Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

I am not saying that all deals are shoddy, but this particular deal was one that excluded us and, as has been explained, was a method of getting a Bill through the House that did not go far enough from our point of view. We have been consistent in our policy about this for a long time and our exclusion from that deal follows from the fact that our policy has always been clear. It comes back to the question whether this clause should be supported in itself. It is a very minor reform but, as the Secretary of State says, it gets rid of absurd elections. He mentioned the election when there were 11 candidates and three voters. The winning candidate won by 2:1—after extra time and a penalty shoot-out, no doubt. It sounds like something from "Blackadder". Lord Steel mentioned in the debate on his Bill in the other place that even Old Sarum had 11 voters and would have higher turnouts than these elections in the Lords. The only argument that has been put forward for voting against the clause is that which the Secretary of State rightly calls the Trotskyist argument—the Tory-Trotskyist argument—that the situation is so awful and so silly that such action would encourage further reform. It is possible that that might work, but the only problem is that this has been the situation since 1998. It has not worked yet and shows no sign of working in the future. Even though it is quite right for Members of the Conservative party to berate the Government for reneging on a deal, if that is what it was, they should nevertheless not reject this clause.