Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maples]

My Lords, I, too, hope that the House will reject this amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, moved it in extremely reasonable and persuasive terms, but it is a bit of a split-the-difference amendment. There has been a call for a 20 per cent spread—10 per cent either way—in the debates in Committee, and 7.5 per cent seems to be a nice compromise between 5 per cent and 10 per cent. However, 5 per cent is quite a lot.

The underlying principle of this Bill is that constituencies should be of equal size. Five per cent either way seems to be reasonable latitude to allow the Boundary Commission in setting those constituency boundaries. It means that the biggest constituency will be about 8,000 voters bigger than the smallest. If we went to 7.5 per cent, that difference would be somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 voters. I do not believe that there should be any exceptions to this rule. I am not persuaded about the Isle of Wight or the Scottish island seats. I do not see why those specific geographical considerations should outweigh others.

I was a Member of the other place for two constituencies, one urban and one rural. All of us who have been in that position can construct reasons to persuade the Boundary Commission why our constituency is special or different. We have all had different geographical considerations and a weight of problems and correspondence in one area that another constituency does not. In my experience, they roughly balance out and the workload is about the same. I do not expect that the number of immigration cases in the Western Isles is very large, and I have some difficulty with whether the workload there is great enough to justify a constituency electorate of, I think, 21,000. There is a principle at stake here that constituencies should be of equal size.

Another issue with this amendment is that, whatever the noble Lord says, it introduces areas of vagueness and subjectivity, including what is “viable”, what is “an exceptionally compelling nature” and “local ties”. Some of these expressions are already in the Bill. When the noble Lord said that judicial review of a Boundary Commission decision was unlikely to get very far and would be dealt with very speedily, I could not help asking myself whether he would give a client exactly the same advice as to whether this was a hopeless prospect.

It seems to me that there is not just the possibility of one case of judicial review; there is the possibility of a great many cases of judicial review. I think I share with my noble friend Lord King an absolute determination that these new boundaries should be in place for the next election. This unfairness has to be eliminated. The amendment makes that less likely. It introduces some concepts of vagueness, which will make the Boundary Commission’s task more difficult and will possibly, although I have to defer to his professional expertise on this, make judicial review more likely. It also seemed to me that his arguments would be equally valid if, instead of putting in 7.5 per cent, he had put 10 per cent or 15 per cent. The figure of 7.5 per cent seems to be a somewhat arbitrary half way between 5 and 10 per cent.

At the next election, the biggest constituency, if the Bill stays as it is, will not just be 10 per cent bigger than the smallest; it will be considerably more than that because the Boundary Commission’s decisions will be based on the electoral registers as they were at the end of last year. If one looks at the problem that this has created in the past, in the 2005 election—I shall pick just two examples—Sheffield Brightside was 19,000 voters under the quota and Banbury was 19,000 over. By the 2010 election, which was based on the year 2000 registers—10 years earlier—the Banbury constituency was about 9,000 voters over quota and the Sheffield Brightside constituency was 9,000 under. At the last election, only 218 seats were within the 5 per cent quota; 161 were within 5 per cent to 10 per cent; 200 were within 10 per cent to 20 per cent; and 60 were more than 20 per cent out.

The next boundary review will be a bit better than that because it will be only five years in arrears, but it will still be based on registers that will at that point be about five years out of date. I have done some very rough arithmetic; one would expect 200 seats to be more than 5 per cent out and about 60 to be more than 10 per cent out. Anything that goes further from the principle that the constituencies should be of equal size should be resisted. Five per cent gives the Boundary Commission considerable leeway, and I would be very reluctant to see the Boundary Commission allowed more subjective judgments and more opportunities for judicial review, or a result in which a considerable number of constituencies were more than 5 per cent away from the average.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

I should like to make it clear to the House that I speak as an individual and support what the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said: that the Cross-Benchers are never to be seen as a group. We all vote according to our individual consciences, as we see our position in this place. I live in an area that has had three changes of constituency in the past three elections, and I have not had the slightest problem with that. I also recognise the importance of all these changes being done by the next election in 2015. Consequently, I totally support the Government’s approach that there should be a leeway of 5 per cent each way. However, I support the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. I played no part whatever in drafting the amendment, and indeed had not read it until I came into the Chamber this afternoon. If one reads the amendment with care and listens with care to what the noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Williamson of Horton, have said about it, it is perfectly obvious that it would give the Boundary Commission leeway in an exceptional, small group of cases. It is not intended to disrupt or change the standard situation, which is the proper way in which to readjust constituencies that are out of kilter.

As someone who has been a judge, I would say that it would be most extraordinary if there was a judicial review of any of these cases. If there was one, it would be very unlikely that the result of that one would encourage further judicial reviews.

