Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, I rather differ from my noble friends on the Front Bench. I could not support this amendment were they to test the opinion of the House because I do not think that it is right for government to fix the size of the House of Commons, which would be the consequence of this amendment. However, I think that it is a valuable amendment if it has been tabled as a probing one, as we need to get at some principles on how the size of the House of Commons should be determined. Like my noble friends, I have sought in vain so far to understand the principle that is animating the Government’s policy in this Bill. The Liberal Democrats, in opposition, took a principled position. They proposed that the size of the House of Commons should be reduced to 500 Members but that would be on the basis of their being elected on the single transferable vote system and of more extensive devolution and the creation of regional assemblies. On that basis it was entirely reasonable that they should argue for a reduction in the number of Members of the House of Commons. Before the election, the Conservative Party proposed that there should be 585 Members of the House of Commons, and it was more difficult to ascertain the principle underpinning that proposition. My noble friend Lady Liddell has already referred to the observation of the noble Lord the Leader of the House that a 10 per cent reduction was a nice round figure, just as he said that 600 in the House of Commons was a nice round figure. Both 585 and 600 are nice round figures, but we would all agree that that is an insufficiently convincing basis for introducing a very major constitutional change that would weaken the capacity of the House of Commons and would tilt the system of parliamentary representation by favouring the Conservative Party and disfavouring the Labour Party. We therefore need to find better reasons. We have not yet heard any good reasons for reducing the size of the House of Commons. At least the noble Lord, Lord Maples, had a go at trying to persuade us that it would be a good idea. Conservative arguments, such as they are, have been that the House of Commons is expensive and that the British people are overrepresented in the House of Commons compared with representation in other legislatures. Those reasons simply do not stand up to scrutiny. The argument that you should take 50 Members out of the House of Commons to save £12 million is risible. It would be risible even if you would save £12 million, but as a number of my noble friends have already explained, we will not save £12 million because the costs for a reduced number of Members of Parliament serving larger numbers of constituents would be no less. Possibly, when the Minister winds up this debate a little later, he would be kind enough to remind us what proportion of the fiscal deficit is £12 million.