Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

There is a world of difference between saying it is a modest amount, which it is, and just dismissing it as not worth doing because it only saves a trivial amount. That was the point I was seeking to make. The point has been made yet again in this debate, as in earlier debates, that somehow or other there ought to be some sort of method of working out what the right size is for the other place based on some analysis of workload—be it through an examination of the sessional returns or not. There may be reasons other than Members not being able to find time as to why some of these committees were not attended, because my recollection is that there was some controversy over the setting up of the regional committees and that may well be reflected in the attendance. The noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, in the usual powerful way in which he expresses opinions, talked about the difficulty of defining the purpose of a Member of Parliament. He called it the perpetual motion of change. It would make it very difficult to find out that there is some way we can empirically arrive at a figure which would be the right number, derived in some way through committees of inquiry or weighing up evidence from 650 different Members of Parliament. Members of Parliament face different challenges, and constituencies vary. Calculating the ideal size of the Commons through a consideration of the role of an MP would be difficult, if not impossible. The Government believe that such an approach is both unrealistic and unnecessary. Our proposals make a modest reduction in the overall size of the House. The result of this will be constituencies that are within 5 per cent of the quota of 76,000. Nobody has seriously suggested that those Members of Parliament who represent seats within 5 per cent either way of 76,000 are somehow or other unable to fulfil their function. One noble Lord—I think perhaps it was the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong—said that it was unreasonable for the Government to fix the size of the electorate. What we are doing is seeing what the size of the electorate is, and dividing the total electorate and coming up with a figure of 600. We have indicated that the difference between what we are doing, having reached that figure and fixing it at that, and what the position is at the moment, is that at the moment it can incrementally go up as it has done in every boundary review bar one since 1950. The noble Baroness, Lady Ford, along with other noble Lords, expressed concern as to how Members of Parliament could still be champions of their local communities—that somehow or other it will no longer be possible. I thought it was interesting that, in his as-ever spirited contribution to the debate, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, mentioned that, in the constituency he used to represent, Cumnock had no relationship with Girvan; some people of Cumnock had never been to Girvan, he said, and the communities there did not really know each other. That does not exactly suggest that the present system has got the kind of wonderful embracing communities as has sometimes been suggested.