Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I was just coming on to the reduction from 650 to 600, and I would like to offer some friendly scepticism to my colleagues on the Government Front Bench. The Deputy Leader of the House was candid enough to say that reducing the House of Commons by 50 Members was arbitrary, but I am even more concerned about this number being arrived at without full knowledge of the whole package of constitutional reforms that this coalition Government are going to introduce. I know that the Deputy Prime Minister has an ambitious programme of constitutional reform for the future, but we do not yet know the detail. We do not know the composition of what I hope will be a wholly elected second Chamber. We do not know what its powers will be or whether it will reflect the four member nations and regions of the United Kingdom. That makes it difficult to deal with the issue raised several times by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)—that of giving more recognition within Parliament to Wales. I think that could be dealt with more properly in an elected second Chamber than here. We still do not know whether more powers are to be given to English city regions. Full devolution has been granted to Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and to London, but English local government certainly needs radical reform and more powers. We have heard about cost—I do not believe that it provides a good reason for reducing the size of the House of Commons—and about international comparisons. France, for instance, has 577 seats and Germany 622, but as we heard earlier, they have far greater devolved Administrations and Bristol's twinned cities of Bordeaux and Hanover have enormous powers in comparison with those of my colleagues who run the city of Bristol.