United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield]

I am happy to take that point, because I would have imagined that the consultation that the Government promised but have failed to deliver would have at its heart real engagement with the devolved Administration, but also with local authorities across the nations of the UK and with our elected Mayors. I would have imagined that all those critical stakeholders would shape the framework, which we as a Parliament could then agree.

Amendments 15 and 16 would provide transparency and protect the decision-making powers of the Senedd, Holyrood and Stormont by making clear that, in relation to all the areas of spending set out in clause 46, funding is allocated to the devolved Administrations, and that all financial assistance related to devolved matters is delivered through the devolved Administrations. That would prevent the Bill from creating a back door through which Ministers could undermine devolution—a power grab in which spending decisions previously made in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast would be made in London, and that would also marginalise local authorities.

We debated on Monday, and next Monday we will debate again, those parts of the Bill that have dominated the headlines and shocked people around the world, but today’s debate has demonstrated that there are other deeply concerning aspects of this Bill. We heard about some yesterday, and they were echoed in the issues raised today. They are concerns about where power lies and how we make the decisions affecting our communities. Labour’s amendments seek to ensure that we hear local voices, spend money where it is needed and protect the Union. I commend them to the House.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

First of all, I thank you, Dame Rosie, for presiding over us in Committee this afternoon and I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on the Opposition Front Bench for his calm tone at the end of what has been a fiery debate. Indeed, in that vein, I also thank the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who brought us to a mature tone after much back and forth. At this early point in my response, I thank him for his points about flooding funding and his coal tip, which I will take away and ensure are looked into the spirit in which he asked this afternoon.

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[Alan Brown]

Will the Minister give way?

[Chloe Smith]

I certainly will not, because the hon. Gentleman has asked every single speaker this afternoon to give way, and I really need to answer the points raised by other hon. and right hon. Members here tonight.

The UK Government do not take any powers away from the devolved Administrations, because this is in addition to devolved powers, which continue. As I have said, we want to continue to work with the devolved Administrations and local authorities to ensure that this power is used to best effect, augmenting the existing powers used to support citizens across the UK. At this point, I want to thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine), who made the point very well about the need for consultation and partnership working. I believe that UK Government Ministers, under the scrutiny of the UK Parliament, should have that ability to invest UK-wide. A legislative obligation to seek consent from colleagues in Stormont, Cardiff Bay or Holyrood might not always be appropriate in that context. That is because, as I have set out, the plans for investment will be at a strategic level, including on UK-wide projects, which would not be suitable to be blocked by any one part of the country. Indeed, the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) revealed in his comments that his party’s priorities lay elsewhere. Perhaps that is the case on independence, as SNP Members have missed no chance to tell us about that this afternoon, but the hon. Gentleman said that economic development, infrastructure, education, culture, sport and more were not a priority in Scotland. Those were his words, and there we have it—[Interruption.] They would block such things.

Amendment 14, from the hon. Member for Sheffield Central, would require both Houses of Parliament to agree by resolution how the power should operate. It is absolutely essential that any and all spending of taxpayers’ money is subject to proper scrutiny and, as the House well knows, we have this responsibility and authority when the Government seek to raise taxes and set budgets for public spending. We have it in the Commons, but not in the Lords, and the first thing I would say about amendment 14 is that it has a weakness—indeed, a major flaw—in that it invites the House of Lords to take a stance on financial matters, which it does not do. I have full confidence in the House of Commons to scrutinise UK Government spending decisions in this way, as it also does daily through Committees such as the Public Accounts Committee. The House would also have the opportunity to vote on spending allocation under this power, through the estimates process. So I argue that amendment 14 is unnecessary because there are already processes for looking at that expenditure, and I argue secondly that it is not right to give that power to the House of Lords as well as to the House of Commons.

Amendments 15, 16 and 12 propose that the devolved Administrations should themselves be funded to provide financial assistance under this legislation. I have already articulated why a new power is needed, so this really comes down to the very core point. For investment that is strategic, that is at a certain scale, that can be intra-UK and that can provide benefits universally across the UK, should that power be held at UK level or at the devolved level? This argument has been made pretty clearly, and it has reverberated across every side of the Chamber this afternoon. I do not think I need to re-summarise it here, but I say very clearly that this Government is a Unionist Government and we put the argument today that it is a sensible role for the UK Government to hold such a power. Therefore I turn away from those amendments that are simply based on a different view.

Amendment 12 seeks to go further. It suggests that the funding arising from the power be pre-allocated based on GDP and it should take the form of multi-annual funding.

Let me take this opportunity to be absolutely clear that devolved Administrations will continue to receive funding through the block grant and the Barnett formula, where appropriate. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) for making a powerful argument that the nations are home to some of the most deprived communities in the UK, and this goes to the argument that is contained in this amendment, perhaps, about where need is. The spending power in the Bill helps to answer that call.

Turning to the idea of long-term planning and multi-annual funding that is also encapsulated in the amendment, the funding arrangements and the governance for use of the UK-wide spending power will be a decision for the spending review, and that is the right way to allocate multi-annual funding. I urge hon. Members to withdraw the proposed amendment because it is not necessary in that instance.

I turn to amendment 22, on which colleagues from Northern Ireland have spoken passionately today, especially the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) and the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson)—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman is waving at me from slightly outside the Chamber. I assure the hon. Members who authored that amendment that it is the intention and the effect of the power to apply equally across all of our nation, but I do not think that was quite the point of the hon. Gentleman’s argument here today. In fact, I suggest to him, politely and gently, that those arguments are best taken up again in the next session of this Committee, when we turn to Northern Ireland’s interests more broadly, and specifically to do with state aid, which is where I think he will be able to get a much fuller discussion of the points that he was making.

I would like to take this opportunity also to reassure the hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) that community balance can be accommodated, such as it has been indeed through the Derry-Londonderry and Strabane city deal, and we intend that kind of partnership to be able to continue.

I also thank the hon. Member for Belfast South (Claire Hanna) for her passionate speech. She is of course right to quote John Hume that the best peace process of all is a job, and that is the kind of economic focus we intend through the Bill.

Let me also, just in passing, say to the hon. Member for Foyle—and I hope he is able to hear me, although he is also not in his place—that there is no intention to change any arrangements to do with water and water charges in Northern Ireland through the Bill, I hope he can note that—

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I want to explain for the benefit of any people who may be watching that normally Members would be in their place, but the restrictions in the Chamber mean that some are not.

[Chloe Smith]

Of course, Dame Rosie, and I mean no discourtesy, either to them or to your chairing of the debate. It is just a little unusual not to be able to see the Member that you are directing a comment to.

Let me turn to amendment 22 on the important topic of climate change, tabled by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). She made her case with her usual passion and eloquence, which I greatly respect, and I share her determination to see those goals achieved, and so do the United Kingdom Government. However, there is already an overarching legal and policy framework for achieving those goals, and I do not think it is necessary to put that restriction on to that power, so I urge her to withdraw the amendment.

Let me turn briefly to the Government amendments 23, 24, 25 and 36, which seek to add to the types of mechanisms by which such assistance can be provided to further support economic development and other matters across the UK by means of an investment fund. Those are to help to ensure that this power can be used to best effect to boost growth, and I certainly hope every right hon. and hon. Member would support that.

This power, and the Bill overall, present a real once-in-a-generation opportunity to level up our country, to strengthen our Union and to allow the UK Government to invest better the taxpayers’ money that was previously spent by Brussels. We have a responsibility to support people, businesses and communities across the whole of our United Kingdom. This power enables the UK Government to do that in a variety of ways. I say to my right hon. and hon. Friends who asked about the UK shared prosperity fund that we can meet the manifesto commitment to deliver the fund, which matches the value of EU structural funds by using the provisions set out in this part of the Bill.

Draft Representation of the People (Electoral Registers Publication Date) Regulations 2020

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2020 General Committees

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Representation of the People (Electoral Registers Publication Date) Regulations 2020.

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mrs Miller. I welcome you to your position on the Panel of Chairs.

The regulations follow on from my announcement in a written ministerial statement in June that, in the light of the many challenges posed by the covid-19 pandemic, we intended to introduce legislation to delay the deadline for the publication of this year’s revised parliamentary and English local government registers by two months, from 1 December to 1 February. I will briefly run through what we are doing and why before I take questions from the Committee.

The annual canvass, which is run by electoral registration officers in each local authority, is, as I am sure hon. Members know, an information-gathering exercise that ordinarily runs for five months from 1 July to 1 December. The aim is to ensure that the electoral registers are as complete and accurate as possible. The information gathered during the canvass is used to identify electors who should be deleted from the registers for reasons such as death, ineligibility, or moving address. It also identifies eligible citizens who are not on the register and should therefore be invited to register. The process of inviting to register involves a separate form to the canvass: a process with which I think hon. Members are familiar.

The revised register is then published on or before 1 December, normally with an exception if, for example, an election is held in the ERO’s area during that period. In that exceptional case, the final deadline is automatically delayed to 1 February the following year. Today’s legislation allows flexibility, but follows in some ways the shape of the December to February exceptional approach. The regulations give the EROs an additional two months to conduct their work should they need that due to the challenges caused by the pandemic. They will still be able to publish before 1 February if they want to, which is still in line with current legislation.

I want to touch on the impact of some other reforms that we have made to the annual canvass as a result of the secondary legislation that we introduced last autumn, as hon. Members will remember. Certainly the elections team in this room—we see a lot of each other—will be very familiar with what we are doing to reform the annual canvass so that it moves away from a cumbersome one-size-fits-all paper-based system to a more modern and adaptable model in which registration officers are able to focus their resources where they are most needed and use more modern communication methods, which is convenient for voters as well as a sensible use of resources.

Thanks to the reforms, this year’s annual canvass is already allowing EROs to conduct safer and more responsive canvasses than ever before. The canvass still involves a certain amount of paperwork and paper responses, and, where phone calls are impossible, door-knocking still applies if a household has not responded to previous attempts to contact them. The in-person contacts and paper elements are still important in ensuring the completeness and accuracy of our electoral registers and cannot be discounted.

In spite of the impact that covid-19 has had so far, the 2020 annual canvass under the reformed system is successfully and safely under way. The roll-out of the new data matching in the reformed system has been impressive and helpful. I want to put on the record my thanks to all the registration officers who have done that work, and I thank them for their continuing dedication and hard work, despite the challenges.

As I say, there are still in-person and paper elements that need to be considered, given the concerns about the impact of covid-19 on ways of working, so we have been speaking to electoral registration officers to see how they can best be met. A number of options were raised for overcoming that challenge: for example, arguments for cancelling the canvass entirely or for removing the in-person contact entirely could be envisaged. We think that the regulations are the better option, allowing for the completeness and accuracy of registers to continue to be prioritised, but also allowing registration officers the flexibility to complete the overall project as safely as they can, using the various methods that they think necessary, and with two months’ additional time in hand.

We have, of course, consulted with others for this, working in close co-operation with the public health agencies in England, Wales and Scotland. We have already issued guidance to electoral registration officers for carrying out a covid-19-secure canvass. My officials at the Cabinet Office are closely monitoring the situation across the country to provide any further non-legislative support that may be needed. Altogether, those actions—in concert with extending the deadline, as the regulations will—give EROs the flexibility and support to deliver the first-class public service that we ask of them for our local areas.

I put on the record that the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators, the Scottish Assessors Association—try saying that one too early in the morning, Mrs Miller—the Local Government Association and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives have all expressed their support for the legislation. I thank my counterparts in the Scottish and Welsh Governments for their proactive and positive engagement on the issue. They have each brough forward complementary legislation in their legislatures to apply the same delay to the deadline for publication of their local government registers. I think that is a good and welcome example of our Administrations working in partnership on a sensible measure.

To conclude, the instrument will provide the flexibility needed to run a secure canvass without compromising on completeness and accuracy, and will do so in what I hope will be a well-supported manner behind the scenes. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

[The Chair]

Before I call Cat Smith for the Opposition, I remind the Committee that these are very specific regulations, and speeches should reflect that.

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[Chloe Smith]

I thank my Front-Bench counterparts for their remarks. To deal with the simplest of the questions, the 1 February date was chosen instead of 1 March because, as I mentioned earlier, that timetable is already contained in the normal operation of this process. A delay to 1 February is sometimes already familiar to EROs, so we thought it would be most supportive to use a familiar pattern, rather than opting for 1 March. I ought to add that the elections that will occur in May next year will be larger than usual, because of the highly unusual and difficult precaution of delaying the 2020 elections to 2021 in large parts of the country. It is therefore all the more important to be ready for those elections, and I hope that this measure balances the need to be ready for them with the flexibility needed for this year.

I note that the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood echoed arguments made about canvass reform. I would encourage her to evolve those views, as her colleagues in the Welsh Government have done—they have been supportive of our proposals, and indeed worked with us on them for many years, as have counterparts in the Scottish Government. They are supportive because those canvass reform proposals allow precious public resources to be used precisely for those electors who might be least likely to be registered. They allow EROs to seek those people out more than they had been able to do using the previous, more cumbersome methods in the canvass. That is a good thing, and fundamentally answers some of the hon. Lady’s other concerns about those who might currently be missing from the electoral register and ought to be welcomed on to it. Canvass reform helps with that, rather than hinders it, and I hope she will be able to recognise that in due course.

None the less, though, I thank the hon. Lady for her support of this morning’s measure. I think we are all agreed that this is a pragmatic measure that commands support, and I therefore commend it to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

List of Ministerial Responsibilities

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd September 2020 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

As part of the Government’s ongoing commitment to transparency and accountability, I am pleased to announce that the Government have published the list of ministerial responsibilities document on gov.uk. I will today be placing copies in the library of both Houses.

The list includes details of ministerial Departments, the Ministers within ministerial Departments, the private offices of all the Ministers and the Executive agencies within each Department.

[HCWS434]

Oral Answers to Questions

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

What plans he has to reform the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 led to parliamentary paralysis at a critical time for our country. It is for that reason that the Government made a commitment in our manifesto and in our Queen’s Speech to take forward work to repeal it. An announcement about that legislation will be made in due course.

[Jonathan Gullis]

I thank my hon. Friend for her answer. She is absolutely right to highlight that the paralysis of the previous Parliament, which dithered, delayed and blocked the democratic will of the people of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, who overwhelmingly voted for us to leave the EU, should never be seen again. What assurances can she give my constituents that this reform can be achieved quickly and with support from all parts of the House to ensure that that kind of Brexit-blocking Parliament we saw last year will not be seen again?

[Chloe Smith]

There are two points to make to my hon. Friend. The first is that repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act had cross-party support. It was in the manifestos of both the Government and the Opposition, so I hope that that gives it a good wind, but it is also the case that the policy does need to be carefully developed and well scrutinised so that we do not repeat past mistakes with an important part of our constitution.

[Aaron Bell]

I thank my hon. Friend for her answer and associate myself with the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis). The problem we had last year was that we had a Government who were manifestly unable to get their core legislative agenda through. They did not have the confidence of the House for that, but the House voted that it had confidence in the Government. I understand that repealing the Act will not necessarily get us back to the status quo ante, so what mechanism does she envisage will make sure that we can never again be in that position where the Government do not have the confidence of the House on their core legislative agenda?

[Chloe Smith]

I thank my hon. Friend for putting his finger on a very important part of what was wrong with that scenario and what is wrong with that legislation: it divorces the issue of confidence from the issue of calling an election. One thing we want to do as we look at its repeal is to make sure that that central tenet of the constitution and of parliamentary operation can be properly functional.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

I look forward to the appearance of my hon. Friend before the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee next week to discuss this matter at length. She will know that the Fixed-term Parliaments Act requires, by the end of November, a review committee to be established to review the Act in its entirety, so can she describe the arrangements for this Committee and its remit?

[Chloe Smith]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend, and I look forward to discussing more on this subject with him and his Committee next week, because it is very important and we have already begun to identify in these exchanges some of the things that need to be put right. Of course the Chair of the Select Committee is absolutely right in that the Prime Minister is required, between June and November this year, to make arrangements for a committee to undertake a review of the operation of the Act. Again, I look forward to bringing details about that forward in due course, and, as part of that, answering the particular points that he put about its composition and arrangements.

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[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

When his Department plans to publish an updated list of ministerial responsibilities.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

The list of ministerial responsibilities document was last updated in October. It is taking longer than usual to compile a new document, and that is in part because Ministers have been focused on responding to the challenges of covid-19. An update will be published when possible.

[Andrew Gwynne [V]]

I am grateful to the Minister for that update, but of course it is not just the booklet; the responsibilities of individual Cabinet Office Ministers have not been available on the gov.uk website, so perhaps that could be updated too. The Cabinet Office has been particularly resistant to transparency and slow to share information in recent times. It is one of the worst performing Departments in responding to freedom of information requests, despite being responsible for FOI policy. In 2019, the Cabinet Office was the Department that was referred the most to the Information Commissioner’s Office. What is the Minister doing about this?

[Chloe Smith]

I hope it is the case that Cabinet Office Ministers—the team here today—have accounted for ourselves and our responsibilities adequately. I know that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and I, and all the Ministers, look forward to coming here to do exactly that, and ensuring that all our correspondence, parliamentary questions and all sorts of other things are properly answered. I hope that hon. and right hon. Members can use the contact details that are already available and those that have been updated during covid to ensure that Parliament can rightly get the information that it requires from our Department.

On the particular issue that the hon. Gentleman refers to on transparency and freedom of information, of course the Cabinet Office proudly leads the way in assisting the rest of Government in our duties under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and other proactive transparency measures that we have put in place over the years to ensure that citizens can get the information that they need and deserve. We intend to continue leading the way, and we think it is very important to do so.

[Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)]

What assessment he has made of the effect of the recent political appointment of the National Security Adviser on their ability to carry out the full functions of that role.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis). He and I have been very good friends in this House in the short time he has been here. I agree with him that we are always better together. It is better to have the four regions together as one. That is the real United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: stronger, better together every time.

This is not the first time I have spoken on this issue and I will start by declaring, as I always do, an interest in having the most wonderful constituency in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Strangford is the most beautiful constituency it is possible to have and I am very pleased to be able to represent it. It brings a lot of communities together and we have an affiliation with each other. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) mentioned earlier, we absolutely require the 10% variation on the quota given our distinct geographical circumstances and the limitations to what changes can be made in Northern Ireland. As everyone knows, we have a land frontier with another country, so our circumstances are very different from everybody else’s.

One issue that is essential, especially in Northern Ireland with the mix of rural and urban in almost every constituency, is the notion of belonging and community. My constituency of Strangford represents the council areas of Ards and North Down, and parts of Lisburn and Castlereagh, and Newry, Mourne and Down. When I was first elected in 2010, we had a massive change in that Ballynahinch East was added to Strangford. I made a decision to make sure that they knew their MP and opened an office in Ballynahinch to underline my commitment to make them a part of Strangford when they never were before.

The office costs allowance could never fully cover another office, but I made the decision because people could not necessarily travel some 45 to 50 miles—an hour or thereabouts—to my office in Newtonards. That has been a great boost because the people of Ballynahinch now very clearly see the constituency of Strangford as it is now and as it should be. When that happened back in 2010, the southern part of Ballynahinch—the Spa area—went into South Down and the west part went into the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley. This area was slightly different from the rest of Strangford and required an office to make its MP accessible to all, and I believe that decision was the right one.

However, every time there is a tinkering with the boundaries, it becomes an issue. Although numbers are easy to understand and move around, people’s identities are less easy to move around. To me, identity is very important, and people’s kinship is worthy of consideration. That is why I am delighted that some of the early proposals did not find their way into these final measures. I understand the concerns of some Members. The Bill has rightly ring-fenced the Isle of Wight, and the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie), in her contribution, referred to that as well. In Northern Ireland, we must take account of individual circumstances, not simply let the numbers involved in a headcount be the be all and end all.

I can remember a situation where, to put in place the ward of Carrowdore, two people had to be moved—just two people. They lived no more than 300 yards from the school where they voted, and they were moved out and had to go and vote in Carrowdore, a 20-minute journey by car down the road. That tinkering, I believe, was wrong, and I did make representations to the commission at that time. The sentiment has been embedded in my mind that where someone votes can matter, and that while moving those two on the map tidied up the numbers, it impacted on people. That must always be a consideration. I believe it is very important that people feel they are part of the constituency and part of the area.

I am thankful that after I hang up my tie and take off these worn leather shoes—it is probably a long time away, by the way, but it happens to all of us who look to be here—Strangford will remain and prosper, and I hope that remains the case for years to come. Strangford, my constituency, has been held together over these years with blood, sweat and tears, and that must be recognised and protected. The personality and the affiliation of Strangford must be considered along with the numbers for every constituency. It is not just about numbers; it is about the constituency and about the people whom we represent. What a joy it is to represent Strangford! It is my pleasure.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

And what a pleasure it is, as always, to follow the remarks of the sage of Strangford, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), with his unrivalled love for his constituency and, may I say, for this Chamber, which he demonstrates day after day—and evening after evening.

Let me take each proposed amendment in turn. I will do my best to accommodate the comments that hon. and right hon. Members have made. If I do not manage to do justice to all of that, I will try to accommodate them in my remarks on Third Reading.

Starting with new clause 1, I am very grateful to hon. Members for all their contributions, because it was a very strong theme in Committee. It is about how much flexibility ought to be given to the boundary commissions. Let me start by outlining that 5% is the existing law—the status quo—and there are a number of reasons why the Government have chosen not to change the legislation in that area and why we therefore do not support the new clause. When we say plus or minus 5%, we are talking about a range of 10% around the electoral quota. By that token, when we talk about plus or minus 7.5%, what is being spoken about is a range of 15%. By my calculation, each percentage is over 1,000 people, and people matter in this.

We believe that a 10% range does give the boundary commissions the space that they need to take account of the other factors that they may consider. As hon. Members will know, those include local geographical features, community ties, local government boundaries and existing parliamentary boundaries. At this point, I note that my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) is right that discussions are ongoing with the Boundary Commission for England, picking up on what we did in Committee.

Some characterise 10% as overly mathematically or too constraining—I think those were the words used by the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith)—but that is not the case. It is right that the boundary commissions are able to engage in dialogue with local communities—that is very important—and are able to adjust the number of electors to reflect important community ties. The 10% range allows that, and the proof is seen in an example from the Boundary Commission for England: in the 2016-18 review, more than 50% of its initial proposals were changed in the light of consultation and feedback.

[Emma Hardy]

I am listening carefully to the Minister’s observations about the need to have equal constituencies. Will she not take back to the Government the need for automatic voter registration, so we can have a truly accurate picture of the number of people in each constituency?

[Chloe Smith]

I admire the tenacity with which the hon. Lady has made that argument today. It is not the subject of the Bill, and, for what it is worth, I do not agree with the concept of automatic voter registration, but I am happy to have that conversation with her in more detail at another time. I will be more sparing in taking interventions from now on, because there is a time limit and I have much to get through.

