Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

The hon. Lady reminds us that there are indeed many complications stemming from devolution in the three affected nations. As an English MP, however, my concern with devolution is that there is not yet a satisfactory solution for the English people at this stage—something for which I shall continue to push. Whenever boundary changes are made or proposed, we see the disfranchisement of possibly hundreds of thousands of people. It results in two classes among the electorate. The first class comprises the people who can vote for someone again after the boundary changes are made; but then there are people in limbo in certain parts of our constituencies. We were their Member of Parliament leading up to the last election, but we knew and they knew that they could not vote for us. They could no longer realistically hold us to account. They could not realistically expect us to knock on their doors—again because they knew and we knew that they could not vote for us. They did not know who their candidates would be in the general election. That is chaos; it should not happen more frequently than once every 10 years. The idea of making boundary changes for every election is simply ridiculous. I hope that that point will be taken seriously on Report and in the other place.