Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Soley Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Soley]

59: Clause 11, page 9, leave out line 18 and insert—
“The number of constituencies in the United Kingdom shall be decided by an independent commission established by the government, but shall not exceed 650 or be less than 500.”

[Lord Soley]

My noble friend Lord Lipsey will speak to Amendment 60. These amendments go together. Amendment 59 is one of the core amendments about the nature of what the Government are doing. As regards this Bill, I have been troubled for a long time about the importance of constitutional issues. Everyone, including the Government, accepts that this is a constitutional Bill. I get the feeling that the Government have not recognised just how important this issue is, particularly to the opposition party, because the Opposition have not been consulted on the size of Parliament. I regard that as particularly important.

I have been a member of the Labour Party for a long time. But it is not being a member of the Labour Party that drives me in politics; it is my strong belief in parliamentary democracy and the rule of law. I have held that view for many years. It goes back to when I was about six years old and watched adults dancing around an effigy of Adolf Hitler burning in the street. I wondered what sort of planet I had ended up on that people should be behaving like that. Over the coming years, it made me understand better why parliamentary democracy was so important and, much later, made me understand why the rule of law was so critical to it.

This, for me, is not a party political issue in that sense, but it has become party-political precisely because the Government have chosen to determine the size of the House of Commons. This amendment points out that that is not right way to do these things. There ought to be an independent assessment of what the size of Parliament should be, and ideally—it is why the amendments are grouped together—that should be done through something like a Speaker’s Conference or, better still, all-party agreement.

That is profoundly important because what matters in constitutional Bills of this type is that if it is perceived that a party in government is altering the size of the House of Commons to suit its own party purposes, that immediately makes the Bill deeply party political. That is what I do not think the Government have taken on board. In summing up, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, said that there was some suggestion of secrecy about the numbers. There has never been any secrecy about the numbers. Actually, I quoted from Andrew Tyrie’s paper which made it clear that the Conservatives would win more seats if they could reduce the size of the House of Commons by 60 seats, and originally they thought they would win even more if they reduced the size by 120 seats. That does not mean that he did not also have a view that the House ought to be smaller, because he did, as did other people who supported him. It also did not mean that he was wrong to say that it would save public money; it probably would. But what you do not do is just change the size of the House of Commons without all-party agreement.

To his credit, as I said in the last debate, Andrew Tyrie made that point. Indeed, he made two points, the first of which was that the Government of the day should seek all-party agreement. He referred to agreement with the Labour Party, but I would simply talk about all-party agreement. His other point concerned the payroll vote issue, which I shall come to in a moment. Why is this so important? I have said in one or two other interventions that one of the problems we face is that whenever we act as international observers in overseas elections, which many Members of this House have done from time to time—certainly I have done it—we do not just look at how well protected the ballot boxes are or at how well the polling stations are protected. We look not just at how the electoral register has been drawn up, but at how the number of seats in the parliament has been drawn up. If we found a situation where one of the major parties in that parliament had been excluded from that process, we would be deeply worried.

I want to put it this way, particularly to Members opposite. They may recall that on the last amendment I referred briefly and in passing to when we decided, quite rightly in my view, to remove the judges from the House of Lords to a newly created Supreme Court. One of the many factors behind the change was that European countries coming out of communist regimes were saying, when they were told by the European Union that they had create judiciaries separate from their legislatures, “But Britain doesn’t”. We were trying to create a situation where we could separate the legislature from the judiciary, but what matters now is a question that I would like the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, to address, if he is going to respond to the debate. If anyone from this House is observing an election, not least in one of the eastern European countries, and they are told that the Government of the day have decided on the size of the Parliament without the permission or agreement of one of the major political parties, will they really say “Yes, that is all right. It is not a problem”? I ask this of all the Members sitting on the Benches opposite because it is very important.

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)]

I cannot resist. Did the noble Lord think that it was outrageous that the Labour Government decided in 1997 to remove the hereditary Peers from the House of Lords without any consultation and agreement? Of course he did not.

