Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

We may well come on to it, but 76,000 and 600 are sensible numbers which achieve the objective of this Bill: of fairer votes in fairer drawn constituencies. I forgot who it was who was suggesting the usual thing, because we have had this debate so many times over the last few weeks. There is no smoking gun. I have said before: I defy the psephologists to actually prove it. For somebody with the experience of elections that she has, she knows how positively daft it is to suggest that 600 is part of some figure that has come out of number-crunching by those in Central Office. Even now, with all the resources, why don’t they crunch their own numbers and try and prove that 600 seats on an average of 76,000 is going to bring this massive advantage to the Conservative party or anybody else? We really do not know. It is simply a way of setting this central objective of fairer votes in fairer drawn constituencies and that is what niggles the Oppostion.