Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

May I take up the point that the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) raised about the Deputy Leader of the House's comment that the House should not become concerned with setting an arithmetical limit and seeking an arithmetical formula? The Bill says that there should be 600 MPs and 600 only—not one more and not one less. No flexibility is to be left to the boundary commissions, to Parliament or to anyone else, and constituencies are to be formulated every five years, again on the basis of a tyranny of arithmetic, so how can the Deputy Leader of the House tell us that within this regime of the new arithmetic and the new politics there cannot be arithmetical guarantees on the fixed number of Ministers in this House?