Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Waldorf and Statler, my noble friend says. I should say that they are distinguished ex-Chancellors of the Exchequer. As they have been around a great deal longer than I have, they will recall—I saw this when we were in opposition in the House of Commons, even when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, and I saw it again when Labour was in power and Tony Blair was Prime Minister—that, as one of my noble friends said earlier, when we went through these kinds of debates in Committee, week in, week out, the Minister would say, “That’s a very good point; I’ll take that away and look at it and come back on Report”. On this Bill, we have had one occasion when the noble Lord, Lord McNally, has said that—one miserable occasion. Even then, he did not say that he agreed; he said that he would take it back and have a look at it without any guarantee, sympathy or consideration.

I think that we could make even better progress through the Bill if, day after day and week after week, the Minister were to say, “That’s a good point. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, has made a good point on this”, or, “The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has made an excellent point on that; I’ll take it away and look at it and see what can be done about it”. So far, though, one such response in six sessions is a very low batting average. It makes the English cricket team look good in comparison. I hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, whom I have known for a very long time, will recognise the validity of the argument that if you are to have a fair election and fair boundaries, you need to ensure that everyone over the age of 18 is taken account of in drawing up those boundaries.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, what a good point my noble friend has just made; I am sure that we shall all take it into account. What a good contribution, too, from my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer, and what an interesting intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Rennard. It is that last to which I want particularly to address my remarks. The noble Lord made a point that was completely impossible to dispute: in the past, constituency boundaries have been based on registers, registers by and large have been getting better—at least, we have worked on getting them better; we do not ever have a completely firm idea of how many people are not registered—and the Bill is therefore soundly based.

That, however, is not reality. The reality is that with the Bill, for the first time, we are treating electorates as part of a rigid mathematical formula—5.1 per cent over, you have to be cut down; 5 per cent under, you have to cut back. There is a strict limit of 5 per cent within which the Electoral Commission has to work, and some good examples of the effects of that have been brought before noble Lords by outside advisers. But what we are trying to equalise is not some actual number, a number in reality—it is an extremely approximate guess at the number of electors. Yes, it is the number of people who appear on a list, but we have no idea how that relates in each individual constituency to the number of people who actually should be on that list.

I can guarantee that, under the provisions of the Bill, some seats will have bits cut off them because they are thought to be over the 5 per cent limit whereas in fact they are not; they will be well within the limit, but they will have a very high registration number. More importantly, you will have other seats which are having bits added into them. They have got a perfectly normal number of people living there but an inadequacy in the register means that they are not all counted. This is perfectly all right under the existing way in which the Electoral Commission works. It works in a way where size is only one of the factors it takes into account. It adjusts for such matters as natural boundaries, geography, local authority boundaries and so on, and it comes by and large to the most sensible view on the most sensible set of facts that are available to it. That does not work for a rigid mathematical formula of this kind.

Half of the solution to this should be to be less rigid about mathematical formulae, both in terms of allowing a greater flexibility around the size allowed to constituencies and by giving a greater weight to the other factors which the Electoral Commission can take into account when deciding the boundaries of a particular seat. We will come later to amendments which are designed to do both those things.

While this provision of 5 per cent remains, however, at least we have to make sure we are doing the best job we can with the electoral register, a job which is now vastly more important because of its vast mathematical significance in the scheme of things laid out by the Bill.

[Lord McAvoy]

Does my noble friend agree with my findings, not on a scientific basis, that during and after the poll tax fiasco the importance of people wanting to be on the register was undermined because a whole strata of people found there was a financial advantage not to be registered and somehow there was something lost in the community about the importance of wanting to register? No matter how allegedly better the registers are now, there must be a residual effect of the poll tax. So it may be better but there is residual damage.

[Lord Lipsey]

I entirely agree with my noble friend. Indeed it is not just the poll tax; there are a number of factors the whole time that cause people to avoid anything that identifies them as individuals and which they think the authorities could catch up with. It may be for bad reasons: they may perhaps be illegally in the country or fear they are here illegally; or good reasons: that they fall for some of the liberal myths about the nature of the modern state and think that they may all end up in prison if they are identified. I do not take it by any means for granted that the improvement in the electoral register will continue over time.

