Democrats are satisfied with this because I do not think it will do much for them. I suspect that the big party—Labour or Conservative—that is doing well will do even better under AV. I want to talk about the second part of the Bill. I have some form on this because almost exactly five years ago I introduced a Ten Minute Rule Bill in another place to achieve the objectives of this Bill. It was called: "““A Bill to equalise of the size of parliamentary constituencies””." I wanted to call it ““A Bill to abolish rotten boroughs””—but the Clerks would not let me—because that is what we have. The smallest constituency at that time had 21,169 voters and the MP was elected with 6,200 votes; the largest constituency had 107,000 voters, five times as many, and the MP had to get 32,700 votes to get elected. There are massive discrepancies that on the whole work to the advantage of the Labour Party, which is why there has been so much special pleading from it in this debate. Although it has managed, quite cleverly, to wrap it up as high principle, I am afraid that special pleading is what it is.