Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I thought that the noble Lord was referring to the introduction or the greater use of the guillotine, which, if I had been a Member of the House of Commons at the time, I would have voted against. I strongly believe that you cannot proceed with legislation if you insist on guillotining it. The problem with this Bill is that it is highly political. I return to what happens in the House of Commons where amendments are not automatically debated. They are selected in what is called Speaker’s selection, whereby probably the majority simply are not accepted as debatable on the Floor of the House. That is the first hurdle that you have to get through in the House of Commons when you table an amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, is probably thinking, ““I wonder whether we can do that here””. If we were to do that in the House of Lords, it would completely transform this place. If you want to clear people out, that is probably the way to do it. The moment you start to interfere with the rights of this House of Members to debate issues freely in the way that historically we have been able to do over the years, you create the incentive for people to leave the House.