McNally: Lords won’t fall for the ‘elephant trap’
Tom McNally, Liberal Democrat peer, argues in favour of the parliamentary voting system and constituency bill:
“At the moment, you can get elected to parliament on 25-26% of votes and occasionally it does. This reform will mean you will go to parliament with at least half of your constituents having consciously voted for you.
“We want to redraw the boundaries so that all votes have a similar weight, which in turn brings the distortion in our electoral system where a government can be elected with a healthy majority… with 36% of the vote.
“It’s getting the wrinkles and the unfairness out of our system.
[On reducing the number of MPs] “It’s a minor adjustment of 8% on which Charlie [Falconer] is trying to build a massive constitutional problem.
“If the House of Lords falls for this elephant trap… then they are not as smart as I think their Lordships are.”
