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Constitutional Renewal

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, for making that point because, of course, there are party lists at the moment. Every single first past the post election is fought from a party list. The difference is that there is only one person on it. That is its significance. Coming to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, I admire the way in which he persistently defends what is, I think, the indefensible. He suggested, as I understood it, that the results of the European election somehow undermine the case for PR. Yes, it undermines the case for the regional list system, but I give the noble Lord some facts. No BNP candidate has been elected under single transferable vote in the local elections in Scotland, but they have under first past the post in England. Similarly, there is no evidence whatever that the AV-plus system recommended to both Houses by Lord Jenkins of Hillhead would result in any extremists being elected. As has been said in this debate, in many generations of use of the single transferable vote in the Republic of Ireland, extremist parties have not been elected. Do not let us be given this nonsense that, somehow, PR leads to extremists being elected. It simply is not true.