[Lord Soley]

I answered that question before, but in a different way. I said, and I say again, that what matters is that, if you change the constitution in a way that reduces the chances of a political party winning an election, you cannot reverse what the Government have done. Removing hereditary Peers from here did not change the opportunity for a party to win an election. It is an important difference. That is why I make the case that one has to look at constitutional Bills differently. Of course, constitutional Bills about removing hereditary Peers or judges are very important, but when you change the composition of a House, which alters the ability of a major party to win an election, that party can no longer assume that it is in a position to reverse what the previous Government have done. That makes all the difference.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has thrown in our face the deal done in 1997 or 1998 over the future of hereditary Peers. I hope that my noble friend will agree that that, surely, was a fine example of negotiation—a very delicate and complicated but very successful negotiation. I believe, indeed, that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, played a not-undistinguished part in that very successful and historic compromise. What we have this evening is a complete absence of any desire to even talk, let alone have a negotiation or a compromise. Surely that is the fundamental difference between the two situations.

[Lord Soley]

My noble friend is quite right and he has reminded me of something. I remember being in the Corridor outside when the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, had had talks with the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, or with his office, and William Hague, the then leader of the Conservative Party, had got to hear about the deal that my noble friend refers to. I happened to bump into William Hague as he came back down the Corridor having seen the noble Lord. His face was as black as thunder. I only heard a bit of what he was saying, but it certainly was not complimentary about the deal that had been done. I diverge, but the point is right. There was a negotiation.

[Lord Snape]

Will my noble friend acknowledge the courage of the Leader of the House at that time? He fell on his sword as a result of those consultations and negotiations, which the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, now denies ever took place at all.

[Lord Soley]

I must admit that I was always impressed that the noble Lord survived the experience, so I give him full marks for political survival. Let me get back to the central point, because it is critically important. When we observe elections in other countries—this was particularly true of the communist countries in eastern Europe, where a number of the communist parties had reformed themselves but still wanted to hold on to control—we see that, if you allow a Government to decide the size of a Parliament, you prevent another Government from having a chance to come in and alter it. You see it in Russia today; it is precisely what President Putin has been doing. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and David Cameron are not President Putin and the British Parliament is not the Duma or the Russian Parliament in general, but this is one of those principles that matter. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, said that principles do not matter in these things. I have to say that, on things like this, they do. They matter a lot. The feeling, rightly or wrongly, is that if one party loses out you undermine the credibility of your electoral system in a major way.

The other problem that the Government have got themselves into is that, presumably, the Liberal Democrats signed up to this 60-seat reduction on the basis of the discussions that had been going on in the Conservative Party over the previous seven or eight years, which I referred to in my earlier speech. However, there is absolutely no need to have a set number of seats. One of my noble friends made the point that you can instruct the Boundary Commission to create a number of seats within a certain range. That is much better, because it allows the commission to take into account everything from geographical to socioeconomic factors. You do not need to decide the number of seats in a precise format.

The reason why I put the range of 500 to 650 in my amendment is that I recognise that the Government have said over many years that they want to reduce the size of Parliament. I also recognise the importance of the deal politically between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party. For them it is crucial and it is one of the reasons why we are having this big fight right now. I say again to the noble Lord, though, that I would like to compromise to some extent. Personally, I would prefer these things to be decided by all-party agreement, and I toyed with putting that in. I do not think, however, that the Government could live with that in the present climate. What they could maybe live with and recognise is that it is vital that Governments do not decide the size of Parliament.

With the amendment, I have tried to give flexibility to the Government, not only in setting up the independent body but also in deciding its timescale. I do not pretend that it would be possible for that body to come up overnight with a definition of what MPs should and should not do, but there are different ways in which this can be addressed, one of which is to say, “If we’re going to have a smaller number of MPs, what parameters should there be?”. You could do that as a starter before addressing some of the other issues.

