Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, at one point in the debate, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said that he wondered if Ministers would bring themselves to look at it again. In responding to the debate for the second time in this area of discussion, I am obliged to look at it again. It may come as no surprise that I still believe that the 600 proposed in this Bill is what the Committee should support. The amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Snape, would reduce the number of current constituencies in the other place by 10 and result in 640 constituencies, which would reduce the number by 50. It was suggested—I am sure that it was just a slip of the tongue—that somehow or other the Government draw up the boundaries. That is clearly not the case. That will still be a matter for the independent boundary commission. Consideration of the workload of Members of Parliament has been a strong feature of the debate on this amendment. The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, talked about trips down memory lane, and the noble Lord, Lord Myners, gave us a more recent trip down memory lane than some of those who have served in the other place did. I can understand why I might be tempted to follow that course, but I do not particularly want to go too far down memory lane. However, I think it is important that this debate has been informed by that experience. I identified with the first part of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, about the different range of what MPs are expected to do and the different ways in which they go about doing it. It certainly struck a chord with me when he said, just as you think you have heard the last of what you might be asked to do, something comes along the following week that you could not have conceived of; I am sure that most Members in the other place have had that experience at some time or other. The noble Lord, Lord Winston, asked what we are requiring of Members of Parliament and talked about the importance of mathematical formulae in his work. However, I think it was made clear in a debate to which I contributed almost 12 hours ago that mathematical formulae do not actually work in situations like this. As the noble Lord, Lord Myners, said, there is variable performance. In some cases the variable performance will be because of different personalities of the Members of Parliament or different circumstances in their constituencies. If you represented a rural constituency, how could you ever factor in the possibility that there might be another outbreak of BSE or foot and mouth disease? It is simply impossible. At the end of the day, the people who make the judgments as to how well or how poorly an individual Member of Parliament discharges the many different responsibilities on him or her are the voters. There is no job description, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said. That is why any way of trying to boil it down to some mathematical formula simply will not work.