It is rather like opinion polls. Opinion polls measure less and less because fewer and fewer people are willing to answer the questions because they are frightened that they may be held to task for the answers they give. There is therefore a serious risk of the deterioration of the electoral registers, which makes it all the more wrong that this Bill should have the exact number on the electoral register and the exact number of people in each constituency as its target and also makes it right that, in so far as we can improve these things at all, the amendment moved by my noble friend should be adopted to make them as good as they can be. But that will never be very good.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I should like to share with noble Lords my own experience of the problems of electoral registration. Prior to the 2005 general election, when I was in the other place, my honourable friend Wayne David, my neighbouring colleague and MP for Caerphilly, and I were absolutely staggered to find that the new register had come out and our electorates had dropped by thousands—I think more than 8,000. We had a meeting with the electoral returning officer who was an official of his association and he explained to us that across the country electoral registration officers were pursuing different approaches to compiling the electoral register. Some were doing canvasses, some were sending out letters, some were sending out post cards and so on and so forth. The real top and tail of it was this: the council was simply not providing sufficient money for the electoral registration officer to carry out an annual canvass.

With the best will in the world, rolling registers have helped but they are more of a convenience. I do not think there is a great deal of evidence to show that many more people have actually registered. I am a bit concerned about individual registration—

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

It is indicated that voting age may not always mean eligibility to vote, because there might be occasions when people may not be United Kingdom citizens, or be Commonwealth citizens or citizens of the Republic of Ireland, and would thereby be ineligible to vote.

The two important points are, first, that that 91 per cent figure is reasonable and compares well with other countries and, secondly, there are still within it groups where the registration rate is not, by any stretch of the imagination, satisfactory; and I believe that there is an obligation to address these issues.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, it is very helpful to have this information from the Minister, but the real point is that it is not what the overall level of registration is, or what the level of registration within groups of the population is; it is what the variation is in the level of registration between constituencies. It is constituency sizes that you are trying to equalise on the basis of these registration figures, and 91 per cent overall could easily hide a difference between 80 per cent at the lowest and 99 per cent at the highest.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

It follows on from what I have said that I have implicitly acknowledged that point, because clearly there are some constituencies where the kind of groups that I have indicated have a lower registration rate tends to be more concentrated. To be fair, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, alluded to the information on that from the reports from the Electoral Commission that have been referred to.

[Lord Lipsey]

The noble and learned Lord says that it is possible on the basis of knowing what groups are in which constituencies to make a pretty good estimate of the percentage of registration in each constituency. It would be helpful if he published for the House a document setting that out, so that we can see what the variance is. It is not on the variance that these equalisations will happen; it is on the basis that they are all plumb right.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I hope that there is no dispute between any parts of the House that it is important that we try to improve voter registration, and I can assure the House that the Government are committed to ensuring that the electoral register is as accurate and as complete as possible. That is why we are taking forward and progressing towards individual registration. I know that the noble and learned Lord agreed that we were taking along what had been set in motion by the previous Administration, although I understand that there are disputes about that on his own Back Benches. In addition, we are introducing measures such as data-matching schemes to help local authorities gain as complete a picture as possible of eligible voters in their area.

The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, made reference to the census. It was a helpful suggestion. In a previous incarnation in Scotland, I had some ministerial responsibility for the census, and I am only too aware of the sensitivities attached to that. I rather suspect that the Office for National Statistics has thought about the degree to which it would be practical to mix the census with another exercise and the effects that that could have. I do not have the information to hand on whether the ONS has made that analysis, but I would nevertheless be happy to look into that issue. It might also be possible, although I cannot give any definitive answer, for the information from the census to inform us in the future. As the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, indicated, there are sensitivities about data protection, but perhaps it may be possible for that information to be available for informing further efforts to improve voter registration.

