Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

The overall cost saving from combining the polls is £30 million. That is our best estimate looking at the details of running those elections across the country. It is a pretty good estimate and the one that we stick by, and the saving is significant. It is not the reason for combining the elections, but there is a significant benefit in doing so. I welcome the shadow Justice Secretary to his position and look forward to working with him, perhaps not on this issue, but on our programme of political reform. He drew attention to the fact that my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister was not here, although he acknowledged that my right hon. Friend had many other things to work on. All that I would say is that, as well as being responsible for political and constitutional reform, my right hon. Friend is working in the national interest with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and shares responsibility across the whole of government. One of the important things that he has been working on in the past few months, and I am sure has been working on for some part of today, is the appalling financial legacy left by the right hon. Gentleman and his Government—the right hon. Gentleman shares some of the blame, having been a member of the previous Government. We have still heard no apology for that legacy. So that is where my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister has been. We work as a team, and are perfectly capable of doing so. The shadow Justice Secretary said that we were rushing the legislation. The Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, which he supported, had only one day of debate on the clauses relating to the alternative vote. The Constitutional Reform Act 2005–a larger Bill than this one—had only three days for Committee, Report and Third Reading. So in providing five days in Committee and two days on Report, we have provided a significant amount of time. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said in one of his interventions that his constituents did not want any fiddling about with the constitution. He had clearly forgotten that the proposal for an AV referendum was in his own party's manifesto and that he supported it in the previous legislation before the election. I shall deal with one or two points that we have not covered, conscious that the Committee probably does not want me to do so at great length. I am grateful for the kind words of my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis). I was disappointed that he was not at the time he made his speech planning to support the Government, but I hope that he may have reconsidered. I am happy to be on what he described as a sticky wicket. I want to correct one point. The coalition agreement to have a referendum was not a deal done behind closed doors. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, when he was leader of the Opposition, came and put that point to members of the parliamentary party, as my hon. Friend will remember, before the agreement was reached with the Liberal Democrats.