Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

This has been a trip down memory lane to the early days of the debate on the Bill. I thought we might still be here for some hours to come but that is not so. I am afraid that the Minister has not convinced me. First, he said that practical arrangements could be made by 5 May and I said precisely the same thing myself. That was never in question. The question is whether a legitimate debate can take place in so short a period. The only argument which I think I heard him use against that was the argument from Scottish and Welsh devolution. He did not say what the exact timetable on those Bills was but that the referendums were carried out quickly. That is true, but there is no analogy between the two. The issues of Scottish and Welsh devolution had been matters of the most intense debate in Scotland and Wales. There had been a failed attempt with a referendum about 10 years before the critical referendum took place. There was not a moment when this was not in the public eye in Scotland and Wales, with one political party having a change to the Government’s arrangements as its central and single objective. There has been a debate about electoral change too. It has been, let me admit freely, up till now largely confined to the political class. It is only now that we really know that the alternative to be put before the British people is AV and not the supplementary vote, STV, AV+ or all the other systems that are around. It is starting miles behind where the devolution campaign started and that is why it is quite wrong to rush it through in this way. As a number of noble Lords have said, the Lib Dems are going to repent of this rapid timetable at their leisure. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 102C withdrawn. Amendment 103 Moved by