Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2011 Lords Chamber

The offer is clear. It is not my offer because it is for the Front Benches opposite. The Government have a way out of this: take the referendum part of the Bill out and agree on a sensible schedule for considering Part 2. We do not like the House to get into the position it is in at the moment; I certainly do not like it. But that is an offer on the table which I think any reasonable person would accept.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, perhaps I may be permitted to put forward, with some diffidence, a perception from a Cross-Bencher, because the Cross-Benchers have been referred to. I think it is known that the Cross-Benchers actually listen to the arguments and we vote according to what we believe are the better arguments. But when a debate on one amendment takes three and three-quarter hours and is not followed by asking the House to decide on it, that is the point at which the Cross-Benchers wonder—I personally wonder and I believe I am not alone—what is actually going on.

[Lady Saltoun of Abernethy]

My Lords, I wonder if I could ask a brief question: what is all the hurry about? Why do we have to have a referendum this May? Why can we not wait and have it in a year’s time, or at any time? This is something that is too important to rush, as we are doing.