Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

No, it is not Labour party policy that anywhere be under-represented. We believe, as I said yesterday evening, that it is important to achieve greater equalisation of the number of voters in each electorate, but that should not be a purely mathematical exercise. Where there are overriding concerns, those should be brought into play. Indeed, the Government agree to some degree, because they have created a degree of exception for Northern Ireland and a completely different set of exemptions for two seats in Scotland, which, according to the Government's interpretation of the situation—and, I presume therefore, the hon. Gentleman's—will effectively create two rotten boroughs in Scotland. We think that if we are going to make exemptions, we should make a broader set of exemptions, rather than just those two.