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Government of Wales Bill

Greek is certainly not my second language, but English is, so the hon. Gentleman should cut me some slack if he has issues with my terminology. I want to focus on the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion that losers cannot be winners. Today and in previous debates, he and others have claimed as justification that the public in Wales want the proposed changes. However, just as two thirds of the British population as a whole voted against the Labour party in the 2005 general election, so too did a majority of electors in Wales. It is thus obvious that if Labour Members claim democracy as justification for making these changes to our electoral process they are contradicting their own arguments. Most people in Wales who used their vote did not support that manifesto commitment. I do not understand why it is so difficult for Government Members to grasp the contradiction between what the public said then and what the Government are saying now. Incidentally, I do not want to stray too far from the debate, but if the Government are suddenly so concerned about what the people think, how is it that they ignored the obvious anecdotal judgments of the public about the war in Iraq, about the anti-terrorist legislation or about something that we have discussed already—