Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Mark Spencer and Penny Mordaunt

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I will make some progress.

We can take it that the Liberals believed in equalising the size of constituencies and reducing the number of MPs. I say that with some confidence because we know that they believe it still; they just do not want it yet. Today, we are not asked to throw out the concepts altogether, which would be a bizarre but perhaps defensible position intellectually; we are simply asked to put them off till the next Parliament—a curious position of which some further explanation is required, and I hope that you agree, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

One of the words that has been overused in this Parliament is “fairness”. Fairness, fairness, fairness is all we have heard from some of our coalition colleagues, but a word that I would like to introduce is “honourability” and ask whether it is honourable for someone to take a position and then move, frankly, to a different one when they see what is before them.

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank my hon. Friend, and to ensure that I do not offend Mr Speaker or anyone else in the House, I welcome the opportunity to put on record the fact that I think all Liberal Democrat Members are honourable ladies and gentlemen, but I hope during my speech to point out to them what they would need to do to remain so by tomorrow morning.

The answer to this puzzle is found not in the amendments but in the fact that the Deputy Prime Minister has made it quite clear that Liberal support for the changes has been withdrawn because the House of Lords Bill could not be passed. I remind the House that that is the same Deputy Prime Minister who was quite categorical in his assurances that one had no influence over the other, while the battle for the constitution still raged. It has doubtless not helped the Liberals’ mood that the public so comprehensively rejected their plans for electoral reform. The Liberals have withdrawn their love because of a contrived slight.

The Deputy Prime Minister can repeat until he is blue in the face—although a fuller conversion to that colour might prove harder to achieve—that the programme for government promised Lords reform, but that will not make it true. There was never any obligation for Conservatives to support Lords reform, and I rebelled with a heavy heart but a clear conscience. Will the same be true for the Liberals in the wrong Lobby today?

--- Later in debate ---

[Penny Mordaunt]

I am trying to give the Liberal Democrats a chance to justify their behaviour. Even if we accept the Liberal code of conduct of an eye for a coalition eye, after their flawed portrayal of the Lords Bill the score is, at best, even.

[Mr Spencer]

What message does my hon. Friend think is conveyed to colleagues who lost their job when they voted against that legislation and who will now witness some of our Liberal Democrat colleagues walking through the Lobby against Government policy but keeping their jobs?

[Penny Mordaunt]

My hon. Friend makes his point well. I am sure it is not lost on those in the Chamber and outside.

We are forced to conclude that industry and judgment have indeed ceded the stage to spite, pettiness and self-interest. The people have rejected the Liberal Democrats’ voting reforms and the Liberal Democrats cannot win the argument for Lords reform, so they will oppose boundary changes, which they want, in the hope of re-opening negotiations after the next election, while casting flirtatious glances across the Chamber. The Liberals have exchanged their legendary sandals for flip-flops in the hope that that will enable them to keep their options open, but they would be wrong to think that the real damage they will do today is to the prospects of the Conservative victory in 2015 or to the notion of a Conservative government.