Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I support the new clause, to which my name, along with those of so many others from different parties, is attached in the unpublished list. When considering the new clause, the Committee should bear in mind not only the experiences of the parties that form the Government and occupy the Government Benches, but those of the rest of us who come to the Chamber and the Committees of the House and are confronted with the realities of the Government Whip system and Parliamentary Private Secretaries—part of the peculiar ecosystem here—who can represent their constituents but are at times bound not to represent their consciences. The idea that someone can represent their constituents but never their conscience is a peculiar political creation, from which the House should try to get away. It brings politics into some disrepute if we appear effectively to neuter ourselves. The straits into which PPSs are cast are unnecessary; they should be allowed more freedom than they generally exercise or are encouraged or permitted to exercise. New clause 7 led me to that issue by way of making a general observation about the dominance of the Executive in the House. In recent years there have been attempts to reduce the Executive's absolute control of the agenda and the timetable, and changes have been made from appointing Chairs of Select Committees to electing them. That is all to the good, but new clause 7 is the reality check. As the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) said, it is the genuine test of whether the new politics means anything. I have no argument with reducing the number of Members of Parliament. I did not vote for 650 the other night; I am happy if there is a reduction. However, alongside that, we need a reduction in the size and voting dominance of the Executive in the Chamber. Of course the answer to the problem of the over-supply of Ministers in this House is not to over-supply them in another place. In the previous Parliament not only many Ministers, but Cabinet Ministers—Secretaries of State—sat in another place. I joined others in criticising that lack of accountability. For me, the answer was not to bring Ministers from the Lords into this House—the last thing I wanted was to bring Peter Mandelson back anywhere, not least to the Dispatch Box, given our experiences of the man. On that famous occasion in Hartlepool, he said that he was not a quitter but a fighter. I always believed that his theme tune should have been the Simon and Garfunkel song ““The Boxer””—not for the lyrics of the verses but for the chorus, which is simply ““Lie la lie”” throughout.