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Adjournment (Whitsun)

The hon. Gentleman suggests that Canvey Island might be included in that group. Remote though it may be, I am not sure that it qualifies. The villages on the levels of Somerset revert to islands for only a few months every year and are considered to be inland most of the time. I welcome the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar to the House and congratulate him on his maiden speech. The hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac) rightly used this opportunity to draw attention to a concern in her constituency. I have no idea of the rights and wrongs of the case that she mentioned. I hope that it will not be necessary for the Deputy Leader of the House to intervene in local authority matters, whichever authority that may be and whatever it may be engaged in. Having been a leader of a county council and chairman of a local education authority, I can say that there is never a right time to go about school reorganisations and there is never a way of presenting a case that does not cause a great deal of controversy locally. A wise local authority will listen carefully to the cases put on both sides and come up with the right solution to provide education for the people in its area. If I may abuse my position slightly, I will first raise two matters of concern in my constituency. The first is a serious matter that I will have to return to repeatedly over the next few months: the future of the new Frome Victoria hospital. We have been waiting since 1998, when it was announced that a new hospital would be built for the town. We were promised that it would be built by 2000. Although it benefited from huge fundraising efforts in the town—£500,000 was raised towards the costs of the new hospital—the situation has becalmed because the private finance scheme to fund it appears not to have sufficient money to get it built. That is a matter of huge concern in Frome. We have a green field where our new hospital should be. We have an excellent hospital, but it was built in Victorian times and cannot provide the necessary facilities for the people of Frome. The town has every right to expect something to be done to break the logjam and to ensure that the hospital is built. So often we hear glowing reports from hon. Members about the wonders of investment in the national health service and what that has provided for their constituencies, yet we in Frome still have a decaying Victorian hospital and an expectation that has so far not been met and we still lack a modern facility in Frome. I asked during the previous Parliament for Ministers to look into the problem and I will continue to do so in this Parliament. My second point is on a rather happier note. Tomorrow, I shall visit St. Louis VC Roman Catholic junior school in my constituency, where the pupils have recorded a CD, songs from which they will sing to me, in support of the Make Poverty History campaign. The fact that children are engaged in that huge issue for our time, along with a large part of the population and the Government and Opposition parties, will, I hope, result in action when it comes to the summit and the British presidency of the G8 and the European Union. I hope that we will be able to make a difference on one of the most crucial issues facing the world, and that we can begin to change the world for the better by reducing the intense poverty that besets so many people in so many parts of the developing world. My principal point is, as I mentioned during business questions, that I find it extraordinary that it is the unelected House that today is having a debate"““To call attention to the workings of the British electoral system in the 2005 general election””," but that this elected House does not have the opportunity to say how it was for us, during an election that was widely felt to have fallen far short of what we would hope of the democratic system in this country. I do not say that from a partisan point of view, because there are people of no political persuasion or many who feel exactly the same way. They feel that it cannot be right to have an electoral system in which a Government can be elected with a substantial majority in this House with just 22 per cent. of the electorate supporting them. It cannot be right for the Conservative party to gain more votes in England than the Labour party, yet have fewer seats. It cannot be right that Her Majesty’s principal Opposition party in terms of numbers has no representation in any city outside London. That is an extraordinary position for our electoral system to be in. I am not arguing the case purely from the position of my own party, even though it is clearly disadvantaged by the current system. Rather, I argue that, if we want people to have confidence in our democracy, questions must be asked about the present position. At the very least, we should examine whether a system that has, I accept, done perfectly well for the country in previous centuries and decades is now adequate to the task of reinvigorating our democracy for the future. My party has a clear line on its preferred system of voting. The Leader of the House argued that we wanted it purely on the basis of self-interest, but that is not the case. The alternative vote system mentioned earlier would be the best for us in respect of the number of seats that we would secure, but we happen to believe that it is not proportional so we do not accept, in principle, that it is the best solution. We also understand the arguments that people often make about the important link between Members and their constituencies. I agree that it is a very important consideration and I would be loth to lose it. I continue to be unhappy with the system used to elect Members to the European Parliament—the closed list system, which effectively puts all the power to decide who represents a particular area in the hands of the party machinery.