Covid-19: Winter Plan

Clive Efford Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady raises an excellent point, and I direct her to the answer that I gave a few minutes ago about the statement that will be made shortly by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab) [V]]

Local authorities have stepped up to the plate to tackle covid in their areas, but they are facing additional costs from local track and trace, while losing income from taxes and fees. Will the Prime Minister give us an undertaking that local government will be recognised in the current spending review and that there will be extra resources so that it can pay for the extra services it is required to provide?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank local government for everything it is doing. I think that it is doing an amazing job in incredibly difficult circumstances. The hon. Gentleman can be sure that it will be recognised in the spending review.

Public Health

Clive Efford Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

With great respect, Mr Speaker, I think that I have answered the question and I think that my friends opposite are going to oppose.

This comes on top of the more than £200 billion that we provided since March. We will also ensure that, throughout this period, our schools stay open. We will not allow this virus to do any further damage to the future of our children. I said in the summer that we had a moral duty to reopen our schools as soon as it was safe to do so, and that they would be the last element of our society to close down again. We have stuck to that pledge. Our schools will remain open, as will colleges, universities, childcare and early years settings.

The measures before the House are designed to arrest the virus, to drive it down and to get on top of it once and for all. If we are able to test on a big enough scale to identify the people who are infected, often without symptoms and who unwittingly and asymptomatically pass the virus to others, those people will be helped immediately—this is the key thing—to self-isolate and to break the chains of transmission, reducing the spread of the virus, reducing the numbers of people in hospital, and reducing the numbers of people dying. I think that if we all play our part in this system it could be a hugely valuable weapon in our fight against covid in the short, medium and long term, and an alternative to the blanket restrictions that have been imposed in so many parts of the world.

This week we are piloting a mass test in Liverpool, where an immense effort benefiting from the logistical skill of the armed services will offer everyone a test, and our aim is to make mass repeated testing available for everyone across the country. Thanks to the pioneering work of British scientists, we already have a life-saving treatment for covid and the genuine possibility of a safe and effective vaccine next year. Taken together, these achievements provide every reason for confidence that our country can and will pull through this crisis, and that our ingenuity will prove equal to the challenge.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Will the Prime Minister give way?

[The Prime Minister]

No, I will not—I am finishing up.

This year, I and the whole of Government have asked much of the British people: more than any Prime Minister, I believe, has asked of the British people in peacetime. I have to say that the public have responded magnificently and selflessly, putting their lives on hold, bearing any burden, overcoming every obstacle, and tolerating every disruption and inconvenience, no matter how large or small—or inconsistent—so that they could do the right thing by their fellow citizens. I wish that it had been enough to defeat this autumn surge. But while I am more optimistic now about the medium and long-term future than I have been for many months, there can be no doubt that the situation before us today is grave and the need for action acute.

It is absolutely right for this House to have doubts—

Covid-19 Update

Clive Efford Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

That is the policy very accurately summed up, but for better elucidation and understanding of it I urge people to get on to the website to see exactly what they need to do.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I accept the need for extra restrictions in order to get on top of the R rate and bring it down, but it is disturbing that the Government do not seem to have any specific targets that they seek to achieve through this lockdown. When we have the debate on Wednesday, will the Government be coming back with specific targets they want to achieve by 2 December?

[The Prime Minister]

These measures are time-limited—they elapse on 2 December—but I repeat that the objective is to get the infection rate to stop doubling and to start halving. To do that, we need to get the R down below 1—it is currently estimated to be between 1.1 and 1.3; I think the Office for National Statistics said recently that it was 1.6, but it has been coming down. Our intention is to use this period to get it below 1 and get that infection rate halving, not doubling.

Covid-19 Update

Clive Efford Excerpts

Monday 12th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for representing his constituents well in the way he does. Of course, we will make sure that we regularly review the measures for his constituency, and indeed for every constituency in this country.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The only think that is world beating about the Prime Minister’s track and trace system is its capacity to take taxpayers’ money and put it in the hands of friends of the Tory party, and deliver a chaotic system. That contrasts with the performance of local government, which has performed miracles at a local level while being starved of resources by the Government, who promised money and then reneged on that promise. Will the Prime Minister now provide the resources to local government if he is going to give it extra responsibility in delivering track and trace?

[The Prime Minister]

I note the ideological scorn of any private sector work, which I thought I had left the Labour party these days, but does not seem to have done. I share the hon. Gentleman’s veneration of local authorities, as a creature of local government myself, and that is why we have given an extra £3.7 billion to support local authorities in this crisis. As I told the House just now, there is a billion more to come.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Clive Efford Excerpts

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

[Andrew Bowie]

I will not because of the time.

I am fully aware that SNP Members do not view us as one nation, but we Conservative Members most certainly do. We believe that there should be equal representation for every seat in the United Kingdom. I shall not detain the House any longer. This is a good Bill and it should have our full-throated support this evening.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Everyone on the Opposition Benches accepts that this parliamentary boundary review is overdue. I think we all also accept that what we want to achieve is equality in the weight of each individual elector’s vote. However, we found from the evidence that we took and our deliberation in Committee that that is not possible.

There are local circumstances that require flexibility in how we construct our parliamentary constituencies, and I very much favour flexibility for the Boundary Commission to be able to get on with its job. We heard from Mr Bellringer from the Boundary Commission, who said that greater flexibility allowed the commission the opportunity to facilitate local concerns and make the best of representations from local communities, and it allowed him to do his job more efficiently. We do not represent individuals alone. We represent communities. I firmly believe that if we create flexibility, we can protect the communities that the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson) referred to earlier. That is why the 5% rigid limitation that the Government want to impose is wrong.

The Boundary Commission wrote to the Committee with some additional evidence, in which it said that

“a ward is a unit of electoral administration”.

Breaking up wards therefore needs to be avoided because it creates difficulty in administering elections. But if that is true, it must also be true that to go across a local government boundary is even more disruptive. What we have to create for the Boundary Commission is the flexibility to avoid circumstances that force it to decide that a parliamentary constituency must take orphan wards from a neighbouring local authority area or bits of communities from a neighbouring area that do not really match up to the communities in the main body of the constituency. We must accept the need to minimise disruption of that kind, so we need to ensure that the people making the recommendations on parliamentary boundaries have the maximum flexibility to do their job.

[Andrew Rosindell]

I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but does he agree that sometimes a ward is completely artificial, so to break up a ward can actually unite a community, rather than divide it? Therefore, the Boundary Commission should be more flexible about using smaller building blocks, such as polling districts, or even an individual road that it makes sense to transfer into a constituency?

[Clive Efford]

I agree, provided it is within a recognisable local government area and a recognisable community, and there is support from the local community. In additional evidence the Boundary Commission sent, it talked about the administrative problems of going down to polling district level. The commission referred to getting Ordnance Survey to map all the polling districts in the whole country, but it seems to me that all it has to do is ring up the electoral registration offices, which can tell it how many people live in every road in every polling district. Why go to a separate organisation to find out information that is already recorded on a given date when we start the parliamentary boundary review? If that is already recorded and kept, all the Boundary Commission has to do is refer to it; then, it could go down to sub-ward level where that makes sense locally. I think the commission is creating problems for itself.

Why 7.5%? We had evidence from Dr Rossiter, who has researched this issue. He explained that as we go up from 5% to 6 % to 7% to 8%, although each percentage point seems a small amount, it improves the quality of the outcome, and that there are benefits from moving from 5% to 6 % to 7% or 8% because it improves the decision-making process. He then said that, beyond 8%, that benefit diminishes. The amendment therefore proposes 7.5%, and the experts who gave evidence favour a figure close to 7.5%. I ask the Government to reconsider their position, as they no doubt will in the other place, to look at the evidence and to accept that 7.5% is a much more sensible figure than the rigid 5% which we know has created problems in the past.

