Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, I, too, support the amendment of my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench. I shall start with my usual obsession and say that, on reading the amendment and indeed the Bill, I was motivated by my usual and, I would say, well founded lack of trust in the behaviour of Liberals in these matters. My noble friend Lady Liddell has mentioned various referendums—or referenda—but, being parochial and from the Royal Burgh of Rutherglen, I shall bring it down to the Royal Burgh level. As I have mentioned previously, we had a local council campaign regarding local government reform in 1994-95. It was an all-party campaign. Everybody behaved themselves, except guess who? We had the local Liberals trying to slip in leaflets and bits about themselves as if the campaign was somehow theirs. It caused great annoyance among the rest of the voluntary committee and they were reprimanded. No doubt somewhere in the Chamber somebody will jump up to say, ““How parochial and petty””. I plead guilty to that. However, I am further reinforced in my position on this amendment by comments from my noble friend Lady Liddell. I have an awful guilty feeling that, as part of the Labour no campaign, I contributed to the finances to seek the interdict that she referred to. I am quite sure that she will have a word to say to me later about that. As my noble friends Lady Liddell and Lord Foulkes pointed out, the election broadcast compounded or, even worse, took advantage of pushing the boundaries of what were the rules and what was policy. Though it is absolutely wrong, the temptation will always be there. This should be very well controlled in order to make sure that election broadcasts are not hijacked for narrow political purposes.