My Lords, I was intrigued as to why the noble Lord had put his name to this amendment. I was particularly intrigued, because of his background as a very senior civil servant whom we all held in very high regard, as to why he would go against the principle, which has been upheld in this House, that we accept the advice of the clerks. The noble Lord is arguing is that, where the players on the field do not like the result, they should have a vote on whether they agree with the referee. The noble Lord prayed in aid the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, for whom I have even more regard—indeed, I voted for her as Speaker in the House of Commons—but the position in the other place is completely different. They have a Speaker, and I say to the noble Lord that, if we go down this road, we may very well end up with such a situation in this House, which would be a very bad thing indeed.
However, it never occurred to me for a moment that the noble Lord would bring Scotland into the argument. He takes as his title, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard. Kinlochard is at the bottom of the loch by which I live; I look at Kinlochard. I have to tell the noble Lord that the people in Kinlochard are not beset with the question of how many Members of Parliament represent them. In fact, their view of Members of Parliament is probably best not repeated in this House. To argue that the nationalists will use the legislation to exploit opposition to the United Kingdom is utterly ridiculous. Alex Salmond wants there to be no Members in the House of Commons from Scotland and to argue that he is going to be concerned by a reduction in the number of Members is ridiculous. To be fair to the SNP, it has always accepted that in return for more powers—which they call devo-max—there should be a reduction in the number of MPs. This is a wholly spurious argument. If the noble Lord had said that he was supporting this amendment because he thought it would help the Labour Party to win the next election, I could have understood the argument, but I have to say that his argument cuts no ice with me at all.
What is the origin of this? How have we got into this mess? Why are we faced with this problem? The answer is that the Deputy Prime Minister is cross. He is cross that, despite repeated warnings, his Bill—which was not properly thought through—crashed on landing in the other place. He said something quite extraordinary
the other day. Before he had even heard the Prime Minister’s speech which is to be made in Europe, he said that he was going to go to Europe in order to translate the Prime Minister’s speech on Europe from double-Dutch to Dutch. What we are seeing today is that the Deputy Prime Minister is capable of going from cross to double-cross, because that is what this is. It is a double-cross.