Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. A large number of government supporters are in the Chamber tonight and I am delighted to see them. They may have come in having heard that the Opposition were conducting a filibuster and behaving poorly, contrary to the rules of this House, and that we were not subjecting the Bill to scrutiny. They may even have felt that Ministers were being incredibly patient in treating a succession of filibustering speeches as though they should be answered seriously, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, has done throughout the debate. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, has been a friend of mine almost as long as he has been a friend of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and it gives me no pleasure to say what I am going to say. The perfunctory and, at the end of his speech, bad-tempered response of the Minister gives the lie to what has been said. We have had an admirable debate on what I agree is only one constituency, but for the people in that constituency it is their constituency and for the people of the neighbouring constituencies those constituencies are theirs and the electoral geography of Wales is its electors’ geography. We have heard very moving speeches, which were particularly noted as they came from a quarter which had no reason to filibuster for a single second, as the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, made clear. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, made admirable cases in favour of this amendment. Therefore, I find the way that it was treated—I use this word to avoid any asperity of speech—disappointing. I wish to deal, first, with the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, who was half right. He is right that the amendment has a wider application than Brecon and Radnor. He may not have heard me say that Brecon and Radnor is the largest constituency in England and Wales. I am afraid that I am not qualified to talk about Northern Ireland but I suspect that most of the 10 constituencies that would be affected by this amendment are in Scotland. This matter can be dealt with in one of two ways. You can say that the case I make for Brecon and Radnor embraces all seats where there is a very dispersed population—in earlier debates we heard eloquent pleas on behalf of other Scottish seats—and that therefore the exemption should indeed apply to all Scottish seats, or you can say that Scotland has a very dispersed population and cannot have more than a certain representation, particularly in the light of devolution, and that therefore an exception should be made for Scotland. There is something to be said for either of those approaches but that does not knock down the amendment that I have proposed, nor does it influence its effect.