I confirm that we are piloting data matching between electoral registration officers and public authorities to identify people who are not on the register and target them for registration. We have just run a process for applications and the pilots will occur next year. I say to the noble and learned Lord that the boundaries have always been drawn on the basis of the register, and, as he correctly pointed out, the review date will be in two years and 10 months. As the report is due on 1 October 2013, the review date would be 1 December which has just passed, which, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, would be too late. However, I hope he will agree that it is not too late to try to encourage people to get on to the register for the purpose of voting in the referendum and in the other elections which are due to take place next year.

I also make the point to the noble and learned Lord that, if his amendment were to be carried and the next election in 2015 were held according to a register where the review date was some 10 years ago, the distortion might be even greater. I also point out that, under the Bill, we are seeking to have a review every five years. That would allow us the opportunity every five years to improve and, it is hoped, to take advantage of the improvements to which we are committed and which I know the Administration of which he was a member subsequently supported. My noble friend Lord Rennard paid proper tribute to the work that was done by the previous Administration to try to increase voter registration with a rolling register. These are worthwhile initiatives and we want to continue with them.

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Moved by

[Lord Lipsey]

47: Clause 8, page 6, line 17, leave out subsection (4)

[Lord Lipsey]

Can the Minister tell me why subsection (4) is there?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, asks a very reasonable question. My understanding is that it is a common provision in the context of a power to commence primary legislative provisions by order. It only allows a limited provision to be made where it is genuinely necessary for the purpose of commencing the AV provisions, and the transitional saving power cannot be used to amend either the Bill or any other piece of legislation.

It was included simply to provide for unforeseen circumstances which might affect the implementation of provisions in the event of a yes vote. As the noble Lord and, indeed, your Lordships may be aware, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has published its report on the Bill and recommends that the power in Clause 8(4), the one which the noble Lord seeks to delete, should be subject to negative procedure. We have noted the concern of the committee that this power might enable the Government to determine which form of voting system should apply in the case of a particular parliamentary election.

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The noble Lord has raised the point. The Government take the view that the best approach therefore is to remove the power in Clause 8(4) and instead provide explicitly for the situation as regards the elections prior to the first general election on AV. That makes the Government’s intention very clear and removes any room for doubt about how that power might be used. The effect of Amendment 47 on its own would be undesirable. It would remove any power to make the saving provision that we think is sensible in secondary legislation without placing that saving provision in the Bill in its place. It would certainly be our intention to bring forward an appropriate amendment on Report.

[Lord Lipsey]

The noble and learned Lord has sent this particular noble Lord home happy for Christmas. At last we have changed the Bill in some small regard. I am very grateful to him for his open-mindedness and his very clear explanation. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 47 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Lord Lipsey]

51: Clause 9, page 6, line 30, at end insert—
“( ) Where a voter marks a ballot with a cross against the name of a candidate, that cross shall count as if the voter had placed the number 1 opposite the name of that candidate.””

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[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, this amendment is in my name and that of my noble friend Lady McDonagh, who is sorry that she cannot be in her place at this stage of the evening. I was rather amazed to have had an impact with my previous amendment and I very much hope that the Government will be able to accept this one.

It is a perfectly simple amendment. It does not go to the heart of the Bill, the core of the coalition agreement or anything like that. It simply says that if someone marks just one preference when they go into the polling booth and, instead of putting 1, they mark it X, that should count. I do not want to labour the point because I see the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, nodding encouragingly. We are in agreement on a lot of things here—we want the maximum number of valid votes in the referendum, as does he—so it is good from that point of view.

[Lord Rooker]

I do not understand this. My noble friend is a supporter of AV. Those of us who have been in the other place—that is, those who have been to an election count, and I do not know whether my noble friend has—know that, under the present first past the post system, if someone puts a 1 against a candidate, that counts as a vote because it is a clear indication. So it is bound to be the case under AV that if you put an X against a name, it will count as a vote; the normal rules allow for that.

I thought that the idea of this was to persuade people to use second choices. This is where the con comes in of it being the “optional” AV system. There will be a campaign out there of people saying, “You don’t have to bother with all these numbers—just put an X against my name”. That is what it is all about. The argument that AV gets rid of tactical voting is fraudulent, as I hope my noble friend will admit.

