Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

If the noble Lord is gently trying to say that this is not a problem that has just arisen and that just happens to coincide with the formation of the coalition Government, I am absolutely with him—of course the problem has been with us and with our system for quite some time now, for probably more than 20 years. However, what brings it into stark relief is the fact that if the Bill goes through in its present form, we will build the size of constituencies on the basis of much stricter numbers than we used in the past. Those numbers will be very important indeed; more important than they were under the rules set by previous Governments over the past 40 or 50 years. In the instance where numbers will be even more important, it seems more important to us to get the numbers as correct as we can.