Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I appreciate that the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, has not taken part in previous debates but, by getting to his feet, he has exposed the problem with the legislation. The problem is that it is built on a falsehood, which, as he explained, is that there has been a bias in recent elections. There has not. His problem, as he set out in his 2001 example, is that he believes that the Conservative Party takes more votes to get elected than Labour because of a differential size in constituencies. It does not. I shall not do it at this late hour, but in future debates other Members will produce Conservative documentation that they have read. This myth has gone on for many years. It takes Conservatives more votes than Labour to get elected because of the social, economic, demographic issue that in Labour seats we primarily represent those on lower incomes than in Conservative seats and with all sorts of other factors that people appreciate. We have lower turnout and those social, economic demographics are not simply particular to the United Kingdom but are the world over. People being on lower incomes—with less education, language problems, less mobility, shift-working and so on—means that they are less likely to turn out. Irrespective of the changes that the Government make, that will always be the case. The relative size between Labour and Conservative seats is no different other than in Wales, where the number of seats was defined by a previous Conservative Government in 1986 when they made that requirement because of the geographic consequences of a change in the number of seats.