Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Baroness Corston and Lord Howarth of Newport

Tuesday 25th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

It was a rather complex set of decisions, simply because there is a significant number of these chapels. They had been listed rather unsystematically over some years, and English Heritage and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport thought that it was time to take a more systematic look at them. In many cases, we raised the listed status of these chapels. However, I do not wish to detain the House further on that point. I simply use it to illustrate something important, which I regret to say is that this Government are apt to ignore and underestimate its value.

It is insensitive and foolish of the Government to legislate to bring about a system whereby parliamentary constituency boundaries are to be drawn through slavish adherence to rigid mathematical formulae, with a minimal tolerance of 5 per cent on either side of a quota of 76,000 electors. That does not leave adequate scope for the boundary commissioners to take account of very important considerations of community, history, tradition, identity and local ties. In this debate on Cornwall—as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Goss Moor, suggested —we are talking not simply about a particular set of circumstances there, although those considerations are very important, but about the unwisdom of a policy that discounts and effectively disparages a passionately held sense of identity on the part of people living in particular communities. That is not a wise thing to do in politics. It is the course that the Government appear determined to persist in. It is foolish and I hope that they will agree to the amendment of my noble friend Lord Myners, not only in deference and respectful response to views that are unanimously and vigorously presented across the political parties and across the communities of Cornwall, but in recognition that throughout the country people believe and insist that their local identity should be respected and expressed in the patterns of their parliamentary representation.

[Baroness Corston]

My Lords, I support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Myners. Thirty-five years ago I was the regional organiser of the Labour Party in the south-west of England. I spent a lot of time in Cornwall. What struck me was that whenever I went there, I would be asked one question: what is the weather like in England? People would talk about driving through Devon to get to God's own country. When I was in Devon, they would say that you have to drive through God's own country to get to Cornwall. That illustrates the tension between the two counties.

During the boundary reviews of the 1970s and 1980s, I assisted on behalf of the Labour Party. One thing that was always said was: “We don't even care if we are underrepresented so long as we keep the county of Cornwall”. I noted that the two noble Lords who spoke in this debate who have represented Cornwall in the other place—as I represented Bristol—addressed themselves to whether there should be five or six constituencies, but did not acknowledge the truth of what they must know: that their county would not wish its border to be crossed. That was my experience then. On subsequent visits to Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, I have seen no evidence that there has been any change of view. Given the antagonism between Devon and Cornwall, it would be profoundly misguided to have any constituency crossing that boundary.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Baroness Corston and Lord Howarth of Newport

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My noble friend developed his argument compellingly in his speech just now. Just as differential turnout matters very much, so do differential levels of registration. These are all factors tending, unfortunately, to produce votes of unequal value. Moreover, within the alternative vote system, we know that the votes of the supporters of the minority parties that continue to be totted up and distributed will themselves carry more power in the ultimate decision than other votes will.

One is left puzzled about what the Government’s motivation can be in rushing this through, unless it is to secure political advantage for the Conservative Party as part of the deal between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats do not even get the reformed electoral system that they really want, but the Tories get their opportunity to reduce the number of seats by 50, which, it has been calculated, if not by them—although I think they might be aware of the calculation—will advantage them and disadvantage the Labour Party.

The truth is that, while pursuing this pretty cynical policy, the Government risk causing the redistribution of constituencies to be botched. If it is botched and there is widespread public dissatisfaction with it, that can serve only to alienate sentiment and to alienate our citizens further from our democratic processes in this country. If there is a case for reform, and I believe that there is a case for significant reform in a number of aspects of our constitutional arrangements, then the benefits of reform will be dissipated and lost if the public feel angry that their legitimate entitlement to make their contribution to this process through public inquiries has been stamped upon by a Government who are in a hurry to effect change to suit their own political interest.

My noble friend Lord Dixon made a speech of profound importance, and I hope that Ministers and noble Lords opposite will think very carefully about what he said. He spoke with passion about the community of which he has been a member all his life. The Government’s formula of insisting on rigid numerical equality between constituencies risks violating community, ignoring history and causing profound offence to the people of this country. If indeed there is to be a rigid numerical formula, with a difference of no more than plus or minus 5 per cent from the norm of 76,000 voters, it is all the more important that the Boundary Commission should be allowed to have the time to take care to be sensitive to these other very important factors. If the Government rush in seeking to create numerically equal constituencies and do not pay attention to what people have to say about community, history, geography and the importance of the alignment of parliamentary constituencies with local government, they will make the process even more offensive than I fear it will inevitably be in any case.

[Baroness Corston]

Does my noble friend recognise that many of us have heard—as, perhaps, he has—from people in Cornwall, who have said that their boundary has been inviolate for more than 1,000 years? They are absolutely appalled that anyone should consider a boundary that includes areas of both Devon and Cornwall, which they would consider utterly unacceptable.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

It is a grossly insensitive and, politically, a remarkably stupid thing to contemplate. I add one further point. My recent observation of the working of the Boundary Commission was in Norfolk, on the question of whether there should be unitary status for Norwich within the county of Norfolk. The difficulty that we got into was, in part, because the Boundary Commission took so much longer than the timescale to which it had been tasked. It simply could not get the job done on the timescale that the previous Government wanted. It might be wise for this Government to study that instance and learn a lesson from it. If this process is pushed through with the kind of haste that is intended, all kinds of grievous consequences will follow. It is a waste of an opportunity for reform.