Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

There has been absolutely no pre-legislative scrutiny. This has not been adumbrated in anybody's manifesto and it has not been available for anybody to consider in public. There has been no public consultation and no consultation between political parties. Of course, therefore, there should be provision for each clause to be considered for at least one day on the Floor of the House, as this is a major constitutional Bill. I am sorry if Government Members are arguing the exact opposite of what they used to, but my point remains—international comparisons are inappropriate. The Deputy Prime Minister has also sought to suggest that we have far too many Members of Parliament because other countries have far fewer, but the local population per elected member at local authority level in other countries is very different: in France it is 118 and in Germany it is 350, whereas in the United Kingdom it is 2,603. We have to look at the whole set of elected officials if we are to have a real impression of whether we have too many or too few Members of Parliament. I suspect that most voters in this country quite like having a local Member of Parliament who sits in the House. Of course, if one asks the public, particularly if one does so via the Daily Express or the Daily Mail, ““Are there too many Members of Parliament?”” they will all answer, ““Yes,”” but if one asks them, ““Should your town not have a Member of Parliament?”” or, ““Should your town be combined with another town?”” they would probably answer, ““No, I would prefer to have a local constituency Member of Parliament whose name I know, who is accessible and whose constituency surgery I can get to.””