Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I am not sure that I entirely follow my noble friend’s argument. My case against a 15-year term is that once one is elected by whatever method, even a better one than my noble friend has put forward, one is there and can do what one likes without being answerable. I am not happy about that, which is why I would prefer shorter mandates that are subject to re-election. My key point is that we need to know a little more about the Government’s plans for the future of this House before we can be happy about what they intend to do to the Commons. My noble friend Lord Grocott and I have some differences in policy. We have no differences in personal terms but we differ occasionally on policy. Unless there is some way round my noble friend’s amendment, we will have a much larger House of Commons, possibly by nearly 150 Members, than we have now, unless we can significantly reduce the membership of this House in the mean time. That is a pretty complicated set of additional thoughts to add to his amendment. He did not go through that in great detail so I do not see his amendment being effective, much as I like his arguments to justify it. I do not want to talk any more about this. I have said that I am not happy about a secondary mandate, but I believe that the relationship between the two Houses is crucial and we look to the Government’s proposals for the future of this House to see how they stack up against what is going on in this Bill. Better still, we should delay consideration of this part of the Bill until we can see what the Government have in mind for the future of this House.