Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

The noble Lord is referring to the time when most of the hereditary Peers were removed from this House. I thought that that was a tremendous blow for democracy. The noble Lord said that he is confused but I, too, am very confused about the attitude of Ministers in this House towards these proposals. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, is not in his place but on many occasions in the past I have heard him speak out against increasing the size of this House. However, through this Bill he is proposing to reduce the size of the other place, while at the same time he is presiding over a huge increase in numbers in this House. That seems to me entirely the opposite of what we have heard him say in the past. Indeed, although my noble friend Lord McAvoy and I have different views on the way that this House should be composed, he none the less expressed his misgivings about the continual increase in the numbers in this place at a time when we are proposing to cut the numbers in the other place. I am an unashamed reformer in terms of wanting an elected second Chamber.