Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I am more likely to find someone recruiting for the band of hope in hell than to find anyone in my part of Wales who supported it. It will not happen, frankly. The point that I am trying to get across is that there is not the community of interest that has to exist if we are to have huge constituencies based on numbers. If the Bill is enacted as it stands we will not need to employ the Boundary Commission to do this work. Anybody with a map, a pencil and an abacus will be able to draw up the new parliamentary boundaries. We might as well hand it over to the Flat Earth Society for all the good it will do for locally based parliamentary representation. This is so important and fundamental, and it is a matter that I will return to perhaps at greater length when we debate the amendments affecting Wales that are in my name and those of other noble Lords. It is important to recognise that there are particular difficulties, especially across the south Wales valleys where simply having constituencies based on numbers will not work in terms of the community of interest. There will be no link whatever between the Member of Parliament and the constituent. That will be a retrograde step, so I hope that with those few remarks the Minister will get the impression of how strongly I feel, as do many people in Wales. I know how people on all sides, including Cross-Benchers, feel about this. Wales will be adversely affected in that 20 per cent of all the reductions in the number of parliamentary seats in Britain will be in Wales. It will lose one in four of its parliamentary seats as the Bill stands. That cannot be right and I will return to that debate later.