[Lord Lipsey]

I enjoyed listening to the speech that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, made under the guise of an intervention, but I am making a perfectly narrow point. In the Bill as drafted an X would not count, and under the amendment that I would like to make an X would count. I must say an X is about the only bit of our electoral system that is truly traditional. It goes way back to the times when many people could not write numbers. First past the post is not the only system that has been in use in Britain. If you look back to the last century there were the university seats and two-member seats in the cities. Nothing else is traditional except the use of X. I am here in the guise of a traditionalist trying to preserve the tradition of the X. The final thing I would say is that, although most people have no difficulty with 1, 2 and 3, older voters and others have perhaps become accustomed to a certain way of casting their vote, and I do not think there is any need to force them to change their mind if they just want to put an X in the right place.

I do not think this amendment will benefit the cause that I hope to see prevail at the election when it comes. People who use X may well not be the best informed voters, and certainly the best informed voters will vote for AV, whatever the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, may say. It may not benefit my cause but I do think it is a democratic advantage to allow an X and I cannot see any argument why not.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

I hope that my noble friend the Leader of the House will find it possible to accept this amendment. It does seem to be eminently sensible in that people have been putting Xs on ballot papers for a very long time and it is conceivable that they might continue to do so. I am not totally reassured by the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, that there is all this flexibility among returning officers. You might not find that this flexibility is there. I would be more comfortable if this was in the Bill and it was made absolutely clear that an X was just as valid as a 1 and vice versa. This is a very sensible amendment which all sides of the House should feel very comfortable about supporting.

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[Lord Rooker]

No, because no words are allowed. That is part of the rules. A tick will do if it clearly indicates a preference, but words are not allowed so it would not count.

[Lord Lipsey]

If my noble friend wants to go home, he should not intervene in the debate. If he would care to read new Section 37A(1)(a) in Clause 9(1), it changes the present situation whereby returning officers can take any old mark and says that there has to be a 1, which is all I am trying to change.

[Lord Rooker]

Well, I do not agree with it.

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I do not think that anyone is advocating this—in fact, the opposite is true. We want to make sure that there is a proper advertising campaign for the system. I hope that I have said sufficient and that what is already in the Bill is enough—that is, if someone places an X against a candidate’s name, the intention will be clear. It will be taken as being the equivalent of putting a 1 and the vote will count.

[Lord Lipsey]

The Minister is in such a jolly mood that I am reluctant in any way to spoil his anticipation of hogmanay by cavilling at his remarks. However, I should say that the last time a Minister pointed to a schedule to the Bill as being the right place to deal with a certain issue, I read that schedule for the first time and found that five amendments badly needed to be made to it. They now feature on the Marshalled List and will be debated by us in the new year.

I have heard what the noblea and learned Lord has said and I have looked at the schedule to which he referred. I cannot help thinking that there is a bit of a clash between the words in the first part of the Bill and those in the schedule. A helpful way forward—I suggest this to the Minister with due humility—might be if the Association of Electoral Administrators were to write to him and he made available to the House a statement saying that the association would interpret the Bill as it stands with those two provisions in the way that he has suggested they should be interpreted—namely, that a mark against one candidate will be accepted. If he were able to make that small concession, I would happily drop this amendment and not resurrect it on Report.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

The noble Lord is inviting the electoral registration officers to write to me and clearly, if they do, I shall make what they say available. The schedule states:

“A ballot paper on which the voter makes any mark which … is clearly intended to indicate a particular preference for a particular candidate”—

I think I would include within that putting an X or even a tick against a person’s name—

“shall be treated in the same way as if the appropriate number … had been marked”.

I hope that the wording there is clear but obviously the electoral registration officers may wish to clarify that. I suspect that it will be a while before we get to Schedule 10, although perhaps not as long as might otherwise be the case.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I am very doubtful about that last one but I could not possibly make a decision on it.

[Lord Lipsey]

I think that the noble and learned Lord would do well to try to get something that nails this point once and for all before we reach the schedule. We have been discussing it for 26 minutes tonight and we can discuss it for another 26 minutes at a later stage, whereas it is well within his powers to deal with it by getting in writing from the appropriate electoral registration officers a clear statement of how they read the Bill. I think that it can be read in two ways, although I accept that his way of reading it is one. With that, and given the hour and the imminence of the festivities, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 51 withdrawn.

