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Political and Constitutional Reform

I do not recognise that it is contemptuous towards the people of Britain, wherever they live, to give them that opportunity for the first time—an opportunity, by the way, that was first promised by the Labour party in its 1997 manifesto, but never delivered, like so many other points of the political reform agenda that remained undelivered over the past decade. I do not think it contemptuous to ask people—wherever they live in Wales, Scotland, England or whatever part of the United Kingdom—to have their say on the electoral system that elects Members to this House, and to ask them to do so on a very simple yes or no basis at a time when they are voting in any event. It underestimates the people of Wales, Scotland—the United Kingdom—to suggest somehow that they are incapable of deciding more than one thing on the same day.