That is absolutely right, and that is the point I made: that both my noble friends were genuinely and honestly considering whether this is a problem. There is nothing wrong with that at all, and I go along with that.
I must deal with my friend with a small “f”, the noble Lord, Lord Sanderson of Bowden. Again, he was one of the few people not to say something during his speech that was said previously, and he indicated that as well. He may not know it, but he is a local hero in Rutherglen, Cambuslang and Halfway—he does know it—for his services to those areas in local government reorganisation in the 1990s.
I will quickly mention something the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, said when he seemed to warn the Labour Party about the constitutional danger of voting against
the Government. I remind him that between 1997 and 2010 this House defeated the Labour Government over 500 times, so the lecture, if it was meant to be that, was a bit misplaced.
Finally, before I get accused of provoking people, the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, made a point about the £1,600 per head that Scotland gets. That is part of the metropolitan attitude that annoys people not just in Scotland but in Wales, the north, the north-west of England and elsewhere. If you took away the hidden government subsidy to London and the south-east from government bodies, contracts, employment and all the rest of it provided by the United Kingdom Government, there might be a better case for complaining about Scotland and elsewhere. However, there is a case for the decentralisation of England. Before I upset anybody else, I will close with that.
11.24 pm