Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Baroness Wall of New Barnet and Lord Soley

Monday 17th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

Professor King made the point that, if you reduce the number of MPs from which Ministers are drawn, you also reduce the “gene pool” for Ministers, as he described it. He said that that was quite important. I do not want to get into a detailed argument about why I am sympathetic to the idea of reducing the size of Parliament; I just want to make a couple of points in relation to it.

[Baroness Wall of New Barnet]

Would my noble friend describe for us what he means by an “independent commission”? I cannot understand why the Government would resent that and be opposed to it. My noble friend is suggesting that they would establish it and it would be independent. Can he give us some reason why he thinks that they may not want it?

[Lord Soley]

I am afraid that the only answer—this is the core of the problem that is making us do things such as debate this late at night when we could be doing other things with our lives—is, quite simply, that there is a political agreement between two parties, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, to do this regardless of the consequences or of the Opposition. That is what they are doing.

I accept that the wording of my amendment is not perfect and that the Government would have to take it away and work on it, but there is no doubt in my mind that they could appoint an independent commission to look at this and come forward with some guidance on the basic issue of the numbers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Soley]

It is what I call over-powerful government again. Again I point out what Andrew Tyrie said. I am not attacking Andrew Tyrie. There are things I think he got wrong in that document, particularly about the figures of representation in other countries. However, it is a well written document and well argued. One of the other things that might make my noble friend sleep less soundly at night—assuming he gets to sleep any night in the near future—is that Andrew Tyrie actually said that the MPs who are displaced by this reduction in size should be given peerages, so we will have even more coming in here. It would be quite nice if the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, answers this and says that will not automatically happen, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it might.

[Baroness Wall of New Barnet]

I have sat, like many other people, for many hours and have only just decided to contribute. There are several reasons that have been given by noble Lords on this side of the House why this is absolutely unacceptable. For me the most moving and convincing argument was that of my noble friend Lord Boateng, who talked about the role we play when we are asked to go out to Governments who are being formed as democracies. The Governments we belong to have always prided ourselves on being absolutely the epitome of governance and everything else. How do we ever accept the opportunity to go and guide and help those people when we have this situation ourselves now?

[Lord Soley]

My noble friend is making a point I made with very great emphasis right at the beginning of my comments. It is important to understand that we will be doing something radically different from everything we tell other countries to do. We look at elections overseas with the various bodies we work through—the United Nations, the European Union, the Commonwealth and so on—but we will be doing something we are telling other countries not to do. There are no ifs and buts about that.