Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Eleanor Laing]

(Epping Forest) (Con): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

If the hon. Lady does not mind, I ought to make a little progress.

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[Mrs Laing]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman realises that his answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) exactly explains why the old system was dominated by clever lawyers and barristers, and clever political argument, and why it must be changed—it had nothing to do with local people. The hon. Gentleman just admitted as much.

The hon. Gentleman’s point on judicial review is a strong one. Does he agree that judicial review, and therefore delay and uncertainty, will be stopped if the Bill is certain and precise? That is why we cannot allow, for example, Lords amendment 19, which mentions circumstances of “an exceptionally compelling nature”. That is imprecise, but it is our duty to produce precise legislation, and thereby to obviate the necessity for judicial review.

[Chris Bryant]

Large parts of the Bill are not sufficiently precise, and the Opposition have tabled amendments to improve the quality of the legislation. The hon. Lady is a member of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, but I am not sure whether she heard Professor Johnston’s evidence last week—[Interruption.] I see that she is brandishing a document, like Excalibur. My reading of his evidence is that he felt that, in certain situations, the Acton Burnells of this world could effect change. We want that to be possible under the new system. We want the people of Cornwall, if they want to, to say categorically, “We do not want to cross the Tamar in the creation of a constituency.” However, there is no provision in the Government’s Bill, either for that voice to be heard effectively and transmitted to the Boundary Commission, or for the commission to act upon it. The commission can do absolutely nothing to act upon it because it is bound by the 5% rule, which is why I hope that the hon. Lady will support the 7.5% rule. If she has a way of improving the provision so that it is more precise, I would be delighted to sit down with her later and draft a new version.

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[Mrs Laing]

The argument advanced by the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) does not hold water at all. First, given that there are students and people with second or third homes all over the country, if someone moves from one constituency to another having registered two votes, those votes will cancel each other out. When the movement between constituencies is considered as a single total movement of population, we see that that will apply throughout the country. Secondly, that is exactly why we need a variation of about 5%.

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend mentioned the number of votes. It is true that if someone genuinely resides in more than one location, rather than merely owning property in those locations—I know that this has been an issue in some parts of the country including Cornwall, and I urge returning officers who do not believe that someone genuinely resides somewhere to be firm about challenging that claim—even if they receive two ballot papers, they are entitled to vote only once. That is the point that I was trying to make to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). Currently it is possible to obtain more than one ballot paper, but it is a criminal offence to use more than one in the same election.

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[Andrew George]

I am not engaged in special pleading. My constituency is in the bottom left-hand corner and as far away from England as one can get in Cornwall, and of course it includes the Isles of Scilly, which have some special geographical considerations, so it is clear that I do not need to worry. There will no doubt be some oscillation of the constituency’s eastern boundary. I am here not for special pleading, but because I believe that a significant injustice is going on across the whole country and that the intransigence in the way it is being handled is simply unacceptable.

[Mrs Laing]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew George]

I will not give way, because we have only 11 minutes left and I want to finish to allow other Members to speak. We had the option of extending to other constituencies the exceptional geographical status that is applied to Na h-Eileanan an Iar, Orkney and Shetland and the other places that have been mentioned. All the amendment would do is give the Boundary Commission reasonable latitude and discretion to accept the arguments for exceptional status that will inevitably arise. Otherwise, the Government’s intransigence will leave a legacy that I believe the House will regret.

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[Paul Murphy]

That extra flexibility allows for the factor that I have just described in Wales and elsewhere to be taken into account—of course it does. I should argue very strongly for 10%, but the Government have a particular principle behind their legislation, which incidentally is based not in any way on logic, but on expediency.

[Mrs Laing]

The right hon. Gentleman is doing very well, as ever, at putting before the House what appears to be an argument based on principle, but in reality are not he and his Labour party colleagues afraid of the inflexibility of a 5% variation, because it would take away their in-built advantage under the current unfair system?

