Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, in introducing the amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, reminded us that three new Peers will be introduced at 2.15 pm. I wonder whether the House authorities have checked whether they have been watching the television overnight and are indeed on their way. All I would say to them is that there is still time. As has just been pointed out, this amendment seeks to keep the number of Members in the House of Commons at 650 for the 2013 boundary review. Like our proposals, it attempts to address the fact that has been recognised on all sides of the House that there has been a tendency for successive boundary reviews to increase numbers of constituencies at every general review. They have been increased only by a small amount, but nevertheless that constitutes upward pressure. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has put forward a plan that I will not describe as ingenious as we fear that, if it were adopted, it would take perhaps 50 years to get down to the target level in this Bill of 600 as it is not entirely clear how the process of rounding down would function. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said that we had abandoned the claim that our objective is cost saving. However, I was present on at least three occasions during the night when we pointed out that our measures would result in cost savings. They would not be large but they would certainly not be trivial, as noble Lords on the other side of the Chamber claimed. Therefore, we have not lost the objective of saving public money but, as I have said so often, we are basically motivated by the objective of getting fair votes in fairly drawn constituencies. Although we have listened to what the noble Lord said, we tend to follow the view of the secretary of the Boundary Commission for Scotland on moving the number in the Commons downwards. He has said: "““I don’t think there would be any particular advantage in doing it incrementally. If you want to make the change, then get it over with””." We do not see an advantage in making these reductions incrementally and I invite the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.