Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, when I saw the amendment on the Marshalled List, I thought that we would have a very different debate from the one that has emerged. Until the speeches of my noble friends Lady Nye and Lord Brooke, I thought that we were not going to touch on what I understood was the essence of the amendment that my noble friend Lady McDonagh has moved. I had assumed that the amendment represented not a real belief on the part of my noble friend that 630 should be the proper size of the House of Commons but what, in a traditional Committee stage of a Bill, we would regard as a probing amendment. The reality is that we have yet to have exposed to us any rationale for the size of the House of Commons that the Bill proposes. My noble friend Lord Brooke referred to the words of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, who talked about plucking a nice round number out of the air. I remember also the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, telling us with enormous earnestness—and, I assume, absolute honesty—that no political considerations were contained in the figure that emerged. So what were the reasons for choosing 600 as opposed to 650, 630, 575 or 585? I was tempted to say that there was some sort of arcane numerology about this. Noble Lords will be aware that 650 is the product of three prime numbers: two, five squared and 13; 630 is of course the product of four prime numbers: two, three squared, five and seven. I defy anyone to find a similar formulation or number that involves five prime numbers. Maybe my noble friend Lord Winston, or some such person could come up with something.