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Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, I shall be very brief, but I do not in any way want to underplay the importance of this amendment. So far as I am concerned, it goes to the heart of the problem of this Government. Having won the election, they have decided that they will change the number of Members of the House of Commons to suit their own party political advantage. It comes from the history of the document written by Andrew Tyrie MP and various others, where the suggestion was to reduce the number by 60 or close to that figure in the first five years and then by another 60 in the following five years in order to maximise the Conservatives’ advantage in winning elections. That is what is so profoundly wrong in this. As I have said on other occasions, it is an invitation not just for this Government but for future Governments of any political complexion to do exactly the same after every election. This is an invitation to gerrymander the House of Commons by the party that wins. I shall not labour the point, but if we were investigating an election in a country emerging from a communist regime where they were trying to assess the size of a House that would benefit the reformed communist party, we would blow the whistle. We are now, shamefully, doing the same.