Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One sadness about the way in which the business ends up having to be transacted today is that because the Government have constructed this in the form of a new clause with four new schedules attendant upon it, the votes on the schedules will be separated from the votes on the new clause—unless, Ms Primarolo, you are going to allow us to proceed in a slightly different way from how these matters are normally conducted. I understand that we will end up having a debate on new clause 7 before we proceed to votes on the new schedules, rather than having a separate debate on the new schedules. That is precisely because of how the Government have constructed their approach to the amendments. It is also worth pointing out that the Government have not put minor amendments before us today. New schedule 2, which refers to England, is 35 pages long, as is new schedule 3, which relates to Wales. New schedule 4 is 37 pages long—Scotland gets rather more than Wales or England—and new schedule 5, on Northern Ireland, is just 19 pages long. I presume that the Minister's final throwaway comments on postal voting in Northern Ireland, which he made swiftly at the end of his speech, are why the number of pages on Northern Ireland is substantially smaller than the number on Scotland and Wales, and that he intends to introduce significant amendments at a later stage. Obviously, I do not believe that that should be next week—I think it should be once the statutory instruments have been considered and, if necessary, approved. However, that is all the more reason why we should ensure that the Northern Ireland statutory instrument is debated on the Floor of the House before Report.