Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill (Twenty Ninth sitting) Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Cabinet Office
Afzal Khan
Main Page: Afzal Khan (Labour - Manchester Rusholme)Department Debates - View all Afzal Khan's debates with the Cabinet Office
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill (Twenty Ninth sitting)
Afzal Khan ExcerptsWednesday 27th March 2019
(5 years, 8 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill 2017-19 View all Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill 2017-19 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Notices of Amendments as at 30 January 2019 - (31 Jan 2019)
The Chair
As the Committee cannot consider the Bill until the House has agreed a money resolution, I call Afzal Khan to move that the Committee do now adjourn.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
I beg to move, That the Committee do now adjourn.
Events have taken an interesting turn this week, notably with the Government’s defeat on Monday, which gave Parliament control of the Order Paper. The Government have officially lost control. Interestingly, throughout the Brexit process, I have seen the Prime Minister raise the importance of respecting and upholding democracy.
I will remind the Committee of what my Bill sets out to do. It would fix the number of MPs at 650 and ensure that boundary changes include the 2 million people who have registered to vote since 2015. Maintaining the number of MPs and ensuring that boundaries have equal numbers of voters in each seat would guarantee free and fair elections, which are essential to the democratic process. At a time when democracy is thought to be under threat, achieving those objectives has never been more important. On that note, would the Minister care to provide an update, please?