Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Waldorf and Statler, my noble friend says. I should say that they are distinguished ex-Chancellors of the Exchequer. As they have been around a great deal longer than I have, they will recall—I saw this when we were in opposition in the House of Commons, even when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, and I saw it again when Labour was in power and Tony Blair was Prime Minister—that, as one of my noble friends said earlier, when we went through these kinds of debates in Committee, week in, week out, the Minister would say, ““That’s a very good point; I’ll take that away and look at it and come back on Report””. On this Bill, we have had one occasion when the noble Lord, Lord McNally, has said that—one miserable occasion. Even then, he did not say that he agreed; he said that he would take it back and have a look at it without any guarantee, sympathy or consideration. I think that we could make even better progress through the Bill if, day after day and week after week, the Minister were to say, ““That’s a good point. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, has made a good point on this””, or, ““The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has made an excellent point on that; I’ll take it away and look at it and see what can be done about it””. So far, though, one such response in six sessions is a very low batting average. It makes the English cricket team look good in comparison. I hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, whom I have known for a very long time, will recognise the validity of the argument that if you are to have a fair election and fair boundaries, you need to ensure that everyone over the age of 18 is taken account of in drawing up those boundaries.