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[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

I accept that there will be great difficulty explaining to the country what the implications of the AV vote will be, but that is why the referendum should be held on a separate day. I am convinced that it will be extremely difficult to explain to the country what the AV vote is about. If it is held on the same day as the local elections and all the other elections, it will be virtually impossible. People will not understand the implications of any different voting system if we stick it in on the same day as the local elections. However, that is what the House has decided to do, in its wisdom, and we are therefore in a very difficult situation, making the whole business of what the vote is even more complicated than it was already.

I am just amazed at how calm everybody seems to be in this House, collectively, about allowing the Bill to go through and allowing the referendum to be held on the same day as the local elections, which will fundamentally change the whole way that this country votes, when I think that we mostly agree that people will not really understand the implications of what they are doing when they vote in that referendum.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, this is by no means the first time that I have been not asleep at this hour due to the joys of debating the merits of AV and so on, but there is something still more exciting to come, because before the Bill is finished I confidently predict that at one or two in the morning we shall get on to the relative merits of d’Hondt and Sainte-Lague and the three Imperiali largest-remainder formulae, a matter on which my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours will no doubt illuminate the House as he has on this. I cannot support, however, the amendment put forward by my noble friend Lord Rooker any more than he could support the one put forward by me earlier.

It takes me back to the days, the happy days indeed, when I was sitting on the Jenkins committee. We got many, many proposals on the Jenkins committee for various systems of weighted voting. D’Hondt as the noble Lord, Lord Henley, with his great knowledge of these matters surely knows, is not a weighted voting system. All the many proposals on weighted voting systems had one factor in common; they were invariably written in green ink and therefore we on the commission did not have to spend as long considering them as we might otherwise.

There are two reasons of substance why this amendment should be rejected. The first is that Churchill’s neat phrase does not reflect the reality in many voters’ minds. It is not true that the most important choice for voters is who they put first and who they put second and they do not care who they put sixth and who they put seventh. If you take my case, in a constituency where there were some serious candidates and towards the bottom of the ones with a chance there was the Democratic Socialist Crosland Labour-affiliated candidate and, on the other hand, the British National Party candidate. I would feel extremely strongly that I preferred the first of those options, whatever I was doing further up the list between those candidates who really had a chance. In reality, there is no way of measuring the strength of people’s preferences, or the amount of thought they have put into them, and it is therefore better to treat all preferences, as AV does, as of equal weight.

The second argument has been touched on and it concerns complexity.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

When my noble friend goes into the polling booth and casts his first preference for Labour and he might be tempted to cast his third preference for the Liberal Democrats, is he, in his own mind, giving that third preference the same weight, when he votes for the Liberal Democrat as he would to Labour, his first preference?

[Lord Lipsey]

It depends on the circumstances in the particular constituency. In my own constituency of Brecon and Radnor, there are very real choices to be made, due to the fact that the Labour candidate, alas, is not a front-running candidate in that seat. That is a choice that I hope to avoid having to make when AV has come into being and I can put my first preference first and then my other preferences in their order without any danger of defeating my preferred second choice by voting for my preferred first choice.

I was going on to say that I think the complexity of the Rooker system and the sheer difficulty of explaining it counts very heavily against it. I do not take the view that voters need to understand absolutely everything about voting systems in order to cast their vote, any more than, when I get into my car and turn the key, I require to know all about how the engine works before I drive off. I need to know certain things, such as how to steer, but I do not need to know how the engine works. There are degrees of complexity and, frankly, the Rooker system would be simply impossible to explain. I do not think many people would buy the explanation that was being given. I am sure my noble friend did not have this even in the back of his mind, but one is tempted to think that a complication of this kind is a well-designed sabotage bomb to make sure that the referendum on AV is lost. Therefore, I cannot support the amendment and hope that the House will not support it tonight.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

One of the advantages of the Leader of the House effectively throwing the Companion to the Standing Orders out of the window is that we have this extra time to contemplate voting systems. My understanding has always been that you think what outcome you would prefer and then choose a voting system to get that outcome. That is why the Liberals have always campaigned and pushed for PR and the single transferable vote, because they want to have more power and influence.