[Alun Cairns]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Clive Efford]

No, because I heard Madam Deputy Speaker cough, which is telling me, “Efford, shut up.” I will conclude by making one point about parliamentary oversight.

If we had not had parliamentary oversight, we would now have 600 MPs, and I do not think anyone in this Chamber thinks we should have 600 MPs. Parliamentary oversight saved us from that gerrymander attempt, which I will not dwell on because I do not have time. It is Parliament that sets the rules, and in any process where someone sets the rules and sends someone else off to perform a function, at the end of it there must be oversight to ensure that the function was performed efficiently and according to the rules that were set out. That is what Parliament does. That is Parliament’s role in this area. Why do we not trust ourselves to perform the function that Parliament is put here to perform? If we set the Boundary Commission a task to perform, we should have oversight of the outcome. If we had not had oversight of the previous two reviews, we would have made the mistake of cutting our number to 600, with all the consequent chaos.

[Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

This Bill is all about creating fair and proper representation in this House for everyone in the United Kingdom. Although there are many local challenges, we should be proud that the Bill aims to achieve just that, and for that reason I very much welcome it.

The Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 put in place processes to reduce the number of MPs in this House from 650 to 600. In Cornwall, the number of MPs would have been reduced from six to five and a bit. Reducing the number of MPs in that way meant that it was highly unlikely that the boundary of Cornwall would be respected, but that a cross-border constituency formed of towns and parishes in both Devon and Cornwall could and would be created. When the Boundary Commission for England published its proposals for the new constituency boundaries, it produced a parliamentary seat that quickly acquired the nickname of “Devonwall”, which naturally caused considerable upset in Cornwall and a bit of damage to Cornish pride. I tried at the time to argue that it was the start of a takeover, but the commission was not buying it.

Cornwall is a historic nation with its own traditions, its own heritage and its own language, and in 2014 the Cornish people became protected through the Council of Europe’s framework convention for the protection of national minorities. I am happy to say that because of this Bill, the cross-border issue appears to have been rectified for now, and I am grateful to the Bill Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Clive Efford]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Cherilyn Mackrory]

I will press on, because we need to get other hon. Members this afternoon.

Constituency boundaries should coincide, where possible, with local administrative boundaries, which should help my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie). I am pleased that the Bill, by reviewing the number of MPs needed for fair and effective representation, ensures that the United Kingdom will continue to have 650 Members to serve in this House and six whole, passionate, hard-working Cornish MPs.

It is worth remembering that, as well as protecting the culture and identity of national minorities, the framework convention seeks to protect the political integrity of territories. I am of the opinion that the Bill will help to protect the Cornish people as a national minority by affording us fair representation for effective government, and our boundaries will stay intact. Once the Bill has passed, it will be for the Cornish MPs, the local authority in Cornwall and local residents to work with the Boundary Commission to ensure that the identity of Cornwall is protected, with its six constituencies within its boundaries, to offer the equal and fair representation that the people deserve.

There is an appetite in Cornwall to look further at greater autonomy, and I am sure that the Government will be more than happy to work with Cornwall towards that goal. It is through that mechanism that I call for more permanent protection of Cornwall’s historic boundary, and I look forward to future conversations with Ministers to that end. If the local authority in Cornwall is serious about greater autonomy, I invite it to be part of those conversations with the Government at that time to achieve that. However, for now, I will continue to do what I can to ensure that my constituents in Truro and Falmouth get the fair representation that they deserve, as well as continued support through the current crisis and beyond, and I thank the Government for their part in that.

To that end, I support the Bill, and I support the Government’s attempts to safeguard and encourage democracy throughout the whole country.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill (Eighth sitting)

Clive Efford Excerpts

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

[Bim Afolami]

At the risk of straying from the measures covered by this new clause, we can have that debate. I happen to support the first-past-the-post system, but I understand that there are very good reasons for not doing so. However, that is not the place of this Bill. If people wanted another referendum on the voting system, I think first past the post would win, as it did several years ago, but I am perfectly happy to have that debate.

In relation to the point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow East about the inadequacies of first past the post, those who do not like that system need to accept that if one is going to respect local ties and local communities and regard them as important, one cannot at the same time support moving to a system that involves much bigger regions, such as a single transferable vote system, or proportional representation generally. That would negate the original point. There are a lot of things that people say they like about the first-past-the-post system. I am not saying that they like every aspect. For example, there are people in my constituency who vote Green, and it is unlikely that the Greens would ever win in my constituency—although, of course, strange things happen in politics. Those who vote Green might say, “I never get a chance for my vote to count.” I appreciate that, but one aspect that people do like about the first-past-the-post system is the fact that community ties are respected and they feel that their Member of Parliament to some degree represents what they feel their community to be like.

We have talked about the difficulties of this. Of course the boundary commission gets it wrong sometimes, but it is up to us, members of the public, political parties and the geeks who do this stuff for fun to try to ensure that the constituencies make sense, because that, I think, is the core of the legitimacy of the first-past-the-post system. And if—this, I suppose, is a warning to the Government or, indeed, anybody else—this whole process were mismanaged and the boundary commission ended up not listening to members of the public, constituencies, Members of Parliament and so on and not making sure that the constituencies did pee and chew gum at the same time, we would get delegitimisation of the first-past-the-post system, because people would not be feeling that they would be voting for a particular Member who represented their community. Therefore I think that it is a point well made.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I support the new clause, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood. I think that we need to go back and listen to some of the arguments that we have heard in this Committee before, but also some of the evidence that we have taken. People have highlighted the problems with 5% and the rigid use of 5%. The hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden, who just spoke, really made an argument in favour of more flexibility for the boundary commission, because he was saying, “Let’s trust the boundary commission. Let’s set the parameters and let it get on with the job.”

What the boundary commission clearly said in evidence to us was this. Mr Bellringer, when asked about tolerance of 5% plus or minus, said:

“It is something that we always used to be able to do in the past and did do on occasion. Prior to 2011, there was not this hard maximum and minimum, but we would still be aiming to keep constituencies within a broad range. Occasionally we would breach that if we needed to, to provide a better holistic solution.”––[Official Report, Parliamentary Constituencies Public Bill Committee, 18 June 2020; c. 17, Q30.]

The boundary commission was clearly saying to us that it tried to keep within or close to the average, but on the rare occasions on which the local circumstances required this, it would use more flexibility. The argument from the boundary commission is clearly that it would like that flexibility in order to do a good job, and I think we should listen to it.

We have had experience of the 5%. We have just been through two reviews, and the complications and difficulties that the 5% created have given us the opportunity to have experience of that without having to implement it, fortunately, because Parliament saw reason. We have the opportunity now to correct that flaw in the process and increase the figure. I would suggest 10%, as the OSCE report suggests, but my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood has found a different solution to the problem.

We also heard from Dr Rossiter, who has investigated this issue. He talks about the situation where these tight tolerances force the boundary commission to go over local authority boundaries, and he respects the difficulties that that creates for Members of Parliament when representing different local authorities. He also made the point that the discretion of the boundary commission enables it to avoid those situations when putting forward proposals. We thus have evidence from an expert that such difficulties may be forced on the boundary commission the tighter we make the plus or minus above the average.

Dr Rossiter went on to say:

“I have noticed, when we have been looking at this, the significant help that increasing that tolerance by very small amounts will provide. As soon as you go from 5% to 6%, you have a big payback from going up by that one percentage point. That payback increases to around 8%, which is why we came to the conclusion in our previous report that a figure of 8% would be much more helpful.”––[Official Report, Parliamentary Constituencies Public Bill Committee, 18 June 2020; c. 140, Q269.]

