—in the attitude adopted by the inhabitants of North Walsall towards the inhabitants of Walsall as a whole, but that does not prevent them from supporting the Walsall Football Club.

The significant point is therefore this—that whatever community life Walsall and North Walsall may have, the people of Brownhills emphatically do not wish to share in that community life, because they have their own life and think that it is a good one. I have no doubt that they are right, and that it is just for historical reasons that these very admirable communities want to live apart.

Let us face the fact that, inside Walsall, the Commissioners have enjoyed a certain measure of support for their proposals. One can only conjecture the reasons for this support. One of them, and one of the more respectable ones, though an extremely dangerous one from the point of view of those whom my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield and Tamworth has been representing, is that with this redistribution there will be two constituencies in which Walsall has a preponderance of votes.

The reckoning is that in the contests that are the daily features of local government, Walsall will be more strongly represented by two Members than it would be by one. This calculation is obviously based on a quite fundamental misconception of the duties of a Member of Parliament and of the way in which all of us, even the worst among us, carry out those duties.

Once a Member is elected for Walsall, North and once a Member is elected for Walsall, South they will be as much Members for Brownhills and Aldridge as they are for Walsall. The practical result of this change in terms of local government will be that the County Borough of Walsall will, for the first time since 1832, not really be represented in Parliament, that the rural district councils will not be so represented, and that the Members, instead of having a clear duty to one local authority, will be in the undesirable position of being in the nature of arbiters between them.

Alternatives which would not have had—certainly for Walsall—the bad results which these proposals would have, were put before the Commissioners. Their effects would have been that there would have been one constituency which was predominantly Walsall and another in which some wards of Walsall and some other districts were incorporated on a rough basis of equality. That would have left Walsall with a borough Member, and would have done rough justice as between the rest.

In spite of the protest of the three local authorities for whom my hon. Friend has spoken, and in spite of the clear division of opinion within the Borough of Walsall itself and of representations for a local inquiry, the Commissioners, and, after the Commissioners, the Government, have persisted in the proposals which are now before the House. These alternatives have not been examined.

I do not wish to add any more to the volume of criticism that has been levelled at the Commissioners in this and in other matters. The Commissioners have been given the wrong job to do, and, with their quite obvious lack of political experience, they are clearly the wrong people to do it. I do not make my criticisms in any personal sense, but I certainly deplore the lack of historical understanding, of perspective and of the working of our political institutions, and also the disregard shown by the Government for the community life of the electorate. Though I dare not hope at this late hour that the Government will reconsider their decision, I must say that, of the many bad decisions which they have taken in this matter, this is one of the worst.