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, I wish to address individual consciences on this matter. I do so having reflected on yesterday’s debate about public inquiries and the role of lawyers and legal challenges in the Boundary Commission process, and having noted that that debate was almost entirely dominated by those from the legal profession. I speak as someone who is very much not a lawyer and who cannot possibly say that he is in any way above the political fray between parties about elections, campaigns and constituencies. However, I am someone who, over more than 30 years, has had extensive experience of fighting and organising elections in many dozens of different constituencies in every part of Great Britain, in general elections and in parliamentary by-elections, as well as extensive involvement in the Boundary Commission processes that have gone into drawing up those constituencies in the past.

I very much appreciate the very sincere efforts of the noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Williamson, and other noble Lords, to try to see whether some reasonable consensus or agreement might be reached and to try sincerely to improve aspects of the Bill in reasonable time, so that the Bill is agreed on the timetable that the Government want. However, there is a fundamental problem with the definition that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and his noble friends have drawn up. There is simply no reasonably agreed and commonly accepted definition of the key phrase “a viable constituency”. There is no agreed definition, and to try to agree on it would be a subject of great controversy. Without a definition of a viable constituency, we are simply inviting four different Boundary Commissions to devise their own definitions of the phrase, which I believe would be very controversial. Nor was it clear to me—or I think to anyone else, although I am not a lawyer—what the meaning of the phrase “exceptionally compelling nature” might be. The Boundary Commissions would have a lot of argument about what considerations of an exceptionally compelling nature are.

I can easily see large numbers of lawyers in many courts arguing for a very long time over definitions of a viable constituency and over exceptions, such as geographic ties and local considerations, which in themselves are very vaguely defined, that might be considered to be of an exceptionally compelling nature. Such phraseology will, I am in no doubt, lead to many legal challenges to the Boundary Commission’s processes, which should be determined by independent boundary commissioners using the criteria given to them by Parliament. They should not be determined by lawyers in the courts arguing over these definitions. Too many problems in the past have been caused by legal arguments. A noble friend of mine, when a Member in the other place, came to me for advice on how to handle Boundary Commission processes. I gave him the best of my advice—and, of course, it was free of charge. By the time he had consulted learned counsel on how to make his representations to the Boundary Commission, a bill in excess of £10,000 had been incurred. If we pass an amendment such as this, we will have to go on by defining viable constituencies and exceptional circumstances, and there will be many legal challenges. These issues will be determined by who has access to the funds for which party, which MP, which candidate and in which constituency. That will be a wholly unsatisfactory process.

The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said that he was creating a narrow definition in this amendment. With great respect to the noble Lord, it is absolutely not a narrow definition to try to say what a viable constituency is or what wholly exceptional circumstances are. They are two very widely defined concepts. He also said that he was trying to reassure Ministers who are concerned that the exception might become more general. This amendment will fail, because the exceptions will become very general.

--- Later in debate ---

My noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness is not in his place at the moment, but on the first amendment we considered today I think he referred to the “sanctity of the Tamar”. I believe that is what he said, rather than the “sanctity of this Chamber”. Although I know he did not mean it, he said it in a slightly disparaging way. But what I would say is this: there is a sanctity about the boundary of the Tamar that is felt by people in both Cornwall and Devon. It has been a boundary for over a thousand years. It is respected and it is a boundary that people feel should be recognised in the Bill. Just as the boundaries between Scotland and England and Wales and England are recognised—a point made by my noble and learned friend earlier—so I believe that the boundary of the Tamar should also be recognised in this Bill. I beg to move.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, as a Cross-Bencher, I wonder whether I might be permitted to say something as someone who has lived in Devon for 45 years. I should like to endorse the fact that Devonians have absolutely nothing in common with Cornwall. The Tamar is a genuine barrier between Devon and Cornwall. Perhaps not all noble Lords will know that although you are welcome to go into Cornwall, you have to pay to come out. I wonder what a Member of Parliament with a constituency partly in Cornwall and partly in Devon would be expected to do if, every time he visited a constituent on one side of the Tamar or the other, he actually had to pay the toll. That is just an indication of the fact that Devon and Cornwall are quite separate places.

So far as we in Devon are concerned, Cornwall is foreign territory. Indeed, that is exactly what the author Daphne du Maurier said in her famous books about Cornwall. She wrote a splendid one that I think is called Rule Britannia in which she wished Cornwall to become independent of the rest of the country. I am not suggesting that Cornwall should be independent, but I believe it should have its own MPs and that they should not trespass upon Devon.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, it is good to follow the noble and learned Baroness from across the water and probably across the frontier too. I support the amendment and I endorse everything the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said about the view of the people of Cornwall, particularly of those at the eastern end where I live. The noble Lord did not mention the treaty between the Celtic Cornish and the Saxon English signed in AD 936 by King Athelstan which started all this off. I would compare this debate about the Tamar and the problem of mixing two races with the thought of what would happen if there was a constituency that crossed the border between Wales and England. I do not think that the people of Wales would like that.

