Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving us that information. She asked the question many hours ago and I did not have the answer then. She has the answer now, and that is good news. The point is that the Boundary Commissions are independent. They will do their review and will advise Parliament on their conclusions. It is equally right that Parliament should say to the Boundary Commissions that we believe the right number across the country is 600. I am in danger of doing what I have accused noble Lords opposite of doing, which is straying from the amendment, and I certainly do not want to do that. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Knight, to these debates on House of Lords reform. I can promise him many hours of debate in the months and perhaps even years ahead on this great subject. He joins a small but—I hope the noble Lord will not mind if I say this—noble group of Members who wave the standard of reform and are not much encouraged by their Back Benches. The noble Lord will find that is equally so. Like the noble Lord, Lord Dubs—he is no longer in his place, which is a pity—and many other noble Lords, I recognise that being a reformer in this House is quite a difficult path to tread. Of course, it is true that Lords reform forms part of a wider series of reforms designed to restore trust in Parliament, but that does not mean that deciding on an appropriate size for the other place is in any way dependent on membership of this House. Determining the size of the other place and reforming this House are not interrelated. If they were, which would come first? As my noble friend Lord Tyler said hours ago—he was absolutely right in his intervention in the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Knight—could we not equally argue that reform of this House cannot be finalised until we agree on an appropriate size for the other place? The two questions are not necessarily connected. If we had done it the other way, I feel sure that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, would have been the first to have argued it the other way round. The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, would have us wait until the number in this House was below the number in the House of Commons. At the moment, there is no means to retire. My noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral has issued a report and we will be studying it. So many noble Lords are keen on retiring from this House that I hope the report will be accepted and a means for retirement will be accepted forthwith. When we get to the Government’s plans on long-term reform of this House, while no final decisions have been made, I very much hope that a document will be published in the next few weeks. I think I can say that it is likely that an elected senate would be substantially smaller than the current House and almost certainly smaller than another place. I hope that that will put a smile on the face of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott.