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Coalition Government

That could have been the case, and no doubt an amendment could have been proposed in another place, but the agreement struck by the coalition was for AV, which is a method that was in the Labour Party’s manifesto. It is entirely right that we should scrutinise and stick to that. However, in the Bill that we are dealing with, things have happened that neither I—in the 25 years that I have been here—nor any of my predecessors as Leaders and Chief Whips has ever seen before: I refer to the wholesale breakdown and refusal of the usual channels to engage. The noble Lord said that we should negotiate, but we negotiate on every Bill. This is the first time ever that the usual channels have said, ““We refuse. We refuse to tell you how many days we want in Committee””. When they asked for more days, we gave them more. I think that it was the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, who said that we are rushing the Bill through the House. He and his friends in the Labour Party are the only people in the universe who believe that the Bill is being rushed through this House. In 22 hours on Monday, only six amendments were considered. This is unprecedented. The idea that this is scrutiny is farcical. Noble Lords opposite who cherish the reputation of this House have no idea how damaging this is to the reputation of this House. It is not scrutiny but verbosity. It may be too late.