My hon. Friend’s proposal is 7.5%, which takes us close to the recommendation. That recommendation is based on expert review of the process of creating boundaries and its impact on local communities.

Returning to a point that I made in a previous debate, I firmly believe that we represent communities as much as numbers of people. Obviously, that has to be met within a certain tolerance. We cannot have a situation in which there is one enormous constituency of more than 100,000 people and one such as mine that is below the average. I also entirely accept that we cannot continue with constituencies that are 20 years out of date, which has led to some of the fluctuations in numbers.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

The hon. Gentleman said, I think, that he would be happy to go to 10% or 15% on either side. At 20% or 30% difference, these boundaries work, so there would be no need to change them within his preferred tolerances every 20 years.

[Clive Efford]

I am not sure that that is correct. We have examples of differences in constituency numbers that go well beyond 10%. I would not go beyond 10%, but I accept the 7.5% that my hon. Friend the Members for Lancaster and Fleetwood is putting forward. That is an acceptable figure that would give the boundary commission the flexibility it needs.

We have all experienced elections, in various numbers. I am on my ninth general election now. I do not want to put years on you, Sir David, but you have been through many more. It is clear that sections of our constituencies vote in similar patterns. I would say that that is because there is a commonality about the experience of those communities. When we start to subdivide those communities, their ability to affect an election and gain representation through their vote is diminished. That eats away at the root of the democratic process.

Those who wrongly focus virtually on numbers alone are in danger of undermining that part of the democratic process. More emphasis needs to be placed on location, community and all the common characteristics that make a community, over and above the numbers. However, I accept that there has to be a limit. I would say that my hon. Friend’s recommendation is about right.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the types of community, and Mr Bellringer has given evidence that wards generally reflect communities in an area, and that to split them therefore risks splitting local ties. However, I think the argument falls down around extending the parameters and not splitting wards. We have seen in the past that in order to stay within wards, and to get the constituency to fit within a number, some very strange constituencies get built that do not represent those communities. It comes back to the question: is it about the plus or minus figure, or is it about going sub-ward level to keep communities together, as wards are described as doing? If wards are described as doing that, why would we then bunch a lot of different, disparate wards together to make one constituency? Surely they should be the same.

[Clive Efford]

We are talking about plus or minus 7.5%. I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the issue of wards, but Sir David pulled me up because it is not within the scope of this debate. However, I agree that we should look at sub-ward level, particularly where it might avoid having to create a constituency with an orphan ward or community—one single ward coming in from a neighbouring local authority area. If that can be avoided that is very desirable. Again, that would go back to my point that that is why we need flexibility within the boundary commission. We also need more co-operation with local electoral registration officers who have numbers down to street level, so they could clearly do that.

However, I take the point made by the right hon. Gentleman—or the point that he from the Electoral Commission—that where that happens it has to be a community. It cannot just be a few streets from a neighbouring area that does not really relate to the rest of the constituency. It has to be something that it makes sense to take down to sub-ward level. We do not need to worry about polling districts, because we have heard from the Electoral Commission that local authorities carry out a review of polling districts immediately after parliamentary boundary reviews where necessary. Therefore, we do not need to worry about the parliamentary constituency boundary commission creating new areas at a sub-ward level if it avoids other disruption such as going out across other local government boundary areas.

To conclude, we need to provide this degree of flexibility for the boundary commission, which has made a case that that flexibility would help it. We have had expert advice that a tolerance level around 8% is most desirable; and that we get payback from each percentage point we go up from the rigid 5%, which begins to taper off if we go above 8%. I think my hon. Friend has got it right and I urge the Government to accept the amendment.

[Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Eltham said that Mr Bellringer indicated that the boundary commission tries to work as close to the quota as possible, and only varies where there is a good reason. I can only speak from the evidence I recall, which is mostly from the north-west. Our smallest constituency is Wirral West, which is just below 6,000 and was drawn at that size to try to avoid a cross-Mersey seat between the Wirral and Liverpool. The largest is 95,000 in Manchester Central, which was drawn very close to that size at the time because it was expected to depopulate. The commission does not always stay as close to the quota as possible. It sometimes take some very odd logical steps to try and make seats seem cohesive.

[Clive Efford]

I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point, because that is exactly what Mr Bellringer said. He said that as a general rule the commission would try to get as close to the average as possible, but in exceptional circumstances it would try to provide a better holistic solution. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, but that is not the norm.

[Chris Clarkson]

In which case, I invite the hon. Gentleman to look at the 75 seats in the north-west and see how many of them are close to quota, even when originally drawn. Very few is the answer. As a thought experiment I decided to see what would happen if we applied the 2019 electoral figures, which are the most up- to-date ones we have, to the 5%, 7.5% and 10% quotas. As a sample, I took all the seats represented by Conservative Members. Only one seat falls within the 5% quota, which is the seat represented by my hon. Friend for Hitchin and Harpenden. If we extend to 7.5%, we still have only one within quota—again, the seat represented by my hon. Friend for Hitchin and Harpenden. If we get to 10%, two of us—my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke and me—are still over quota.

Looking at the population drift from these seats, it is not that large over a number of years. It is simply that the more the quota is extended simply to try to reduce the extent of change, the more the seats end up disproportionately large. When starting with a 5% quota variant, the maximum difference between the smallest and largest seats is 7,260. That rises to 10,912 on 10%; then 14,551 on 10%; then 21,826 voters based on the OCSE of a maximum of 15%. It is never more than 15%. The reality is that we will see population change in the seats that will be drawn, which is a natural consequence of some areas depopulating and other areas increasing in population. Drawing the quotas as closely as possible to the mean is a way of ensuring that when we review the situation in eight years’ time, the variation will not be so severe that radical change will be needed. Obviously, radical change will be required in this review because the information is 20 years out of date. We should aim to get the electorate as close as possible to that mean now, so that in the future we are not having to radically redraw the map every time we come to this exercise.

--- Later in debate ---

I have covered my main points. I will draw my remarks to a conclusion by asking the Minister how, in the context of this Bill and in the absence of broader constitutional reform, we might ensure in future boundary reviews that there is a certain critical mass of Welsh MPs, and indeed MPs from Scotland and Northern Ireland. If we hold solely to demographics, Wales will probably lose out quicker than the other two nations—we are smaller, and Northern Ireland, of course, is its own case—but those other nations will also suffer in the end. Although I appreciate that the fire is not raging at the moment, I am seeing a bit of smoke, which is something we should give a little more consideration to.

[Clive Efford]

I rise to speak in support of the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester. This is about representation of communities and making sure that voices are heard through the democratic process. If we were to stick rigidly to the averages as calculated and impose them on Scotland and Wales, the significant loss of seats would make people in those nations wonder, “What is the point in the Westminster Parliament if our representation is diminished by such a degree—if we lose out in this process?” That is the way the public would see it, and that would undermine local representation.

I am prepared to accept that the situation in Scotland and Wales is significantly different from my situation in London and the situation in the rest of England. If we are to represent communities effectively, different numbers may apply, and it may be wrong to make a significant reduction in the number of constituencies, particularly at this time. A minimum threshold below which we cannot go is a sensible proposal. Those who say that they want to protect the Union—the integrity of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—should think carefully about what the consequences of this process are, and the message that it sends to communities in Scotland and Wales.

The concept of making sure that we respect communities and local circumstances applies here, perhaps more than anywhere. During this debate, we have heard about constituencies that are geographically quite enormous compared with inner-city ones, in which people within a single constituency live more than 90 miles apart. When people are so distant, that cannot make for healthy democracy and healthy representation, so we have to accept some sort of limit on how large constituencies can be while still remaining a coherent, cohesive community that can be represented. I feel strongly about local representation, the link between a constituency MP and the communities they represent, which is something that Committee members on both sides of the House have referred to. We must give those MPs a racing chance of being able to represent their communities, so we cannot have constituencies that make that impossible.

