---

Coalition Government

Before the noble Lord sits down, if the House will allow me, he referred to a torrent of constitutional legislation in the early years of the Labour Government. Will he accept that there were two very important differences between the circumstances then and those now? First, that Labour Government had offered in their manifesto the constitutional policies that they were proposing to the people. Secondly, that Government did not have a majority in your Lordships’ House. As for later constitutional legislation by that Government—the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act in particular—I myself was very critical on the Floor of the House that the Government were loading more and more items of constitutional reform into that one Bill. Does the noble Lord agree that bad practice then does not justify bad practice now?