My Lords, I, too, received advice from the clerks of the House and I valued it. At the end of the day, although I did not ignore that advice, there were occasions when I said, “I will go in another direction”. In effect, I did not accept 100% of what the clerks had said.
However, let me put this to noble Lords. One of the reasons that a clerk would give to me, to the Chairman of Ways and Means or to a Deputy Speaker for not selecting an amendment was that the matter had been aired fully on a recent occasion. This matter was recently aired fully. I am speaking not only about this amendment or this issue. I take an interest in Boundary Commission debates and in electoral registration legislation. I am speaking because I am interested in both issues. I spoke about Argyll and was accused by the Liberal Party of filibustering. The beneficiary of the Argyll constituency was a Liberal, not Labour, Member of Parliament.
The amendment says, “Do not implement the matter until 2018”. Therefore, what guarantee do we have that by the 2020 elections, which will occur at that time because of the five-year duration of a Parliament, the boundary commissioner will be able to finish his or her business and deal with the appeals that will take place? I concur with everything that has been said about electoral registers. That argument has gone on for as long as electoral registers have existed. The first argument has been, “They are inaccurate”, but that is unfortunately bound to be the case because of bereavement and transient populations. That is a legitimate argument to put before a boundary commissioner. I have been before Boundary Commission inquiries and said that the electoral register was inaccurate. I went before boundary commissioners when the famous poll tax was on the go and people were deliberately keeping their names off the register.
I would feel a lot more comfortable with the amendment if there was a Private Member’s Bill of one clause from the other place encompassing the same case as the amendment. At least we would then truly be taking on our role as a revising Chamber. We are talking about passing an amendment when we do not know the view of the Members of Parliament down the corridor. If it came from the other direction, however, we would at least have had the benefit of the Hansard report of the debate. Any of us who has been through boundary changes as Members of Parliament know that it is the last possible thing you can get through in a sitting. You can lose a colleague, or colleague can be turned against colleague. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, as the Secretary of State for Scotland, had to sign off a boundary commissioner’s review—a proposal made in good faith—knowing that it would have a profound effect on his political career. People down the corridor know what the boundary commissioner has already pulled out of the hat. Some are going to win and some are going to lose. That brings about the human frailties that it can bring about and we will not get the objective vote we would have got if it came from the other direction. We are in a very serious situation when we disregard the clerks without due cause. That is the important thing—without due cause.