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Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has referred to the wrecking amendments we debated and voted on in Committee. Essentially, what we have tonight are wrecking amendments that are bubble-wrapped. No matter what the sophistry of Opposition Front Benchers or anyone else, we know what the intention is: to put a serious and direct brake on the possibility of the referendum being won. There will be barely 11 weeks of campaigning given the time left, and the imposition of a threshold will create a completely unequal situation. In the south of Ireland, people deliberately created all sorts of confusion during referendum campaigns so that they could say, ““If you don't know, vote no.”” If we agree to anything that passes for any sort of threshold, people in this country will have an incentive to say, ““If you don't know, don't vote””, knowing that votes that are not cast will count as votes against. That is completely unfair, and if people are supporting the Bill in the name of equal votes, they should not support a threshold that creates a completely unequal situation.