Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

That is absolutely right and I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend. The real problem with the British constitution is that we do not have one. The constitution in this country is what the Government can get away with. If they can get away with clause 9, which weakens democracy and the Commons and strengthens the Executive, they can get away with more or less anything, with the willing concurrence of the supine Liberals, who are supporting a measure that will weaken them—hopefully—for their own execution. There is no mystique to how I arrived at the figure of 650 for amendment 259. I just put it in. That is the number of MPs now and the Commons will function efficiently with it. There used to be 700 MPs in the 19th century when the Irish were here. They had to fit in a Chamber the size of this one, which seats about 420—fortunately, most of them did not come—but 650 is a good working total, which is why I chose it. The consequence of having 600 MPs, as proposed in clause 9, is that the redistribution will be more brutal and more massive. It will be a blitzkrieg of a redistribution, but there will be no democratic controls on it. The scale of the redistribution is determined by the size of the House.