Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My noble friend is again right. I sat through about half of the debate on housing benefit and was really impressed by the speeches from all sides, particularly from the Liberal Democrats— including my old friend the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope—all arguing against the cuts in housing benefit. The cuts will certainly make it more difficult for poor people to access their elected representatives. As my noble friend said, cuts to library services will have the same effect. To illustrate the increasing demand in MPs’ casework, I quote a couple of examples that I hope, since they do not come particularly from Labour, might convince Members opposite. According to Wilks-Heeg and Clayton, authors of Whose Town is it Anyway? The State of Local Democracy in Two Northern Towns, published in 2006 by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, an MP in the 1950s or 1960s, which is even before I was a Member of Parliament and probably even before my noble friend Lord Kinnock was—