What are the other issues? One of the most crucial, which has been totally ignored in the Bill, is that if you reduce the size of the House of Commons but do not at the same time reduce the payroll vote—those people who depend on the Government for their jobs—you immediately increase the power of the Government and decrease the power of Back-Benchers. There are fewer Back-Benchers to hold the Government to account and more Members in the pay of the Government of the day. That is not desirable. Someone else referred earlier to the professor at Essex University whose name escapes me for the moment—

[Noble Lords]

Anthony King.

[Lord Soley]

Professor King made the point that, if you reduce the number of MPs from which Ministers are drawn, you also reduce the “gene pool” for Ministers, as he described it. He said that that was quite important. I do not want to get into a detailed argument about why I am sympathetic to the idea of reducing the size of Parliament; I just want to make a couple of points in relation to it.

[Baroness Wall of New Barnet]

Would my noble friend describe for us what he means by an “independent commission”? I cannot understand why the Government would resent that and be opposed to it. My noble friend is suggesting that they would establish it and it would be independent. Can he give us some reason why he thinks that they may not want it?

[Lord Soley]

I am afraid that the only answer—this is the core of the problem that is making us do things such as debate this late at night when we could be doing other things with our lives—is, quite simply, that there is a political agreement between two parties, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, to do this regardless of the consequences or of the Opposition. That is what they are doing.

I accept that the wording of my amendment is not perfect and that the Government would have to take it away and work on it, but there is no doubt in my mind that they could appoint an independent commission to look at this and come forward with some guidance on the basic issue of the numbers.

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

What is highly relevant is that this commission would be able to examine the evidence behind what my noble friend is proposing. Is that not very important?

[Lord Soley]

It is very important and it would also allow the commission to look at what is, for me, a critical point: the principle of a Government deciding the size of Parliament without the agreement of the parties within it. That is what is so dangerous and undesirable about this proposal.

I want to extend my comments a little on the implications of the payroll vote. As I said earlier when I referred to pulling a thread on a jumper, the trouble is that when you pull at the thread of the number of parliamentarians and change it, you change other things as well. If you reduce the number, you inevitably change the power of the House to challenge the Executive. You also inevitably, as Professor King points out, reduce the pool of people from which Ministers can be drawn. However, it is possible to provide answers to those problems, although this is why I say that reducing the number is not a nice, simple option. It is perfectly possible to say that we will reduce the payroll vote in the House of Commons. You could, if there were agreement, then increase the number of Peers in the House of Lords or you could take a really radical step and increase the number of Ministers who are drawn from outside Parliament but who have to be called before Parliament. You could pursue all sorts of very radical proposals if that was what you wanted to do. The Liberal Democrats have occasionally said that they want to do things such as that. They have said that they want Ministers from outside this place who can be called in and cross-examined on the way in which they run their departments. All those things are possible, but what is not possible—

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords—

[Lord Soley]

I shall give way in just a second. What is not possible is to reduce the size of Parliament and not reduce the payroll vote without losing a lot of power for that Parliament.

[Lord Strathclyde]

What the noble Lord is saying is very interesting, but he is now speaking to Amendment 91A. Perhaps he would like to talk about this subject when we reach that amendment, rather than while we are debating this one.

[Lord Soley]

I am pleased that the noble Lord is on the ball. That is probably why he ran rings round William Hague. He is quite right, but I cannot not mention it in the context of an independent commission looking at the implications of a reduction in the size of Parliament. The other point that I want to make—

[Lord Snape]

Before my noble friend leaves that point—it is not for me to make his speech, as he is doing a more than adequate job—why does he not reply to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, by pointing out that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, who is in his place this evening, has made it quite clear why he feels that the size of the House of Commons should be reduced? It is for pure political advantage. That is what he said in his article in the Times and that is what this debate is all about.

[Lord Soley]

My noble friend is quite right, but I am seeking to persuade the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. I am wooing him, if you like. He does not look as though he is being wooed, but we will keep working at it and I might even get the noble Lord, Lord Baker, on my side. I indicated earlier that, when the noble Lord made his suggestion, he knew that it should happen with all-party agreement. I think that I am also right in saying that it would have implications for the size of government.

