Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, if anything that has happened over the past four hours suggests that I am not enjoying this process, it is entirely untrue. I will write to Chris Bryant in the morning. I would not want him to think that I was attacking him personally. I am certainly not someone who has objected to the interventions of the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy. A number of Labour MPs have stopped me with a look of sheer amazement and said, ““You heard Tommy McAvoy speak?””. On the point about the Electoral Commission, I hope that noble Lords do not put sinister interpretations on this matter. If our intention is to hold the referendum on 5 May, as is absolutely clear and we continue to make clear, it is no more than the Electoral Commission’s duty for it to say that, if amendments A, B or C were to be passed, the House should be aware that this would make the situation more difficult, impossible, or whatever. The commission should not leave the House to pull the trigger and not tell it whether the gun is loaded. I do not think that the commission has done any more than that. If the Committee wants to pass the amendment, knowing its repercussions, it is open to do that, but it is not improper to say that there would be consequences to an amendment such as this. Being a skilled advocate, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, can draw out these various bodies and make a case for a real mishmash of voting areas. In fact, the provisions that we have included in the Bill in relation to voting areas for the referendum ensure, as much as possible, that the same boundaries will be used for the referendum on the voting system as are used for other polls with which the referendum is combined. There is nothing more or less to it than that. The intent of the clause—as is the case in so much of the Bill—is to make the core decision that the electorate are being invited to make as simple as possible. On the specific question of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, I can tell him that the City of London is designated separately because, as he will know, it is a separate local government area within London. The other areas are the London boroughs.