I have an inner-city constituency, and although it is quite big compared with others, because there is lots of open space in it, I am able to go from one meeting to another; sometimes I do two or three meetings in an evening. That is nigh-on impossible for somebody with a constituency that is spread out over tens of miles—almost 90 miles. There has to be some sort of limitation on distance; we have to be realistic about that, whatever those who are fixed on applying mathematical formulas to this process say. There is an issue about democratic accountability and Members having strong ties to the community that they represent.

When it comes to the Bill’s impact on the number of Members of Parliament from Scotland and Wales, we have to step back and be realistic. If we want to maintain the Union, want people to value Westminster as the place where their laws are made, and want them to be well represented, there is a limit to how far we can go in cutting the number of MPs who come from Scotland and Wales to Westminster, so I support the new clause in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester.

[Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to make my first contribution under your chairmanship, Sir David; I seem to have missed you during our sittings. I want to pick up on the eloquent contributions of the hon. Members for Ceredigion, for Eltham, and for City of Chester. We run the risk of viewing ourselves from within a silo in this place, as if we were the only part of the democratic structure, but in fact we do not operate in a silo. Back in the 1940s, when we started reviewing parliamentary boundaries, we probably were the most significant part of that democratic structure, but of course that has changed.

This links back to the point made about the devolution settlement. Over the past 20 years, electors have got a lot more sophisticated. The hon. Member for Eltham said that people need to understand where their laws are made. Yes, they do, but a lot of people’s laws are made not here, but in Holyrood or Cardiff Bay. From the interactions I have had, I know that our electors understand that division in where their laws are made, and how we operate within the structure. There is also the role of local authorities; during the pandemic, we have seen that, and the support that they provide. Speaking from local experience, people understand the difference between the role of their local authority, and my interaction as a Member of Parliament with that local authority.

[Clive Efford]

I am interested in the hon. Gentleman’s line of argument. Is he arguing that the role of Westminster is diminishing in Scotland, and that reducing the number of MPs from Scotland is justified? It seems a strange argument for the Conservative party to make.

[Shaun Bailey]

I am saying that we have to take a pragmatic approach to how we view our United Kingdom; as a Unionist, I would never say that the role that the hon. Gentleman speaks of is diminished. It would be remiss not to recognise that voters, particularly in the devolved nations, understand the differences I mentioned. We talk about reducing the number of constituencies in areas of the UK; in a way, we have to balance that with the democratic structures that now exist there.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill (Sixth sitting)

Clive Efford Excerpts

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

[The Chair]

I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing the following:

Amendment 3, in clause 1, page 1, line 14, leave out subsection (4).

This is a paving amendment for Amendment 5, with the aim of maintaining the status quo of parliamentary oversight within the boundary review process.

Amendment 4, in clause 1, page 2, line 16, leave out subsection (7).

This is a paving amendment for Amendment 5, with the aim of maintaining the status quo of parliamentary oversight within the boundary review process.

Clause stand part.

Clause 2 stand part.

[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.

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[Christian Matheson]

First, I welcome the Minister’s explanation of the clause. I have been through a few of these boundary reviews now. I remember attending one in the mid-1990s for Cheshire, which was held in Winsford, in the geographical centre of Cheshire, along with my old mentor Lord Hoyle—as he is now is—and Mike Hall, another former MP, and the late and much-missed Andrew Miller, another former MP.

More recently, the Cheshire review was held in my own constituency in Chester, in The Queen hotel, and in that circumstance I found myself speaking against my own party’s recommendations, because the numbers had forced the party to exclude a part of the constituency from Chester that I felt rightfully belonged to it. It was a strange and uncomfortable situation, but I did what I did because it was right.

Having heard the hon. Member for Glasgow East speak to his amendment, I think there is a principle that flows throughout the Bill, which is the importance of taking into account geography, in terms of the overall impact of the Bill and its overall implications. I could easily get from Chester to Winsford and from Chester to Warrington; that would not be a problem. Speaking from my own experience, I think that Cheshire could get away with having one public inquiry.

If I think about parts of rural northern England, the far south-west, or large parts of Scotland and Wales, the sparsity of population makes it less easy to hold public inquiries than in Cheshire or in large boroughs. It is the same principle and the same argument that we will discuss later in the Bill—I do not want to wander too far off the subject of this clause—where we have numbers overriding geographical considerations. There are parts of the country that need to be treated differently because sparsity of population and geographical features make it more difficult for individuals to take part

The hon. Member for Ceredigion asked the Minister a question that had also occurred to me, about whether, in principle, she may consider a slightly different amendment, if she accepts that some areas need more attention because of their geography and sparsity of population. Obviously, the Minister cannot speak to a hypothetical amendment, but I would support that suggestion. The principle that flows through the Bill is that we cannot simply go on bare numbers. Geography, population density and the ease of people getting to, and taking part in, consultations need to be considered. I have a lot of sympathy with the amendment moved by the hon. Member for Glasgow East.

[Clive Efford]

I am sorry that I did not call you “Sir David” earlier. I was not trying to de-noble you and I apologise.

I support the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Glasgow East. We are in a curious situation with this clause. On the one hand, the Government are saying, “Step back, set the parameters and let the boundary commission get on with it,” but when we get to this clause they become prescriptive. The clause limits the scope of the boundary commission to consult and to set up consultations with an area in a way that meets the reaction they are getting from a local community. It says that there can only be five consultations in an area. That does not seem to me to be stepping back, allowing the boundary commission to get on with its job, and reacting according to representations from the community.

The Bill sets a rigid timetable, which is acceptable, but subsection (12) says that we will have only six weeks for the second stage and four weeks for the third, because we have a rushed timetable. In the evidence, we were told time and again that this will be a major upheaval because the boundaries are 20 years out of date. Rather than truncating the consultation period in the coming boundary review, we should at least stick to the length of time we are setting for subsequent boundary reviews. Apparently we are not doing that and we can rush at this one, like a bull at a gate.

This is a substantial review that will bring about major changes because of the age of the boundaries we have, which is quite right. I am not arguing about the fact that these changes have to be made and that we have to achieve some sort of equilibrium, which at the same time recognises communities, but it will be a difficult exercise that the Government are making even more difficult because of the timescale they are setting.

Saying that the second stage of the review will have only six weeks and the final stage only four does not seem to be consistent with the idea that we set parameters and let the boundary commission get on with its job. All of a sudden we are starting to put difficulties in its way. I would support the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Glasgow East if it were put to a vote. It is important that we give flexibility to the boundary commission so that the public have confidence in what the commission is doing and that their views can be heard. Even if the outcome is not the boundaries that the public support, at least they will have had the right to have their voices heard in a way that is convenient and in a location that enables them to participate. Putting restrictions on the boundary commission is a step in the wrong direction. I fundamentally disagree with the bit in subsection (12). On a boundary review that is well overdue and is going to be difficult, the Government have set a tougher timescale. The game is up. This really does expose the political considerations. This is all about the timing and choice of a general election date from 2023 onwards. It has nothing whatever to do with doing an efficient job in reviewing parliamentary boundaries.

[The Chair]

I point out to the Committee that any vote on amendment 10 will be later in our proceedings. If the hon. Member for Glasgow East wishes to press the amendment to a Division, it will be later in our proceedings.

