Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

It is correct that that legislation will not have been carried by the House, but it will be available for Members to debate. There are two scenarios: either the House will approve the orders that my right hon. Friends have laid before the House today—in which case the amendments that we will table once the Committee stage is finished, which we will debate on Report next week, will come into force—or the House will vote those orders down, in which case we will revert to what we are talking about today. In either situation, this House will have had the opportunity to debate those provisions—I suspect at length—and they will therefore not be left to the upper House. We have tried hard to ensure that the elected House has been able to debate both the provisions on the referendum and those on boundaries. If I remember rightly, in the previous Parliament, in which I served, the Government of which the hon. Gentleman was a member were not so fastidious about ensuring that this House was able to debate provisions. Significant pieces of legislation went to the other place without any debate at all on enormous portions of it. To the extent that it has been within the power of the Government, we have taken great care to ensure that by the time this legislation leaves this House next Tuesday, all the key issues will have been debated and voted on by this House. We may not have achieved perfection, but we have made a pretty good stab at it, and I have to say—honestly—that what we have done is a considerable improvement on much of what the previous Government did. I would ask Members to bear that in mind. The provisions on postal voting in local elections in Northern Ireland are changed substantially by one of the orders laid today, so it would not have been sensible to deal with that in the current group of amendments. However, to finish on a point that I hope will bring the hon. Gentleman great cheer, I can confirm that no amendments will be necessary in relation to the combination provisions for Wales, as the changes to be made to the rules governing the conduct of the Welsh Assembly elections do not affect any rules relevant to combination with the referendum. On that note, which I am sure will gladden his heart, let me conclude by saying that the combination provisions that we have provided are necessary for the smooth running of all the polls that are scheduled to take place next May.