Member

The fundamental issue here is the potential with this mechanism for Prime Ministers to appoint the number that they wish, to their own party predominantly, and so you get this escalator. The noble Lord, Lord Gove, says that there is no problem with the size of the House, and we have never pretended to argue that there is a precise number which is wrong. But we have observed that this mechanism and the way it works leads to a steadily increasing size of the House. Two or three more moves of Governments who have substantial majorities for periods of time will see it explode to even larger numbers, unless we can find some way of beginning to constrain it.