I want to touch on another very important point. If this proposal goes through in its current form, the Government will be not just opening the door but laying out a welcome mat to any future Government of any complexion to say, “We’ve decided that this is the right size for Parliament and we are going to legislate to make it that size”. That is what is so dangerous about this measure. If it goes through in its present form without an independent assessment of some kind, all-party agreement or a Speaker’s Conference, the noble Lord will have no grounds for complaint if a future Government—

[Lord Morgan]

My Lords—

[Lord Soley]

I shall give way in just one second. The noble Lord will have no grounds for complaint if a future Government, be it a Labour Government or any other kind of Government, come forward with a proposal that, they will have worked out, will benefit them politically.

[Lord Morgan]

Does my noble friend not agree that it is very puzzling that this completely arbitrary figure has been given for Members of the legislature but that no figure has been given for the size of the Executive, even though many civil servants have made such proposals? Perhaps, in the course of his fascinating remarks, he will be able to draw out from the Leader of the House an explanation as to why one aspect has been stressed and not the other.

[Lord Soley]

My noble friend is quite right. I am waiting for that point to be answered, but, then again, there are a number of points that are not answered.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Perhaps I may marginally disagree with what my noble friend has just said. He said that a Labour Government would have to have in mind the way in which we have been treated. The reality is that a Labour Government would not do it, because we think that it is wrong and unprincipled. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, should understand that, and that is what is making us very angry.

[Lord Soley]

My noble friend is right, although I thought that I said “any future Government”, not particularly a Labour Government. Any future Government could come in and simply say, “We are going to change the size”. That goes back to the previous amendment, on which I do not want to dwell but where I quoted from Andrew Tyrie’s booklet produced for the Conservative Party and referred to things that were said by other members of the Conservative Party in the intervening period; that is, that the figure of 120 over 10 years was too many, too fast, but that 60 over five years was manageable. My noble friend intervened with a question, but the real question is: should this Government win the next election, will they then go for the other 10 per cent? It is in the booklet; it is not a secret. There was considerable discussion of that figure. The Deputy Prime Minister said that he wanted the House to be reduced by 150. It is legitimate to ask whether the Government think that it is wise even from their point of view to have a system where the Government of the day get elected, look at the size of the House of Commons and say, “Well, we could have done better if we had this number” and then legislated accordingly. If in five years they are here, fighting such a proposal late into the night, they will not be feeling as they are feeling now and going around saying, “Oh, this is a filibuster. We don’t like it”. They will say, “This is an abuse of the constitution”. Every one of them will be doing it, the Liberals more than anyone else. This is where the Liberals say one thing in one place and another in another place.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

Nonsense!

[Lord Soley]

I thought that the noble Lord was agreeing with me, but I might be wrong. Let us make no bones about it: if we are going to lay out the welcome mat to any future Government, not just a Labour Government, to be able to legislate on the size of Parliament, we are breaking one of the principles that we all observe when we check international elections. We are going against what is said in the European Union, the United Nations and the Commonwealth about checking elections. We all look at that as international observers for those bodies, yet here, all of a sudden, we are saying, “No, it’s all right for the Government to legislate for the size of Parliament. It doesn’t matter at all”. Of course it matters.

This Government might think that cutting the number MPs will be popular. Up to a point, they are right, but the problem is that they are playing the role of the overly powerful Government. It is not just the Public Bodies Bill and powers which they have taken which are over the top—Henry VIII powers are used in so much legislation now. I would be the first to concede that Henry VIII powers were taken to some extent under the Labour Government, but it is happening much more now—the Public Bodies Bill is virtually a Henry VIII Bill. But it is not just that; it is also putting enough new Members in this House so that the two political parties which form the Government, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, have a near-majority over the other political party. In other words, we are in danger of breaching that constitutional principle which we have all followed for years: that no political party should have a majority over the others here. I understand fully that the Government do not have a majority over the Cross Benches and the Labour Party jointly, but they certainly come very close to having a majority over the Labour Party. That differs greatly from what happened previously.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

They have it.

