---

House of Commons (Participation) Bill

There is only so much radical reform of the constitution that one can do in one week, and we have perhaps exceeded our quota. It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), and it will surprise neither him nor the House to learn that I agreed with a lot of what he said. I was interested to discover the revelation that he was born in Devon, and it is also clear that he has been in Hampshire for so long that he now thinks of himself as a southerner, rather than a west countryman. I am a west countryman and that is my identity, but that does not prevent me at the same time from being English and British. Our roots within this country are important, as are the people whom we represent. I want to congratulate the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr. Walter) on securing the opportunity to debate his Bill today. I do not agree with its contents, but he is absolutely right to have raised this issue. I point out to Members in all parts of the House that this is not some strange, wacko argument, but a real one in many of our constituencies south of the border and east of the Marches. It is a real issue, and we cannot be indifferent to it. That does not mean to say that I accept the hon. Gentleman’s solution, but we ignore it at our peril. If there is a view—and there is—among our constituents that England as a whole is ill-served by the constitutional settlement that we have reached, we need to address that.