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[David Linden]

Thank you very much, Sir David. I do not want to challenge the establishment too much when you are in the Chair, so I will avoid being taken down the path that these unruly Conservatives would have me go down—of course, I was so much in order. Perhaps my remarks in the last few minutes have been slightly cheekie-chappie, but I want to say that I am delighted to see the clause in the Bill. It would be remiss of us not to put on the record our thanks to the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton, who tried to keep this issue alive in the previous Parliament and, as a result, we find ourselves with a Bill that is by no means perfect, but the clause is one of the better things in it. With that, and I am sure to everyone’s relief, I bring my remarks to a close.

[Clive Efford]

The Bill gets more and more curious. The Minister argued consistently on previous clauses for a position that would have prevented us from getting to the clause, had we been in that position of automaticity and the previous boundary reviews had gone through. If it were not for Parliament’s ability to have a second look at what had been set in train, we would not have the clause to have 650 MPs.

It is curious for the Minister to stand up and say that is the right decision and what we should do when she has also argued for something that would have prevented us from getting to this position. That is the argument in favour of Parliament giving the final approval on whatever the boundary commission proposes. It is clear that going down to 600 MPs was a schism imposed on us by two ambitious young politicians who got together in a rose garden and completely fell in love. It was the wrong decision, and when Parliament got the chance to take a second look, it came to a conclusion that both sides of the House support. With the situation we are in, which we have been in for a long time—MPs represent greater numbers of constituents than ever before, and in some of our inner-city areas that involves many people who cannot go on the electoral register—it has been obvious that we should not cut the number of MPs. We are where we are, but that highlights how the Government are arguing for a position that would have resulted in us making a huge error, had it been in place at the time of the last boundary review.

[Christian Matheson]

I will speak only briefly. In fact, I only sought to catch your eye, Sir David, after my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley gave advice to the Minister, based on his years of experience, that she was entitled to criticise previous leaders who may no longer be with us. I thought I would therefore take the opportunity to do what I promised earlier and compliment the Minister on changing her position. I said how she would prove to be flexible, and this is what I was talking about. As my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood said, the reversion to 650 is the right decision, and I very much welcome it. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham just said, is it not great that we are in a position to do that, because automaticity was not in the Bill? I will leave it at that.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 5 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 6

Taking account of local government boundaries

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[Chris Clarkson]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I largely agree with my right hon. Friends the Members for Basingstoke and for Elmet and Rothwell, and thank the hon. Member for Glasgow East for his amendment. I will treat it as a probing amendment, and I shall not support it as it stands because we are still awaiting a letter from the boundary commission. My concern is that if we start prescribing units, it becomes dogma. We have seen that three of the boundary commissions are perfectly happy to start looking at innovative ways of splitting wards and treating postcode areas and community council areas as building blocks.

As Mr Bellringer suggested—I am not saying that this is the attitude across the piece, but it appears to be—the boundary commissions will go for the path of least resistance, which at the moment is wards. If we give them something smaller to work with, they will just work to that particular unit. We will get concomitances of polling districts snatched from area A and area B, and it becomes a more microscopic version of what we currently have. I am also concerned about using polling districts. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell said, there is the danger of reintroducing a political element into something when we are trying to take it out by introducing the process of automaticity.

I shall not support the amendment. I greatly appreciate the option of being able to split wards. I am glad that we have had this debate. The Committee has heard from Government-supporting Members that it is something that we are happy to look at, but I consider that being prescriptive is not the most helpful way to approach it.

[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?

Parliamentary Constituencies bill (Fourth sitting)

Clive Efford Excerpts

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

[Chris Clarkson]

Q Is it fair to say that an element of the disruptive change that will be an inevitable part of this review will be down to the fact that local electoral geography has changed substantially over the last 20 years?

Peter Stanyon: Absolutely. It comes back to the electoral figures that are being dealt with. Certainly, the proposed reduction of seats from 650 to 600 exacerbated it. It is 20 years since the review was undertaken, so there will be significant changes in some areas. Over time, hopefully they will be negated as we go forward, but yes, it is difficult to cope with at the moment because it has been a long time since the last boundary review.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Q Hi Peter. What are the additional problems that are created for electoral registration officers when a constituency goes into two local authority areas that are under the purview of different local authorities and EROs?

Peter Stanyon: In local authority A, the electoral registration officer will cover the area for that local authority, maybe giving that register away. That is reasonably straightforward in terms of polling stations and the like, but slightly more complicated with absent votes and postal votes. There need to be agreements about who will be leading on each individual process. In some areas, the give-away authority will administer parts of the process for the authority that has taken it in, because of software incompatibility or different approaches being taken.

Most of the challenge is about: how do you mirror local authority A’s working practice on to local authority B? Despite the fact that the law that everybody is working to is exactly the same, there are local practices that are slightly different. That comes down to the real nitty-gritty of things like how many staff are appointed to polling stations, the processes used for the opening of postal votes and things like that. It is more an administrative approach that is difficult, which means that the respective returning officers need to communicate very closely with each other, to make sure that there is no element of doubt as to the way in which processes are administered.

[Clive Efford]

Q For local administration purposes, would it be better to go to sub-ward level to keep a constituency coterminous within a local authority area than to go across two local authority areas?

Peter Stanyon: It would really depend on the nature of the split in the area, but, generally speaking, it is far easier to manage a constituency within a local authority area in which you are normally running elections. Equally, splitting down to polling districts, and going lower than the ward building block, may be preferable in some areas, but it could add different issues, depending on the nature of those splits. We would probably be able to cope with the odd one here and there, but if it were across the board of a local authority on a consistent basis, I could foresee that being as complicated as it would be across boundaries.

[Clive Efford]

Q Are there any sources of information that electoral registration officers would like to have access to and that they currently cannot access, which would assist them in maintaining an accurate electoral register?

Peter Stanyon: Much of what is going on as we speak in terms of the changes to the canvass process is about data. As you are aware, the new IER process involves inviting people to register. More access to data that allows registration officers to target those who could potentially be on the register would be welcome, be that local, national or regional. It depends on the type of data source; equally, it needs to be the right sort of data so that register updates can be done in an accurate and convenient manner.

[Clive Efford]

Q Has your association identified the sources that you would like to be able to access?

Peter Stanyon: I think the Department for Work and Pensions database is, at the moment, pretty robust in terms of checking. The Electoral Commission has done a lot of work on other sources that we have been a party to, including HM Passport Office and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. Each comes with its positives and negatives; there are lots of pros and cons. One of the things we want to avoid is the provision of data for the sake of the provision of data, because sometimes the data that we already have is more accurate than the data coming in, throwing EROs off course in terms of registration.

[Clive Efford]

Q Is the simple answer to the question that yes, there are sources that you would like access to?

Peter Stanyon: There are potential sources. We need to see the quality of those data sources before we can jump that way.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

Q Thank you for your evidence, Peter. If you mentioned this earlier I did not catch it, but we have been talking a lot about polling districts. Could you confirm how often, on average, polling districts actually change? I have been an MP for 15 years and I could probably count two or three times we have had changes in polling districts, which should always be as a result of boundary changes for wards. Is that typical, or are they usually more regular than that?

Peter Stanyon: It will vary across the UK. A statutory review must be undertaken every five years. One has just finished, and the next one is due to report between October 2023 and January 2025. In some local authorities, polling district reviews are undertaken after each major poll, just to make sure that the scheme is suitable. It depends on the fluidity of local authority areas.

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[Laura Farris]

Q We heard evidence from Professor Iain McLean this morning, who said that one of the risks of the local ties argument is that, depending on whose hands that argument is in, it can be politicised in a different way, and what the Conservatives, Labour party or Liberal Democrats might determine to be local ties would vary according to which of them you ask. Do you agree with that analysis? If you do, do you think it supports the idea of a threshold being set somewhere?