[Lord Soley]

My figures may be slightly dated, but, either way, it is profoundly dangerous. I will end on this note—

[Lord Grocott]

Before my noble friend concludes, am I the only one—I am sure I am not—who can see the irony that since we started debating Part 2 of this Bill last Monday, which is basically about reducing the number of Members of Parliament by 50, during just that week 14 new Members have been introduced into Parliament—into this House? Can he explain the rationale of that situation?

[Lord Soley]

It is what I call over-powerful government again. Again I point out what Andrew Tyrie said. I am not attacking Andrew Tyrie. There are things I think he got wrong in that document, particularly about the figures of representation in other countries. However, it is a well written document and well argued. One of the other things that might make my noble friend sleep less soundly at night—assuming he gets to sleep any night in the near future—is that Andrew Tyrie actually said that the MPs who are displaced by this reduction in size should be given peerages, so we will have even more coming in here. It would be quite nice if the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, answers this and says that will not automatically happen, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it might.

[Baroness Wall of New Barnet]

I have sat, like many other people, for many hours and have only just decided to contribute. There are several reasons that have been given by noble Lords on this side of the House why this is absolutely unacceptable. For me the most moving and convincing argument was that of my noble friend Lord Boateng, who talked about the role we play when we are asked to go out to Governments who are being formed as democracies. The Governments we belong to have always prided ourselves on being absolutely the epitome of governance and everything else. How do we ever accept the opportunity to go and guide and help those people when we have this situation ourselves now?

[Lord Soley]

My noble friend is making a point I made with very great emphasis right at the beginning of my comments. It is important to understand that we will be doing something radically different from everything we tell other countries to do. We look at elections overseas with the various bodies we work through—the United Nations, the European Union, the Commonwealth and so on—but we will be doing something we are telling other countries not to do. There are no ifs and buts about that.

[Lord Garel-Jones]

Like me, the noble Lord spent a bit of time in the other place. Like me, no doubt he can recognise a filibuster when he sees one. Can I please invite him to consider the danger under which he is placing this House in standing up against the expressed will of the other place by a substantial majority, and in masquerading and taking advantage of the customs of this House whereby we do not enjoy the facilities that are enjoyed in the other place precisely to bring to a conclusion boring filibusters of this kind?

[Lord Soley]

I am sorry to hear the noble Lord say that. He is so wrong and so misled on it. I have not in any way filibustered at all. The Committee has sat for nine days. I have made 13 speeches, none of them more than 15 minutes. I have made 19 interventions in nine days. Is that a filibuster? I am asking the noble Lord. Of course it is not. If he thinks that, he has a very strange definition of a filibuster.

[Lord Garel-Jones]

The noble Lord must be very aware from his experience in the other place many moons ago that there it would have been proposed that the question be now put.

[Lord Soley]

On a constitutional matter of this importance in this Chamber? What makes the difference is that this Chamber safeguards the constitution against abuse in the other Chamber at times. If the noble Lord does not understand that, he does not know why he has been here. Maybe he ought to think that perhaps he should not have come here if he takes the view that we ought to just roll over and have our bellies tickled every time the House of Commons says so. It is not like that at all and I think it is sad that someone of his experience should actually say that. This is a matter of considerable importance. It really is. If he is complaining that it has become party political, he needs to take on board that it has been made party political by a Government who have decided to do what other Governments are not allowed to do under all the systems we observe when checking elections—to change the size of a Parliament to suit their own political ends. That is what makes this different, and that is what makes it party political.

