Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I hope that the noble Lord is not accusing me of filibustering. I have sat through a great deal of this debate and this is the first time that I have spoken. These are issues on which I feel very strongly indeed—as I hope the noble Lord will accept. I am someone who favours an elected second Chamber. I was interested to hear the comments about the wonderful debate that took place here on 10 December with the young people from different schools around the country. I confess to the House that I was the Member of the House who worked most closely with those young people who were putting forward the elected option. Unfortunately, we lost the debate. Nonetheless, there was a great quality of argument and discussion. It was an absolute privilege and joy for me to work with the young people from the community school in Newham in east London, helping them prepare for that debate. I absolutely applaud their efforts and the efforts of the other young people involved in what was a tremendous occasion. I am glad that my noble friend, having referred to this, enabled me to make that comment. In her very eloquent contribution, my noble friend Lady Smith spoke very tellingly about the changing role of MPs and their attachment to their constituency. As a former Member of the other place I feel very strongly about it too. I believe—as others have said—that it is important for constituencies to be linked to communities. It should be a very important guiding principle in deciding on numbers, rather than simply having an arbitrary number decided on. Like my noble friend, my own constituency was changed several times because of boundary changes. Sometimes those changes worked well if they were linked to proper communities. However, the constituency that I finally represented, Gateshead East and Washington West—which I was very happy to represent because it is in my native North-East—was a very strange constituency. The name sounds geographically a little bit confused. It was virtually two islands only connected by one narrow lane. One part of it was in the city of Sunderland and the other part was in the Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead. That arrangement worked far less well than having a constituency that was wholly within one particular local government area and that had a very obvious association and community feeling. The arguments that my noble friend put forward were very telling indeed. For all these reasons—and for the reasons that she gave about the changing role of MPs—she is, in some ways, absolutely right. The pressure and amount of work is much greater than it used to be. Although we must recognise that there is also some continuity in the frustrations of the House of Commons. In the 19th century Walter Bagehot said that the House of Commons was so full of business, "““that it is hard to keep your head in it””." In some ways, it is not just about the numbers. It is also about the function, role and huge variety of tasks that Members are trying to undertake. It is about all these things: the need for constituencies to be part of communities and the need for the role of a Member of the other place to be properly evaluated before changes are made. We should proceed very cautiously and not proceed in an arbitrary or ill thought out manner.