As I understand it, the intention behind new clause 1 is to require the boundary commissions to aim for the 10% range, and only if necessary would they then use the extra 5%. That approach gives rise to a number of concerns. First, it seems to me that there is a lack of clarity, which could generate confusion; it would certainly generate ambiguity and might undermine the effectiveness of the process. One can imagine local authorities simply not knowing at the outset of the process whether their constituency would fall within the 10% range, or whether they might be a special case. A process that was previously clear and transparent would become less so.

Secondly, there is the risk of a ratchet effect. If we were to offer the boundary commissions the option to go up 7.5%, they would quickly come under pressure. That might lead to lobbying and the 15% range becoming increasingly widely used. It might be said that those who want that outcome should put it directly and courageously in an amendment, rather than saying it could be used if the commission wanted to use it.

Thirdly, and quite important, the discretion provided to the four boundary commissions would be likely to generate different approaches in different parts of the United Kingdom. That could open the door to legal challenges and a situation where the commissions’ work was made more difficult. I acknowledge the words of the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) about rule 7 and the court case there. I recognise his points, and much more detail was drawn out in that ruling, but let me say briefly now that I think rule 7 is important and it stands, notwithstanding that ruling.

In Committee, we discussed 5% versus other numbers at length. Today, I say that we should be in the business of giving the boundary commissions clear instructions. There are times when we give them room for judgment and discretion. We ask them to conduct an intense process, but this should not be one of the times when their instructions lack clarity. The matter of the tolerance is a judgment for us; it is for us in this House to set out what we think it ought to be. A balance must be struck, and no academic can tell us the right answer. Conservative Members believe in equal-sized constituencies and in being able to deliver updated and equal constituencies, and the 5% tolerance gives a better chance of achieving that and ending an unfairness that has persisted for too long.

Let me address new clause 2. I thank the hon. Members for Glasgow East (David Linden) and for Ceredigion (Ben Lake) for making this an interesting debate—one that we also had in Committee. It seems that something that is actually quite technical is being used here as a conduit for a much larger constitutional debate about the Union and how its nations relate to each other. That is important and extremely interesting, but today is rather a narrow debate and it is not necessarily the time for concluding such big questions. Let us talk about what this new clause would actually mean.

My concern is that new clause 2, by fixing a minimum number of constituencies, would effectively enshrine electoral inequality, cementing the current situation and not allowing it to develop. I can give the House lots of examples of unequal constituency sizes within and between our nations, and those are the kinds of inequality that we are trying to address in the Bill overall. Of course, it is critical that every nation and every part of the Union has a powerful voice in Westminster. They have two powerful voices here today—and across the Chamber—but there is already a sensible way of setting the nation’s participation in Westminster. The new clause would not add value in that respect.

Under the current legislation, a mathematical formula exists to do exactly the job of allocating constituency numbers to each of the four nations. It is widely used internationally and is widely thought of as being one of the fairest methods. It should be maintained because it is fair and rational. The problem with the new clause is that it suggests that the hon. Members who tabled it could be fairer and more rational in deciding what the numbers ought to be, but in effect those Members are guessing what the numbers should be and trying to lock them in. The new clause would lock in quite radical inequality between the nations of the Union in terms of the citizen-to-MP ratio that would result, and there is not a good reason for that.

[Alun Cairns]

Does the Minister recognise that new clause 2, tabled by Plaid Cymru and the SNP, almost suggests that we are a federal nation? We are not a federal nation but a proud Union.

[Chloe Smith]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. He knows that the Conservative party and the Government are absolutely committed to strengthening our Union and we do not believe that that would be achieved through new clause 2, which would undermine in many ways what ought to be an equality in the assessment of the voices in the Union and an equality between citizens that can be enjoyed across the nation.

I absolutely recognise the wider debate about what our nations and our Union consist of, although the hon. Member for Glasgow East would love to have nothing more to do with that debate—he would love to be nowhere near here today, and that breaks my heart. As much as I may say that I would love to see the back of him, of course I would not. I cannot wait to spend even more time discussing exactly this point with him and with anybody else who would like to join me in the debate about how to strengthen our Union, how to maintain excellent intergovernmental relations, how to help our nations work best together and how to help people across the nation to be as prosperous as they can. But new clause 2 is not the place to do that.

I thank the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) for tabling new clause 3. She was honest and sincere about what she is seeking to do with the amendment, which is to open up a valuable broader debate. I will talk a little about why the new clause would not quite do what is right, but let me say that the hon. Member’s instincts are admirable. We should all share the goal of being able to do the utmost for our constituents, whether they are registered to vote or not. Furthermore, we should all share the goal of wanting as many people on our electoral registers as possible. That is notwithstanding the fact that the Government believe that it is an important principle that our constituencies are based on the electoral registers.

On what we are doing to ensure that the registers are as accurate and complete as possible, the introduction of online registration has made it simpler and faster for people to register to vote; it takes as little as five minutes. This benefits everybody, including anybody who may previously have found it harder to make an application to register. We have developed a range of resources to promote engagement with our democracy and to encourage people to register to vote, all of which are available on gov.uk and are aimed widely—at registration officers, civil society groups, teachers and more.

We are also in the process of implementing changes to the annual canvass of all residential properties in Great Britain, which will improve its efficiency greatly and will allow officers to focus their efforts on those who they may traditionally have found harder to get to register. That is important for accuracy and completeness. Since the introduction of individual electoral registration, the registers in Great Britain are as complete and more accurate than before; that is an important base of the record.

I share the intentions of the hon. Member for North East Fife of wanting to see more people registered and to see us listening to all in our community, so let me turn to why new clause 3 would not necessarily work as well as might be wished. Its core problem is that it deals with estimates and moves away from facts. It asks the Electoral Commission to do a very large job of estimation when, in fact, we already have firm data that the process can be based on. It would be a huge and unnecessary task to set off, bringing further elements of risk and challenge to the work of the Boundary Commissions.

The work of the Boundary Commissions should be based on those who have registered as electors. That principle counts those who want to have their views represented in Parliament. That is what a Member of Parliament is for and that is what voting for Parliament is for. It is a good principle that that is the basis on which we work, and it is not new, having been the case since 1944.

We should encourage more people to register to vote. I think the new clause does a slightly different thing. I welcome the fact that the hon. Lady referred to it as a probing amendment, and I hope she will not press it to a Division. Before I move on, I welcome her support for our overseas voters. She will know that there is much work to do to enable more overseas voters to register The Government are committed, as I hope she is, to ending the injustice of the abrupt disenfranchisement that they face after 15 years overseas.

Finally, I cannot support the intention of amendment 1. The effect of clause 2, which amendment 1 would remove, is to bring much-needed certainty to the boundary review process. It gives confidence that the recommendations of the independent boundary commissions will be brought into effect without interference or delay. They develop their proposal through a robust process that lasts over a two to three-year period with extensive public consultation. Those impartial recommendations ought to be brought into effect promptly without any further wastage of public money and without any question of their independence. Clause 2 provides for that, and it does so by a very normal mechanism.

I just want to pick up one point that was made. The hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood tried to go to town on the nature of an Order in Council. Let me break it to her, in case she is not aware, that the last Labour Government used more than 300 of them between 1997 and 2010. They are a normal constitutional legislative instrument. They should be recognised as being part of the status quo. She is either misreading the Bill or wilfully misrepresenting it—I do not know which. She did so in Committee, and she is doing so again today.

The Order in Council is not the villain that the hon. Lady makes it out to be, and nor is there an increase in powers in the Bill for the Executive. The opposite is the case. Countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand use similar approaches. A string of respected academics voiced their support for this change during Committee when giving evidence. Memorably, one in particular said:

“It is probably better that MPs set the terms of the exercise for the Boundary Commission behind a veil of ignorance…without knowing exactly what the particular outcomes would be for them as individual MPs.”––[Official Report, Parliamentary Constituencies Public Bill Committee, 18 June 2020; c. 57, Q117.]

The Government believe that clause 2 is an important and principled change. It will ensure that expert recommendations are brought into effect independently with no further delay.

It provides a better outcome for people, and I urge the hon. Lady not to press the amendment to a Division.

[Cat Smith]

I did not think it was possible to have as much fun as we had in Committee, but this afternoon has perhaps run it quite close. Of course, there is no comparison between three hours and four days. I put on record my thanks to the members of the Committee who have also made contributions to today’s debate.

The Labour party supports the democratic principles of the boundary review. We recognise that this review is urgently needed, given the out-of-date boundaries we currently have. The idea of constituencies being of broadly equal size and the idea of constituencies also taking account of local community ties are not mutually exclusive, and I urge Members to support that amendment. Labour’s new clause would provide for the flexibility needed to create constituencies that communities can have confidence in and identify with.

Most critically, I encourage Members across the House to support amendment 1. The Government must not use the Bill to strengthen their own power at the expense of parliamentary power. It is an insult to this House, and it sets a dangerous precedent for future legislation.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chloe Smith]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

I thank all Members who have contributed to our debates on the Bill. In addition to our colleagues on the Front Benches, we have heard excellent contributions from my right hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns), my hon. Friends the Members for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson), for Dartford (Gareth Johnson), for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory), for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie), for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey), for Dudley South (Mike Wood) and for North West Durham (Mr Holden), the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) and the hon. Members for Eltham (Clive Efford), for Ceredigion (Ben Lake), for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) and for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins). Forgive me if I have missed anyone.

All Members who have contributed to these debates have considered the principles behind the Bill and the details of each of its clauses with a constructive and positive outlook. I have been struck by how many Members have acknowledged that the current situation of having unequally sized constituencies cannot continue and that action must be taken. The Government agree, and this Bill delivers that. Of course, there have been differences of opinion along the way, and there has been thorough scrutiny and robust challenge, which I hope has improved the Bill.

Our engagement before the introduction of the Bill with representatives of the parliamentary parties and electoral administrators has helped us to hone the technical aspects of the Bill and to take better account of what works from a practical standpoint. Our debates on amendments to the Bill in this elected House have led to a common-sense addition for the smallest of protected island constituencies. I am very grateful to all those who have contributed, including the witnesses who spoke at our Committee sessions. Many Members have advocated, challenged, probed and scrutinised in a spirit of logic but with good humour, and we have all joined in the overarching common purpose of ensuring that a crucial part of our democracy is made fairer and more equitable without delay.

There has been widespread acceptance of the equality of voting power as a fundamental principle. I think everybody knows that the boundary commissions have an important task that they have to get right of balancing that goal of equality with the need to maintain community links within constituencies. We all value the responsibility of representing our constituents and our communities, and none of us will ever stop defending the precious link between our constituents and us as their representatives. Soon we will be able to do that with a renewed sense that there is fairness and equality in our democracy more than before and that each elector’s vote to choose the Government of the day carries the same weight.

We have looked closely at how to ensure that the recommendations of future boundary reviews can be implemented without delay, and we have drawn on the experience of comparable systems in other countries. That matter was pressed to a Division in Committee, and the view of the elected Chamber is clearly in favour of automatic implementation.

The Union was never far from our mind in these debates. We gave careful consideration to the specific needs of the four nations in an overall framework, and we considered a variety of ideas in that context. The hon. Member for Ceredigion is not in his place, but I particularly enjoyed a discussion of the Welsh language and its role in community identity, and I was pleased to put on record how that can already be accommodated.

I thank the two hon. Members who chaired the Committee, as well as you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your guardianship today; I am sure I speak for all Committee members when I say it has been a pleasure to serve under you and those hon. Members. I am also grateful to my counterparts on the Opposition Benches, including the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain), for their positive and challenging approach to their duties. I was particularly interested to find out from the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) that not only have we had three had children since last we last served on a similar Bill Committee, but that this is in fact the first time she has completed a Bill Committee without giving birth—although there are still nine minutes and 40 seconds to go. I share her gratitude that the Committee did not decide to go on any longer than it needed to, further risking that. To make progress, all Bills rely on the wise counsel of Clerks and our officials, so I place on record my gratitude to them. We tested the new circumstances in which we find ourselves thoroughly in Committee and with our witnesses.

As a result of all those efforts, the House now has before it a Bill that provides equal and updated boundaries, meaning that, wherever voters live in our United Kingdom, they can be sure of having a fair and equal say in the crucial question of choosing who will govern. I hope that the noble Lords will now play their part so that the next review can finally get under way. It is with pleasure that I commend the Bill to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chloe Smith]

Well, Madam Deputy Speaker, let us consider the glory of the United Kingdom. Let us start, alphabetically, with the first constituency that comes to mind. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar) is not in his place, but if he were, he would doubtless tell us what a glorious place it is. We would then turn to the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn). Regrettably, he is not in his place, but if he were he would tell us how wonderful Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire are.

[Mrs Miller]

Does the Minister not agree that the debate has given everybody the opportunity to talk about the uniqueness of their constituency, and that the Boundary Commission should not forget that when looking at redrawing the boundaries, because that uniqueness in each of our constituencies is what makes us want to do our jobs?

[Chloe Smith]

I absolutely agree on that, and it allows me to do something rarely allowed to a Minister in such proceedings, which is to pay tribute to one’s own constituency. Let me put on record how wonderful Norwich North is, with its parishes and towns, which in themselves are separate communities. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) made the point about how fiercely such things are argued, even within a constituency.

[Chris Clarkson]

Will the Minister give way?

[Chloe Smith]

Not until I have managed to name all the parishes and towns in Norwich North, which are, of course, as anybody will know, the wonderful places of Hellesdon, which goes back to the Domesday Book—shades of my maiden speech coming on here—Old Catton, Sprowston and Thorpe St Andrew, and next to those the historic characteristics of more urban Norwich.

[Chris Clarkson]

They sound like lovely parishes. I could also mention Norden, Bamford, Castleton, Heywood and Middleton in my constituency, and just have. I wish to pay tribute to everybody who participated in the Bill Committee, because I think we have achieved a robust Bill. Obviously, we will see what their lordships send back to us and no doubt we will have further interesting and exciting psephological exuberance, as I said earlier. I also wish to put on record my thanks to the Clerks, all the House staff and all the Bill Committee members, and, of course, to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for being here tonight. I have to say how disappointed I am not to hear the hon. Member for Strangford speak—

[Chris Clarkson]

I will not.

[Chloe Smith]

May I close this unusual contribution to the end of a Bill’s proceedings by also noting how wonderful the constituencies are of our Whips, those of my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley) and—this may take us to the end of the alphabet, although I am subject to challenge—the hon. Member for Wolverhampton. [Interruption.] Oh goodness me, I meant my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes). I have got it wrong and I am going to face retribution for that—there will be letters written about the difference between those places. With that, I think I can now give way to a Whip to conclude tonight’s proceedings.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I believe York Outer is the last one. Let me now put the Question.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill (Seventh sitting)

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 30th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Shaun Bailey]

It is great to see you in the Chair again, Mr Paisley. I thank the hon. Member for Ceredigion for his probing amendment. I am a something of a fledgling Welsh speaker and taught myself in his constituency. Ydw, ‘dwi’n gallu siarad Cymraeg—ddim yn rhugl, ond yn iawn. Diolch yn fawr iawn. {Translation: Yes, I can speak Welsh—not fluently, but okay. Thank you very much.]

My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke made a really pertinent point—my one concern is that the amendment could better limit how it define local ties— but the hon. Gentleman makes some really good points about language. Unless someone has been there and experienced a language in a community, they can never fully appreciate it, particularly in Wales. I speak of Wales because in my experience, the language, the community and the identity are so fundamentally ingrained there, meaning that the level of conversation and the way it flows is totally different depending on whether it is in Welsh or in English. That needs to be experienced as a Welsh speaker.

As many hon. Members have said, this is a really interesting probing amendment and it is great that the hon. Gentleman has tabled it so we can think about that. Hopefully, reaching 1 million Welsh speakers, which I think is an absolutely vital goal set by the Welsh Government and one with which I agree, will change the dynamic. I was pleased to hear in our evidence sessions about how the Boundary Commission for Wales takes language into account, which we saw in the proposals for the joined-up constituency of Ceredigion and Machynlleth in the aborted review; language played some role in drawing that boundary.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: we cannot forget linguistic considerations. However, as my right hon. Friend for Basingstoke said, we need to be really careful not to constrain ourselves, so I cannot support his absolutely fantastic amendment, which I hope the Minister will consider carefully none the less.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I echo right hon. and hon. Members in welcoming this debate and the very thoughtful way in which the hon. Member for Ceredigion has proposed his amendment. It is important that we look at those issues, and he has given us great food for thought in the way that he has presented the topic.

That said, I will argue that the proposal should not form part of the Bill, and will do so on the basis of a point that we have covered a number of times in our deliberations so far, which is that we ought to retain the framework of factors in the schedule to the Bill at a relatively high level, thereby giving flexibility to the boundary commissioners rather than being any more specific. To be clear, we are talking about the list of factors in a specific paragraph of the schedule to the Bill. As the Committee will be aware, any boundary commission may take those factors into account when making recommendations if, and to the extent that, it sees fit. Those factors already include any local ties that would be broken by changes in constituencies.

I will make just one other preliminary point before I go on to how the boundary commissions have already been able to accommodate the importance of the Welsh language. It is that the amendment would have to apply to all the boundary commissions. The nature of putting something into these factors is that it would have to apply across the United Kingdom. Hon. Members might question whether that would be appropriate for the other boundary commissions to the extent that the hon. Gentleman has argued it is appropriate for Wales. There are some questions there. For example—Mr Paisley, I hope you do not mind me saying so—it is obvious that in Northern Ireland this would be quite a particular argument to put in the context of language and culture, which would have different effects from those in Wales, Scotland or England. For that reason alone, I hesitate to accept this amendment.

That said, the Welsh language is very important. It is an official UK language and one of the great inheritances of our Union, which we all have a responsibility to protect and develop. It is a manifesto commitment of this Government to support the ambition for 1 million people in Wales to be able to speak Welsh by 2050 and I am delighted that there are some in the Black Country as well, as demonstrated by my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West. The UK Government are working closely with our counterparts in Cardiff on that commitment. I am pleased to say that 11 UK Government Departments have implemented their own Welsh language schemes, too.

In 2017, the Boundary Commission for Wales voluntarily adopted the Welsh language standards that became applicable to its sister organisation, the Local Democracy and Boundary Commission for Wales. It reports annually on how it has delivered against the Welsh language standards. The most recent report outlined that the Boundary Commission for Wales had implemented a language preference system for all correspondence with the public and confirmed that it published all online and offline material bilingually at the same time.

A critical part of the commission’s work is its extensive public consultation. We have touched on this in other parts of the debate. Equal status is given to Welsh and English throughout these consultations. I think that is very important, because it allows people to be able to advocate for their views in whichever language they are most comfortable with.

As the hon. Member for Ceredigion set out, the Boundary Commission for Wales already seriously considers Welsh language issues and links under the “local ties” factor. At the 2018 review, the boundary commission moved to designating all constituencies in Wales with English and Welsh names, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned. I can give some examples for the benefit of the Committee of how the boundary commission takes account of language.

During the 2018 review, a report by the assistant commissioners into the proposed constituency of Gwynedd noted that there was strong support for including four particular electoral wards in that constituency,

“because of the strong Welsh language, social and economic ties between that area and Gwynedd.”

[Interruption.] Did my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke wish to intervene?

[Mrs Miller]

No, I just cleared my throat.

[Chloe Smith]

It was so emphatic that I thought it was another marvellous point coming from my right hon. Friend. Let me meet that noise of approval with another example from the 2018 review about naming constituencies. The commission initially proposed naming two constituencies in alphabetical order: “Colwyn and Conwy” and “Flint and Rhuddlan”. However, the order of these names was reversed in the final recommendations after the commission received advice about

“a Welsh language convention of naming geographic place names from north to south and from west to east.”

I make no comments about the merits of north, south, west or east Wales. The hon. Member for Ceredigion has already done that very capably. I should also note that the Boundary Commission for Wales raises the issue of Welsh language links in the meetings and briefings with the various political parties at the start of any boundary review, and it is open to the parties and members of the public to raise Welsh language links in the extensive consultation carried out during a review.

I hope that I have provided reassurance that the law as drafted already gives the boundary commissions—in this case the Boundary Commission for Wales—all they need to take account of languages and how they contribute to local ties. This is a pressing case in Wales. I hope the examples I have given show that that is already happening in action. On that basis alone, I suggest that the amendment should not be accepted.

However, I will advance one other, perhaps darker and more serious argument than the one the hon. Member for Ceredigion intended, and I certainly do not cast aspersions on him for making those points. I want to highlight a slippery slope that could occur with such an argument. It is right that the legislation does not set out characteristics of people, but sets out characteristics of place. There is an important moral dimension to that. It is easy to foresee a slippery slope, whereby other characteristics of people could be argued for in terms of how constituencies ought to be drawn. Although we have not given him much time yet in our debates, we could think back to Governor Elbridge Gerry in 1812 in Boston who did that. Of course he gave his name to the term “gerrymander”, because he created a constituency that looked like a salamander that had the characteristics of people that he wanted to be seen in one constituency. We should be cautious about the idea of opening up to placing people together because they have a certain characteristic, as opposed to local ties of place, which perhaps give a more respectable way to look at community. I am conscious that the hon. Gentleman certainly did not go that far in making his argument, and I would not want to say that he had done so. I am grateful to him for his thoughtful presentation of the issues, but I hope that the set of arguments I have put both demonstrate how the language is rightly taken into account, and show some of the dangers of going further with the amendment. I urge the hon. Gentleman to withdraw it.

[Ben Lake]

I will keep my remarks brief. As I set out earlier, amendment 1 was a probing amendment and I am pleased with the debate we have had. We have not only highlighted the importance of the language in Wales, but had a bit of a discussion about what constitutes local ties, and how we might try to balance them out. I agree with the Minister that the Boundary Commission for Wales has done sterling work in the conservation of the language and in adopting the Welsh language standards voluntarily. I know from experience in my own part of the world that in the proposed boundary change of 2018—or even before that; I have lost track—the Welsh language was a key consideration that informed the final recommendation. In no way did I try to criticise the work of the boundary commission in tabling the amendment. The boundary commission does very good work. My concern relates to how local ties are balanced in the future, but I accept the point about not only the appropriateness of having the language on the face of the Bill, but the possible unintended consequences for the boundary commissions. With that in mind, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[Chloe Smith]

I managed to give some of the principal arguments for clause stand part earlier, so I will not detain the Committee long. If hon. Members can bear to think back to what was said, I explained why clause 6 was important in allowing a fixed picture of local government boundaries to be taken into account, and explained the necessity of fixing that point in time. I also explained the rationale for our inclusion of prospective changes in the Bill. Having heard no further questions or comments on any of those points, I hope that the clause will stand part of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christian Matheson]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for that clarification. The point that I was making in response to her speech and other contributions was that as long as we insist on 5%, none of the other considerations that hon. Members across the Committee are calling for will be possible or indeed relevant. I believe that it is important, for example, to have community ties. Language ties had not occurred to me until they were raised by the hon. Member for Ceredigion in relation to the previous clause. I found that very thought provoking, but there has to be a balance between the aim of achieving equal-sized constituencies and achieving the community ties for which hon. Members are calling. Unfortunately, at the moment we are not hitting that balance.