I shall end with a quote from Vince Cable, who put it very well.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

Before my noble friend concludes his valuable and very interesting remarks, would he care to remind the noble Lord, Lord Garel-Jones, that until very recent years it was unthinkable that constitutional legislation would have been timetabled and programmed in the House of Commons. This really is an abuse. Since it has happened, it is only in this House that it is possible to give adequate scrutiny to this legislation. Does my noble friend recall that, in the House of Commons proceedings on this Bill, Clauses 3 to 6 on very important matters—the conduct of the referendum, combining polls and the rules about media coverage—along with Clause 11 that we are now debating, on the number and distribution of seats, were entirely undiscussed in the other place, in Committee and on Report? My noble friend is absolutely right to treat these important matters at some length and searchingly as he is.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Soley]

That is right. It is not just Labour Members in the other place but Conservative Members too who wrote to us asking us to cover these matters in our debates in the House of Lords, because they were not covered in the House of Commons as they should be.

I end with a quote from Vince Cable, who, in an eavesdropped conversation—and in my view the journalists have something to answer for, but it is out so it must be said—stated that there was a real danger of the Government becoming Maoist in their tendencies. That is right. There is a foolish rush of power—perhaps of power to the head—which is driving them forward.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Soley, for giving way. I perfectly understand the legitimacy of arguments about the proper way in which one should reduce or not reduce the number of MPs. Where I do not follow him—and what seems an illegitimate argument—is for him to say, as he has said a number of times, that this is being done as a gerrymander, in effect. I put it to him that there is no evidence for that. What is the purpose of the Boundary Commission if it is not to ensure that any change in constituencies is fairly effected?

[Lord Soley]

Nobody has moved the word “gerrymandering”, myself included. But let us be very clear what was being said, and not just in Andrew Tyrie’s document. He says that the current numbers are unfair as they overrepresent the Labour Party and that the Conservative Party is underrepresented. He does not use those last words, but it is there throughout. In a number of the speeches, comments and articles written in newspapers, which I have going back over that period, it is repeated on numerous occasions by Conservatives that the Labour Party has too many seats. What he is basing that on—although I do not want to go over my last speech—is the number of the electors. But of course it rules out the underregistration problem and the social and economic factors that we referred to, so it is not appropriate. What matters is that with those figures, he has worked out, quite rightly—although I know there are arguments about this—that the Conservatives would win more of those seats. The argument gets a big convoluted if you put in the alternative vote, when it becomes more difficult to predict. But there is not much doubt that in the mind of the Conservative Party since 2004 there has been the view that the Labour Party has too many seats in Parliament and that the Tory Party should have more.

[Lord Tyler]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Soley. Uncharacteristically, he seems not to have been attending to all these debates. If he had been listening, he would have heard the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, making it quite clear from the democratic audit analysis of the potential effects of the proposals in the Bill that there is no substantial increase in advantage for the Conservative Party. Indeed, I have to say that there is some disadvantage to my own party. In all fairness, I should have thought he would recognise that. It is the most legitimate, careful analysis of the potential impact of this Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Soley]

I said a number of times, as I did in my last speech, that I am not sure whether the Tory Party would gain as much as it thinks, but it clearly thinks that it is going to gain. They are saying it over and over again. Does he deny there is evidence of that? It is also in the speeches. David Cameron said in 2009, “We are unfairly treated”, so what is he saying? Do your Lordships think that he really has not asked his party workers to work it out? Of course he has.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

Surely, even if were not to turn out that way, the very process raises the question. It will be a tainted process and people will suspect it as such.

[Lord Soley]

The point I made earlier is that if a major party is left out of the arrangements for deciding the size of the legislature, there will be trouble. I give way to my noble friend, who has great experience of this sort of thing.

[Lord Wills]

I am grateful to my noble friend. I wanted to suggest that he might direct the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, who asked for evidence of the partisan nature of this legislation, to the website of Mr Mark Field—a prominent Member of the other place on the Conservative Benches—where he made it explicitly clear. I think that this is still up there; it was a few days ago. It says quite clearly that the party managers in the other place were going around seeking support for this legislation precisely because it would be to their partisan advantage.