While my colleagues have been talking about the theory, I have been looking at what might happen in practice if we had an election for the leader of the group of Labour Peers on this side of the House. There are five candidates, Campbell-Savours, Falconer, Foulkes, McAvoy, and Rooker. Those were the only five candidates put forward. Alphabetically, Campbell-Savours is number one, Falconer is number two, Foulkes number three, McAvoy number four and Rooker number five. There are 40 electors. Some of them are not here tonight. They are around somewhere and will come in if necessary. If we were to carry out this election under first past the post, the result might be Campbell-Savours 10, Falconer nine, Foulkes eight, McAvoy seven and Rooker six. In that case, Campbell-Savours would be elected and would be our leader. That is the system that we all know. Campbell-Savours would be welcome and we would accept him as our leader and worship him and follow his every lead. He would carry out that leadership with his usual kindness, wisdom and grace.

However, we could have accepted one form of the alternative vote, which from my recollection of what my noble friends Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Rooker said in previous speeches, is the Australian federal system in which everyone has to vote one, two, three, four, five. Then we might get this result: 10, nine, eight, seven, six on the first vote. Then Rooker is eliminated and all of his votes would naturally go to Falconer. Noble Lords have seen that in the debates that have taken place. Falconer would now be leading with 15 votes. Campbell-Savours would have 10, Foulkes would have 8 and McAvoy would have seven.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Harris of Richmond)]

I must inform your Lordships that if the amendment is agreed, I cannot call manuscript Amendment 52AA, by reason of pre-emption.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, I can understand the case that my noble friend Lord Beecham is making and it is seductive. However, it removes some of the most desirable features of the AV system, which is designed to produce a much wider choice for voters. That includes, for example, the possibility of voting for a party that really has no chance and which you know will come bottom of the polls, without at the same time wasting your vote. There might be, for example, a local campaigner with a specific goal which you strongly support, but you do not necessarily want to waste your vote entirely by supporting that candidate if there is a danger that it will be eliminated. The amendment means that it is less likely, rather than not likely, that the winning candidate will get 51 per cent of the vote. As we know, under the present system, only a third of Members of the House of Commons received as much as half of their electorate’s votes. We do not have an exact figure as to what that would increase to under AV, but if you said 86 per cent or 90 per cent, you would probably be right. The amendment would reduce that back down again nearer to the present third. For those reasons, I cannot support my noble friend in his well meant amendment.

[Lord McAvoy]

My Lords, I support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Beecham but only in the context of where we are with that system. I believe very strongly that the first past the post system should stay and I do not want anyone to say—although, of course, I cannot stop anyone saying it—that supporting the amendment in the context of where we are necessarily means that I am deserting my support for first past the post.

This is a modest amendment. On the other hand, romantic candidates, Official Monster Raving Loony Party candidates and the “independent with a cause” candidate can all sound okay but, in a serious parliamentary democracy, is it right that such a small proportion of the vote should be used elsewhere? We are running serious elections for serious and responsible elected positions and, although having the freedom to stand for election and to campaign and so on is an absolute right, I do not think that that type of candidate who polls less than 5 per cent of the vote should be allowed to distort the electoral system and the democratic process. Then again, I keep asking myself why people get involved in that kind of party when it is all a lot of nonsense. Nevertheless, speaking as a realistic politician, I have to say that the amendment is before us and it needs to be discussed. However, if anyone wishes to use their charms on me, I am still willing to be convinced by an objection to my noble friend’s amendment.

My noble friend Lord Lipsey is great to listen to and I admire him. He is a formidable person but I do not think that he came up with any reason why the amendment should be opposed. He came up with an intellectual reason, and it is right and proper that that is aired. However, we have to take the real world into account and I do not think it is right for a party with a small percentage of the vote to distort the vote. In the context of what we are discussing, I have no hesitation in supporting my noble friend’s amendment.