[Chloe Smith]

I will keep this fairly brief, but I wish to take a moment to acknowledge the arguments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke and other members of the Committee regarding the evidence that the Boundary Commission for England has now provided to us. I confirm that I will look at this matter in the Department to see whether there are any ways that the non-legislative side of it could be taken forward. I am not in a position to say anything more about that at this point, but I wanted to acknowledge it now as part of the stand part debate on clause 6.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 6 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 7

Alteration of the “review date” in relation to the 2023 reports

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[Chloe Smith]

Hon. Members will remember that clause 1 made certain changes to the timing of boundary reviews; it did that by establishing the end dates of boundary reviews—namely, the dates by which the boundary commissions must submit their reports to the Speaker. We discussed then how the next boundary review, starting in 2021, would have an end date of July 2023, to allow a slightly compressed timetable of two years and seven months for that review only. The intention there was to provide the best possible chance of the new boundaries being in place ahead of the next general election.

Clause 7 is the other side of the same coin. It sets the start date for the next review. The formal start date of a boundary review is known as the review date, and the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 defines it as being two years and 10 months before reports are due to be submitted. Clause 7 amends the 1986 Act—I am talking now about rule 9(5) in schedule 2—making a change for the next review only, by maintaining the review date of 1 December 2020. For all subsequent boundary reviews, the review date will continue to be two years and 10 months before reports are due to be submitted.

As we have already discussed, bringing this back up to the general level of the arguments on this Bill, it has been well over a decade since the results of a boundary review have been implemented. Our constituencies are therefore based on electoral data that is up to 20 years old. The purpose of this provision is to ensure that the next boundary review, starting in 2021, finishes as promptly as possible, but without compromising the processes of the boundary commissions. The timetable of two years and seven months has been discussed with the boundary commissions and with parliamentary party stakeholders who, as I outlined in an earlier session, all support the move. I therefore hope that it will also have the support of this Committee as well.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 7 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 8

Removal of duty to implement, etc. in relation to current reports

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[Chloe Smith]

It is that part of the morning, Mr Paisley, where you keep me on my feet all morning, going through a rattle of clauses. Here we go.

[The Chair]

The smiles on colleagues’ faces cannot be hidden.

[Chloe Smith]

Exactly; the audience awaits—or, as my three-year-old managed to learn to say the other day, “And the crowd goes wild!”. That surprised me coming out of the mouth of a three-year-old, but perhaps the same will be true of the Parliamentary Constituencies Bill Committee.

[Christian Matheson]

Just wait and see.

[Chloe Smith]

What does clause 8 do? It removes the legal obligation to implement the 2018 boundary review. As hon. Members will recall from when we discussed clause 5, the Bill will amend the existing legislation to ensure that we continue to have 650 parliamentary constituencies, as we do now. In order to achieve that, clause 5 set the number of constituencies at 650 for future reviews. That in itself does not resolve the current legal obligation on the Government to implement the 2018 boundary review, which was based on 600.

The boundary commissions have submitted their final reports for that review, but the recommendations have yet to be brought into legal effect. Clause 8 therefore brings the 2018 boundary review to a close without implementation. It removes the Government’s obligation to bring the recommendations of the 2018 review into effect, because those proposals would take us down to 600 constituencies at the next election, which this Committee has already agreed is undesirable.

Under this clause, that obligation would be removed retrospectively, with effect from 24 March of this year. I can explain that specific date to the Committee: it is the date on which the Government announced their intention to retain 650 constituencies in the written ministerial statement that I laid before the House. Without this clause, there would be a very irregular situation. We would be legally required to implement the 2018 review and implement the reduction to 600 constituencies at the next general election. I think that this Committee would agree, having already taken the decision to move from 600 back to 650, that that situation would be confusing and undesirable. Therefore this clause, although technical, is important and I urge that it stand part of the Bill.

[Cat Smith]

I will make a brief comment, not least to give the Minister a breather and a chance to get some water as she rattles through the clauses. I just ask her whether she is pleased to be able to have clause 8 in the Bill because the 2018 review did not have the automaticity clause that future reviews will have.

[Chloe Smith]

The debate would not have been complete had the hon. Lady not raised that point. I think it is fair to say that we have answered that one comprehensively in the course of these Committee proceedings so far; and given that we have also already agreed that automaticity is the right thing to do in this Bill, I am not going to entertain the argument any further.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 8 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 9

Removal of duty to review reduction in number of constituencies

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[The Chair]

Déjà vu, Minister.

[Chloe Smith]

Here we go again, Mr Paisley.

This clause is connected to clause 8, in that, as I have already said, the Bill seeks to maintain the number of constituencies at 650, reversing the changes from the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 that provided for 600. Section 14 of the 2011 Act also imposed a requirement on the Government to make arrangements for a committee to carry out a review of the effects of the reduction to 600 constituencies. I know we all love being on committees, but I think we can agree that we do not need another committee to do that particular function, having just agreed clause 8 and, earlier, that there should be 650 constituencies. Therefore we are cancelling those arrangements. They would have been required to be made no earlier than 1 June 2020 and no later than 30 November 2020—in other words, this year. As the reduction in the number of constituencies has not taken effect and clauses 5 and 8 already stand part of the Bill, the duty to review the reduction in the number of constituencies is entirely redundant.

Like clause 8, this clause is retrospective, and it will be treated as having come into force as of 31 May this year. That is obviously the day before 1 June—the start of the period within which the Government were to be required to make arrangements for a review to be carried out. Without this clause, the Government would be legally required to make those arrangements to undertake a redundant review, so I urge hon. Members, on the grounds of sensible work and governance and the need for no more committees, to support the clause’s standing part of the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 9 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 10

Effect of Orders in Council under the 1986 Act on NI Assembly constituencies

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[Chloe Smith]

Clause 10 makes a different kind of provision, and it will take me a little while to explain the detail of it, so I trust that the Committee will bear with me while I do. This clause makes specific provision in relation to Northern Ireland and how boundary review recommendations are brought into effect there. I shall make a couple of preamble points that outline related legislation.

First, existing legislation—the Northern Ireland Act 1998—dictates that constituencies in Northern Ireland automatically mirror UK parliamentary constituencies. Therefore, when a boundary review is brought into effect for the United Kingdom, the constituencies for the Northern Ireland Assembly, each of which has five Assembly Members, will automatically change. Currently, that change happens at the next Assembly election. By the bye, this is not the case in either Scotland or Wales, where the boundaries used for the devolved legislatures are not linked in law to UK parliamentary constituencies, and are devolved matters.

The other point to bear in mind at the outset is that the Northern Ireland Assembly has scheduled elections, so we can predict when there will be moments when a UK parliamentary boundary review will finish close to an upcoming Stormont Assembly election. One of those moments, we can foresee, is in 2031/32. In addition, if, as there has been in the past, an unscheduled Assembly election were to be triggered close to the end of the boundary review, it would be important for there to be clarity about the boundaries to be used.

--- Later in debate ---

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[Chloe Smith]

On a point of order, Mr Paisley. Are we dealing with the schedule and its amendments after the stand part debate?

[The Chair]

Yes, we are.

[Chloe Smith]

Clause 11 gives effect to the schedule to the Bill that contains minor and consequential amendments, including the repeal of provisions that are now spent or superseded. The schedule contains several minor provisions. As I mentioned at the beginning of our line-by-line scrutiny, one such provision clarifies that references to the Secretary of State include the Minister for the Cabinet Office, which alone takes up three of the 11 paragraphs that make up the schedule—perhaps a reflection of how minor the provisions are.

Others provisions in the schedule include paragraph 4(2) which, to reflect clause 5 of the Bill, which amends the number of constituencies to 650, updates the UK electoral quota to be based on 646 rather than 596. That reflects the number of constituencies minus the four protected constituencies. I acknowledge, however, that we will come on to debate aspects of that matter later. To reflect clause 4’s changes to public hearings, paragraph 5 tidies up the references to public hearings in the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986.

Hon. Members may be interested in the schedule’s reference to Blackpool, which I can explain, should the Committee be interested. No doubt the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood is agog to talk about Blackpool, so I will cover it briefly. There was a mistake in an amendment to the 1986 Act in the European Parliamentary Elections Etc. (Repeal, Revocation, Amendment and Saving Provisions) (United Kingdom and Gibraltar) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018.

The amendment made by that SI was intended to maintain the current position, that the BCE may take into account the boundaries of the European parliamentary electoral regions in England if it wished to do so, despite the repeal of the European parliamentary elections legislation. The regulations provided for newly defined English regions that correspond to the make-up of the existing European parliamentary electoral regions. The Bill adds the county of Blackpool to the description of the north-west region, which was erroneously omitted. Let the celebrations ring out around Blackpool for us having done that this morning in this Committee.

The schedule also ties up the drafting in previous related legislation, including the 1986 Act and the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011. As they are very minor, I will not set them out in detail, although I would be happy to if hon. Members wish. The minor and consequential changes made by the schedule are important for tidying up the statute book and making the legislation easier to understand for the reader.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 11 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule

Minor and consequential amendments

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I beg to move amendment 14 in the schedule, page 7, line 16, leave out “for “596” substitute “646”” and insert “leave out “596” and insert “645””.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christian Matheson]

It is a pleasure to take part in the debate. I think an amendment that I have tabled is similar in effect to those tabled by Conservative Members. Anglesey, which I knew as a child, is a great place. I remember we used to go there on holiday every year, staying at Red Wharf Bay at Benllech and visiting Llangefni market and Llanfair PG. I will not go any further than that. We still go there, and not so long ago I visited Newborough Warren. It is a wonderful place, and is a fantastic place to visit. The hon. Member for Ceredigion talked about the history of the Romans and the druids, and I was aware of that. He might want to correct me, but I think I am right that eventually the Romans got round their problem by fording the Menai strait at low spring tide, resolving their difficulties with the druids in, unfortunately, the fashion in which Romans resolved such problems.

[Chloe Smith]

Will the hon. Gentleman explain what the Romans ever did for the druids?

[Christian Matheson]

I am looking at the clock.

--- Later in debate ---

[Cat Smith]

Unfortunately the hon. Member for Pudsey is not taking part in proceedings. The amendments are about recognising the fundamental and distinct identity of Ynys Môn and awarding it protected constituency status. Although the Labour party will certainly support that, it throws up a debate about the potential conflict between the idea of protecting communities and identity, and equally sized constituencies. Creating another protected constituency makes it more difficult to have equally sized constituencies right across the British Isles.

I find many of the ideas that the Committee has discussed very contradictory. On the one hand, hon. Members argue for equally sized constituencies, and on the other, they argue for more protected constituencies, which ingrain unequal size. I am very clear that we should respect community ties and acknowledge that some constituencies will be larger than others to reflect those ties, but as far as possible, we should try to have constituencies that are as equal as they can be. The amendments highlight the challenge that that throws up, in recognising that communities should be included together when it comes to parliamentary constituencies.

[Chloe Smith]

I am really pleased that we have had this discussion, which, in formal terms, complements my opening remarks on clause 11 stand part.

Following on from the arguments articulated by the hon. Members for Ceredigion and for City of Chester, as well as by the shadow Minister, I can confirm that the Government will accept amendment 14, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke, and give Ynys Môn protected constituency status. I will go through the reasons for that.

I will pray in aid the hon. Member for Glasgow East, who occasionally helps me out in this respect. He was so kind to say earlier that I am a considered Minister who takes arguments on merit, which is what I am seeking to do today. That starts with reflecting on what the current legislation sets out. It sets out four protected constituencies, the boundaries of which are fixed and do not change at boundary reviews. They are all islands: Orkney and Shetland, Na h-Eileanan an Iar, and the two constituencies on the Isle of Wight. Currently, there are no protected constituencies in Wales.

During debate on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, arguments were made that Ynys Môn should also be a protected constituency. Those arguments centred on the fact that the constituency covers a relatively large island geographically and has a sizeable electorate—and they still have merit today. Indeed, we heard witnesses and hon. Members of all stripes make the case for Ynys Môn, including Tom Adams of the Labour party, Geraint Day from Plaid Cymru and Chris Williams from the Green party, in addition to the parties represented on the Committee. Dr Larner from the Wales Governance Centre added his thoughts to the argument, too. Of course, hon. Members outside the Committee have also joined the argument via amendment 14, including the hon. Member for the Isle of Wight (Bob Seely), whose support is, I think telling.

I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn, who is sitting in the Public Gallery. She has campaigned and worked very hard on this matter, on top of being a most assiduous constituency MP on other matters. If I remember rightly, her swearing in to the House was done in Welsh, which shows her commitment to the characteristics of her constituency. Since she entered the House, she has argued that local people sent her here to do just that, and I am glad that she is here to listen.

As the hon. Member for Ceredigion explained, Ynys Môn, which covers 715 sq km, is the fourth largest island in Great Britain in terms of geographical size, excluding the mainland—to be precise, that is including Holy island to the west. With an electorate of approximately 50,000, based on 2019 data, Ynys Môn is comparable to other islands that enjoy protected constituency status.

I am of course mindful that each additional exception slightly chips away at the underlying principle of equally sized constituencies—I will bring that argument into my own remarks before anyone else makes it. It is a consideration that we have to include in this decision. However, I am persuaded that the creation of Ynys Môn as a protected constituency would address an anomaly. It is the only island in the UK whose electorate and geographical area fall squarely within the range of the currently protected constituencies. It has a considerable electorate, sitting between those of the other protected constituencies: Na h-Eileanan an Iar is at one end, with an electorate of just over 21,000, and the Isle of Wight is at the other, with 111,000. The argument that Ynys Môn belongs among the protected constituencies is compelling.

Amendment 14 also responds in part to something else we have heard in this Committee, which is that Wales is likely to see a reduction in the number of its constituencies. For a variety of historical reasons, which we have discussed already and may discuss later when debating other amendments, Welsh constituencies are slightly smaller on average than most UK constituencies. Given that the next boundary review will seek to create constituencies that are equal in size, it is likely to result in fewer constituencies in Wales. It is relevant to note that the creation of an appropriate protected constituency on Ynys Môn will mean that the electorate of that island will not be included in any calculation relating to the number of constituencies in Wales.

This amendment also means that there will be at least one protected constituency in each part of Great Britain, which helps demonstrate the importance with which we regard those component parts of the Union, and that we think these are important, relevant considerations. We believe that Ynys Môn, with its sizable electorate and particular geography, would make an appropriate protected constituency to sit alongside the others. As I have already confirmed, we intend to accept amendment 14.

[John Spellar]

Can we have some clarity on how the arithmetic works? Will Wales be taken as a block and allocated a number of seats, from which the protected seat would then be abstracted and its quota spread among the other seats? Alternatively, will Wales’s population be included with England’s and Scotland’s, so that all the protected seats are taken completely out of the equation and the basic figure for constituencies will be decided quite separately from the protected constituencies?

[Chloe Smith]

I believe it is the former; indeed, that is what the consequential amendments in this bundle go on to do. We can complete that argument when we discuss the tolerance and the way in which the quota is arrived at.

I will now deal with the fact that a couple of amendments are grouped together, and other Members have already asked questions about the procedure. I assume it would be in order for me to indicate that I would like to accept amendment 14 and new clause 10, but not new clause 6 and its associated amendment. That is for the very good reason that consequential changes to the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 are required to fully implement this protected constituency, and we need to ensure that those consequential changes are made by the amendments tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke, not those tabled by the hon. Members for Ceredigion and for Glasgow East. That is not to say that those Members have not made good arguments today—they have—but I intend to accept the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke. I hope that is in order, Mr Paisley. I think I have answered all the points raised.

[Mrs Miller]

I thank the Minister and also the hon. Members for Ceredigion and for City of Chester for their kind words and support for this approach to achieve what we all want. The Minister has indicated that she will accept amendment 14 and, when we come to it, new clause 10 as well. It is my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn who has campaigned for this change, this protection, and today’s debate reflects her assiduous hard work and the understanding that she has of the community that she represents.

Amendment 14 agreed to.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill (Eighth sitting)

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 30th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I asked for fans to be supplied to Committee Room 14, and the fans are here. No sooner did I ask for them than the weather deteriorated. However, if anyone is too warm I will arrange for the fans to be shared with anyone who would like them.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

Sir David, it is a wonderful pleasure to return to the Committee under your chairmanship. I wanted to clarify a point that was raised by the right hon. Member for Warley. He is not in his place now, but I hope it will be helpful to the Committee if I proceed.

The right hon. Gentleman asked how the protected status of Ynys Môn, on which we had an excellent debate this morning, would relate to the allocation of seats between the nations in the calculation of the electoral quota. I can make that clear now. At the start of the boundary review, before any allocations are made, the protected constituencies and their electorate are set to one side, as it were. That happens at the beginning before the national consideration. They are then not included in any consideration of either seat allocations or the calculation of the electoral quota. To illustrate that, with Ynys Môn added to the existing four protected constituencies there will be five in total. Those five will be removed from the overall total number, leaving 645. Their electorates would then be subtracted from the UK total electorate. The remaining UK electorate would be divided by 645, and that would give the electoral quota—the average on which each proposed constituency will be based. That figure is likely to fall somewhere between 70,000 and 80,000. The number of constituencies per home nation—the allocation—is then calculated by the usual method set out under rule 8 of schedule 2 to the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986, which also uses the total electorate of each part of the UK, minus the electorate of any protected constituencies in that part. I will talk more about the method for that when we discuss new clause 3, but I hope that in the first instance that addresses the right hon. Gentleman’s query, even in his absence.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is also a member of the Defence Committee, and the Secretary of State is giving evidence there this afternoon, so his not being here is certainly no discourtesy.

[Chloe Smith]

That is extremely helpful to know. As I said once before in this Committee, it is of great benefit that we have such experienced Committee members, including no fewer than two former Secretaries of State, who naturally have other calls on their time.

The final clause of the Bill, clause 12, makes provision with respect to the extent of the Bill, its commencement and the short title. As it relates to the UK Parliament and its constituencies, the Bill extends to England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The subject matter is reserved to the UK Parliament, so legislative consent motions from any of the devolved legislatures are not required. The Bill comes into force on the day when it is passed. It is important that it should commence on that day in order to allow the boundary commissions to have legal certainty on the rules, such as the number of constituencies, for the next reviews, which begin formally on 1 December 2020—the review date—and in practice will get going in earnest in early 2021.

As I noted during discussion on clauses 8 and 9, the Bill applies retrospectively in two clauses in relation to Government obligations on implementing the 2018 boundary review and the review of the reduction of seats. The provisions in those clauses are treated as having come into force from 24 March and 31 May 2020 respectively. The short title of the Bill, once it receives Royal Assent, is set out as the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 12 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

New Clause 1

“Registers used to determine the “electorate” in relation to the 2023 reports

‘(1) In rule 9(2) of Schedule 2 to the 1986 Act (definition of the “electorate”), for “The” substitute “Subject to sub-paragraph (2A), the”.

(2) After rule 9(2) of that Schedule insert—

“(2A) In relation to a report under section 3(1) that a Boundary Commission is required (by section 3(2)) to submit before 1 July 2023, the “electorate” of the United Kingdom, or of a part of the United Kingdom or a constituency, is the total number of persons whose names appear on a register of parliamentary electors (maintained under section 9 of the Representation of the People Act 1983) in respect of addresses in the United Kingdom, or in that part or that constituency, as that register has effect on 2 March 2020.””—(Chloe Smith.)

This new clause inserts a new clause (to be added after clause 6) which provides for the meaning of the “electorate” in Schedule 2 to the 1986 Act, in the case of the 2023 reports of the Boundary Commissions, to be determined by reference to the registers of parliamentary electors as they have effect on 2 March 2020 rather than by reference to the versions of those registers which are published under section 13(1) of the Representation of the People Act 1983 on or before 1 December 2020 (which is the “review date” provided for under clause 7), a prescribed later date, or 1 February 2021 (where section 13(1A) of that Act applies).

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Chloe Smith]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 4—Definition of “electorate”—

“(1) The 1986 Act is amended as follows.

(2) In rule 9(2) of Schedule 2 to the 1986 Act, omit the words from “the version that is required” to the end and insert “the electoral register as on the date of the last General Election before the review date.”

For the purposes of future reviews, this new clause would define the electorate as being those on the electoral register at the last General Election prior to the review.

[Chloe Smith]

First, allow me to address the new clause that stands in my name before turning to new clause 4, which stands in the names of the hon. Members for Lancaster and Fleetwood and for City of Chester.

The purpose of new clause 1 is to mitigate a risk arising from the covid-19 pandemic that could affect the successful delivery of the next boundary review. The risk relates to electoral data, namely information on the numbers of electors across the UK. Hon. Members will be well aware that this is fundamental to the work of the boundary commissions. We need the next review, and all reviews, to be based on the most robust form of the data. Under current legislation, the next boundary review would be based on the number of registered electors as at 1 December 2020, following the annual canvass.

As we know, the annual canvass is a large information-gathering exercise that checks and verifies the addresses of registered electors. The boundary commissions generally use the version of the electoral register that follows the canvass because it is the most up to date and accurate available at the start of the review. This year, however, concerns have rightly been raised about whether the operation of the 2020 annual canvass might be affected by covid-19, given that it is a considerable exercise mobilising many staff and contractors over several months. This new clause responds to those concerns and provides for the next boundary review to be based, on a one-off basis, on the number of registered electors at 2 March 2020.

That data represents the most up-to-date electoral registration information available from the point before the impacts of covid became widespread. It will capture the registrations that took place in the run-up to the 2019 general election, subject to any monthly updates that were then also made up to 2 March 2020. As hon. Members may know from other remarks I have made and the letter I sent to the Committee, I have engaged with both parliamentary party and administrator representatives on this issue. It is critical that the next boundary review is not compromised as a result of covid, so I have tabled the new clause.

New clause 4 seeks to change the definition of the electorate to that of the electoral register from the last general election prior to the boundary review. There are a number of reasons why the Government believe this is not the appropriate dataset to use for boundary reviews, and I will lay those out.

First, as I set out when introducing new clause 1, the electoral register is updated through the year. The annual canvass then provides the most comprehensive audit of the electoral register each year. It represents the most consistent and up-to-date picture of how many UK electors there are and where they live.

Secondly, the current approach of using the December registers, the data from which is collected, checked and published by the Office for National Statistics, ensures that the boundary commissions are using officially published data that is up to date, transparent and readily available to all citizens. By contrast, electoral registration officers are not required to published data on the number of electors on the registers of parliamentary electors for general elections. That data is not officially published by the Office for National Statistics, so it could be argued to be more opaque, whereas transparency is helpful.

Thirdly, I think many of us would agree that when we are looking to update UK parliamentary boundaries, it is important that the most up-to-date and robust data is used. Unlike the canvass, general elections do not happen every 12 months—or at least we hope that they do not—and the use of election data could therefore result in boundary reviews being based on information that was considerably more out of date than that provided by the canvass. I will go into that in a couple of ways.

It is unusual for a general election to occur in the second half of a calendar year. 2019 was a notable exception, and I am sure we all reflected on that as we were banging on doors in the rain and the snow. To take a past example, had we used the general election data for the boundary review starting in 2000, we would have been using data from the 1997 general election. That would have been two and a half years out of date at the start of the review, and over a decade out of date by the time the boundaries were first used in an election in 2010.