Darren Hughes: I do agree with that analysis. Sometimes things are important but not very popular, or not very—[Inaudible]— or not very engaging. When we conduct elections, they are very important to millions of people, which is why around two thirds of people on the register turn out. We all wish that that was higher, but there is still a lot of interest in elections. Some of the mechanics of how we build the demographic architecture does not result in a huge amount of engagement. I think that on parliamentary boundaries, if you were wanting to involve them in a submission process, you either hire somebody to run that for you or you ensure that tweets and letters go out and so on. As I said before, it takes on an incredible cloak of authority for that community, even though it might not be entitled to the status that it receives. I agree that it is possible to happen, and I think in some cases the community argument is very strong, but in a lot of cases it is a shield for more of a partisan argument for that particular electoral cycle, which, as I say, is the sort of thing we should avoid.

Being able to have things like citizens’ juries or —[Inaudible]—citizens who are asked to come together to assist the commissions with information, with their feelings and the values of that area, and with people saying what they think the community interests really are, might be a more real way of being able to include the community, getting better quality information and ensuring that the final decisions reflect the reasonable view of the public, as opposed to those who knew that the consultation was on.

[Clive Efford]

Q Thanks, Darren, for giving evidence this afternoon. Following on from that, do you think that the Boundary Commission is incapable of telling the difference between political opportunism and genuine community concern about parliamentary boundaries and local representation?

Darren Hughes: I do not know, is the answer to that. I assume not, but sometimes when these processes are going on for a long period of time, and if people are appointed who might not have a lot of experience in dealing with active organised citizens pushing a particular view, these are the risks you run. It might not be the case in every cycle, but you would want to make sure that organised political activity dressed up as the concerned citizen was not able to take hold. That is an important thing. Secondly, if there are mechanisms to get very good quality information about what the general public think, like deliberative consultation processes enable you to do, that is pretty rich information for the commissioners to receive in addition to the demography data that they would be using as well.

[Clive Efford]

Q Do you have examples of where things went wrong, where local representations were dressed up in such a way as to influence the outcome, which brought about something that was regretted later? You do not have any examples of where local representation has forced errors in boundaries.

Darren Hughes: Not that I can provide you with right now, no. I have never sat on one of those commissions, so I do not have personal experience there. There is plenty of both academic and more political-style literature that is available to describe some of the tactics that can go on. All I am saying is that those things are really easy to avoid, and we should build it into the process.

[Clive Efford]

Q Can I ask about how we devise the electoral register? Do you think there should be any changes to the way we do that, and any sources of information that are currently denied EROs, that they should be able to access to help them create an accurate list?

Darren Hughes: The main suggestion I have on that would be to move proactively to an overt position of automatic voter registration where we basically said that every time a citizen makes contact, or touches base in any way, with the Government or Government agencies, there is an ability to register—and that that is proactively put to people: we do work with people before they attain registration age to explain what democracy is, why participation is important and how you can have your say, and we really try to increase the amount of information that our younger citizens have. Then, with an automatic voter registration model where they would go on the register, you would hope that that would lead to participation in elections. Even if it did not, it would then get more accurate and complete data for the drawing up of boundaries.

I think some improvements were made by using other sources of Government data and requiring DWP involvement when the IER changes were made. That is coming up to 10 years ago, so now the next step is to say, “What could we do to be more proactive?” I think this paper that the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust has produced on automatic voter registration would be a good place to start.

[Clive Efford]

Q Earlier you mentioned that you favoured 650 MPs. You were concerned about going down to 600 and giving the payroll a greater proportional say. You also in answer to the Minister made a reference to political interference. Was Parliament right to stop the number being cut down to 600, or was that political interference—or was trying to go down to 600 actually the political interference? I am not sure what point you were making.

Darren Hughes: I suppose it would be political involvement at both levels, would not it? It was the decision to propose going from 650 to 600, and then another decision to reverse that and go back. I think that there was a political element to that. I guess the other thing is, right at the very beginning, making sure that these things are written for all time, not just one time, one particular cycle or one particular Government or Opposition—just doing these things in a very straight way so that if you are up it works for you and if you are down it works for you as well.

I do not think the decision to go from 650 to 600 was driven by any particular democratic principle. It was part of a response to a crisis at the time, and that has not stood the test of time because it was not grounded in much more than that. Also, probably it is easy to agree to a cut in the number of MPs until you realise that it also involves the boundaries of the remaining 600. That might have focused minds a wee bit.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Q Why is there an assumption that all adults want to be on the electoral register?

Darren Hughes: That is a good question, because I guess it is philosophical. The duties and responsibilities of being a citizen do not actually require much, but being on the electoral register means that you can, right at the last minute, decide whether you will vote. It also helps us with the way we structure democracy and ensures that the way the boundaries are done is open and transparent. For people who want to be involved in elected politics, it is important to know the number of people in the country for whom they can campaign with their ideas and policies. Those are all some basic responsibilities that just come with the duty of being a citizen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Clarkson]

But it is at the moment.

[Clive Efford]

Q I am not sure which of the two of you I am aiming this question at, but how much does locality and the experience of living in a community influence the way people vote? Does it bring outcomes where people vote collectively in a similar pattern?

Professor Pattie: You heard evidence from John Curtice this morning on this and I would not disagree with him. There certainly is evidence that people are influenced by the context in which they live and by what is happening around them both in terms of the economic and political environment and in terms of the climate of opinion around them. People who in a sociological sense look very similar, but live in different areas, can go in very different ways much more akin to other people within their area. Is it the biggest influence on people’s voting? No, probably it is not. Does it have an effect? Yes, it does.

[Clive Efford]

Q Could it lead to frustration? We do not keep clearly identifiable communities with common characteristics integral within parliamentary representation, but their voices could be lost because they cannot vote collectively in response to the experience of living in their particular locality.

Professor Pattie: That is rather harder to argue, to be honest. The extent to which people would see themselves as acting for their local area in a constituency sense is quite a hard one to argue. People have a sense of “my area” [Inaudible], but is that the constituency? That is much less obvious.

Dr Rossiter: Over the years, for my sins, I have attended an awful lot of what were local inquiries and I have listened to a very large amount of evidence put forward about local ties. I tend to agree with Professor McLean, who gave evidence this morning, that one person’s local ties go in diametrically opposed directions to another person’s local ties, depending on their political preferences, so I am not at all upset at the idea that arguments in terms of local ties might take a lower role in the hierarchy. In fact, I think that that is a sensible thing.

What I do think—this also goes back to the previous question—is that where you have got local government boundaries and existing seats, you have inconvenience when you cross those. I listened to the evidence earlier from the person representing the electoral registration officers and I have also heard evidence given at inquiries from Members of Parliament who have repeatedly referenced the difficulties that they have when they have to deal with multiple local authorities. People deal with four. or, as recommended in one of the recent reviews, five local authorities for one Member of Parliament. That aspect of discretion is something that the Boundary Commissions over years and years have shown great ability to recognise. Again, I come back to my point: that is where their discretion and their ability to address those concerns is being curtailed.

[Clive Efford]

Q I was going to come on to that, so you have segued to it nicely. To come within the 5%, or whatever we finish up setting in this piece of legislation, requires either taking a piece of a ward—going to sub-ward level within a local authority area—or going across that local authority boundary. Would you suggest that it is better to go to a sub-ward level and stay within the local authority area, rather than having constituencies span two or more local authority areas?

