Lord Grocott
Main Page: Lord Grocott (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Grocott's debates with the Leader of the House
(14 years ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
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
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
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.