Let me take this moment to address a few other myths about electoral registers. There are a few areas of tension as to how the registers work, and the arguments can be confusing. I do not think general election registers are always the answer, and I want to address a few of the erroneous arguments that are made. One myth advanced by some is that after a general election people suddenly vanish off the electoral register; as the register compiled for the election is sometimes regarded as the fullest or biggest, people argue that electors have to have been captured at exactly that early moment. I do not think this is the case. It seems to derive from the idea the election registers are more comprehensive as a consequence of the many registrations made in the run-up to a major poll. However, they do not somehow vanish after a poll; they are not lost. Those people remain there, and the canvass that follows any general election will verify that those who registered for that election are still resident at the same address, together with any further registrations that have taken place in the intervening months. If they are still resident, they stay on the register—quite rightly—and are taken into account at a boundary review starting after the review date.

For example, if people registered in the run-up to the 2019 December general election and remained at the same address after the election, they remain on the register. It is as simple as that. Of course the contrary is also true: if they moved immediately after the election, it is only right that the canvass and the monthly updates that follow it highlight that change. Therefore, the fullest register, as general election data is sometimes described, does not stay accurate forever.

Maintaining accuracy and completeness needs to be part of an ongoing cycle. The quality of the register relies on these two elements—completeness and accuracy. One is not enough on its own: they have to be seen together. If a person registers in the run-up to a general election in area A and shortly afterwards moves to area B, it is not right that they stay on the register for area A. Some might argue, I suppose, that for completeness they would stay registered in area A while they also registered in area B, but that is not accuracy. The work of the electoral registration officers, who have responsibility for maintaining complete and accurate registers, is to create a picture that is both as accurate and as complete as possible while, admittedly, accepting that no register can ever be perfect because the population does move.

The Government have been working hard over the years with electoral administrators to improve the accuracy and completeness of the registers. I will take a moment to highlight some of that work. The introduction of online registration has made it easier, simpler and faster for people to register to vote, taking as little as five minutes. This also applies in a positive way particularly to people who traditionally found it harder to make an application to register. Working with lots of partners, we have developed a range of democratic engagement resources to promote democratic engagement and voter registration. That is all available on gov.uk. We are also in the process of implementing changes to the annual canvass of all the residential properties in Great Britain that will improve its overall efficiency quite considerably. It will let registration officers focus their efforts on the hardest-to-reach groups, and play an important role in helping to maintain the accuracy and completeness of the register.

I hope I have given a sense of what we are doing to support the best quality data available for the function of the Bill, in the form of the covid 19-related new clause 1. I have also presented some arguments why canvass data is better data to use than the general election data. I also wanted to provide the Committee with a few insights into how we have been working to improve levels of registration in this country, and why we should all agree that that is very important, albeit slightly to the side of the main subject of the Bill. If the Committee wishes me to respond to points that others may make, I will be happy to do so, but I shall pause here and urge that the Government new clause be added to the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has covered most of the points, so I will be very brief. In a sense, I will be asking the Minister only a couple of questions.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that we hit the high water mark at the general election. The Minister has corrected me when I have perhaps claimed too high an increase for the 2017 general election. Nevertheless, there is a surge in registrations that makes a general election register, as I have said, the high water mark and, if we are asking for a snapshot, the most accurate snapshot within, perhaps, a period of nine months or a year either side. In that respect, it is the most accurate register on which to base a set of boundaries.

I wonder whether the Minister can answer a couple of questions—I am not trying to catch her out. First, can she say, given that there is that rush at a general election, what measures a Government might put in place to maintain that high water mark level of registrations? For example, in the past year there was a proposal to downgrade the annual canvass. That proposal actually went through, which I was not happy with at the time, but the Minister was confident it was achievable. We are not going to see that this year, rightly, but what measures could be put in place to maintain that high water mark around a general election? Can the Minister also explain—I think this was touched upon during the evidence sessions—whether any assessment has been made of the numerical difference between the general election register and the register in March that we are going to base this on, and why that difference exists?

Using the March register, as opposed to waiting for more people to drop off the register at the end of this year—potentially 200,000 people—is a very sensible move. I have praised the Minister in the past when she has earned it; this was the right thing to do, and I echo my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood in welcoming the change to maintain as high a water mark as possible in the number of people registered. As she has said, there is a broader debate about automatic registration, but I do not think that is covered in this new clause.

[Chloe Smith]

I am happy to offer a few further arguments as to why it is misguided to seek to use general election data. Going back to the facts of the matter in December 2019, there are two points I want to make. The first is that the December 2019 general election was an unexpected event, for a number of reasons. That may be a matter of ins and outs for politicians, but for administrators, that is quite a proposition: they have to be able to run an election as requested.

At that time, electoral officers had broadly three options for when to publish their electoral registers—three different options at three different times. Some published in October 2019, just after the election was called, for very valid reasons: they might have seen the benefit of trying to simplify the process of giving each elector their identification number and arranging the printing and postage of poll cards. A second group published on 1 December 2019, the traditional deadline for publication of the revised registers following the canvass. And some published on 1 February 2020, which is the deadline for those who had an election other than the general election in their area during that period—that is, a by-election between 1 January and December 2019. My point is that there are three different times when election officers would have published the registers, so there is no such thing as a single register that provides the silver bullet the Opposition are looking for. I am afraid it is deeply misguided to think there is.

My second point, based on the facts in December last year, is that some registers were swollen, but some were not. The hon. Member for City of Chester will recall the evidence given by Roger Pratt to this Committee:

“Three hundred and eighty-eight seats were actually larger at the general election than on 1 December, but 261…were smaller at the general election”.––[Official Report, Parliamentary Constituencies Public Bill Committee, 18 June 2020; c. 30.]

Not only is there not a silver bullet, the bullet does not even go in the direction in which the Opposition would like to fire the gun.

[Christian Matheson]

My understanding, however, is that the overall number of electors always swells to a high-water mark during a general election, albeit there will be some constituencies in which that is not the case, as Mr Pratt advised us.

[Chloe Smith]

As a matter of common sense, that swelling is likely, and I agree with the hon. Gentleman that people have an incentive to register before an election. It is evidently the case that the demands of an election, where people have the chance to cast their vote and have their say, are an encouragement to registration. I do not argue against that at all; I welcome that. As I said in my earlier remarks, we want to encourage people to register year round, but there is that particular incentive with an election. These facts remain, however, and they drive holes through the Opposition’s argument right now.

I am afraid that there is one further point that I need to drive home hard: the hon. Member for the City of Chester should know better than to rehearse the really poor arguments he made about canvass reform when this time last year we discussed the statutory instrument that he mentioned. It was not a downgrade of the annual canvass. He had not done his homework at the time. It was an upgrade of the annual canvass, whereby resources can be focused on the hardest to identify, who, from Labour Members’ discourse, we might think they wished to go after. The upgrade also involved looking at where resources should be focused, rather than taxpayers’ money being put to poorer use where those resources are not needed. In other words, canvass reform allows registration officers to do a more targeted job of the canvass. That is a good thing. It allows citizens to have a better experience of canvassing, because they are being asked to fill out fewer forms. It allows taxpayers to save money. As the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood rightly pointed out, every pound in local government is sorely needed at the moment. There should never be an argument for wasting money in local government on an exercise that could be better targeted than it has been in the past. Those are the facts about canvass reform. Furthermore, I am afraid the hon. Member for the City of Chester is incorrect to say that we will not see that this year. We will. If he were in touch with his Welsh Labour colleagues in Cardiff, for example, he would know that it is going ahead this year, and that they rightly support it. Indeed, so do the devolved Government in Scotland, because it is the right thing to do. But enough on the annual canvass; that is not our subject matter here.

The Government strongly believe that the use of the electoral register in the way for which the Bill provides is the right thing to do. I have given comprehensive reasons why the idea of doing it from a general election register is not strong. I urge the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood not to press new clause 4 to a vote.

[Cat Smith]

We will be pressing new clause 4 to a vote. The Minister made some good points, and this is an area where we have spent many a happy day discussing the annual canvass and the inaccuracy of electoral registers. In the current cycle, I concede that the difference between the general election register and the March 2020 register is quite narrow because of the timing of the recent general election. However, new clause 4 is designed to deal with future boundary reviews. When a large amount of time has elapsed between the date of the snapshot and a general election, there may be significantly more than hundreds of thousands of people missing from the electoral register, therefore I will press new clause 4 to a vote.

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[Christian Matheson]

I speak in support of new clause 2, which I tabled with my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood. I have really enjoyed listening to the contributions to the debate, but I am concerned about the lack of consistency expressed by Government Members. That is partly in relation to the clause, but also in relation to the clause as it reflects other parts of the Bill. I will try not to stray too far from the clause, and I am sure, Sir David, that you will pull me back if I do.

The right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell—who, as always, makes me stop and think—talked about the boundary commission getting it right first time. I suspect that he meant in the first set of proposals as opposed to the former ones. One of the problems is that we cannot always trust the boundary commission to get it right first time. Frankly, there are occasions when it does not get it right the second time. That is why we opposed automaticity in another part of the Bill.

I understand what the right hon. Gentleman is saying, but the lack of absolute confidence—we do have confidence in the boundary commission—might have been expressed in another part of the considerations. The hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton discussed disparities in our own region, and about his seat and that of the right hon. Member for Basingstoke who, I think, has described her seat as being a small market town that has grown and grown over the years. She might wish to correct me. These changes do happen, and it is not simply that the boundary commission chooses to draw much bigger seats. Growth does happen, and for that reason it is projected that south-east England is likely to get extra seats as a result of population shifts.

The hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden—I must get it correct—said that the situation was not what we have now, but the new clause does not propose the situation we have now—it is not proposing 10% either way. I listened to my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham suggesting that we have 10%, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley suggesting that it is perfectly legitimate to propose that within the OSCE guidelines. However, the new clause proposes a balance between that very tight adherence to the variance of 5% and the need for community interest.

I listened to the debate at Second Reading, and the right hon. Member for Basingstoke, and the hon. Members for Newbury and for West Bromwich West might have mentioned the importance of reflecting community interests. We have all spoken on that subject, and the hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden discussed that in a question on first past the post, and spoke about maintaining the importance of community. Many Committee members have mentioned the importance of community, but the lack of consistency comes up when we reject all those arguments in favour of tight adherence. Somewhere, we have to strike a balance.

On this side of the Committee, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood said, we have accepted the Government’s arguments that we must have much more equally sized constituencies. We are asking Government Members to accept, as we strive to achieve that, that the guidance to boundary commissions should say that those community ties—which all other hon. Members have said are important—should be taken into account, so that they get it right first or second time. In this Bill, we do not have the opportunity to call them back if they do not get it right.

This new clause provides balance and a safety valve, as we have discussed regarding automaticity, to ensure that community interests and ties are taken into account. It achieves a tighter tolerance around the average, so that it achieves something of the Government’s aim—which is also our aim—to secure more equalised seats, but not going so far that it completely wipes out the community interest. Across the Committee, hon. Members have talked about that. I will therefore support my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood in the vote.

[Chloe Smith]

What a good debate we have had on this part of the Bill. I think we all knew this would be one of the main dividing lines in the Committee. I am pleased we have been able to air these arguments and discuss what they mean for the Bill and, crucially, for real people—to whom we should anchor our discussion.

As we all know, we are looking at the electoral quota followed by what is stipulated in the existing legislation, namely, that constituencies subject to a small number of exceptions must be between 95% and 105% of that electoral quota. That is the 10% point range. As we know, because we have looked at it comprehensively in Committee, the boundary commissions may then take other factors into account, which are subject to the overriding principle of equality in constituency size.

I do not want to detain the Committee on things we have gone over, but I will underline how far adrift the UK’s current constituencies are from that principle of equality. There are some very clear examples in England. Milton Keynes South clocks in at 97,000; Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Central clocks in at 54,000. That is not fair. In Wales, Cardiff South and Penarth comes in at 80,000 constituents, whereas only 43,000 electors get to have their say in Arfon. That is not fair. The Government are committed to ensuring greater fairness by updating parliamentary constituencies to ensure that across the UK votes have the same weight. That is what we care about. That is what we are delivering. That is the right thing to do.

I do not agree with the new clause tabled by the hon. Members for Lancaster and Fleetwood and for City of Chester. I want to make a point about the difference between theory and practice. It is easy for us to bandy about figures such as 5% and 7.5%, which seem theoretical. I pay tribute to the mathematical minds that we have in this Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton is one of the finest, but there are others in the Committee who have a great facility with numbers and have really helped us in these deliberations by looking at what those figures mean when we run them under different scenarios.

Let us remember what those numbers are for. We are talking about people. Those numbers relate to the number of voters. Even the word “electors” might seem a step away from normal people, whom we ought to think of here. These people want a chance of fairness in their democracy and for their voice to be heard as equally as the next person in the next seat or nation in the country. That is the core principle at stake. It is unfair to go far off that average point. It is undesirable and it is unworthy of the people we are trying to do this for. We want to get this right for people who have asked for a change to their parliamentary constituencies. They voted for this as a manifesto commitment of this Government; indeed, it was in all parties’ manifestos, as I understand it. That is an important commitment to deliver. We should take that very seriously.

Ultimately, we must take that step away from numbers towards a judgment. The Committee heard evidence from Professor Charles Pattie of the University of Sheffield, who has been studying elections and boundary reviews for more than 30 years, about which we joked with him at the time—he has spent a very long time doing that. His conclusion was that he would certainly endorse the notion of an equalisation rule as the top priority. Dr Alan Renwick took us further in that argument. On the exact percentage that is appropriate, he said that

“numbers around 5% to 10% seem to be fairly standard. There is no answer that an academic can give you as to what is the correct number, but something in that region is appropriate.”––[Official Report, Parliamentary Constituencies Public Bill Committee, 23 June 2020; c. 74, Q141.]

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[Shaun Bailey]

I see the hon. Gentleman’s point. It is a difficult one because it is a good point, but with respect to the line that I am following, I think the scope of what he is saying is a slightly different debate. It is slightly out of the scope of the clause but I see his point and recognise it to a degree. However, as we move into a more—without panicking Front Benchers—quasi-federal system perhaps, there needs to be a wider recognition of how we deal with these quotas. If we look at other systems—take Australia for example—and the way they set quotas between state and federal level, they differentiate. That is just how it goes. It means that areas lose seats and that loss of power is there, but it is made up for by the fact there is a system underneath and they interact with each other. I follow the argument of the hon. Member for Ceredigion, but given where we are constitutionally—I do not want to turn this into a huge constitutional debate because we could do that all day—and I agree that we need to be as pragmatic as we can and review this going forward, I think there is a balance there now with the Senedd and with the Scottish Parliament. I will draw my comments to a close to allow my hon. Friend to talk.

[Chloe Smith]

It has been another very interesting debate. I am grateful to the hon. Members for Eltham, for the City of Chester and for Ceredigion and to my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West for a thoughtful exposition of a much wider point—much wider than we could hope to do justice to in Committee. We have seen in the arguments, certainly on the Government side of the Committee, the desire to fix a much wider constitutional issue—namely, how England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should relate to each other. Every single one of the hon. Members who spoke knows that that issue is much larger than the Bill. They also know that it comprises the rest of my portfolio and I would be delighted to speak about it at any other time. Indeed, we will. There are many depths in that work that are acknowledged and being worked upon and about which I am sure we will have many fruitful discussions in the future. I want to do two things today. I want to say a little bit more about why the Bill is not the right place to do that and then I will talk specifically about the merits of the amendment.

The Bill is not the right place to deal with the entirety of the constitutional settlement because, very obviously, it provides for a mechanism for independent boundary reviews, and the constitutional settlement is so much larger than that. This boundary review is, indeed, only for the UK Parliament. The constitutional settlement is much wider. Hon. Members will have heard the Prime Minister’s speech today, in which he made a number of passionately pro-Unionist points. He reminds us that the interests of the citizens of the United Kingdom—their security, prosperity, welfare, and all the opportunities we want to come out of the pandemic—are much wider than what we have here today and that he is addressing them. He is seeking to do that and he has set out clearly what he intends to do. Naturally, and as the Minister of State for the Constitution and Devolution, I am in full-throated support of that, but that is not the subject matter today.

Let us focus a little more on what the Bill does. We all want the constituent nations of the United Kingdom to have a powerful voice. That should be the foundation for all of us in this discussion and I am sure it is. We all want those voices to be heard loud and clear. That is the fair way for the Union to function and to come together in the Parliament of the unitary state. Because that is the only fair way, the new clause does not work. I am afraid to say that it would put inequality and inaccuracy in the way of that Unionist proposition and the prosperity of our Union. If we set in legislation the thresholds proposed in the new clause and amendment (a), we would be cutting into the heart of the idea that votes should be equal, and that would damage the equality between the nations and individual people of the Union.

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[Christian Matheson]

I am grateful to the Minister and all hon. Members for taking part in an illuminating and positive debate. I was particularly taken by the intervention the hon. Member for Glasgow East made on the hon. Member for West Bromwich West, whose response was honest and positive. I welcome that. The idea of the legislative load being passed back from the European Union yet not having the legislative representation to manage that was a serious and salient point. I hoped the hon. Member for Glasgow East might have made a contribution to further develop that point, but he chose not to.

[Chloe Smith]

To make a brief correction, which should not detain us further, that is untrue. Those powers are returning to Stormont, Holyrood and Cardiff Bay—quite rightly. If we are referring to common frameworks, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Glasgow East will be intimately familiar with the detail. That is an incorrect representation.

[Christian Matheson]

I am intimately aware of that. I will take the Minister’s advice, because I do not think all of the responsibilities are coming back. Some will go back to the various different Parliaments; others will stay here in Westminster.

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Charles Kennedy was right; frankly, these constituencies have become geographically impractical. New clause 5 seeks to remedy that, and I therefore look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Chloe Smith]

I will keep it brief. I acknowledge the points that the hon. Gentleman has made, and he made them very well and very eloquently. He is right to bring in the experience of, for example, Charles Kennedy. There is no shying away from the fact that there will be large constituencies in a place that has a more sparse population. We have to face up to these issues and to how we can design constituencies accurately.

Essentially, the new clause seeks to achieve an easement, by reducing the impact of a certain rule, and I will just quickly run through that rule. Rule 4 in the second schedule to the 1986 Act relates specifically to constituencies that are geographically very large, and is, in effect, relevant only to Scotland and to the highlands, in particular. It stipulates that if a constituency is over 12,000 sq km and has yet to reach an electorate that is within the permitted variance range of 95% to 105%, the Boundary Commission may propose a constituency that is below 95% in electoral terms. That gives extra flexibility to meet the challenge of very large constituencies. As I said, it is a matter of reality that this matter falls to the Boundary Commission for Scotland. Indeed, the history of this rule involved using the largest constituency at the time to try to set a rule or a cap, so it is all quite specific.

It is not necessary to amend the rule in the way the hon. Gentleman proposes, because it is so rarely used and because the range of constituencies that would approach largeness is so spread out that even his new clause would not make a great deal of difference. I will just explain why.

At the 2018 boundary review, albeit that it was on the basis of 600 seats, the Boundary Commission for Scotland proposed only one constituency; that is the constituency of Highland North, which the hon. Gentleman has argued in this Committee is already infamous. There was only one constituency that exceeded 12,000 sq km. In that case, the additional flexibility provided by rule 4 was not even needed, because the proposed electorate was within the tolerance range.

Although we must not prejudge the proposals of the next boundary review, lowering the threshold to 9,000 sq km might bring additional constituencies in, but it might not, because the previous review was, as I have said, on the basis of 600 seats, and even it brought in only two proposed constituencies that were between 9,000 and 12,000 sq km. Their names—I am going to get my commas and “ands” wrong here—were Highland Central and Argyll. Those are two constituencies, and their names will be in the record.

There is my argument in a nutshell. Because we are dealing with such outliers in terms of size—the square metreage, and not necessarily the population—an extension to the rule is not needed. The sub-outliers, if you like, are still so far down the line from the outlier that even the hon. Gentleman’s new clause would not make a great deal of difference. That is fundamentally my point against the new clause.

To come a little more generally to the themes we have seen in the rest of the Bill, a boundary review is a balancing act. We have seen this across several of the new clauses that we have spoken about this afternoon and several of the clauses in the Bill. We have to balance important but competing goals. On one hand, there is the premise of equality, which is extremely important. We have spoken all the way through about the fundamental idea that a vote in the Scottish highlands counts the same as one in the Brecon Beacons, which counts the same as one in the Somerset levels. We have heard witness after witness back up that idea. But on the other hand, we also have to reflect local community ties and respond to specific and varied circumstances.

In this particular case, it is not an easy balance to strike, but I draw the Committee’s attention to the real nature of this part of the graph and suggest that it is not necessary to make the change the hon. Gentleman suggests, because the protection is already there through the specific protected constituencies and through rule 4 as it currently exists, which protects very large highland constituencies.

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[David Linden]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

I hope that Members’ heads have not been hurting too much in trying to understand this new clause, which gives a discretionary power in certain circumstances to all boundary commissions, when considering a grouping of constituencies, that currently applies only to the Boundary Commission for Northern Ireland when considering those constituencies as a whole.

Boundary commissions have always worked by grouping areas together and designing constituencies within those areas. For parliamentary reviews, areas will be formed by grouping local authorities. Sometimes the initial set of groupings does not work and other things are considered. The Boundary Commission for Scotland helpfully publishes all its minutes at the start of the initial consultation period and, indeed, makes available maps of its rejected proposals as well, so that people can see exactly how it has come to its conclusions.

Let us say that we are designing 10 constituencies in an area with an electorate roughly equal to the UK electoral quota multiplied by 10. We would be able to use the plus or minus 5% variation to its full throughout the area to design our 10 constituencies. A problem arises when the electorate of the 10 constituencies combined represents somewhere between 95% and 105% of the UK electoral quota multiplied by 10, because the scope for variation then becomes very limited, meaning that, to retain the grouping, constituencies will have to be designed with very little scope for numerical variation. That can often lead to what looks like logical groupings being abandoned unnecessarily.

The problem was recognised in Northern Ireland, which was allocated 16 and then 17 seats in the two reviews under the current legislation. Current rule 7 allows the use of a Northern Ireland quota in defined circumstances. The Northern Ireland quota is simply the number of electors in Northern Ireland divided by the number of constituencies allocated. Use of that quota means the full plus or minus 5% variation for constituencies is then effectively reinstated.

To pre-empt what the Minister might say, there was an obscure issue in Northern Ireland in the last review around the point at which the decision to apply the rule was made, which resulted in litigation. I stress that that was very much a procedural issue, which was not relevant to the essential utility of the rule. The problem in Northern Ireland was a numerical one. It is not one in special recognition of the politics there. The numerical problem applies throughout the United Kingdom when we group constituencies, as all boundary commissions do.

I therefore look forward to hearing the Minister’s position and her explanation of why what is good for Northern Ireland is not good for all the other boundary commissions when faced with the identical issue. On that basis, I will draw my remarks to a close and listen to what the Minister has to say on new clause 7.