Dr Rossiter: Speaking personally, it would depend on the evidence in the particular case. I do not think that one is necessarily better than the other. I have noticed, when we have been looking at this, the significant help that increasing that tolerance by very small amounts will provide. As soon as you go from 5% to 6%, you have a big payback from going up by that one percentage point. That payback increases to around 8%, which is why we came to the conclusion in our previous report that a figure of 8% would be much more helpful. Beyond 8%, the advantage begins to flatten off, because you are reaching a point at which any sensible commission can reach solutions.

In all this, we accept and understand entirely that the 5% introduction was not an attempt to be cussed or anything of that nature. It is simply that 8% and 5% are not worlds apart. If you are able to achieve far more when you adopt one rather than the other, you have to wonder why you would want to go for the lower figure, unless there is some major negativity in that regard. Again, as people who write published papers, we have to do our research, and we have looked for anything that would support 5% in any of the previous discussions regarding the 2011 Act and so on, and we have struggled.

I know you have had reference to the standards related to the “Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters”, and there seems to have been some confusion over what that says. I am not sure whether that confusion has been sorted out; I was very surprised by what I heard the other day. I think there is probably an understandable source for this confusion, because an earlier edition of an OSCE publication did indeed say that a 10% tolerance—quite reasonably taken to mean no more than 5% either side of the norm—should be aimed for, but that was never referenced in that version of that booklet; a subsequent edition of that observer handbook has come out, and that reference is no longer in there.

Probably the best statement of what is best in this area is the OSCE’s “Guidelines for Reviewing a Legal Framework for Elections”, which specifically endorses the “Code of Good Practice” and states that proximate equality—no more than 10% between electorates—should be the aim, but interestingly goes on to say that

“frequent changes in the boundaries of constituencies should be avoided”.

If we are looking for international standards on this, there is a clear suggestion that going right down to 5% is not necessary, and in so far as it causes change to boundaries, we would not fall foul of OSCE reports. They all seem to find that UK elections fail in one respect or another, but at least we would not fall foul on that.

[Clive Efford]

Thank you.

[The Chair]

Are there any other questions from Committee Members to put to our two witnesses? If there are no other questions, I would like to thank Dr Rossiter and Professor Pattie for the evidence you have given us this afternoon. We are very grateful. I am grateful to Members for their cooperation during this virtual session in these somewhat unusual proceedings.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned—(Eddie Hughes.)

Parliamentary Constituencies bill (Third sitting)

Clive Efford Excerpts

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

[The Chair]

I thank our witnesses for their full answers, but I am afraid we will have to have very brief questions and responses.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Q How far should we go in ensuring that whole communities are kept intact when we form a parliamentary constituency boundary, when balanced against trying to achieve equality of the value of someone’s vote?

Dr Renwick: Both of the principles that you have just mentioned matter, and so does the principle that there should not be too much chopping and changing of constituency boundaries from election to election. There is no single correct answer to the question of how those different principles should be balanced. The Venice Commission from the Council of Europe recommends a maximum deviation from perfect equality in numerical terms of 10%. Currently, under the UK rules we have 5%. The evidence from Charles Pattie and David Rossiter, which I am sure you will hear this afternoon, suggests that something like a deviation of 8% would allow much greater account to be taken of local community ties and much less chopping and changing between elections.

[Clive Efford]

Q In order to achieve making sure that communities are kept intact, is it desirable that the Boundary Commission has flexibility and is not kept to a maximum of 5%?

Dr Renwick: I think there should be a maximum, but there is a good case for saying that the maximum could be extended a little bit without undue cost to the equality of the vote.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Q It is always dangerous to go head to head with an academic, but in terms of the 5% and the 10%, my reading of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe report is that it is a 10% variation between seats, not a 20% variation. May I clarify, Dr Renwick, that when you talk about the 5% difference, that actually gives an overall difference of 10% between seats, whereas a 10% difference would give an overall difference of 20% between seats?

Dr Renwick: What I am referring to is the guidance from the Venice Commission. My reading of that is that it implies a 10% deviation from the average. If we look at other countries, we see that in New Zealand the deviation is permitted as 5% from the average, and in Australia it is, so far as possible, 3% from the average, and not more than 10%. Therefore, 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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Q One reason we are probing how constituencies are built is because there is removal of parliamentary oversight. It needs to be done properly the first time. You rightly referenced the size of the wards in Birmingham. I am a West Yorkshire MP. There are two councils in West Yorkshire, Kirklees and Leeds—out of the five councils—where the wards are far too big not to be split.

This comes down to guidance. As you pointed out, the large wards and the way they are managed in Scotland has allowed a more detailed approach. When you get to the arguments of whether it should be plus or minus 10% or 5%, I am seeking your view as to whether the arguments about the variations can be overcome by the guidance, which goes more explicitly to the Boundary Commission for England in splitting wards.

In the past, there has been a habit of them trying to form some strange shapes, like American congressional districts, just to get the numbers right, forming very strange communities. They have almost always then changed the first draft significantly in the second draft. The guidance that will go in this Bill, especially for the Boundary Commission for England, should try to avoid that situation.

The parliamentary oversight is going, which I believe is the correct thing to do. But we must get this right the first time and use this Bill to iron out these issues. Is this Bill strong enough, in terms of the Boundary Commission for England, to construct constituencies, which have an eye to what has gone on in the past, but do not end up with peculiar shapes and communities just to make the numbers work?

Professor Sir John Curtice: Can I respond to that? It is true that the current arrangements for parliamentary oversight do not make it very easy for the House of Commons to change the detail of the provisions. It basically has to say yes or no, and only after it has said no can the Government attempt to change the provisions of the Commission. That is the first point; otherwise, it is a guess on my part, but I would anticipate that now we are going to a House of 650 seats rather than one of 600, some of the difficulties with supposedly major constituencies may be less sharp.

The final thing to say is that even with us going for 650 seats rather than 600, the next boundary revision is bound to be a major one. Because Parliament has blocked both of the last two redistributions that it ordered, we now have boundaries that are 20 years out of date. We are also finally getting around to dealing with the differences in the allocation of constituencies to England, Scotland and Wales, so this is bound to be a disruptive redistribution. It will be somewhat less disruptive than it would have been with 600 seats, but it is bound to be disruptive, in much the same way as the one that was introduced in 1983, because that got affected by the direction of local government.

You might want to investigate the forces that have resulted in boundaries going out of date—that is, population movements, which historically for most of the post-war period meant people moving out of the inner city into more suburban and rural areas. The last analysis of this I read, which was by the expert Tony Champion, indicates that this has been going on to a lesser extent; it is notable that somewhere like London is now gaining population and is certainly not going to lose out from the current redistribution. Of course, nobody knows what is going to happen in the wake of the pandemic, but it is worth being aware that some of the demographic forces that have given rise to the kinds of inequalities we have been used to may no longer have quite the same force as in the past.

Professor McLean: If time permits, Chair, may I come in on part of the Member’s question, which was to do with whether the guidance in the Bill should be more explicit than this current draft? My view is no, for the following reasons.

The legislation is UK-wide, as you all know. As this discussion has revealed, the English and Scottish—and, may I say, Northern Irish—commissions have all taken different approaches to the local government boundary question. Those different approaches are all legitimate within the text of the Act that this Bill amends, and it does not amend that Act in any material way. Therefore, I do not think there is any need to give guidance to the Boundary Commission for England that, if it wishes, it can be more flexible in Birmingham and West Yorkshire than its predecessors have been. It already has that discretion; that discretion is exercised by the Boundary Commission for Scotland, and to pick up a point of John’s, if at the last review the Boundary Commission for England had invested in geographic information systems that were as up to date as the Scottish commission’s, some of the problems that the Member mentioned—which I know concern a lot of Members—could have been avoided. My view is that as the existing statutory framework gives the commission the authority to ignore local government boundaries if it has to, there is no need to change the draft Bill in that respect.

