"When I took this Bill on holiday to read in the summer, it was 153 pages. When it arrived in this House, it was 300. Yet the Minister has the brass neck to say that the other place was time-wasting, when the Bill doubled because of 286 government amendments that …..." Lord Rooker - View Speech
"I do not want to prolong this, but this is the result of this place not having a Speaker. In the other place, if anybody down there had said about somebody up here what was said by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, the Speaker would have ruled it out of …..." Lord Rooker - View Speech
"My Lords, I did not really see the significance of my noble friend’s amendment when I was reading through the Bill, and I missed this.
I am thinking back. I know that we are going to be told that the 1975 referendum was not declared by constituency. If I remember …..." Lord Rooker - View Speech
"I accept that. However, the referendum in 1975 was to make a decision on whether the country—I repeat, the country—should stay in the EU or not. On 5 May next year, the issue is whether 650 individual constituencies should use a different voting system...." Lord Rooker - View Speech
"Of course it is. Therefore, people are entitled to know at a local level. While the noble Lord is on this point, I should say that only the count is affected here. If there is a delay in the count, so what? The Electoral Commission cannot delay when the voting …..." Lord Rooker - View Speech
"Perhaps MPs should have a free vote when the Bill returns to the other place. Let them decide; after all, they are the ones with the supreme vested interest. There is no interest more vested for an MP than their constituency boundaries and knowing what their constituents actually feel...." Lord Rooker - View Speech
"I should like to bring my noble friend Lord Anderson around to supporting my noble friend Lady Hayter because, while I am sceptical as well, this is not about votes at 16. It is about allowing the people who will be 18 at the end of a fixed-term Parliament to …..." Lord Rooker - View Speech
"There is an easy solution to that. I think it is the case—I do not have children but I was at the DSS—that when you are 16 you are issued with your national insurance number. You are known about on the system. It would be easy for the DWP to …..." Lord Rooker - View Speech
"Forgive me but that was not my point. The noble Lord was saying that we could not get 16 year-olds on to the register in time. The fact is that they are on a register now. It would be very easy to transfer them to the electoral register. It is …..." Lord Rooker - View Speech