[Chloe Smith]

Sir David, may I invite the hon. Gentleman to say what his amendment does?

[David Linden]

I am grateful to the Minister for that. Essentially, I am looking to give as much flexibility as possible to the boundary commissions. That is the idea behind looking at whether we can apply rule 7 to other parts of the United Kingdom. I hope that that gives the Minister a bit of a steer about what I am looking to do with new clause 7.

[Chloe Smith]

I will do my best. What is puzzling me is why it might be a grouping of five, but if the hon. Gentleman will allow me to speak generally, I can, or perhaps he would like to articulate why it is five.

[David Linden]

I am happy to allow the Minister to deliberate more generally and look into the numbering. This is a probing amendment.

[Chloe Smith]

Okay. I will give it my best shot. My understanding is that the hon. Gentleman is trying to extend the rule that works in Northern Ireland and to apply it to the whole of the UK by saying that we could take a grouping of five or more constituencies, whose combined electorate meets a certain mathematical criterion.

I have said it before and I will say it again: the Government are committed to delivering equal and updated constituencies for the UK. We can do that only if the rules set for the boundary commissions allow them to propose constituencies that are equal or as equal as possible. That loops back to many of the nuances and balances that we have spoken about throughout the Committee. I fear the new clause goes in the opposite direction and, in doing so, raises a couple of problems, which I will try to draw out.

Let me start with what rule 7 is for. It exists because of a specific issue arising in Northern Ireland. Of the four nations, it has the smallest discrete group of constituencies. At the beginning of a boundary review, as I referred to earlier, numbers of constituencies are allocated to each nation using the Sainte-Laguë method. As each nation must have a whole number of constituencies, there is inevitably either a rounding up or a rounding down at the moment. For Northern Ireland, that has been likely to mean—and will still be likely to mean—either a rounding up to 18 or a rounding down to 17. The effects of that can be quite significant when you have only a double-digit number like that.

Rule 7 first applies a mathematical formula to assess the significance of the rounding effects. If, as a result of the rounding down, the overall electorate in Northern Ireland is significantly more than might be expected, by taking the UK electoral quota and multiplying by 17—the number of Northern Ireland seats—then rule 7 may come into play if the Boundary Commission for Northern Ireland judges that is necessary in order for it to adequately perform a boundary review. In those circumstances, rule 7 then allows the Boundary Commission for Northern Ireland to apply a more generous electoral quota variance range, that range being ascertained through a second mathematical formula. I apologise for the level of detail, but I wanted to set out what rule 7 does before going any further.

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[David Linden]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

This new clause is slightly easier to understand. It seeks to deal with a specific situation that arises when local authority areas are redrawn and relates not to wards but to other electoral divisions within those local authority areas. Members will see that I have listed a registered interest as the Member for Glasgow East, and I will explain why as I develop my speech.

Unlike wards, local authority areas are not periodically reviewed. The justification for a local authority area review is usually when new houses have been built over a local authority boundary, although there can be other triggers. For example, the construction of the Edinburgh bypass resulted in one farm moving from Edinburgh into West Lothian.

Sometimes areas are redrawn without any voters being affected. I understand that principal area boundary reviews elsewhere are similarly unusual and not conducted on a periodic basis. The local government boundary commission for Scotland has only carried out 10 local authority area reviews since we moved to unitary authorities in 1995. As luck would have it, two of those reviews, conducted in 2010 and 2019, affected my own constituency, and it is for that reason that I registered a specific interest in relation to this new clause.

Constituencies where there are a small number of electors in one local authority area present additional difficulties for returning officers in co-ordinating elections. They also cause issues in relation to representation. If a constituency is equally divided between two local authorities, the MP will be able to maintain a good working relationship between both sets of local authority officials and, importantly, so will their staff. If only a very small number of constituents are from one local authority, those relationships will not be established in the same way. I reflect on that particularly as someone who represents both Glasgow and North Lanarkshire.

The Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, combined with the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, anticipated a world where we would have elections every five years and boundaries reviewed before each election. I think some us probably wonder what on earth happened to that. With a model of the five-year elections and reviews every election in mind, the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act abolished the idea of interim reviews. In the past, interim reviews of UK parliamentary constituencies were a check on whether more minor changes should be made to constituencies between the major periodical reviews. With constituencies being reviewed before each election, that process essentially became unnecessary.

The Bill looks to having reviews every two Parliaments or so. We never know when the next general election will happen—with this Government, that is fairly clear as they are looking to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. Therefore, that brings back on the agenda the need to be able to set out the consequences of local authority area reviews.

My Scottish Parliament colleagues will have their constituency boundaries revised in time for the elections next year because Boundaries Scotland, as it is being renamed, retains an ability to conduct interim reviews. The 300 electors affected by the last local government area review in my constituency will move into a different Scottish Parliament constituency in May ’21. The electors affected by the earlier review were already in their correct constituency. The new clause does not attempt to bring back interim reviews, but to ensure that in those rare instances where there has been a local authority boundary change that can be reflected in the UK Parliament constituency, as it can be in the Scottish Parliament constituency as a result of the powers exercised by Boundaries Scotland.

The new clause contains a tightly drawn power that can only be used where a limited number of electors are affected by an area review. I would be happy to discuss further with the Minister the appropriate number, but in practice most area reviews involve considerably fewer electors. I hope the Minister therefore appreciates that the new clause is confined to very specific circumstances and is not an attempt to reintroduce interim reviews, and that on that basis the Government will support it.

[Chloe Smith]

I appreciate the way that the hon. Member for Glasgow East has framed the new clause—that it is not quite the same as the old policy of interim reviews but is a new policy for our times. I appreciate the way he put that. I understand the arguments he makes, but I argue that the new clause is not needed, and I will begin by looking back at what the old policy of interim reviews actually did, just to give us that context.

As I understand it, the new clause would give a boundary commission discretion to submit a report in between boundary reviews that recommends the realignment of existing parliamentary constituencies with a local authority area boundary that has ceased to be aligned with those constituencies owing to a local authority boundary change. The hon. Gentleman has been careful to try to temper that discretion by saying that it should only apply to 1,000 electors and, in effect, try to tackle the problem of orphaned electors who perhaps find themselves in a neighbouring constituency to the one they had expected to belong to. I think that the effect of this change would remain quite close to that of interim reviews and, for comparison, I will set out what those used to do.

Before the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, the boundary commissions had discretion to carry out interim reviews of particular constituency boundaries. They could, for example, take into account intervening changes to local authority boundaries or to a number of registered electors that affecting the boundaries of existing parliamentary constituencies in a particular area. Provision for this was removed under the 2011 Act. It was thought unnecessary because, as the hon. Gentleman outlined, general reviews would then be held every five years.

Under the Bill, reviews will be held every eight years, so I argue—as the Committee accepts—that boundaries will be reviewed and updated regularly. That is sufficiently regular to make interim reviews not needed, so we have no need to return to that old policy. I have concerns about both the policy of interim reviews and the proposed policy which, even though the hon. Gentleman has tried to minimise disruption, would still be fundamentally disruptive, hitting local communities and their relationship with their representation in this place.

We should also accept the fundamental truth that the different governmental boundaries that criss-cross our country will never be fully aligned; it will inherently be a moving picture, and it will never be possible to align all of them at any one time. It is hard to put in place a policy that tries to align a small bit of that while acknowledging that the rest keeps evolving. Boundaries change all the time, owing to population shifts and the growth of new housing settlements. The point of a boundary review is to try to control for that by taking a snapshot in time, once every eight years, and saying that that is the point at which there will be changes—there will not be ongoing, perpetual change, but change at a key point in time.

I also do not think it cost-effective to keep going for that perpetual change. I appreciate the arguments that have been made, including the minimisation argument inherent in what the hon. Gentleman has tabled. However, there is a practical argument against asking the boundary commissions to effectively chase their tail and go after something that could move perpetually between those eight years or something that does not always come to fruition. The point has occasionally been made in the Committee about how to treat housing developments. That certainly ought to be accommodated in boundary reviews—that is the point of regular enough ones to do that—but it is also the case that sometimes housing developments do not come to fruition. Had that policy wrongly predicted a settlement, ultimately public money would have been wasted in getting the boundary commission to look at it.

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[David Linden]

I have never felt so powerful as I do right now. I am grateful for the Minister’s response. This was a probing new clause. The issue has dominated my email inbox since I was elected in 2017—there is a lovely little area in my constituency called Stepps, by Cardowan, where the good people vote highly for the SNP actually, but that is by the bye. I was keen to spark some thought in Government, but when drafting the new clause, I feared that putting the number at 1,000 electors would frighten the Government off a little. I will reflect on what the Minister has said.

At one minute past 5 o’clock, I will allow the opportunity for the hard-working Clerks and Hansard staff to get some respite. As this is the last opportunity I will have to say anything in Committee, I also thank you, Sir David, and Mr Paisley for your forbearance in what have been long-drawn-out proceedings. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 10

Protected constituencies

‘(1) Schedule 2 to the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 is amended as follows.

(2) In rule 6(2), after paragraph (b) insert “;

(c) a constituency named Ynys Môn, comprising the area of the Isle of Anglesey County Council”.

(3) In rule 8(5)—

(a) in paragraph (b), for “6(2)” substitute “6(2)(a) and (b)”, and

(b) after paragraph (b) insert “;

“(c) the electorate of Wales shall be treated for the purposes of this rule as reduced by the electorate of the constituency mentioned in rule (6)(2)(c)”.

(4) In rule 9(7)—

(a) after “6” insert “(2)(a) or (b)”, and

(b) after “2011” insert “, and the reference in rule 6(2)(c) to the area of the Isle of Anglesey County Council is to the area as it existed on the coming into force of the Schedule to the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020”.’—(Mrs Miller.)

This new clause adds the parliamentary constituency of Ynys Môn to the list of protected constituencies in the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 and makes other consequential changes to that Act.

Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.

Question proposed, That the Chair do report the Bill, as amended, to the House.

[Chloe Smith]

I thank you, Sir David, and Mr Paisley for all of your work in chairing this Committee. We have all appreciated your clear chairmanship and good humour. I also thank the Clerks and all House staff who have made it possible to do a Bill Committee in these new circumstances. They have been most diligent. Also, many thanks to the witnesses who joined us and gave helpful evidence on our journey in Committee.

Finally, I thank all our colleagues in this room. I will pick on my two silent Friends who do not normally get a great deal to say in Committee, but I say it for them, so I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Walsall North and for Loughborough for their contributions. I thank all the parties represented here for the excellent quality of their debate and for the probing discussions we have had—in the witness sessions, as well, when we heard from other parties.

We have covered all the issues in the Bill comprehensively, with ample time to do so. I am pleased that we found common ground on the need to provide equal and updated boundaries for the representation of all the communities in our land.

[Cat Smith]

I want to put on the record my thanks to you, Sir David, and to Mr Paisley for chairing our proceedings in this Bill Committee. I also thank the officials for supporting our work, and members of the Committee for their contributions. I thank the Minister for her positive and thoughtful contributions.

This has been a first for me—the first time that I have made it to the end of a Bill Committee without giving birth. It is a great pleasure that this Committee did not go on as long as some of the others that I have briefly taken part in. I thank the Committee.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill (Sixth sitting)

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 25th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Thank you, Sir David, for calling me again to continue my contribution. I was saying that it is very important for us to have accountability in this process, and some oversight to make sure the rules have been followed.

I will give an example, which does not come from a parliamentary boundary review but from a local government boundary review that happened in my borough. The commissioner took it upon himself to make every ward come within a very tight percentage plus or minus. There were no requirements within the rules for that; it was a self-imposed ordinance that he decided he was going to follow rigidly, despite local protests. What ended up happening was that one of the wards, which had roughly 10,500 residents, was given 12 properties that were on the other side of the south circular and the other side of a large green in order to come within that tight number set by the commissioner—a limit of 3% or 5% that he had set himself, not the limit within the rules, which was 10% plus or minus. These 12 houses, which had no connection at all to the rest of the ward apart from being in the same borough, were forced to be part of that ward. That is the sort of decision that requires people to come back and say, “Wait a minute, what is going on here?” We need to have some oversight of decisions such as those, which is a good reason why we should not just set this in train without being able to oversee the conclusions that the officials and academics have drawn up.

When we were going through the process of reducing the number of MPs, a lot of people were opposed to that proposal. Let us be clear: it came after a period when MPs had been vilified because of expenses, and two very young, new leaders of their parties decided to jump on to that bandwagon and start kicking MPs. “We are too expensive. There are too many of us. Let’s cut the cost of politics. Let’s cut the number of MPs.” It was an act of populism, and a very successful one, with those leaders trying to capture a political mood because they wanted to remove the Government of the time.

What came out of that was a proposal to go down to 600 MPs that had no basis in any science, or any review that had taken place; it had no basis in anything apart from the whim of these two young, ambitious politicians. It was a figure that was plucked out of the air and thrown into manifestos, and we were then lumbered with it. Of course, the Whips then came into play, and we ended up with legislation to reduce the House of Commons to 600 MPs and had to go through that process. Once MPs had looked into the abyss and saw what it all meant, Parliament came to its senses very quickly. I never supported that proposal, but when the first boundary review was released—we had two—I came out all right. I would have had quite a safe seat, with that review only adding a bit to my existing constituency, but I still opposed the proposed changes in principle.

The second review did not go so well. The problem was that the boundary commission started its deliberations in south-east London by saying, “The numbers in Bromley borough come to exactly three constituencies that can be coterminous with that borough.” That was their starting point, and the rest of south-east London had to fall into line. That was a huge problem, and during the first review, local arguments managed to convince the boundary commission to change its mind.

The second time around, the same arguments were applied and the boundary commission came out with a set of proposals. Those went out for a second round of consultation, and then somebody who had nothing to do with all the local arguments and comments came up with a mathematical equation. They did the whole of south-east London on three pages of A4. Lo and behold, because that proposal was very close to the boundary commission’s original proposals, the boundary commission flipped right back and we had a major upheaval in my part of south-east London. The commission did not listen at all to the arguments that had been made locally and had prevailed in two successive reviews of the boundaries until that point.

That is why we need to have a final overview. We cannot just abdicate responsibility for the process and leave our constituents without a voice. No matter how many people are cynical about it, we are accountable for what we say in this process. It is quite right that we, as the elected representatives of those people, should have some oversight of the final outcome, and that the commissioners should be accountable to Parliament for what they have done. The day when we just abdicate that responsibility is a dark one for our democracy.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

It is an absolute pleasure, Sir David, to serve under your chairmanship, as it was to serve under Mr Paisley’s this morning. I shall in my remarks cover clauses 1 and 2 stand part, and amendments 2 to 4, and respond where I can to what right hon. and hon. Members have said.

Clause 1 deals with the timing of boundary reviews and the submission of the final reports by the boundary commissions. First, the clause provides for the next boundary review to take place according to a slightly shortened timetable. The clause sets 1 July 2023 as the date by which the four boundary commissions must submit their final reports. That means that they will have two years and seven months from the review date—the formal start of a boundary review—to complete the process and submit their recommendations. Usually, they would have two years and 10 months.

I will deal straight away here with a point raised by the hon. Member for Glasgow East. He mentioned the question raised by Professor Sir John Curtice about why there should be a difference between the period for the immediate next review that for future reviews. I hate to say it, but there is no great conspiracy. It was set out clearly in the pages of the Conservative party manifesto, which I know the hon. Gentleman will have had as his bedside reading day in, day out since 2019. He will know from it that we have made a commitment to repealing the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. There is no secret. That legislation is inadequate and we are committed to repealing it. I will not go into further detail about that in this Committee—you would not want me to, Sir David—but it squarely answers the point. It is no great secret that according to that scheme there should then be the flexibility for the next general election to be called at the right time after July 2023, which is what is in the Bill.

The purpose of clause 1 is to give the best chance of having new constituency boundaries in place ahead of the next general election, whenever that may come. As witnesses such as Mr Peter Stanyon and Mr Chris Williams of the Green party reminded us, once the recommendations of a boundary review have been brought into effect, it takes some time for returning officers to implement the new boundaries, and for all others involved, including political parties, to make the necessary preparations to field candidates and communicate with voters. So we have to allow for that period before new constituencies will be put into use. It is not a fixed amount of time, but, as a general principle, we aspire to ensure that legislation is in place six months before a poll.. That was discussed in the evidence sessions.

As the Committee is aware, it is over a decade since the results of a boundary review have been implemented. Our existing Westminster constituencies are based on electoral data from the very early 2000s. That means that our current constituencies take no account of today’s youngest voters, which is beginning to get ridiculous, nor do they reflect nearly two decades of democratic shift, house building and all the things we want a boundary review to consider. The purpose of the provision in clause 1 is to ensure that the next boundary review, which is due to begin next year, finishes as promptly as possible, without compromising the processes of the boundary commissions, including the extensive public consultation they conduct, which I will make a brief point about. We will discuss public consultation further as we go through the clauses.

The three-month reduction in timetable, in the case referred to in the clause, will be made possible by shortening the sum of the boundary commissions’ internal operational processes. In addition, we propose to shorten the public consultation time for the next boundary review only from 24 to 18 weeks. I will address that in greater detail when we discuss clause 4, where that is laid out. I can say at this point that we have tested the proposition—a timetable of two years and seven months—with stakeholders, including electoral administrators, the parliamentary parties and representatives of other parties. There was a cross-party consensus that in this instance the change is beneficial and the right thing to do.

The second change introduced by clause 1 is to extend the boundary review cycle, moving the review from every five years to every eight. The intention here—my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell touched on this—is to ensure that parliamentary constituencies are updated sufficiently regularly without the disruption to local communities and their representation that might occur if there was a review every election period.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, as several colleagues have mentioned, it is really important that the boundary commissions takes notice of what is being said here? Hopefully, they will look at the arguments being made, whatever the outcomes are. It is all about communities and getting it right in the first instance—I refer to the comments made by the right hon. Member for Warley. If they can do that, they can shorten the timeframe and take notice, so communities can stay together.

[Chloe Smith]

That is very important indeed. I am confident that all four of the boundary commissions have been listening closely to the proceedings of the Committee since our evidence sessions, which they joined, and since then in our proceedings clause by clause. I know they will want to take into account comments made by hon. Members across the Committee, including how we can keep communities together and ensure that the public has that strong voice, which was the point I was making with regard to clause 1.

Clause 1 sets out that in future the boundary commissions will submit their final reports to the Speaker of the House of Commons. Mr Speaker is the ex officio chair of the boundary commissions. The reports will go to him rather than to the Secretary of State, as the commissions do now. The Speaker, not the Secretary of State, will lay the reports before Parliament.

We think that is the right change. It underlines the independence of the boundary commissions—a theme we will return to many times. It is right that the chair of those commissions—in other words, Mr Speaker—should receive and lay the reports just as they also currently receive the progress reports made by the boundary commissions. It is also right that the Government’s only role is to implement the recommendations without needing to have any hand in the process by which they are submitted.

In summary, clause 1 makes technical but important changes to the conduct of boundary reviews. It sets the cycle of eight years, establishes the Speaker as the appropriate recipient of the final report and shortens the boundary review timetable in the way that I have explained, to give us and citizens the best chance of knowing that what they have asked for—the general election being conducted on the basis of updated and equal constituencies—will happen. For those reasons, I think the clause should stand part of the Bill.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

There was some discussion right at the beginning about whether the Bill gives the Executive more power, but is the Minister saying that it removes the Executive from the process once the boundary commission has started to undertake its work?

[Chloe Smith]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, because she allows me to move on to the matters in clause 2. They are very important, and she presages what I am going to say.

Clause 2 changes the way in which the recommendations of the boundary commissions are brought into effect. This is the meat of the debate. The purpose of the change is to bring certainty to the boundary review process and give confidence that recommendations of the independent boundary commissions are brought into effect without interference or delay. The boundary commissions develop their proposals through a robust process involving extensive public consultation over a two to three-year period.

The right hon. Member for Warley made a very thoughtful point about checks and balances, and what he called a new set of priesthoods. Aside from the fact that this is not new—this commission has been in existence for many decades, and rightly so—the point that I want to make is this: the public are the check and balance on that body. By way of example, more than half the recommendations made by the Boundary Commission for England in the previous cycle were changed. This morning, examples were exchanged of where change was desirable or not desirable, and where it was proposed or rejected, but the fact is that that level of responsiveness to the public has been shown to be there in what boundary commissions do, so the need for check and balance is met by what the boundary commissions do in their public consultation. That is very important. My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West eloquently touched on that.

It is important that the boundary commissions’ impartial recommendations are brought into effect promptly and with certainty in order to avoid wasting public money and time and to underline the independence of the process. Clause 2 provides for proposed constituencies to be brought into effect automatically. It does that by amending the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986, which provides for the recommendations to be brought into effect through an Order in Council made by Her Majesty following approval of the draft order by both Houses of Parliament.

As happens now, the Secretary of State would be required to give effect to the recommendations of the boundary commissions. Let me say a little about the wording that hon. Members will see in the Bill. Professor Sir John Curtice also noted this in evidence. The wording has been updated over time. In the current legislation, a Minister must submit the draft order

“as soon as may be”.

The new wording used in the clause is:

“as soon as reasonably practicable”.

I do not think that is of great interest to the Committee, but I just want to make the point that that is more up-to-date wording. There is nothing more to be read into that change of words.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

Is there any practical difference between the two forms of worfing, or is it simply using more up-to-date language?

[Chloe Smith]

The hon. Gentleman—my friend, if I may return his compliments of this morning—has it exactly right. I thank him for aiding the Committee’s understanding on that point. I could give examples of where that kind of wording has been updated in other Acts, but I think I do not need to do so if it is as simply put as that.

As happens now, an Order in Council will be used to give effect to the recommendations, but Parliament will not play a role in approving that order, and the Secretary of State will no longer be able to amend the draft Order in Council that implements the boundary commissions’ recommendations in the event that it is rejected by Parliament.

We heard in the witnesses sessions that a number of respected academics support this change. Countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand use a similar approach. It is the right one to use. We heard from Dr Renwick and Professors Hazell, Curtice and McLean, and there are many more who stand on that side of the argument. One of the most eloquent whom we heard in our sessions was Professor Wyn Jones from the Welsh Governance Centre, who said:

“It is probably better that MPs set the terms of the exercise for the Boundary Commission behind a veil of ignorance, if you like, without knowing exactly what the particular outcomes would be for them as individual MPs.”––[Official Report, Parliamentary Constituencies Public Bill Committee, 18 June 2020; c. 57, Q117.]

I considered trying to get a joke on the record about Immanuel Kant and the ways that that surname could be used, but I thought it would be better not to test the boundaries of that at this stage of the Committee.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke went on to say, witnesses were clear that the independence of the process should not be violated—a strong word, as she pointed out. Whether Professor Curtice was also right to call Committee members and Members of the House turkeys, I could not possibly comment, but it is self-evident that MPs have an interest in the outcome. That is simply a fact.

