Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I beg to move that the House do now resume. It was three hours and fifty minutes ago that I made the last application for the House to resume. Taking the starting point as the application to move into Committee, the House has now been talking about this Bill for twelve hours, less an hour, for the UQ. The House is now, according to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, sitting in shifts. I understand that he is going off at three. There will be substantial proportions of the House that will not hear half of these amendments. We are debating these amendments in respect of a part of the Bill where there is no stated urgency to any part. We are doing it at the dead of night. It is sixteen minutes past three. I do not believe that this is an appropriate way for us to conduct business. This is another opportunity for those on the other Benches to consider whether or not this is the right way to seek proper scrutiny of the Bill. I said on the last occasion that I moved that the House resume that our unique feature—the thing that makes us a successful House—is that we scrutinise Bills well. It is inappropriate and wrong for us to be doing a really important constitutional Bill that has no degree of urgency—because there is no external urgency like there was in relation to, for example, the national security or Northern Rock legislation—in the middle of the night.