I want to mention just one other thing. Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly have recently been awarded a local enterprise partnership, one of the first to have been made. It is a great tribute to the county council and the other people who promoted it, and it is a fine achievement. It also demonstrates that the Government think that Cornwall is different and that it is separate. It has economic problems as well as many other ones, but the LEP demonstrates that one part of the Government thinks it should be separate. I trust that the Minister, when he comes to reply, will express his support.

Legal Aid: Family Courts

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, one of the Government’s proposals, which I think has some merit, is to attempt to move away from a culture in which the taxpayer pays for litigation, particularly in family disputes. Many studies have shown that the litigation route to settling family disputes exacerbates the dispute and causes lasting harm to all sides of the family, particularly the children.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, as a judge who tried a large number of family cases in which both sides were litigants in person, I can confirm that such cases will take much longer. Does the Minister realise that there is a hard core of people who fight over their children and who will not agree through mediation? I would be delighted to take part in consultations with the Government on what will happen.

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, I fully appreciate the noble and learned Baroness’s long and great experience in these fields. Certainly, some cases may be lengthened by the fact that neither side is legally advised, but the intention, as I said at the beginning, is to try to move a large number of such cases away from the court system into mediation and other forms of settlement. I fully accept her point that family disputes can become so bitter and intractable that resolution is very difficult, but that still does not argue the case for the taxpayer funding both sides in that kind of dispute.

Drugs and Crime

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I, too, welcome the UNODC discussion paper, and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, on securing this very timely debate.

Large numbers of offenders of all ages commit drug or drink offences. I believe that something like 80 per cent of the prison population has a connection with drugs or drink. I do not think that drug dependency is treated in most prisons, so the rate of reoffending is inevitably high and those people are less likely ever to be able to reintegrate into the community. As we all know, drugs are widely available in prisons. I was very shocked to be told yesterday by a barrister who does a lot of prison visiting that prisoners who go in taking cannabis move to heroin because it is less obvious in the blood stream when testing is carried out. They come out of prison heroin addicts. That is a terrible indictment of an element of our prison system.

As regards the human suffering of those who take drugs and those who live with, or are connected with, those who take drugs, there is, of course, a huge effect on families. As the noble Lord, Lord Freud, said in the previous debate, 80 per cent of drug users are on benefits and are, presumably, unemployable. The point that I particularly wish to bring to the attention of the House—it has not yet been referred to—is the effect of drug use on children. They are affected in all sorts of ways. When parents are on drugs, they do not give their children love, care and attention. Children who truant, commit crimes and move into gangs come from dysfunctional families. A substantial group of dysfunctional families in this country are those in which one or both parents take drugs. Children as young as 10 to 12 are recruited as runners and by the time they are 18 are dealers on housing estates. By the time they are 18, they are dealers. That is a terrible aspect of life in some parts of the country.

I do not how many noble Lords know about cannabis farms. Do you know that private houses are rented out to gangs who turn them into cannabis farms? They create one by pulling out all the interior, taking the electricity and water for the spray and heating system, and using polythene. Fortunately, the smell is extremely strong and the police can detect it using infrared technology in helicopters. Thereby, many of the cannabis farms are found. The police discovered a number of cannabis farms in private houses near Heathrow that were being tended by Vietnamese children as young as eight or 10. They had of course been trafficked into this country and all they did was tend cannabis farms in private houses.

It is difficult to know the best way to deal with drug abuse and whether drugs should be decriminalised. One thing is absolutely certain, which encouraged those of us who signed the letter sent by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, to Kofi Annan—the present system around the world is not working. It is certainly not working in the United Kingdom. It is costly, time-consuming and is, overall, ineffective, as the noble Baroness told us. The successes in the discovery of loads of drugs only highlight the huge difficulty of keeping up with the inflow of drugs to this country and through this country to other countries. We all know that sentencing, however severe, does not seem to have any deterrent effect on drug abuse.

One possibility might indeed be to decriminalise, but one would have to be extremely brave as the Government of a country to do that in light of the 180 countries that deal with sentencing severely. One only has to go to Singapore and walk into the airport to be told that to carry drugs means death. We are a long way from making Singapore decriminalise drugs.

I was interested in what the noble Baroness, Lady Afshar, said about Afghanistan. For a long time I have wondered why this country, perhaps in concert with other countries, does not buy the entire Afghan production of opium. We know that there is a world shortage of morphine and I should not have thought that it would be difficult to sell at a profit. If we bought it, we would do down the Taliban at one stroke—certainly to a large degree.

The proposals of the UNODC are extremely interesting. There seem to be two ways in which one could go on this: either by keeping the criminal system, whereby offenders go through the courts but do not go to prison; or, preferably, by diverting entirely from the prison system. I cannot believe that setting up a large number of clinics in the United Kingdom could be anything like as costly as keeping the drug addicts in prison and releasing them to reoffend whereby, again and again, they are a charge on the state.

I should like the Government to try out further pilot projects that divert from prisons to alternative remedies. It would be crucial that clinics were free, freely available and properly set up to deal with drug offenders. I urge the Government to do something such as that and see by how far they could cut out the people in prisons.