I now turn to amendments 2 to 4 and the opposition to the clause that I assume goes with them. I disagree fundamentally with the amendments and I urge hon. Members to withdraw them. I recognise the passion with which hon. Members put their arguments. The hon. Member for City of Chester spoke about parliamentary approval being a “safety valve”, but those arguments are wrong-headed. Essentially, they say that a process should be regarded as independent if someone agrees with it, and not if they do not, which is a poor way to approach the question. The changes are important to ensure that the recommendations of the independent boundary commissions are brought into effect promptly, without interference from any political quarter, without waste of public time and money, and without delay.

[John Spellar]

Essentially, the Minister is avoiding the central political reality, which is that because of the way the boundary commission went about its work, whether according to its instructions or not, the Conservative Government fundamentally lost control of their Members of Parliament. Ironically, in 1969, the then Labour Government had absolute control of their Members of Parliament, which is why they voted down the recommendation. The reason that those proposals never got before Parliament was that they were so fundamentally unsatisfactory that the Conservative Government lost control of their Back-Bench Members and some of their Ministers.

[Chloe Smith]

I have huge respect for the right hon. Gentleman; it is a credit to the Committee that we have no fewer than two former Secretaries of State on it. I am afraid that in this case, however, he is not correct. That is not the fundamental point. The fundamental point is that we need to put in place updated and equal boundaries. If his party’s heritage goes right back to the Chartists, as he hopes it does, he ought to be with that argument rather than against it. That is what we need to address today.

I want to make a few points about the nature of parliamentary sovereignty as it operates here. The hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood said that the Government of the day set the parameters and, without the safety net of a further approval stage, we could allow for bad reviews—I think I have accurately reflected her words there. Sir John Curtice also reminded us that someone could introduce an overturning Bill if they wanted to; that is a facet of parliamentary sovereignty. Parliament can do that if it wishes. Indeed, the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) tried to do that in the last Parliament, and we spent many hours considering his Bill.

The hon. Members for Lancaster and Fleetwood and for Glasgow East misunderstand, or misrepresent, the nature of Parliament and the Executive in their arguments, so I want to set the record straight. It is Parliament, not the Executive, that sets the parameters through this Bill; that is what we are doing. I may be on my feet right now as a member of the Executive, which I am deeply honoured to be, but it is Parliament in the form of this Committee and later in the whole House, and in the second Chamber, that does that job.

I merely present proposals. It is for Parliament to agree or deny them. It is Parliament that retains that sovereignty at all times, and if Parliament later disagrees with the measure, it can act. There is nothing here to prevent it from doing so, although I would advise against that for the reasons that I have set out. My right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell set that out clearly to the hon. Member for City of Chester, who agreed with him, if I understood the exchange correctly.

It is the constitutional position that the Executive are composed of the largest party in Parliament. That is simply how it is. I appreciate that I am the Minister for the Constitution, so I rather enjoy such arguments, but I hope the Committee will bear with me.

It is the case that Parliament has some crossover with the Executive—of course it does; that is how we are set up. In that resides the confidence of the House and the delivery of the manifesto commitments that have put the Government in their place. That is what we are here to do in the Bill: deliver equal and updated boundaries. That is the right thing to do.

[John Spellar]

I think that we should explore that constitutional issue, because we also need to look at the procedures of the House. Only the Government can instigate legislation, apart from the rather convoluted private Members’ Bills procedures. Indeed, even when such a Bill may be trying to proceed, it can be held up by not putting forward a money resolution. Government, as the Executive—subject, as the hon. Lady rightly says, to the constraint of a vote of no confidence—are able to stifle any of that legislation, should they so wish.

[Chloe Smith]

And in that will reside the views of the majority of Members of the House of Commons, who know what the right argument here is in this case, which is to deliver equal and updated boundaries. I am only sorry that some of the arguments we have heard this morning seem to express almost a lack of confidence in Parliament’s right and ability to set a framework at the outset and then have confidence that it can be delivered by what is a very high-quality public body, judge-led and acknowledged by witnesses to be among the best in the world in how we run our boundary commissions. Perhaps the hon. Member for City of Chester disagrees.

[Christian Matheson]

I am enjoying the Minister’s exposition of the constitution. The proof of the particular pudding she is talking about is in the fact that the last two boundary revisions did not have the support of Parliament. There was no formal mechanism in the way that she describes for hon. Members to express that disapproval and lack of support. It had to be done informally through the usual channels, until the Government realised that if they did push either of those to a vote, they would not have succeeded. There was no formal constitutional mechanism of the type the Minister is trying to outline.

[Chloe Smith]

I will say two things to that. First, we should be focusing on what we now need to do. Secondly, I am pleased to be here proposing a better way forward that demonstrates that we have listened to the opinions expressed by, among others, the Select Committee on Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs. We should therefore deliver what we have been asked to do by people in this country through the means of the Bill.

I will draw my remarks to a close. I need detain the Committee no longer. I think I have dealt with all the points put to me this morning. I recommend that the Committee reject the amendment and support clauses 1 and 2 standing part of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[Chloe Smith]

I shall be as brief as I can. Clause 3 inserts new section 4A into the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986. New section 4A sets out the circumstances in which the recommendations made in a final report of a boundary commission may be modified. The purpose of the clause is to provide for a process by which a boundary commission may submit to the Speaker a statement of modification that the commission considers should be made to the recommendations after they have been submitted to the Speaker.

That will be the only process by which a boundary commission’s recommendations can be modified. Under new section 4A, the only modifications that could be made are those that the commission would request in order to correct an error. That can occur once the reports have been submitted, and where an Order in Council implementing the recommendations has not yet been submitted to Her Majesty in Council.

New section 4A(6) requires that any subsequent Order must give effect to any such modifications when implementing the recommendations. Currently, the commissions may notify the relevant Minister of modifications to recommendations in the report and the reasons for them, and the Minister will then give effect to them. The clause changes that process so that the commissions may submit a statement of modifications to the Speaker, who lays that statement before Parliament. A copy of the modifications sent to the Speaker is also sent to the Secretary of State. That is so that any commission modifications are reflected in the subsequent Order in Council that implements the recommendations, as we have just been discussing.

New section 4A(5) requires the commissions to publish a statement of modifications as soon as reasonably practicable after it has been laid in Parliament by the Speaker. These are sensible, technical changes, which I hope will not trouble the Committee greatly, to reflect the smaller role of the Government in implementing the recommendations and the increased role of the Speaker, as set out in clauses 1 and 2. I therefore urge that the clause stand part of the Bill.

Question put and agreed to. 

Clause 3 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 4

Publicity and consultation

Question proposed, that the Clause stand part of the Bill.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 10, in the schedule, page 7, line 29, at end insert—

‘(1A) In paragraph 2(1) omit the words “and no more than five” in each of the subparagraphs.’

These amendments remove the cap on the number of hearings the Boundary Commissions may hold in each of the nations and in each of the English regions, leaving it for the Boundary Commissions to decide the appropriate number of hearings to hold.’.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

It is a great pleasure to see you in the chair, Sir David—welcome to our deliberations. I certainly do not wish to detain the Committee long, not least because I see that the Minister is chewing a sweetie, and if I sit down quickly, I will put her in a difficult position. Amendment 10, which is supported by the hon. Member for Ceredigion, was tabled with a view to making the lives of the boundary commissioners a little easier by giving them some room for manoeuvre.

As the Committee will recall, during the evidence session on 19 June, Ms Drummond-Murray of the Boundary Commission for Scottish, in response to question 6, spoke of things being “problematic” in the last review because of the restrictions in the number of hearings set out in statute. She made it clear that covering a country the size of Scotland, and doing so with only five hearings, was problematic. The amendment would remove that restriction.

As I was gently discussing this with the hon. Member for West Bromwich West earlier, something that came through from the evidence sessions and over the course of this morning’s sitting was a respect for the boundary commissions and a desire to try to make their lives as easy as possible. The amendment would not alter the fundamental principles of the Bill; it seeks merely to give the commissioners the flexibility to undertake the public engagement that is welcomed—and not just by the hon. Member for West Bromwich West, but by us all in our communities. It seeks to give that flexibility to commissioners to undertake public engagement. I hope that the Government will support my amendment, and I look forward to hearing her thoughts on the proposal.

[Chloe Smith]

I will address both clause 4 and the amendment in one breath. As currently drafted, the rules governing the boundary reviews provide that there should be between two and five public hearings in each of Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the nine English regions. The amendment would make the number of public hearings a matter of judgment for each of the boundary commissions. I am confident that I understand the argument that the hon. Gentleman made, and I am grateful to him for tabling the amendment in the spirit of improving and prioritising public consultation of the existing framework, which is very important.

My reservation about the amendment is that we need to give the boundary commissions clear rules that are in themselves unimpeachable. As we discussed this morning, there is of course great interest in getting the result right so that it can carry trust and command confidence. To that end, a clear and unambiguous framework is helpful; it would allow the boundary commissions to better preserve both their actual and perceived independence.

By mandating a particular number of hearings, we are saying that the commissions are able to deploy their technical expertise in a legally certain environment in which their independence could not be challenged for the wrong reasons—for example, on the grounds of process, or on grounds such as, “You didn’t do enough hearings here,” “You did too many hearings there,” or, “You didn’t give us a fair voice here and gave somebody else an overly large voice over there.”

I would put the argument at that level: instead of removing it entirely, it is right to maintain that set of guidelines for how many hearings there ought to be, because it allows for there to be a greater degree of public trust around the fairness of the process of the hearings. I hope that argument is enough to engage the interest of the hon. Member for Glasgow East, and to persuade him and the hon. Member for Ceredigion not to press the amendment.

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)]

Before the Minister moves on to clause 4, I have a question about amendment 10. Is it fair to say that the Government might be willing to consider extending or increasing the role and number of hearings—setting a higher limit, as opposed to lifting it completely?

[Chloe Smith]

I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman makes. As the witness from the Boundary Commission for Scotland said, there ought to be more hearings. That is a fair argument—perhaps a fairer argument than the one I was seeking to address just now. I note that it is not the one on the amendment paper, so it is perhaps academic for the purposes of the immediate discussion. However, I understand and note the hon. Gentleman’s point. I will discuss the full extent of what we are doing with the public hearings, which might address his point.

We are changing the timing of the public hearings so that they can be better targeted by the boundary commissions. That goes directly to the point that Ms Drummond-May made. With the number of hearings that she had, she had to decide where to hold them in what is, as we all know, a large geographical area that is sparsely populated. Being able to be more flexible about when the hearings take place addresses that point, because after having observed the first round of feedback coming from the first round of consultation, the boundary commissions will be able to say, “Right, we see where that feedback is coming from. We’re going to use the change in timing for the hearings, which will now be in the second round, to meet that feedback where it is coming from.” In effect, it will save somebody such as Ms Drummond-Murray the difficulty of deciding blindly whether to put their hearings in Hawick or Inverness.

This change addresses that point: without necessarily needing to add another hearing, it allows for them to be better targeted. I will explain a little how the clause does that. It makes a change by putting the public hearings later in the consultation process. As I say, the clause allows public hearings to be better targeted to areas where it is clear that there might be the greatest debate over possible different options. From our discussions with the boundary commissions—indeed, the Boundary Commission of Scotland told us this in Committee—we know that it is only once a review gets going that boundary commission staff are able to judge where the feeling is greatest about particular constituencies and proposals. That is where we would want to target the use of public hearings to have the greatest impact on, and responsiveness to, the public, which is a principle that we all agree on.

The trouble with the current legislation is that the public hearings take place close to the start, during the first 12-week consultation process. Bearing in mind that the hearings are events of some scale and inevitably require large venues, which can be hard to find and need to be booked ahead, this could be a particular concern in areas where there is a sparse population. Again, there is a limited number of such venues to choose from. Under the current law, the boundary commissions can therefore find themselves picking locations and having to secure the venues before the review has even begun, to ensure that they can conduct those events. In effect, they are guessing about where the interest is going to come.

The change being made by the clause addresses that issue by allowing the boundary commissions to be better able to consider the responses received, assess where the feeling is greatest, decide where the hearings should be held, and then plan and deliver those hearings for the secondary consultation period. Therefore, to make it possible to implement this change, we are adding time to the secondary consultation period. The clause has the effect of moving four weeks of consultation time from the initial consultation period to the secondary consultation period, to allow that time for public hearings.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his advance warning that that is what he will do. It will be helpful as far as the administration of the Bill is concerned.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 4 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 5

Number of parliamentary constituencies

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[Chloe Smith]

Is it not a pleasure that we can do our work without the bells being quite so loud as they were earlier? I will keep my remarks on clause 5 extremely short because the clause is very simple. It amends the existing legislation to ensure that we continue to have 650 parliamentary constituencies, as we do now. Currently the 1986 Act, as amended by the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, sets the number of constituencies at 600.

The reduction has yet to happen in practice. As the recommendations of the commission’s review is based on 600, it had yet to be implemented by the order that would have been laid under previous legislation, which we have discussed mightily already this morning. This is a change of policy from that adopted under the coalition Government. There is nothing to hide. The change takes into account views that have been expressed. Dare I say it demonstrates listening?

I mentioned that the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee has looked into the matter, and we are grateful for their consideration. On balance, we believe that the move to 600 constituencies, brought into law in 2011 by the coalition Government, is no longer the appropriate move to make because circumstances have changed in two areas. First, in the past decade the UK population has grown by 5% between 2011 and 2019. It is now estimated to be 66.4 million. And—the one hon. Members have all been waiting for—we have left the European Union. Is that not the core argument of the day? It is relevant to the Bill because we have regained significant areas of law making, returned to this Parliament and the other legislatures of the UK. That means that to ensure effective representation for a growing population, it is sensible to maintain 650 constituencies. I note that there was broad consensus on that on Second Reading, so I do not think that any of the chucklings that we have heard from sedentary positions are based on strong arguments. The direction of the argument is in favour of maintaining 650.

[Mrs Miller]

I absolutely understand and accept the Minister’s argument, although other democratic institutions regularly review the number of their elected representatives. My local authority, Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council, has just implemented new boundaries to reduce the number of councillors from 60 to 54, not only to save the council tax payer money, but to recognise that things change. The Government are right to keep such questions under review.

[Chloe Smith]

I am grateful for that example. My right hon. Friend is correct, particularly about the principle that ought to underpin what we do here. After all, we are looking at public money, in terms of what we might call the cost of politics—the number of salaries multiplied by 600 or 650—and how we ask the boundary commissions to do their work. Those things are underpinned by public money and public time, so we should consider them in Committee . There is nothing more extensive to say about clause 5, so I commend it to the Committee.

[Cat Smith]

The Opposition welcome clause 5. We have argued to keep the number of MPs at 650. I also welcome the Minister’s explanation of why the Government have U-turned and returned to the idea of having 650 Members of Parliament.

The Minister made the argument that the UK population has grown by 5% since 2011. I ask her, and she is welcome to intervene, whether that is an indication that we should expect the 650 figure to increase in subsequent reviews if the UK population were to increase in that time.

I also ask why the number is fixed. We heard in our evidence sessions that one of the difficulties that commissioners have in drawing seats is that they must finally reach the 650 figure. Is there not a strong case for having a target number of MPs that the commissioners should reach within a percentage range? Overall, the Opposition welcome the clause and the decision to maintain 650 MPs.

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[Clive Efford]

The hon. Member for Glasgow East has provoked an interesting debate about how we go about this process. I did not understand some of Mr Bellringer’s arguments. We all know our constituencies extremely well, and we know the level of detail that electoral registration officers produce, road by road and building by building. On a fixed date, when we enter into the parliamentary boundary review, the number of people registered for a particular street is known. I do not understand why the boundary commission, in communication with the local registration officer, could not, where it needed to, investigate that level of detail, so I did not understand those answers.

As the Bill progresses, perhaps some thought can be given to expanding the areas of information that the boundary commission uses to draw up the parliamentary boundaries. We had an interesting discussion in the evidence sessions about the use of polling districts and what their legal basis was. Peter Stanyon from the local government boundary commission explained that it was often dictated by the location of a suitable venue for a polling station, the accessibility for people with disabilities, and the convenience, to enable communities to vote. Those are important factors, and they seem to be things that lead to a community being provided with a suitable location, which is desirable. Those might be suitable building blocks.

However, Mr Stanyon also said that, post a parliamentary boundary review, local government has to have a review if there are changes within its area to a parliamentary boundary. That use of technology could therefore allow the boundary commission to go down to sub-street level in the knowledge that, at some later date, the polling district will be changed to meet the new boundary that the commission has drawn up.

The commission does not need to be restricted to the distinct polling district area. It can now move forward in the knowledge that, if it can avoid creating a parliamentary boundary that goes across the jurisdiction of a local authority area, which brings in all sorts of difficulties, it has the flexibility to create an additional polling district or to add an additional community from within that local government area, in order to avoid all the problems that come with that cross-border situation. The local government boundary commission has made it quite clear that it would move the boundaries to suit that new parliamentary boundary if it were created.

I think that the hon. Member for Glasgow East is on to something, and that should be explored as the Bill progresses. We are creating a rigid set of criteria where some flexibility could avoid lots of difficulties that will be created by having small sections of communities in different local authority areas represented by an MP who primarily supports and represents a different community. We should explore that further.

[Chloe Smith]

May I, Sir David, on a question of order, ask whether you would like me to speak to amendments 8 and 9, new clause 9, and clause 6 stand part at this stage?

[The Chair]

No, please just speak to the amendment.

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[Chloe Smith]

And new clause 9, as you said at the outset. I will be very happy to do so. Thank you, Sir David, for that clarification, which was very helpful. I thank the hon. Members who tabled the amendments, and who have made very considered comments on them. I agree with colleagues that we have come to one of the interesting seams of detail that run through what we have to do in the Bill.

The amendments make specific and additional provision for the boundary commissions to take into account the boundaries of polling districts within their consideration of new constituencies where useable data is available. It might help the Committee if I make it clear in what way the amendment is additional to the provisions in the Bill. This is what Professor Iain McLean ended up looking for in his papers during our evidence session.

As colleagues will know, the 1986 Act is where this framework of rules is found, and within that framework of what are called “rules” are what are called the “factors” that are to be taken into account. That is where some of the debate is taking place; there will be others during the course of the Committee. The provision is additional because it would add to those factors, whereas the Bill does not. The Bill proposes to leave those factors as they are.

[Mrs Miller]

My hon. Friend started to talk about the factors within the 1986 Act. I hope she might have noticed that I tabled an amendment to ask the Government whether they should be rethinking their approach to those factors, particularly their approach to Ynys Môn being a standalone constituency, to join the other four standalone constituencies, which include two very near neighbouring constituencies in my neck of the woods—the two Isle of Wight seats.

[Chloe Smith]

I thank my right hon. Friend for presaging something that it is very important that we shall come on to. I do not wish to dance on the head of a pin, as it were. She is absolutely right that those points are made in the rules, and the factors are a subset of the rules that govern a microscopic element of the conduct.

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[The Chair]

I can clarify that very easily. I am not being rude, but, if hon. Members listen carefully, at the start of the proceedings I said, “We now come to amendment 8 to clause 6, with which it will be convenient to discuss amendment 9 and new clause 9,” and I then called Mr Linden. What I said at the start was correct; it is just finessing the process. Hon. Members rightly get confused about when they can move amendments and when they can withdraw them.

I say again to the Committee that next Tuesday, we will ensure that things run more smoothly. I have just been advised that it is worth stating the simple principle that the selection list is available in the room and shows the order of debate. As a Member of Parliament, I understand that, although that is available, it is a bit like finding out that we were physically looking at the wrong Bill in our evidence session. We are all human beings and we can all make mistakes.

[Chloe Smith]

On a point of order, Sir David. I think I might be able to assist the Committee on how we have come to this point of discussion. When I heard you say what you have just repeated, I made a note to myself that circled the group containing amendments 8 and 9 and new clause 9, which appears in a different group on the selection list that you have just referred to. I for one have been working in an L shape, which might have caused confusion among colleagues, because there are four different groupings of which we suddenly seem to be doing two at once.

[The Chair]

I am now much better in the picture than I was before. To answer Mr Shelbrooke’s question, once we have dealt with the group that I announced at the start of the proceedings, we will go on to Mr Linden and deal with amendment 6 to clause 6, with which it will be convenient to discuss amendment 7.

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[Chloe Smith]

I am happy to do so, Sir David. I thank the hon. Lady for raising this interesting issue, which touches on some of the broader themes that were raised in the witness session, which we may not necessarily come to in the rest of our consideration.

As the hon. Lady explained, this proposal would insert a new clause into rule 5(1) of schedule 2 to the 1986 Act—the factors set I mentioned earlier—to add an additional factor that the commissions may take into consideration. As I understand it, she thinks there ought to be

“data from the Department for Work and Pensions about non-registered voters”

who are eligible to vote, should they choose to register.

We have already discussed, and no doubt will again, the fact that boundary reviews are conducted on the basis of the electorate. That is a major principle. The electorate are defined at paragraph 9(2) of schedule 2 to the 1986 Act as being

“the total number of persons whose names appear on the relevant version of a register of parliamentary electors.”

The register of electors is used, and has always been used, because it is the most up-to-date, verified and accurate source of information we have on those who are eligible to vote. Hon. Members who enjoyed the witness sessions will recall that we had some discussion about what it means to talk in terms of completeness and accuracy. These are the signal terms we use when we talk about the electoral register.

This proposal goes beyond that because it talks about those who are not registered. I understand the desire to catch and reflect those who are eligible to vote but who, for whatever reason, have not registered to do so. However, I have to tell the Committee that there are some significant practical considerations that argue against this proposal, because it does not take them into account.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am listening carefully to the debate. Is one of the important points that we represent everybody, as the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood said? We are using a set of data taken from a set point in time and collected in a set way, but we do not just represent the people on the electoral register. We represent everybody who is in our community, including everybody under the age of 18, who are not on the electoral register. Whether there are more people or not, we are not disenfranchising them from the service they may receive from a Member of Parliament. That is an important distinction.

[Chloe Smith]

Yes, I think that is right; I agree with my right hon. Friend’s characterisation. Certainly, I aspire to that in my work, and I know that will be true across the Committee. The fact of the matter is that when constructing a review, and the framework that sits around it, we need to make a definition somewhere. If we believe in equal constituencies, we have to believe in an ability to find a number to define equality, and that has always been taken to be those who are registered as voters.

[Ben Lake]

I appreciate the point that the Minister makes about the practicalities of us getting things right and where we draw the line, but given that we know that in certain areas—I know about some wards in my constituency—only 35% of the eligible electorate are actually registered, that is the figure that would be taken into consideration when favouring boundaries. I echo the point made by the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell—we have to represent everybody. Those individuals who have not registered to vote will perhaps come to us for help and assistance. That is a point we need to explore further.

[Chloe Smith]

May I put on the record how much I appreciated the illustration the hon. Gentleman made to the Committee earlier about those who have second homes in his constituency? He gave a powerful illustration of the problem at hand for those who have their second homes in his constituency, perhaps in a slightly different direction in income terms from the thinking in this proposal.

Let me come to what is being asked in this proposed measure. My principal, practical point, which I make to the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood, is that the DWP does not actually have such a dataset. It does not have a dataset that specifically identifies eligible electors who are not registered to vote. In keeping with its purpose and powers, the Department holds data on those who pay tax or are in receipt of a benefit. That will certainly include individuals who are eligible to vote but not registered, and perhaps even the majority of such people—who knows?