[Lord Soley]

There is no doubt that that is how most people in the Conservative Party view it. I shall simply sit down on this point; the Government have made a fatal flaw. They are trying to decide the size of a Parliament without the agreement of the major parties. No other modern democracy would do that. All the bodies that we are part of, which oversee elections in countries emerging from dictatorships, look for that problem, identify it and point it out. The Government have also not looked at the other factor which I have referred to: the size of the payroll vote. They had something in here which said that they would reduce the size of the payroll vote. I know that we will come to that later. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, will vote for it. He has obviously noticed it and clearly recognised its importance. It may be that I can tempt him into the Lobby on that one; who knows?

This is so important, not some stupid idea of: “Well, just filibuster for the hell of it”. I do not want to go back to what we did in the other place, staying overnight. I have far better things to do, frankly, with the remaining years of my life than to stay up night after night. But if a Government change the size of a Parliament without all-party agreement, they are driving a coach and horses through all the agreements that exists between parties in this place. They therefore cannot and must not assume that we will not fight it, because they would fight it if we did to them. If we did come back—and, as my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours says, I hope that we will not—with a figure in the House of Commons that suited us, do not tell me that they would not all be lined up on the other side doing everything that they could to prevent it. I beg to move this amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Strathclyde]

I heard the question and I said to the noble Baroness that if I can find the answer to it, I shall let her know. Our contention is simple. There is no reason why Parliament should not decide on the numbers of Members of Parliament. We have no need to go to an external body or to a Speaker’s Conference to decide that for us. We have all the expertise. Noble Lords opposite have demonstrated just how much expertise they have on another place. That is why we took the view we took. I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Soley]

I shall say straightaway that from the way in which the noble Lord has started his contribution I am unclear about whether he is summing up the debate. I do not think he is right to do so because, frankly, he has not answered me. If the noble Lord would listen to what I am saying, he has not actually answered the questions I put to him. I understand that the normal courtesy of this House is for the Minister to answer the questions that are put to him. The questions were things like: what does he say when we are faced with a situation, of which I gave many examples, of overseeing elections in other countries where there is a constant expectation that a Government should not decide the size of a House of Parliament? He has also not dealt with my other question.

I assume that at some stage the Minister will respond to the questions that he has been asked. For the moment I reserve my right to sum up this amendment when people have finished speaking. But I have to say that he has not answered my questions, and I think he knows it, because they are difficult questions for the Government.

[Lord Strathclyde]

The noble Lord, Lord Soley, has suggested in the most bizarre way that because the Government have decided, and if Parliament decides it as well, that there should be 600 MPs, that somehow this turns us into a Soviet dictatorship and that no noble Lords opposite will be able to go anywhere in the world and argue that we are a democracy. That is completely absurd. In the past 13 years noble Lords opposite decided on the electoral system for Europe, they decided on how many Members should sit in the Scottish Parliament, in the Welsh Assembly and in the London assembly. None of these questions was raised. I do not know how much embarrassment the noble Lord, Lord Soley, can take when he travels abroad and people point out these terrible errors.

This is my winding-up contribution and my answer. We simply do not accept any of the premises that noble Lords opposite have made.

[Lord Soley]

I will sum up when other people have spoken. I want just to repeat that the Leader of the House does no good for this House if he fails to answer the questions that are put to him. I would also say to him that anyone coming to this debate out of the blue would think that his recent contribution was, if anything, a filibuster because it did not answer the question.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Soley]

I am serious. Let us hear the arguments for a moment. I have brought forward considerable evidence to support what I said about the problems that any Government would have with this. I also asked the noble Lord what he would do if a future Government of any political complexion came forward at the next election or the one after that and said, “We think that this number of MPs would be more beneficial to us and therefore we are going to drive it through”. I challenge him to say that he would not fight that every inch of the way. Those are the questions he has not answered. I am afraid that they have to be addressed because they are too important for the House and too important for the country.

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I had thought that the noble Lord had given way to me, but I hope that I can now make the speech that I wanted to make earlier, which I make genuinely in the hope of helping the Government.