[Paul Murphy]

In the examples that I have just given, of Welsh-speaking constituencies in Wales, the seats are held mainly by Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrat party, so there is no advantage for the Labour party in that. I am not arguing a partisan point; I am arguing that 7.5% would provide for that flexibility throughout the United Kingdom and avoid the worst excesses of the Bill.

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[Alec Shelbrooke]

Absolutely. That makes my point entirely. When considering special circumstances and local ties, would not Sherburn in Elmet, part of the Celtic kingdom of Elmet, become part of a constituency incorporating Elmet? Would that not come under special interests and considerations? Would not precedent be brought forward in the courts in terms of representing that seat? The amendment is absolute nonsense which leads to grey areas in the Bill.

I want to talk about the 5% barrier. In the Leeds area, Elmet and Rothwell has 78,000 electors, and perhaps this point did not occur to the Opposition when they put their proposal together, but their variations on 76,000, the figure in the Bill, take us perilously close to the 68,000 electors in Leeds North East, a Labour seat; to the 65,000 electors in Leeds East, also held by Labour; and to the 65,000 electors in Leeds Central—Labour. The only exceptions are Morley and Outwood, which has 74,000 electors, although I believe the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) would need only a 1.5% swing to lose the seat; and Pudsey, which has 69,000 electors. The 5% barrier is fine; it allows us not to go down the path of dividing villages or streets. The idea of trying to increase the percentage is just an attempt to preserve the Labour party’s in-built advantage.

[Mrs Laing]

The amendment cannot stand: first, it is unclear, and it would be wrong for this House to make laws that are unclear; and secondly, it is unfair.

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[Mr Harper]

Let me make a little more progress.

There are some technical and practical deficiencies, some of which were partially addressed in Lord Rooker’s Third Reading amendment, which the Government did not oppose pending full consideration in the Chamber. The definition of electorate was dealt with, as was how the turnout would be calculated. A problem with the original amendment was not remedied, as it leads to the creation of an internal contradiction in the Bill. It makes no consequential change to clause 8 to clarify that, in a case where the turnout is less than 40%, the referendum result is no longer binding. As it stands, clause 8 provides that the result is binding, irrespective of the turnout.

In addition, neither amendment makes any reference to what kind of process would follow a non-binding result. In the debate, Lord Rooker and his colleagues indicated that, in the event of a yes vote where the turnout was less than 40%, the question of whether the AV provisions should be implemented should return to Parliament. That point has been repeated by Members of all parties, but it is not made clear in the Bill or in the Lords amendment with which we disagree. There are also some issues with the definition of turnout.

[Mrs Laing]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Harper]

Given that my hon. Friend is the acting Chairman of the Select Committee, I will give way to her.

[Mrs Laing]

It is in my capacity as acting Chairman of the Select Committee that I wish to make this point. The amendment is—sadly, because I want to see thresholds, but not as the amendment introduces them—deficient. It is not clear. The definition of vote is not clear and the definition of electorate is not clear. The Electoral Commission provided the Select Committee with the evidence—I do not have time to provide it now, but it is on the record—and if a law is not clear, it is bad law.

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend is quite right. I was just coming on to the point that there is also the question of whether the definition of turnout in their Lordship’s amendment is correct. Lords amendment 8 specifies that

“the turnout figure is to be calculated on the basis that 100% is defined as the total number of individuals who are entitled to vote in the referendum, as defined in section 2; and… under Part 1 of this Act”.

That means that the turnout figure would not include those who had voted on the day, but whose votes were deemed, for whatever reason, to be void. Those void votes are not counted. As Lord Wallace noted in the other place, the Government’s view is that if eligible electors go to the polling station and vote, they have “turned out”, so they should be included within the turnout figure, even if their vote is subsequently deemed to be invalid. Although this aspect clarifies how to interpret Lords amendment 1, it does not necessarily do so in the right way.