My point is that we do not know that. However, those people would not be identifiable as such, because that is not the purpose of the DWP data. To create such a dataset, the Department would need to match its records with the electoral register, eliminate registered electors and generate a fresh, accurate list of those from its first dataset who are not registered but who are eligible to be. That would require a new data-matching process and a new power to share data for that purpose and place a new duty on the DWP. I think that the Committee will understand that I am not in a position today to accept such a new clause and argue that the DWP should proceed in that way. That is not within the scope of the Bill.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I assume that I am right, although I stand to be corrected, in saying that not all voters who are registered can vote in a general election. There are voters who can vote in a local but not a general election. That is another factor that would have to be taken into account.

[Chloe Smith]

Here we go on the discussion of the franchise, which is a very large discussion, and I think, Sir David, you would rightly suggest we stay off it and remain within the matter in hand; but my right hon. Friend makes the point well that there are a number of different franchises in operation in this country, and there are a number of arguments for other groups to be added to the franchise. There are common arguments that those under 18, or European Union electors, should be added, but they are not in the scope of the Bill before the Committee, and in my opinion that is right. We have the correct data set, identified under the 1986 Act, as amended, and upheld in the Bill .

I hope that hon. Members will agree that the requirement that the new clause would put on the Department for Work and Pensions would not be technically correct or proportionate to its aim. I might add—although it is perhaps unwise as it might reopen the debate that we had about how the boundary commissions use data—that there is a further step that needs to be thought through, about how any such data could be used by the commissions. To use an example that I know hon. Members will appreciate, DWP records are not broken down by electoral ward—the very thing that we just spent some time discussing as the primary building block for parliamentary constituencies. A quite complex matching process would be required. That would take some time and of course doing it would have a price tag attached.

That is not the principal subject that the Committee is considering. I welcome the interest of the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood in how to include all people in our democratic process—the process represented in the Bill. She is coming from an admirable, principled place in tabling the new clause, and I have great sympathy with it, because I, like her, want as many people as possible to be registered to vote and take part, and to be counted within the purview of the Bill. However, I do not think that the new clause is a correct or proportionate way to achieve the goal.

[David Linden]

I think that some time has elapsed, and the conversation has moved on somewhat, since I spoke to amendments 8 and 9. I referred to myself as a cheeky chappie, and the Minister referred to me as an agent provocateur, and of course the right hon. Member for Basingstoke is right: I do not have any skin in the game in this debate, because the situation is different north of the border. However, I was genuinely interested in what came up in the course of the evidence sittings. The point brought out a degree of interest in the Committee, and I tabled amendments 8 and 9 on that basis. I think most Members will have guessed by now that they are probing amendments. I am relatively satisfied that they fulfilled the objective of stimulating debate and thought in the Government, and on that basis I thank the Committee for the discussion, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

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[Ben Lake]

I do not wish to detain the Committee for long. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East explained the rationale behind the amendments and how we want to probe for a bit of debate. This gives me an opportunity to make history, potentially, because I will urge caution about accepting the amendment that I support, in the light of written evidence from Councillor Dick Cole of Cornwall Council, submitted to the Committee after the oral evidence sessions concluded. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s thoughts on his letter, and particularly on the rights of Cornwall as a historic nation. Sir David, you were kind to allow me to tread on unfamiliar territory during the evidence sessions in asking about feelings about a cross-Tamar constituency. Having studied the matter further, I understand that people in Cornwall feel strongly about it, and rightly so.

The Committee’s attention should be drawn in particular to a decision made by the UK Government in 2014, where they recognised the Cornish people through the framework convention for the protection of national minorities. One part of the convention seeks to protect the political integrity of territories associated with groups such as the Cornish people. When the Minister sums up, could she say whether anything can be done as part of the Bill to address such concerns? I note there are a few calls for a boundary commission for Cornwall to be set up. I would be interested in hearing what is possible, because Councillor Cole has raised valid concerns that we should at least look at.

[Chloe Smith]

I am sorry to add to possible confusion, but before the hon. Member sits down, is he referring to amendments 6 and 7 or to amendment 1?

[Ben Lake]

That is a good question. I am talking about amendments 6 and 7 in terms of the ability not to hold too tightly to local government boundaries. Of course, at the moment Cornwall Council is a local government boundary, and the amendments could allow for the Boundary Commission for England to introduce a cross-Tamar constituency, if it deemed that necessary.

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[Chris Clarkson]

I can tell the hon. Gentleman that it is foremost in my mind, which is why I was very glad to have the debate that was sparked by the hon. Member for Glasgow East. We need to be less prescriptive about the units that we use to build things, but there is a common-sense approach that does not involve taking ridiculous leaps by keeping whole units together, just because they have arbitrarily been drawn one way by the Local Government Boundary Commission.

[Chloe Smith]

We have now tapped into one of the very rich seams of community interest and detail in and around the Bill. I will make some general comments about what clause 6 does in order to accommodate explanation of what the amendment might do. I hope that will help the Committee.

I will begin by referring back to the fact that, in coming up with their proposals, the boundary commissions have a set of factors to which they are allowed to refer. I will read out the wording, which states that commissions

“may take into account, if and to such extent as they think fit”.

It is very clear in the legislation that that is a “may” power —it may be used and is there if it is needed—rather than being a “must”. The relevant factors include geographical features such as rivers or mountains, community ties, existing parliamentary constituencies and local government boundaries. The Bill does not change that.

Parliamentary Constituencies bill (Third sitting)

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Dr Renwick, would you introduce yourself, please?

Dr Renwick: I am Dr Alan Renwick. I am the deputy director of the constitution unit at University College London and I lead our work on elections and referendums.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

Q 135 Professor Hazell and Dr Renwick, thank you very much for joining us. You very kindly supplied some written evidence, and I am sure we have all had a chance to look at your recent blogposts—thank you for those. Could you take us through what you see as the independence of the UK boundary review process, which in your written evidence you describe as

“among the best in the world”?

Dr Renwick: Perhaps I can kick off. Thank you, Minister, for that question, and thank you to the Committee for inviting us this morning.

As you say, the boundary commissions in the UK are unusual in international comparison in the degree to which they uphold the principle of independence. They are appointed in a process that, on the whole, upholds that principle. As we said in our submission, we have some concerns that the safeguards should be enhanced, but the process that the commissions follow is independent of Government and of Parliament, as it should be. The principle that should be followed is that those who have a direct interest in the outcome of the review process should not be able to determine the outcome of that process, so it is proper that Parliament sets the overall rules but that the process is then conducted by the independent boundary commissions. Of course, it is also proper that MPs should be able to make submissions to the boundary commissions, as they do, but that the final decisions ought to be made by the commissions.

At present, the reviews are conducted by the boundary commissions, but it is then up to Parliament to decide whether to implement those reviews. It seems to us that that is simply a very clear breach of the principle of independence. There have been three cases now—in 1969, 2013 and 2018—when the review was blocked in one way or another. That is not a desirable outcome. Whether or not partisan or personal interests were involved in those decisions, at the very least the perception is created that they could have been. That is undesirable, and we now have boundaries that at least in England are based on electoral registers from 2000—clearly, they are very out of date.

We have a strong view that it is correct to have automatic implementation of reviews, which already works very well and without any problem in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. It ought to be introduced in the UK as well, alongside better safeguards to ensure that the current independence of the boundary commissions from Government cannot be taken away by Government in the future.

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[The Chair]

That is a splendid idea. Thank you for that suggestion. It will be done sooner rather than later.

I am delighted that Chris Williams is here in person. He is the head of elections and field operations for the Green party. We have until 10.20 am for this session, not as was indicated on the Order Paper. Mr Williams, please briefly introduce yourself.

Chris Williams: I am Chris Williams. I work for the Green party of England and Wales as head of elections and field operations.

[Chloe Smith]

Q Mr Williams, thank you for joining us this morning. I thank all the political parties that have given some technical engagement with the Bill in its development. Please set out what you think of the Bill and any particular characteristics you would point to.

Chris Williams: I can run through our thoughts briefly. Thank you for the involvement we have been invited to have with yourself and civil servants.

We are supportive of the change to 650 MPs. We are also pleased that the electoral register data to be used has moved back to March 2020. A minor improvement would have been to move it to December 2019, but that is still a good move. Changing the future reviews to every eight years is positive.

I have some concerns around how the constituencies will end up looking in terms of representation of the communities that we want to see well represented as part of the system we operate within. The 5% tolerance limit is potentially challenging. We have some concerns around how all this will be perceived in Wales. The last speakers spoke about automaticity. I have commented on perception and the perception that any involvement from the Government could be seen as problematic without the ability for Back Benchers to stop any recommendations once they come back from the commissions.

Finally, if I have understood things correctly, in future reviews, the Bill says the deadline in any year for the commissions to report back to the Government or the Speaker is 1 October. In future, there would not be very long before a general election—just seven months. That does not give a great deal of time for reselection and candidate selection to take place and for smaller parties and independents to get their act together, so to speak. I think moving the date forward to something more like July before a general election would provide a bit of protection there.

[Cat Smith]

Q Mr Williams, thank you for coming to give evidence before the Committee. To push you slightly further on something you have already alluded to, what are your views on the very tight tolerance limit of 5% in the legislation that we will be moving into scrutiny of on Thursday? How does it relate to those community links, and what issues do you think that very tight tolerance will throw up when it comes to the realities for communities?

Chris Williams: That is a good question. I guess I should say—I appreciate it is beyond the scope of this Bill—that the Green party does not support the first-past-the-post system, but one of the benefits of it is the very strong link between Members of Parliament and the communities they represent. If members of a community perceive that their constituency is of a very bizarre make-up, or that they have been stuck together for some convenience, that breaks down that benefit that currently exists with MPs.

Certainly from my experience last time around, when we were seeking 600 constituencies with a 5% tolerance limit, some very bizarre constituencies were put together. I looked at the west midlands make-up in some detail, and some of the constituencies were incredibly bizarre, with an awful lot of complaints. One was effectively a sausage-shaped constituency that was very, very long—I think it was the Birmingham Selly Oak and Halesowen constituency. The only thing that the boundary commission, bless them, could find to operate within the tolerance limit that had a community tie was a canal, but of course if you take that to its extremity, you will end up connecting some places that are very far away from each other. Giving the Commission the flexibility to have a 7.5% variance in extreme circumstances, where it is necessary, would help avoid some of those problems. I can see some real problems in rural areas as well, where I think a greater tolerance would really help.

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[The Chair]

Sir John, your voice is very familiar to us all. Again, at least as Chair, I feel cheated that we cannot see you, but never mind. Just so colleagues realise, you do not have to take the time, but we have until 11.25 am if you so wish.

[Chloe Smith]

Q Thank you very much indeed, Sir David. Could we have anything better than more time with Professor Maclean and Professor Sir John? This really is a treat—thank you both very much for joining us. Given that we have a little more time, I would like to start with a question to each of you, although I am sure your paths may cross over as the session goes on.

Professor McLean, you began in your introduction by referring to the rules having been put right in the earlier Bill and said that you would not change them again. Could you go into a little more detail on that? I am taking you to mean the rules that we find in schedule 2 to the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986, which, as you will know, the Bill predominantly leaves unchanged. We—perhaps like you—think that they flexible enough to allow the commissions to do their work, but perhaps you could elaborate on that. If I may, I would then like to ask Sir John a question once Iain has had a chance to speak.

Professor McLean: The rules, as originally drafted in 1986, were mutually contradictory. Rule 1 said that you should not expand the size of the House of Commons, and there was an equality rule, the unintended effect of which, as it was then written, was to tend to increase the size of the House of Commons after each review, for mathematical reasons that I hope I do not have to go into now, although I can.

They are now expired because two things in the 2011 Act fixed that problem. It gave total priority to a fixed number of seats in the House of Commons, and because that overrules everything else in schedule 2 to the 1986 Act, the creeping enlargement of the House of Commons, which some people thought a problem, is no longer a problem. Secondly, within the other rules, the 2011 Act amends the 1986 Act by giving equality of constituency size priority over the other criteria, including local ties and respect for local government boundaries. Once that priority has been set—I am speaking mathematically, not politically—the contradictions in schedule 2 as it originally operated have disappeared.

I have looked at—with some difficulty during lockdown—the text of the Bill and I have it and the explanatory notes in front of me, via a rather dodgy connection to my iPhone. I have looked rather nerdily at the proposed amendments to the vital schedule 2 to the 1986 Act. From my reading—though I am not a lawyer—I would say that they do not upset the changes that were made in 2011 and, therefore, they should be left as they are. I think that will do at the technical level, although the Committee may have further questions.

[Chloe Smith]

Q Thank you very much indeed, Professor McLean. I do not mean to take the role of the Clerk, but I think that I can say that, if it helps, you can take a copy of the Bill and the explanatory notes from the table just behind Mr Efford.

Thank you for that helpful explanation. To clarify it further, do you think that rule 5(1), the list of factors, does a good enough job of providing flexibility to the boundary commissions, given its place in the hierarchy of rules that you have just gone through?

Professor McLean: I may need a moment, Minister; I have just collected paper copies of the documents. Would it be in order to ask you to park that question and ask John in the meantime?

[Chloe Smith]

Of course. I am still driving at schedule 2 to the 1986 Act, which admittedly you do not have there in your papers.

Professor McLean: I have the Bill here; the amendments to schedule 2 to the 1986 Act are at the back, in the schedule to the Bill.

[The Chair]

Shall we go over to Sir John to give you time to absorb it all?

Professor McLean: Okay. I will be ready to answer your question, Minister, when you have asked the next one to Sir John.

[Chloe Smith]

Q Thank you very much indeed.

Sir John, thank you very much for joining us. I wonder whether you might be able to help us with our understanding of the data used for boundary reviews. They are based on electoral registration data; could you give us your views on the adequacy of that?

Professor Sir John Curtice: The short answer is that over the long run, from the various exercises—most recently by the Electoral Commission, and before the commission was created, by the Office for National Statistics—that have looked at the accuracy and completeness of the electoral register, we know that there are inadequacies in the register that have increased over time. Those inaccuracies are also related to certain circumstances such as having recently moved house, living in private accommodation or being unemployed. The Electoral Commission’s most recent report, for the December 2018 registers, said that they were 85% complete, meaning that only 85% of those people who should be on the register are on it, and 89% accurate, meaning that about 11% of entries relate to people who should not be on the register at the place that they are at.

The Bill makes no difference at all for all practical purposes to the rules for redistribution that were passed in the 2011 Act, but that Act places a premium on allocating constituencies with respect to electorates. We know that those electorates are less than perfect; I guess that if we are really now concerned about the mathematical accuracy of boundaries, what we should probably be worrying about is not the rules for redistribution, but ensuring that those rules are implemented more effectively by improving the accuracy of the electoral register. But that is a long-running problem, and I am not trying to argue that it will be easy to resolve.

[Chloe Smith]

Q Indeed; there is always discussion to be had about how we can continue to improve the completeness and accuracy of the registers. Not that I would get into an argument with you about trends over time, but my understanding was that those are rising rather than declining—but as you say, that is a different discussion.

Looking at electoral registration data with its ins and outs, as you have just outlined, is it the right kind of data to base boundaries on—as opposed to census data, for example, or other kinds that you could conceive of being collected?

Professor Sir John Curtice: The problem with census data, obviously, is that it is now nearly 10 years out of date. You might want to argue that the ONS produces a mid-year population estimate over time, but it does not necessarily have the detail required to set up boundaries.

The second problem is that there is a disjuncture between residency and citizenship. If you went in the same direction as the Scottish Government by giving anybody who is permanently resident in the United Kingdom the right to vote, you might want to consider population as a reasonable proxy for that. However, as long as we are going to limit the franchise to British, Irish and Commonwealth citizens, given that this country has a substantial resident non-citizen population, you are probably not going to want to go down the route of using population. That, again, is tied up with the issue of the franchise.

[Chloe Smith]

Q Understood. Thank you for those opening remarks; that is helpful. Maybe Iain has had a chance to think about the other question I left hanging with him.

Professor McLean: Thank you Minister, and thank you Chair, for your forbearance. It is quite a jigsaw puzzle, but on page seven of the Bill are what you call “Minor and consequential amendments”. That is a mistaken heading; one of them is neither minor nor consequential. I will not comment on the addition of the county of Blackpool in paragraph 4 of the schedule; the only material amendment here is in paragraph 4(2): “for ‘596’ substitute ‘646’.” As Members know, that is one of the consequences of keeping the House of Commons’ size at 650. The number 646 appears in the paragraph because of the four reserved constituencies, which are islands exempted from the equality criterion. That is all good. What is not in here are the changes to the schedule of the 1986 Act introduced by the 2011 Act. I was in a position to check that yesterday.

[The Chair]

Order. I am slightly embarrassed, but I have to share with the Committee that the Bill available in the room is the wrong Bill. Quite how that has happened, I do not know. The Clerks will make sure that the right Bill is available for the next sitting. I was completely unaware of that, and unfortunately there is nothing I can do about it, I am afraid. It is a pity. Professor McLean, one of the Committee members will get the right Bill; it is on its way, and everyone will have the copies.

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[The Chair]

My view is that it does not really affect that materially, but I felt that I should place on record the fact that the Bill that we had was not the right one.

[Chloe Smith]

Further to that point of order, Sir David. The Bill we should be talking about is the Parliamentary Constituencies Bill. The incorrect one is the Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill, a private Member’s Bill put forward by none other than my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone).

[The Chair]

This is surreal. I thank the Minister for enlightening the Committee. It was an innocent mistake. The hon. Member for the City of Chester has kindly now made sure that we all have the correct Bill. Professor McLean, are you now in a position to respond?

Professor McLean: It turns out that I always was; my document is the correct Bill. To reiterate, for those who are looking at the correct one, paragraph 4 of the schedule to the Bill, “Minor and Consequential Amendments”, addresses schedule 2 to the 1986 Act. That is the one that does all the work. The only material change that is introduced is one of the consequences of keeping the size of the House at 650 Members; after subtracting the four protected constituencies, that is 646. This ensures that the House’s size continues to be fixed absolutely. That removes one of the sources of the incoherence of the schedule as originally drafted.

The other source of the incoherence was that the electoral equality criterion, until the 2011 Act, had no priority over the local ties and local government boundaries criteria. Amendments to the 2011 Act, which is not further changed and is therefore not in front of you here, gave the equality criterion priority over the local ties and local government boundaries criteria. That remains unchanged by the Bill. Ministers and parliamentary drafters have not, therefore, by any mistake reintroduced any of the inconsistencies in the original 1986 Bill. I hope that that is sufficiently clear to Members, but I can expand further if people wish.

Parliamentary Constituencies bill (Fourth sitting)

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

We will now hear from Peter Stanyon, chief executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators, and we have until 2.30 pm for this session. Mr Stanyon, would you briefly introduce yourself to the Committee, please?

Peter Stanyon: Certainly. I am chief executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators, or AEA, and we are the professional body that represents those who deliver the electoral process across the United Kingdom. It includes some returning officers and some registration officers, but primarily it includes those who many of you will have come across, who actually deliver the nuts and bolts of the electoral process in the field. We are a body that represents their interests, such as liaison, training and the like, across the board.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

Q182 Peter, thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. It is excellent for the Committee to have the benefit of your expertise. I wonder if I might start with two questions. The first is very general. Could you talk us through what the work of a boundary review, and after a boundary review, looks like from your perspective? To take an example, the next boundary review will finish by July 2023. Could you talk us through what will then have to happen to implement those boundaries?

Peter Stanyon: Certainly, Minister, and thank you. The key point is that these are the building blocks of the democratic system. The hard work is not necessarily directly to do with the elections process, but is more to do with the production of the electoral register. In terms of how the process works for administrators, the actual involvement in whether the proposals are right, wrong or whatever is not quite at the same level as that for local government boundary reviews. It is more about providing support to elected representatives and others regarding statistics and the like, to make sure that all the relevant needs are met so that the boundary commissions can come forward with their proposals, and councils and the like can make representations through the various processes available to them.

When presented with the final outcomes, the task starts. The key point is to revise the electoral register, so a lot of work goes on to ensure that the building blocks are correct. That does not just mean the parliamentary constituency boundaries—how they interrelate with local government ward boundaries, council divisions, parishes and the like—but, following on immediately from the constituency boundary changes, there is a need to look at all the polling districts, polling places and polling stations for the elections themselves. A lot of technical work goes on behind the scenes to make sure that on polling day, the elector arrives at their polling station in the correct area, with accessible venues and things like that.

One of the huge challenges—this goes back to the outcome of the previous review, which obviously is being effectively terminated—is the fact that each individual registration officer works in the individual building block of their local authority, but parliamentary constituencies do not follow those boundaries. One of the dangers of the previous review was that an awful lot of cross-boundary work needed to take place, which means liaising with neighbouring local authorities. That sounds reasonably straightforward, and in most instances it is, but it often means that different software systems are used for the electoral register and there are different working practices.

Although we all work according to the same legislative background, there are different ways of interpreting that locally. That means trying to ensure consistency across the piece, with the electors and candidates at elections receiving the right level of service and being able to be involved. Where there is more cross-boundary work, more elements of risk come in. Effectively, when it is under their self-control, it is a lot easier for local authorities to deal with those sorts of things. It is really a communication beast between individual registration and returning officers once the actual boundaries are agreed.

[Chloe Smith]

Q Thank you very much, Peter. To introduce a term that we will come on to in Committee, we often talk about the Gould principle, meaning six months of preparation time for administrators and others at the working level before an election takes place. Will you explain the value of that for administrators, and why six months is a helpful amount of time for you?

Peter Stanyon: Absolutely. That came from Sir Ron Gould, who did an investigation into—I think, from memory—the Scottish independence referendum, where there had been some very late changes to legislation. Anything can be planned for. With elections, as you all know, the period ahead of the polls becomes very pressurised. A longer lead-in to any significant change—a constituency boundary change would be significant—is welcome, and six months is certainly the minimum that an election administrator would want.

In the case of these boundaries, the fundamental point to bear in mind is that the electoral registers will need to be reshaped and put into their new building blocks. Whatever the case, we have 1 December as the date the revised versions of registers are published. That is often the logical date at which we would want parliamentary constituencies to be reflected in the electoral roll, simply because it means a full change in the register, which helps political parties and candidates. It can be changed later on but, again, that makes it more complicated. The sooner it is said—the Gould principle is six months—makes it far easier for that communication and working across boundaries with different administrators. De-risking the process is far easier if we have that lead-in time.

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

Q If this boundary review were to throw up some significant boundary changes—which would not be unexpected, given that, certainly in England, the data from the last review was from 2000—and given the principle of a bare minimum of six months between any major change and elections, what period would be the most appropriate or comfortable for electoral administrators to go from completion of a boundary review to an election based on that set of boundaries?