As the then Minister responsible, I went through all these issues in a great deal of detail, so I think that it might help the House to know the judgments that we made when we were in Government. Both Amendment 59 and Amendment 60 speak to the importance of having an impartial process—which, crucially, is seen to be impartial—in dealing with these issues. I have already spoken about why that is so important, so I will not rehearse those arguments again now, but the instances that I gave of the consideration that we gave to these issues in Government might—even at this late stage and with all the bad feeling that there is about it—persuade the Government to think again.

It is no secret that we looked at these issues. Since 1997, as a Government we were embarked on a developing programme of constitutional reform, whose latter stages have been largely adopted by the new Government, which have claimed credit for the proposals as the new politics. As part of that developing programme of constitutional reform, we were looking at these very issues. As Minister, it was quite clear to me that all the issues that the noble Lord and his colleagues are so concerned about were real issues that should be engaged with in bringing forward any measures. We looked at these issues for some time. It is no secret that the amendment that I moved last week—Amendment 54ZA—was largely based on the conclusions that I came to as the Minister for constitutional reform. I hope that the noble Lord is listening to this, because he might learn something about why he has got himself and the Government into such a mess with this legislation.

Having looked at these issues, we came to the conclusion that the best way forward was to set up the sort of independent inquiry that my amendment proposed last week and that we have again heard advocated today. We did not bring forward that proposal for one simple reason: we felt that there was too little time left in the lifespan of that Government to be sure that we could bring about an all-party consensus on the mechanism. That is why we did not bring forward the proposal, although it was ready and prepared and officials had done the work. We believed that it was absolutely essential to achieve cross-party support for the mechanism. We thought that that would be difficult, because these issues are contentious and complex. As we did not think that we had enough time, we did not think that it was proper to introduce proposals that did not have that basis of cross-party support for the mechanism—not for the conclusions or outcomes or for 650 or 600 or 500 seats—by which we were to get there.

The reason that we thought that that was so important was not that we were unworried about what an incoming Conservative Government might do—of course, we were worried about that. We knew—I knew—that there was a possibility that we might lose the election and that we would get a Conservative Government. Politicians are always worried about what the other side might do, so this was not an easy conclusion. However, so important did we consider the impartiality of the process that we did not introduce our proposals. Even then, I hoped and honestly believed that, whatever Government came in—I did not expect a coalition Government, in the event that we were not re-elected—would abide by those basic constitutional proprieties, which are now being so flouted.

Cross-party agreement is so important precisely because of the element of trust. The issue is not just what parliamentarians think about the process and whether the Labour Party in Parliament thinks that the proposed process is flawed; fundamentally, the issue is about the people whom we serve. The people have to believe that politicians can be trusted to run the system impartially, without any appearance of partisan self-interest. I do not know whether the Government’s calculations are based on partisan self-interest because they simply have not provided the information, but it is so corrosive when such doubt remains. The Government have ample opportunity to deal with the issue by accepting either of these amendments or by saying that they will look at the issue again. What the Government must do is recognise the doubts that their process has created in the minds of many, many people. This will be poisonous if it is allowed to fester in the way that the Government are allowing it to fester.

I do not think that anyone on this side of the House wants to stop the Government getting their legislation through. [Laughter.] As I have said many times, I do not think that that is the case. I do not know how many noble Lords opposite, who are commenting from a sedentary position, have actually looked at what I have said. I have made it clear over and over again that I support the objectives of both parts of the Bill. As Minister, I was going to bring forward legislation. We brought forward legislation for the proposals in Part 1 of the Bill and I was preparing, as I have just said, to bring forward legislation that would have dealt with the issues, in the same way, that are dealt with in Part 2.

I want to see these objectives realised, but I want to see them realised in a proper way that will command consent across all parties and among the British people. The Government could still get their legislation through in this Parliament if they took a pause by taking advantage of one of these amendments to institute an impartial process. Such a process need not take very long—it need not take the three years that my amendment proposed—and could take just a short number of months, if the Government so wished. At least, there would then be an independent, fair-minded inquiry. That is what we were going to do in Government, and I urge and, indeed, beg the Government to follow that example.