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Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

That is wholly my view. That solution gets around the problems, to which I have referred, for the parts of the Union that are more dramatically affected than others, and it would be entirely in keeping with the tradition of this House, which is that we proceed by evolution rather than revolution. I could understand the argument for reducing the number of seats from 650 to 600 if over the past 50 years the number of seats had dramatically increased in relation to the electorate. In actual fact, however, the number of seats has grown by 3% and the number of voters has increased by 25%, so if hon. Members were being honest they would say, ““As we agree that the number of seats should go with the number of voters, we should argue for more seats, rather than fewer.”” In addition, the job has completely and utterly changed over the past few years. In a previous debate, for which not all hon. Members were present, the hon. Member for Epping Forest referred to casework, which is a concept in modern politics—