Peter Stanyon: If I were to ask for tomorrow, that would be helpful, but I am not sure that is going to happen. In terms of the lead-in periods, we welcome the proposed spring timescale for boundary commissions to submit their reports to the Speaker. An ideal timescale would be elections taking place in May 2023, with preparations for an electoral registration cavass kicking on immediately after those May elections finish. We would then certainly look to have something by early summer at the very latest, so that, over that autumn period, as the canvass takes place, the amendments can be introduced to registers in the time for the revisions to be published on or by 1 December 2023.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

I shall stop reading out the script as it appears in front of me.

[Chloe Smith]

Q Andrew, thank you for joining for joining us. One element of the Bill in front of us seeks to help parliamentary constituency boundaries and local government boundaries to come together as best they can. Obviously, that task will never be entirely complete, but we have endeavoured to accommodate the most up-to-date boundaries from the local government side. We have used the word “prospective”. Please talk the Committee through what that means for your side of that work and how you envisage that we can be as well co-ordinated as possible.

Andrew Scallan: We have a rolling programme of reviews. Typically, we start 25 reviews each year. Each review, of whatever type, has a certain process resulting in a set of final recommendations. Those recommendations are turned into an order, which is signed by our chief executive after they have sat in Parliament for 40 days under the negative procedure.

Our programme has been worked out. Our reviews take about 15 months. We have a very good idea of where we will be by the beginning of December., and we know where our timetables will take us with our further reviews. The reviews take a long time. We have some contingency because some of our reviews do not finish when we expected them to, because we put in a further set of consultations where there has been something particularly contentious.

[Chloe Smith]

Q Thank you. It is very helpful to have the breadth of that on record. Drilling down into what it means to talk about prospective boundaries from the local government side, please talk through that definition for the Committee and what that might look like this year, for example.

Andrew Scallan: It depends on how you define prospective, because for us it is our work in hand. We anticipate that 19 reviews covering 3.3 million people will be made before 1 December. Our work programme, at the moment, includes a range of reviews that will not be completed by 1 December. There are around 13 reviews covering 2.1 million people that will be close to completion but will not be ready by 1 December.

[Cat Smith]

Q Andrew, the Local Government Boundary Commission for England presents its report to Parliament under the negative procedure. That strikes a balance between the independence of your work and the scrutiny we conduct as MPs. For local government boundaries, do you feel there is a good balance between that independence and parliamentary scrutiny?

Andrew Scallan: Yes, we think that is exactly the case. It presents the opportunity to challenge; since 2010, there have been three discussions about our orders, but none has been overturned. They are either accepted or overturned, and the 214 that we have done since 2010 have all been approved.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chloe Smith]

Q Welcome, Mr Hughes. It is great to have you here this afternoon. I am indeed going to take you up on the opportunity of talking a little bit about New Zealand with you. Would you start by giving us some general reflections on how the system currently in operation in the UK, and that which is envisaged to come into operation through the Bill, compare to that of New Zealand?

Darren Hughes: Sure thing. We welcome the change to go back to the future, as it were, with the 650 number. We were quite concerned, at the time that was being looked at, that it would have resulted in quite a high proportion of the Commons being MPs who were also on the Government payroll, which would lower the scrutiny aspect of the legislative side of the role of Members of Parliament. It would also have made the Commons even more out of proportion with the second Chamber, the membership of which gallops along at an alarming pace. I think it is better to have gone for 650.

On some of the differences, in New Zealand there has been more of a philosophical decision that a Member of Parliament’s local duty is to every citizen resident in their constituency, regardless of their age and so on, so constituency size is entirely based on the census figures, rather than on the number of people on the electoral register. We have a long-held view that a lot of constituency casework is irrelevant to the age or electoral status of the citizen in front of the MP. That is a difference.

Another difference that may be of interest is that it is so important that these things are done in a clear, straight, technically correct, robust and honest way. If you lose control of these sort of things, you will live to regret it for a very long time indeed, so it is so important to get it right. However, we also cannot deny that there is a political dynamic to the entire process. Very few industry players get the opportunity to sit around and come up with the rules for their own industry in quite the way that parliamentarians do. You are the guardians of the whole society, so recognising some of the realities there can sometimes take some of the tension out.

In New Zealand, on the Representation Commission, which is a boundary commission equivalent, in addition to those members chosen based on the positions that they hold, such as the surveyor general for mapping, the Government Statistician from our Office for National Statistics equivalent and so on, the Prime Minister is asked to nominate a representative on behalf of governing parties—I say that plural, because in New Zealand a collection of parties run the Government—and the Leader of the Opposition is invited to appoint somebody to represent Opposition parties, or to at least bring their perspectives to bear. They are obviously rightly in a numerical minority, but that blends some of those technical aspects with the political reality.

I should also say that there are reserved constituencies like those discussed this morning, in that seven constituencies are reserved for Maori indigenous voters who register on that roll. Again, taking into account some of the unique identifying features of our polity is quite an important point.

[Chloe Smith]

Q Thank you very much indeed, Mr Hughes. That is a very helpful depth of detail that we had not managed to get from any other witness in their international comparisons. Could I add one more comparison to that list? I understand that New Zealand does what we refer to here as automaticity. To use your own words, given that there is a political dimension to the process, and given, as you say, that no industry really gets the luxury of being able to set its own rules, is that not a good thing?

Darren Hughes: Yes. Forgive me; I should have touched on that. That is very important. That takes it out the perception or, in some examples, as Professor Curtice pointed to, the reality of political interference, based on what was happening at that particular time in politics.

As I said earlier, there are a handful of laws and rules and conventions that really need to be able to stand the test of time, regardless of any particular party’s fortunes—whenever you start to decide based on that, it is not long before it blows up in the face of those who have done it; they certainly regret it down the line. Putting that in place is important.

That is at the end of the process, and I think it creates a huge responsibility at the beginning of the process to get the scope right and the membership of the commission right, because it is handing a lot of power and say, in a democratic sense, to that institution. That is why you need to spend some time thinking about who should go on it, how long they should be there for and how you balance the need for straight demographic information versus community interests versus the political dimension that exists.

One thought I had on that was that we have consultation periods, but as we all know, consultation can be a small number of very squeaky wheels that take up the opportunity, and are then painted as being “the community”. Given the recent narrow interest in parliamentary boundaries, this might be an area for some of the more innovative techniques for consulting publics, such as citizens’ juries and deliberative democracy mechanisms, where you could take randomly selected citizens for a particular region and use them as a way of consulting. Then actual people could tell you whether they thought a bridge being in one constituency or another really mattered, as opposed to those who take the initiative to write the letter and subsequently take on a cloak of authority when they may represent a tiny fraction of the real population.

[Chloe Smith]

Q Thank you; that is a helpful suggestion. I know that the four Boundary Commissions are listening very carefully to these witness sessions and so may well have a moment to give some thought to that as a method.

Can I round off my international comparison questions by checking whether New Zealand or any other countries that you are aware of also run with a judge-led process, securing a high level of independence, as we do in this country?

Darren Hughes: That has been a feature in New Zealand, and I know it is in other jurisdictions as well. One of the dilemmas to resolve is whether you draw up a list of positions you want to serve on the commission and to make the decisions—and in that sense you are blind to whoever the postholder happens to be when the review is done—or whether there are particular people who you think have the skills and strength and integrity to run the decision process for that particular round. That is something for the Committee to think about, because if you nominate particular positions, you always know who will be responsible for the decision, seeing as there will not be that final parliamentary vote, and that may have an impact on recruitment decisions, because those extra responsibilities are thought about. Alternatively, if there are particular people deemed appropriate for that time, that might reflect on whether or not it is judge-led, or whether there is some other structure that might be important.

Rounding off on that point, what you have to have at the back of your mind when coming up with these systems is what happens if they fall into the hands of a bad actor or a disruptive actor, or somebody who says, “This is just a bunch of conventions. It’s not really written down anywhere. We can drive a lorry through this.” The UK system is so trusted and has not gone down the Americanised gerrymander system, so that has got to be protected at all costs. That might lead you to want to be a little bit more prescriptive at the beginning, seeing that you are conceding that final vote at the end.

[Cat Smith]

Q Mr Hughes, thank you for giving evidence to the Committee this afternoon. Do you feel that the balance is right between community ties and the 5% tolerance in the Bill?

Darren Hughes: There are so many strong arguments on the threshold question. We would come down in favour of a higher threshold than the plus or minus 5%, to be able to offer some flexibility in that sense. There are two competing ways of looking at this. On the one hand, who are the people for whom communities of interest are important with respect to parliamentary boundaries? The answer is: every single Member of Parliament and all the people who are in that orbit of representation, democratic work and politics. Outside of the campaign periods, the boundaries themselves, for the most part, do not have enduring appeal or identity. It has always struck me that, on a basic thing that people need to do all the time—think about where they are going to rent or buy a property—Zoopla does not make a big thing of telling you what parliamentary constituency you will be in if you move to this particular accommodation, whereas it will talk about the borough, the schools and the other services that are available. It makes sense to, as best as possible, come up with sensible communities for a constituency because the Member of Parliament will need to be doing a lot of important work there. However, I do not think you want to stretch it too far to pretend that people’s connection to a particular constituency is the most important thing. One way of dealing with that might be to look at the threshold question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chloe Smith]

Q Welcome to our Committee, Gavin. I am not sure that I could reach your shoulder to tap you on it, so it is great to have you with us virtually, at least to get me out of that. May I invite you to give the perspective of the parties in Northern Ireland? I make that plural, if you do not mind, because in preparation for the Bill I have reached out to all the Northern Ireland parties to be even-handed, and I am sure that you can give us some broad insights that go across the piece of what this looks like from the parties’ perspective in Northern Ireland.

Gavin Robinson: Thank you for that curveball. I am very happy to speak on behalf of the Democratic Unionist party. I am a little more curtailed in hoping to assist the Bill Committee as to the position of other parties. We had engagement at party level with you, Minister, and we are grateful for that. Some of the other parties participated in that engagement. We had separate engagement with the Northern Ireland Office as well, as part of the overall consideration.

One of the perennial issues with and concerns about the previous proposals before Parliament was the reduction from 650 to 600, with the impact that it had on the parliamentary constituencies in Northern Ireland. We have 18; we were proposed to be reduced to 17 and—[Interruption.]

[The Chair]

Gavin, may I interrupt you for a minute? There is a three-minute suspension. We cannot hear what you are saying clearly, so please hang on until the bell has stopped ringing.

Gavin Robinson: There was concern about the reduction from 18 seats to 17, which was consequential on the decision to move from 650 to 600. Given the acute political divisions that we have in Northern Ireland and the history, people are easily led into surmising how that might have impacted on one community or another. I am happy for the Committee to explore that further. At least in the initial stages, it formed part of a court case that concluded within the past month on the previous boundary proposals.

In these proposals, we are satisfied and pleased to see that the 650 figure will remain, albeit highlighting the fact that in the previous Parliament legislation was introduced in 2018 that sought to solidify in legislation the 18 seats for Northern Ireland, with 632 for the rest of the United Kingdom. That is a commitment that was there two years ago, although it did not leave Committee. We believe that it is important to solidify the constituency and boundary arrangements that we have at present in Northern Ireland.

[Chloe Smith]

Q Thank you, Gavin. Will you go into the next level of detail, to do with how the rules given to the Boundary Commission for Northern Ireland helped to bring about their review?

Gavin Robinson: The particular rule that we can rely on in Northern Ireland is rule 7. That rule is important for us, given the geographical nature of Northern Ireland, with the urban dimensions and restrictiveness of our small part of the United Kingdom. Rule 7 allows us, where there is unreasonable infringement, to go beyond the 5% tolerance. We wish to see that important rule maintained. That is maintained.

We are mildly concerned that the consequence of the judicial review that just emerged from the Court of Appeal may inject a level of chill in the Boundary Commission’s ability to rely on rule 7. It is an important flexibility that it should use, with the need ultimately to demonstrate the rationale for doing so.

[Cat Smith]

Q Thank you for giving evidence, Gavin. Do you feel that a commitment to protecting the 18 seats in Northern Ireland without a similar protection for Scotland and Wales compromises the integrity of the Union in the longer run?

Gavin Robinson: I do not think it compromises the integrity of the Union in the longer term, but I do see that some of the arguments that could be used for retaining 18 seats in Northern Ireland could naturally apply to some of the other devolved Administrations. Fundamentally, the Northern Ireland Act 1998 provides for Assembly constituencies to be contiguous with our parliamentary constituencies. Without elections occurring at the same time, you could have a situation where you have representatives for a parliamentary constituency that no longer exists remaining in the Northern Ireland Assembly. I assume that unless there was some co-ordination between election times and reviews, that anomalous situation could occur, with representation for areas that no longer exist, depending on a boundary change and the configuration at that time. That is important for us.

You cannot really go beyond our boundaries unless you are prepared to go into extraterritorial application or the sea. Land boundaries with Scotland and Wales are obviously a little less constrained, but when you consider the impact on the devolved Administrations, I do think there is an argument that you can extrapolate from Northern Ireland to others.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chloe Smith]

Q Gavin, I want to round out our session with one quite small piece of detail, but one that we have not managed to touch on with any other witness yet. That is the way in which the constituencies of the Northern Ireland Assembly are directly tied to UK parliamentary constituencies.

        As you will have seen from a close reading, this Bill makes provision for a buffer period between recommendations from a boundary review that would come into effect for the UK, and the point at which the Northern Ireland Assembly constituencies would change to reflect those new boundaries. I wonder if you might be able to give us a little more insight into the impact of such a scenario—that is, what effect not having that kind of buffer and protection would have on constituencies and electors in Northern Ireland.

        Gavin Robinson: I think as currently outlined, with a projected Assembly election in 2022, the process is manageable. There are two considerations for further reflection; we will reflect on them, and I am sure others will as well.

        The first would be a cyclical reduction in uplift from 17 and 18, which I think would be unhelpful given the knock-on consequences that would have for the Assembly elections. Fundamentally, given the difficulties we have faced over the past three years—the stagnation in the effective operation of our devolved institutions—I do not think we have fully reflected on or resolved what would happen should there be an early or emergency Assembly election and how that may be impacted by this boundary process.

[Chloe Smith]

Q Thank you. I seek to get on the record your thoughts on the vanilla scenario, if you like, of those moments in the future when Northern Ireland Assembly elections might be scheduled to clash with, or come close to, UK parliamentary elections, and on the way in which the buffer provision seeks to give some ease to administrators, campaigners and citizens in Northern Ireland from those two things being unmanageably close together. If you have not had a chance to think through that, please do not feel the need to comment further, but if you have, that will be interesting to the Committee.

Gavin Robinson: Only that, as I indicated at the start of the answer, as currently drafted, the process will be entirely manageable.

[Chloe Smith]

Thank you very much indeed. I was keen for the Committee to note that, so I appreciate your help on that.

[The Chair]

There are no other questions from the Committee to our witness. Gavin, I thank you very much indeed for enlightening us on the views of your party on the Bill and for sharing how other parties in Northern Ireland feel about this particular piece of legislation.

Examination of Witness

Dr Jac Larner gave evidence.

[The Chair]

Q I owe you an apology, Dr Larner, because I have had you waiting an awful long time for this call. There was a moment in our proceedings this afternoon where it appeared that we could have had a gap, so I am grateful that you have been on standby for so long. I hope you have not been bored but enthused by our proceedings. Dr Larner, would you please say something about yourself?

Dr Larner: It has been very interesting, actually; certainly not boring at all. I am a research associate at the Wales Governance Centre at Cardiff University. My research focuses on electoral behaviour—how people behave around elections. A big part of that is that I am a research associate on the Welsh Election Study and the Scottish Election Study, which are big surveys around election times.

[Chloe Smith]

Q Thank you very much for joining us, Dr Larner. We really appreciate it. It is great that we have had the chance to hear from you and from your colleague, Professor Wyn Jones, last week. I will keep it extremely general at the outset. Will you give us your view on the provisions in the Bill and say whether you support them or not?

Dr Larner: The Bill has particularly drastic changes and implications for future elections in Wales. The planned change to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600 has now obviously been rethought, but proportionally, that does not really make much difference in the reduction for Wales. If we have 600 MPs, there is a planned reduction of around 12 seats. In the new plan to stay at 650, Wales’ seats will drop by eight. Either way, the proportional representation of Wales in the Commons will be around the 5% mark. That is obviously of concern.

Wales is the biggest loser here. At the same time, it is also worth bearing in mind that, in pretty much any set-up, Wales will always be, proportionally, a very small part of the representation in the Commons. It might also be important to consider things such as really strengthening intergovernmental relations between the devolved Administrations and Westminster going forward.

On whether I outrightly support the Bill or disapprove of it, that is slightly more complicated. I will leave my answer at that, if that is okay.

[Cat Smith]

Q As you have outlined, Dr Larner, it is expected that we will see some big changes to the constituencies in Wales, and with that we will see new boundaries drawn, probably around communities that look very different. How important do you feel community identity and having communities together in one constituency are when it comes to that balance between keeping communities together and the electoral tolerance of 5%?

Dr Larner: That is a very important question, and particularly relevant where I am from, for example, in south Wales. People talk about the valleys as one block, but I can assure you that people from one valley to the next, no matter how small, consider themselves quite different. There is the importance of people feeling that their community is being represented, without being interfered with by what they might see as people from other, different communities.

There is also the important uniqueness of Wales’s being particularly rural in its population. Given the tolerance at the moment, doing some quick maths, at the lower bound of what is being suggested at the moment— around the 69,000 voter mark—depending on which data source you use, there are only either two or four constituencies in Wales larger than that lower bound. That would necessitate really big boundary changes, and we know from some of our research that people like do not like the idea of constituencies being merged in different areas. It is really a balancing act in terms of how much importance you give to that kind of intuitive feeling of, “Oh no, I want boundaries to stay as they are,” versus the idea of fairness in the size of constituencies.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Colleagues, we come to our final session this afternoon. We have Dr Rossiter and Professor Charles Pattie. Could you please introduce yourselves, gentlemen?

Professor Pattie: I am Charles Pattie, professor of politics at the University of Sheffield. I have been studying elections and boundary reviews for something like 30 or 35 years.

Dr Rossiter: My name is David Rossiter. I do not want to outdo Charles, but I have studied and published on the process of redrawing boundaries for about 40 years. I was the lead researcher on a Leverhulme-sponsored study on the work of Boundary Commissions in the 1990s, and was responsible for much of the modelling for the McDougall Trust report on the impact of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 in 2014.

[Chloe Smith]

Q Thank you both for joining us. I salute you for your combined seven or eight decades of work on these matters. It strikes me that you are extremely well placed to help us have a very down-to-earth conversation, and to remove some of the high-falutin’ terms that get used sometimes in these matters.

I noted that you and your late colleague, Professor Ron Johnston—we send you our condolences on his loss—looked into claims of bias in prior reviews. You were very clear that there is a function here for levelling the playing field by ensuring updated and equal boundaries. Could you please go into that?

Professor Pattie: Thank you for your words on Ron. Do not take it amiss, but I think both David and I would, in some respects, prefer it if Ron were here to talk to you in person. I mean that in the best of possible senses.

Your question about bias is very interesting. Obviously, it has been the cause of some concern. There has been a particular party political concern about the extent to which the system has become substantially biased in Labour’s favour. Part of the concern is around constituency size effects, which the current legislation and the 2011 Act deal with.

You heard earlier today—I think John Curtice also discussed it this morning—that there are two things to bear in mind. First, we are talking about bias between Conservative and Labour. As long as we have a first-past-the-post system, there is in-built bias against small parties with equal vote shares. The Conservative-Labour bias in particular does have an element around the constituency size effect, which the legislation largely removes. Most of the bias that has caused comment and concern in recent years has come from other sources that are nothing to do with the constituency size issue. They are to do with things such as preferential abstention rates, third-party effects in different seats, and in particular the efficiency with which parties’ votes are spread.

In the last few elections—every election since 2015—the relative Conservative-Labour bias has run in favour of the Conservative party and not Labour, largely because the Conservatives have become much more efficient in how they campaign and where they win the votes. To that extent, the legislation deals with one of the sources of bias. However, as a few witnesses this morning pointed out, that is one of the smaller components of the bias picture, and the bigger elements of bias are not really dealt with by this legislation—and I suspect cannot be dealt with by any legislation.

Dr Rossiter: The change to a UK-wide quota quite clearly deals with the fact that there were higher levels of representation in Scotland up to 2005, and still are in Wales. If you look back to when the current constituencies —the ones you are representing—were first defined using 2000 data, there was no bias at that time in favour of either party in terms of the size of the seats. The 10 largest seats defined at that stage included Hornchurch and Upminster as well as Croydon North; one was Conservative, one Labour. If you look at the 10 smallest seats, again, there is a completely equal mix. So for every Hexham, there was an Islington South and Finsbury. It is not that the commissions were unable to provide equality at the date of enumeration—that is, the date they have to work to. It is the demographic change that took place in ensuing years that has caused the big disparities that were more evident in the 2005 and 2010 elections than in 2000.

That demographic change was already slowing down in the 1990s, and over the past decade it has effectively ground to a halt. That process is no longer continuing. From that point of view, the pre-2011 legislation was able to deal with an awful lot of the difficulties that come from differently sized seats. The issue was: how, if at all, can you deal with the fact that certain areas grow in size and certain areas reduce in size? Reducing the period between reviews—the Bill suggests eight years—seems the best way to achieve that.

[Chloe Smith]

Q Thank you very much. You concluded with an argument in favour of regular reviews and, I suppose, getting on with it. As you pointed out, the age of the data that currently holds sway is in itself an argument for moving ahead to the first of a new series of reviews, and establishing a series from there.

Dr Rossiter: Yes.

Professor Pattie: Absolutely.

[Cat Smith]

Q I would like to start by passing on my condolences to you both after the unexpected death of your colleague Ron Johnston. There is an argument to be had about where the balance lies between drawing constituency boundaries that look like the communities that people recognise around them, and the electoral quota and the flexibility to stray either side of it. The Bill proposes a variance in the electoral quota of 5%. What do you think the number should be to strike that balance between community and constituencies of equal size?

Professor Pattie: I guess we can break that down into two constituent parts. One is whether we should have a principle of priority within the rules, as in the 2011 Act and in the Bill, with some notion of equalisation of electorates being the top criterion rather than the medium criterion, to avoid some of the confusion and tension of the earlier rules. To that extent—Dave may feel differently about this—I would certainly endorse the notion of having an equalisation rule as the top priority.

The second element of this is where to draw the tolerance. Should it be 5%, 1% or 10%? On that point, I think you have a rather more open debate on your hands. Dave referred, when introducing himself, to the work that we did for the McDougall Trust in 2014, looking at the process around the sixth review—the first under the 2011 legislation. In that work, we tried to estimate how much disruption different tolerances would cause in the system—how much breaking of ties and breaking up of existing seats there would be. Inevitably, there will be quite a lot, both in the first review under the new rules and in any subsequent revision. However, on our estimates, if you set the tolerance at around 7%, 8% or 9%, disruption is reduced, and you do a better job of maintaining existing ties and links.

Yes, equalisation is important, but the question is what tolerance you should work to, and how wide you set that tolerance. Our estimates suggested that 8% starts to get you into the compromise zone and makes life a bit easier.