[Clive Efford]

Q Professor Sir John, how much does locality and shared common experience in a community influence how individuals vote?

Professor Sir John Curtice: The research on this goes back quite a way, and the answer is “to a degree”. For the purposes of answering this question, I will go back 20 years psephologically, because the psephology of party support has changed so much over the past 20 years that this is not necessarily true now. If we go back 20 years, to an era when a middle-class person was markedly more likely to vote Conservative than Labour, and the opposite was true of someone who was working class—that, by the way, is not currently the case—historically, it had long been demonstrated that if you were a middle-class person living in an area that was predominantly populated by people in working-class occupations, you were more likely to vote Labour than if you were a middle-class person living in a more middle-class area.

There were two potential forces going on there. One is that, to some degree, middle-class people who choose to live in a more working-class area may actually already be rather more of a Labour disposition, but equally, it has certainly long been argued that to some degree, you are influenced by the social interaction to which you are exposed, so if you are living in a working-class community, you are more likely to be exposed to pro-Labour arguments than if you were living in a Conservative one.

Of course, the world has moved on in terms of the demography of party support, which is much less clearly structured by class, and social interaction is no longer as geographically bound as it once was and can now take place over social media. Iain may know more than me, but it has certainly been a while since I have seen anybody doing anything major on the extent to which community makes a difference. The only thing that I would say is that, undoubtedly, one of the reasons why MPs will always be concerned about any redistribution is that it upsets the connection between them and their existing electorate.

One of the things that we certainly do know—again, this may also be relevant to your question—is that if somebody has been elected for the first time at the last election and defeated the incumbent MP from another party, there is a fairly consistent tendency now whereby, in view of the next election, that new Member, who has probably just won a marginal seat, has a great deal of incentive to be representing their community and to be visible and so on, to get something of a personal bonus. You can see that in the way that the Labour party defended some seats in 2019, with newly incumbent, first-term Labour MPs doing well, and it was similar for the Conservative party in 2017. To that extent at least, yes, you can certainly also argue that a minority of voters—in some instances a crucial minority—will vote for their individual MP rather than for the party, but of course, if you get a boundary redistribution that carves up an individual MP’s constituency, that link is broken.

In truth, in our electoral system, there is a continuous and perpetual tension. We want our electoral system to do two things: on the one hand, we want it to provide local representation, and on the other, we want it to be a system that provides a means by which the electorate can choose between alternative Governments. I am afraid that I have spent the last 40 years pointing out the potential conflict between those two objectives and that, if you wish to ensure that the system is fair in the ability of voters to choose between alternative Governments, at some point you have to let go of the emphasis on local representation.

In a sense, the debate that we are having now about mathematical equality versus respecting community ties is a sub-part of that broader debate. Decide what your elections are about: if they are about the election of individual MPs and less to do with Governments, you can focus on representing communities; if you think that it is a system for enabling us to choose between alternative Governments, which is the traditional defence of the single member plurality system, I am afraid that local representation has to be given a lower priority.

[Clive Efford]

Q If a community has a shared experience—perhaps, for instance, the “red wall” seats that people have talked about a lot since the last election—and wants to express a collective view through the ballot box, is it not important that those communities are connected and represented in a cohesive and clearly identifiable way, where they have common characteristics, so that their votes will count?

Professor Sir John Curtice: That is what we used to have in the system of parliamentary representation when both boroughs and counties were represented and they were often of considerably unequal size. That comes back to the fundamental question about what we think elections should be about. Are they about providing MPs who represent communities, or are they a mechanism for choosing between alternative Governments? I am afraid that is just an inherent tension within the electoral system that we are looking at.

[Clive Efford]

Q But if those views are diluted because communities are divided up in a mathematical exercise, do people not become frustrated because their collective view, brought about by their collective experiences in a locality, cannot be represented?

Professor Sir John Curtice: Well, you are assuming that the current decisions of parliamentary constituents in some way already play out in—[Inaudible.] As Professor McLean has pointed out, what we regard as our community is sometimes in the eye of the beholder.

[Clive Efford]

Q That may well be true. Nonetheless, the community has an opportunity to make those representations to the Boundary Commission.

Professor Sir John Curtice: There is a certain geographical concentration of voters who may or may not feel a sense of community, or who may in fact feel that they are an aggregation of many different communities. For example, I expect that relatively few of the constituencies in the far north of Scotland necessarily think that their constituency represents one agreed community, as opposed to a collection of villages. Indeed, if we go out to the Western Isles, where even the concept of village does not really exist, they will not necessarily think that the constituency is some clear, single, coterminous and homogenous community.

[Clive Efford]

Q That is true. There are communities within boundaries, but it is important that they are not subdivided, just to satisfy a tight, rigid, mathematical exercise, is it not?

Professor Sir John Curtice: The truth is that whatever set of rules you come up with, you may discover that you have got a choice about exactly how you try to represent community interest. At the end of the day, you may well simply discover that whatever rules you come up with, you end up dividing some places that you think—acknowledging that there is a question mark—might be a community.

[Clive Efford]

Q My final point would be that, in that case, should we not allow the Boundary Commission more flexibility than the 5%, in order to meet those concerns, where there is a genuine expression of concern from a local community?

Professor Sir John Curtice: I think my answer is that, while you might make it somewhat easier to avoid some of the cries that “This community is being divided”, the fact is that—if you go back to the current constituencies—communities are divided. Do we think that some of the lines that are drawn down the middle of Birmingham or London boroughs necessarily represent a community boundary? I suggest that they do not always do so.

[Clive Efford]

Q Can I turn to Professor McLean? Do we need more than a calculator to map out our parliamentary boundaries?

Professor McLean: I would urge Members not to go down that road. Of course, it is a political judgment for the Committee and the House of Commons. This is somewhat of a knight’s move answer to Mr Efford, but paragraphs 86 to 89 of the explanatory notes have a section about compatibility with the European convention on human rights. The criteria to be met are in paragraph 88 of the explanatory notes:

“The Bill maintains the principle of equal suffrage”.

The wider the margin, the less equal is the suffrage. That is the trade-off, which Parliament must decide to make. My view is that plus or minus 5% is ample, given that we have the device of protected constituencies. Of course, Members may wish to add to that number. I see that an amendment has been tabled that Ynys Môn should be added to the list, and Members might feel that Wirral should be added. Those are further instances of geographical peculiarities that might make the application of the 5% plus or minus more difficult. That is a political judgment for Members; as political scientists, or electoral mathematicians, we cannot say anything about it, except that those might be plausible cases. I would be against relaxing the plus or minus 5%, in the light of compatibility with the European convention on human rights, among other things.

[The Chair]

Before asking Mrs Miller to put her question, in a moment the Division bell will ring. Please stand to observe a minute’s silence for those murdered in Reading.

Covid-19 Update

Clive Efford Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I think I know Roger Koppl and I would be very interested to hear what he has to say, but I must say I think that the guidance from our scientists has been incredibly valuable. It has helped us throughout the period. But be in no doubt—I am sure my hon. Friend will understand—that the decisions that we have taken are decisions that we as Government have taken, and for which we take full responsibility.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I have many large leisure facilities in my constituency that could open now—gymnasiums, swimming pools and even an outdoor lido, but they fear that they have been lumped in with smaller facilities that would find it difficult to open. They could open now, meeting social distancing regulations, whether 2 metres or 1 metre. How long will they have to wait for the taskforce to enable them to open?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very powerful point, and I am sure that that kind of point will be echoed in multiple ways around the country today, as people look at apparent inconsistencies. All I can say is, we will work as fast as we can with him, with the gyms and swimming pools that he mentions, to try to get them into a state where they can open as fast as possible.