Coalition Policies Debate

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Department: Leader of the House

Coalition Policies

Lord Grocott Excerpts
Monday 8th November 2010

(14 years, 1 month ago)

Lords Chamber
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Lord Strathclyde Portrait Lord Strathclyde
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Broadly speaking, yes, I do, because they have the support of the majority in the House of Commons and were overwhelmingly and clearly pointed out in the respective manifestos. There are one or two exceptions where that is not the case but, as I said before, we will recognise them when we see them.

Lord Grocott Portrait Lord Grocott
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As it is not necessarily feasible to go through and analyse every single response, can the Leader of the House at least tell us how many people wrote in saying they thought it would be a good idea to spend £100 million on a referendum on the alternative vote?

Lord Strathclyde Portrait Lord Strathclyde
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My Lords, the noble Lord is of course right that it is far too short a time to look at each one but I flicked through the responses usefully over lunch and, for instance, here is one taken at random:

“We want referendums on national issues as we were promised”.

Another is:

“We want FAIR VOTES NOW!”.

Here is another one:

“I am concerned that having an elected upper house will mean that there is less accountability rather than more”.

I thought that one would go down well.