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Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

We have defined the difference. Both constituencies constitute groups of islands which, owing to their challenging geography, are not readily combinable with the mainland. I know that some Members, including the hon. Gentleman, wanted more exceptions to be made, but few if any argued that we should not have made the two exceptions that we did make. Although most of the argument in the House of Commons was in favour of further exceptions, we were reluctant to make many, because we believed that the general principle of equality was important. There was a clear rationale for the Government's proposal for 5% either side of the United Kingdom electoral quota. It is the closest to equality that we can achieve while allowing wards, which are themselves drawn with local factors in mind, to remain the building blocks of constituencies in England which account for the majority of seats. We believe that that strikes the right balance between the principle of more equally weighted votes at national level, and flexibility to allow account to be taken of specific circumstances at local level. The amendment was proposed in a constructive spirit by Cross Benchers in the other place who wanted to ensure that exceptions were strictly limited, and it was debated at length. However, the Government disagree with the Lords, for the following reasons. First, we believe that however emphatic the drafting, attempts to limit the exercise of the discretion in exceptional circumstances are unlikely to be as successful as the proposers of the amendment hoped. Each exception would constitute a further precedent, and as the number of exceptions increases, so does the scope for argument. That is clear from the existing legislation. Boundary commissions are supposed to aim for equality, but because of all the other factors that they must take into account, the size of some constituencies varies by up to 50%.