Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords on all sides who have spoken in what everyone who has listened must consider to be a proper and sensible debate at Committee stage on an important matter. The Minister did not convince me in the slightest as to why the rule is in the Bill and I have a feeling that he did not persuade the Committee either. That is quite a serious state of affairs, because rule 4 stands out as being the one whose presence in the Bill cannot be understood at all. I do not, I am afraid, get the point about the Scottish Boundary Commission. I hope that the Minister will in due course help the Committee by telling us chapter and verse about the Scottish Boundary Commission, but the rule seems effectively to apply to only one constituency in the whole of the United Kingdom. If the Government wanted to exempt that constituency, why did they not just exempt it, as they have the two others and now the Isle of Wight? I said in opening that, even if the original intention was to protect a particular constituency, it has become apparent that that objective would not be delivered. I suppose that if there is one thing worse than trying to protect a particular constituency, it is trying to protect it and failing to do so. I fear that that may have happened on this occasion. I cannot think—I think that other noble Lords are of the same mind as me—what other explanation there can be for the rule appearing. As for other speakers, I accused the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, the other night of being a purist. It was meant entirely as a compliment rather than an insult; indeed, he took it as though it were a compliment, which I was slightly surprised at. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, proposed a very sensible amendment the other night, which the Front Bench on the other side said that it would look at and take up. We very much hope that it does so, because the points that he made in his short speech tonight showed how important that should be. I am grateful also to my noble friends Lord Stevenson, Lord McAvoy and Lord Foulkes. I was intrigued by and grateful for the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, because he has real history in that part of the world. He said that he did not like the Bill as it was worded but that he liked our amendment even less, but I was not quite sure what he wanted. I look forward to hearing in more detail at some stage what he would like to see in place of both the Government’s attitude and ours. He said that we should be looking for votes of equal value that are balanced by a sense of constituencies being represented by an individual. We know exactly what he meant by that and we agree with him; it is exactly what we are looking for in this case. We do not see how this clause helps us to achieve that. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, asked the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, why the rule could not just be taken out and reliance made on rule 5. I think that the answer to that is that rule 5 is subject to rule 2, which is the one that sets the quota, but rule 4, which is the one that sets up this particularly odd territorial constituency size, is not subject to rule 2 in the same way. They have equal worth. If tonight we took out rule 4, we would be left with rule 5, but that would be subject strictly to the 5 per cent rule and, therefore, would not prevail. I think that that is the answer to the question that the noble Lord posed. I do not intend to divide the House tonight on this issue. We have had a very sensible Committee debate. The Government must have heard concern from all sides of the House about this clause and I am sure that they will go away and consider carefully whether this is really the right clause to be in this Bill and whether they could come up with a better version of it. It is unsatisfactory and we will undoubtedly bring the matter back at Report. By then, all sides of the House—and I do not just mean my noble friends alongside me and behind me—will want to have a better explanation as to why rule 4 is in the Bill. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 71B withdrawn. Amendment 71C not moved.