Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I was here last night and I heard those interminable statistics. The point is that this is not what we are debating at the moment; we are debating parliamentary constituencies. I have enunciated a principle that the Government consider important for this part of the Bill, and one that we believe would be seriously undermined by the proposal that is implicit in the amendment. In addition, as the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, acknowledged in response to a question from the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, this also overrules rule 1, and the Committee has debated at considerable length the question of the size of the House of Commons and the fact that the Government’s position is that there should be a House of 600. The current situation is that there is no hierarchy of rules and there is a flexibility to move away from the aspiration, which is there in the current rules, that the Boundary Commission should go as close to the quota as possible. It was clear from the exchanges that took place in the debate that in fact there is that flexibility to move away that has led to the kind of wide variation that I have just illustrated with the difference between Manchester Central and Glasgow North, and indeed has led to a steady increment over many years, almost invariably in an upward direction, in the number of seats.