Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

There is an awfully long queue of new Peers and hopeful Peers who would like to come in. Publishing a Bill and sending it to a Joint Committee of both Houses is an important milestone in this debate on reform of the House of Lords, but it is not yet the introduction of a Bill for legislation. We shall have to wait for the Government’s decision on that, and of course the Bill will be subject to full parliamentary scrutiny. Reform of this House is, of course, an important issue, but determining the size of the other place and reforming this House are certainly not connected. I hope that noble Lords opposite feel that I have demonstrated that. This has been a good debate. It has been a long debate, and I particularly enjoyed the intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Prescott. I welcome him to these debates. I know that he takes a slightly different view to his noble friend Lord Knight, and there is also an honourable and noble tradition on that in the House of Lords. Both these amendments ask us to wait, and that is the fundamental message I got from the Labour Party throughout what has been a very long Committee day. It is, ““Do not be hasty””—well, we could not be accused of being overly hasty these past few hours—and ““Do not make the change in the House of Commons to 600””. I believe that there is a majority in this House to make that reduction, and I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.