Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, I want to make a point not about individual constituencies, because I have never been in another place, but about the importance of the amendment as making certain things statutory. Those of your Lordships who have read Richard Crossman’s diaries may remember the glee with which he said, ““Oh, the Boundary Commission are our people and they will fix these boundaries in our favour””. For many years we have conducted affairs more or less according to the idea that the party in power has a licence to fix things in its own way. I think that we have now come to the stage at which it is very likely that we will have coalition Governments, and when you have coalition Governments you have to stop doing that sort of thing. You have to put things on a statutory basis. What I like about my noble friend’s amendment is that it very systematically establishes a committee of inquiry that will report year after year and will take a comprehensive look at a number of these issues, including the time to conduct boundary reviews, et cetera. What we are debating here is not so much whether one should equalise or not—maybe we should equalise—but how we equalise. It might be inevitable that diverse constituencies are put together. This is not so much about what we do but about how we do it and how we continue to do it on a permanent basis. That is an important part of the amendment. By putting it in the way he has—and I hope that the Minister will take this very seriously—my noble friend is adding something to the constitutional reform process on which the Government are embarked. This will prove a very important brick to give greater legitimacy to the kind of reform the Government wants than it has got so far. Therefore, when it comes to House of Lords reform and determining the size of the House, if this amendment is accepted it will be much easier for the Government to propose the new size of the House of Lords because they will be able to say that a committee of inquiry has been permanently established that can consider and report on the matter. This is why I commend my noble friend’s amendment.