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Political Parties and Elections Bill

It will not surprise the Minister that I wish to return to the question of political commissioners, although I can assure him that this will be the last time that he and I debate it across the Chamber. The Minister's answer to my intervention was totally inadequate. It is just not good enough to say that because we are a smaller party in this House we should not get a proper look-in when it comes to the arrangements for the Electoral Commission. The commission has responsibilities and obligations not just to this House, but to every devolved legislature across the United Kingdom, as the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) noted. We are in great danger of allowing the Electoral Commission to become the plaything of this House. However, it must properly reflect the new United Kingdom, with all its devolved institutions, and the reality of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies. My question for the Minister, which I hope he will spend some time answering—that is, if he is prepared to listen to it—is this: why is it right that the three main London-based parties have the opportunity to nominate three commissioners and the smaller parties, as he calls them, have the opportunity to nominate only one? He may refer to the smaller parties in this place, let me remind him that we are the Government in Scotland, in one of the major legislatures in the United Kingdom. The Democratic Unionist party has a share in a coalition in Northern Ireland and Plaid Cymru, our colleagues on these Benches, has a share in power in a coalition in Wales. We are the Governments of the rest of the United Kingdom.