Lisa Smart

I do. I fear it would try the patience of the House if I were to get into that level of detail about my favourite voting systems with my hon. Friend—we only have a further three hours of this debate, so I will press on—but I do agree with him that there are more representative ways to elect our representatives that we should look at. We Liberal Democrats will continue to press for proportional representation so that we can finally make every vote count. It is a matter of basic fairness. No Bill claiming to modernise our democracy can be taken seriously while it ignores this question. Worse, it does not even introduce elections for our second Chamber, leaving the House of Lords unreformed, unelected and, in the current climate, frankly indefensible. Peers face no meaningful accountability to the public whose lives they affect. The Bill takes some limited, but sadly too timid, steps in the right direction. It fails to seize the opportunity to rebuild trust and make our vulnerable, brittle democracy more resilient. We look forward to working constructively to strengthen it during the parliamentary process, because we must be more courageous and ambitious than the Bill currently is. We must stop taking our democracy for granted.