Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend has made a perfectly fair point. Let us recall, however, that although the Government have consistently argued that the problem is that this elected House is the largest in the European Union and in most legislatures, they never point out that the other House is larger than this, and that in legislatures not just in the European Union but throughout the globe the revising or upper Chamber, or the senate, is almost invariably not larger but significantly smaller than the elected Chamber. Where is the justification for maintaining a much larger second Chamber? No international relative statistics support the case for very large second Chambers, which seems to be what the Government want to introduce.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman has made a pertinent point in referring to the size of second Chambers in many modern democracies around the world. The point that he has not made is that in most of those instances the second Chamber is elected, whereas our second Chamber—which is bigger than our elected Chamber—is unelected. I consider it a massive contradiction that the Government are proposing an expansion of the unelected second Chamber and a reduction in the size of the legitimate, elected Chamber.

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his support. While he was making his intervention, I received a communication from a Whip to the effect that, apparently, the coalition Government are committed to reducing the size of the other House. My response was “When?” I supported an excellent ten-minute rule Bill presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), which proposed doing away with Whips in this Chamber. I am grateful to the Whip for the help that he tried to give, but I should be even more grateful if he could ensure, perhaps through those on the Front Bench, that it is put on record when we will reach a point at which the second Chamber is smaller than this elected Chamber.