Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Bach Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Bach]

71B: Clause 11, page 9, line 34, leave out from beginning to end of line 5 on page 10

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, the purpose of this amendment is to probe the thinking behind the territorial extent rule—rule 4—in Clause 11 and, in so doing, to test some of the fundamental assumptions that underpin the Bill’s proposed new system before drawing parliamentary constituencies. Rule 4 is designed to place a limit on the territorial extent of a constituency. The rule is deemed necessary because, if the principle of equality of representation was continued to its logical end, we would see at least one gigantic parliamentary constituency in the Highlands of Scotland. This is because the scarcity of population in that part of the United Kingdom means that a constituency would have to cover an enormous area if it was going to attain the proposed electoral quota of approximately 75,800 electors.

The electoral parity rule, born out of rules 2 and 5(3) in the Government’s scheme, is clear that every seat in Britain, save for the two Scottish island seats—and now, by the will of this Committee, the Isle of Wight—would have to have an electorate of between 95 per cent and 105 per cent of that UK average electorate, which means between about 73,000 and 80,000 voters. Rule 4 overrides that requirement. It states on the one hand that no constituency may exceed 13,000 square kilometres in size and on the other that a constituency may be exempted from the rule requiring it to meet the electoral quota in the event that it has a land area of more than 12,000 square kilometres.

What was the basis for these numbers? That is the first question that, we believe, stems from rule 4. There has never been, so far as we know, a statutory limit on the size of a constituency; still less has there been a statutory limit on electorates and an exemption from that limit based on territorial extent. Where did these numbers come from? The answer seems to be Ross, Skye and Lochaber, the constituency represented by the former Liberal Democrat leader, the right honourable Charles Kennedy, which is the only constituency that currently has a land area in that category of between 12,000 and 13,000 square kilometres.

Ross, Skye and Lochaber is the largest constituency in the United Kingdom. The Deputy Prime Minister told Parliament last summer, before the Bill was introduced, that,

“no constituency will be larger than the size of the largest one now”.—[Official Report, Commons, 5/7/10; col. 25.]

In fact, he did not quite stay true to his word. Thirteen thousand square kilometres—the maximum territorial extent allowed by the Bill—is 285 square kilometres bigger than Ross, Skye and Lochaber, which is 12,715 square kilometres. Before noble Lords accuse me of nit-picking, let me say that the Labour Member for Aberdeen North pointed out during debates on the Bill in another place that it is just enough to allow Ross, Skye and Lochaber, with its 52,000 electorate, to add some 21,000 voters from the city of Inverness, represented, of course, by the right honourable gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. That would be just enough to push Ross, Skye and Lochaber to within 5 per cent—5,000—of the electoral quota. We are not sure, however, that the Chief Secretary would be too keen on that.

Many people have harboured suspicions about this territorial size exemption, given the close relationship between the numbers in the rule and the dimensions of the said constituency. Some have viewed it as a crude attempt to protect the seat of the former Liberal Democrat leader. I do not take that view; this side does not take that view.

Even if that were the original intention, it has become apparent that it would not deliver that objective. The reality of the electoral parity law means that the Bill may result in the three new constituencies in place of the four currently representing the areas of Highland and Argyll. The seat most likely to disappear, assuming that the Boundary Commission for Scotland operates in its normal way, and regardless of whether it begins its calculations from south to north or north to south, is Ross, Skye and Lochaber.

The purpose of our amendment to delete the territorial extent rule is not to remove a special protection for the right honourable gentleman. He clearly has no such protection. It is to raise the fundamental question as to why territorial extent should be the only general factor written into the Bill that may warrant a departure from the electoral parity rule and why that exemption should itself be framed so narrowly. Rule 4 in the Bill can only conceivably have an application in one part of the United Kingdom: the Scottish Highlands. But why should the geography of that area be the only geography to qualify for special recognition in the construction of parliamentary constituencies? Of course, we understand why it might be sensible to put a limit on how large in territorial terms a constituency should be allowed to grow in pursuit of the electoral quota, but we ask whether it would not also be sensible to place some other protections on potentially undesirable geographical entities that could be produced as a consequence of the electoral parity rule. In other amendments, we have sought, for example, to ensure that island constituencies are guaranteed an allocation of whole constituencies.

However, further considerations should arguably be included in the proposed new rules. For example, Democratic Audit has said:

“It would make sense to ban constituencies straddling wide estuaries such as the Mersey, Humber, Clyde, Forth and Thames”.

When the Boundary Commission for England has proposed cross-estuary seats in the past, for instance on Merseyside, there has been strong resistance to such proposals. It is also said that some leeway might be allowed for the construction of constituencies in the Welsh valleys. The Democratic Audit report argues that there is,

“a case for allowing small departure from the usual rules if following them could lead to an absurd seat with a small part of one valley attached to a seat based on another valley”.

We would be grateful if the Minister could explain whether the Government would be prepared to take these situations on board. If not, what is so special about territorial extent, as opposed to the other special geographical concerns that we have mentioned?

[Lord Kinnock]

Just to underline and illuminate the point that my noble friend made in passing about the south Wales valleys, I report to him the words of the late Alec Jones, who, as the noble Lord will recall, was the Member for Rhondda, having been a Member for Rhondda West, which was then brought together with Rhondda East. There was at the time of that Boundary Commission report an idea that a part of what became the Cynon Valley constituency should be grouped in with Rhondda East and Rhondda West—that is, Rhondda Fawr and Rhondda Fach, or the large Rhondda and the little Rhondda. Alec Jones’s devastating comment on that to the Boundary Commission was, “Some bloody idiot has been using a flat map”. There is a huge danger, if the kind of amendment presented by my noble friend is not accepted and there are no clear indicators to the Boundary Commission to use its sensible discretion, that flat maps will plague a lot of constituencies, not just in Wales but in England and Scotland, that are interrupted by large geographical features that define communities. Unless proper consideration is given to that topographical reality, flat maps will come to be cursed.

[Lord Bach]

I am grateful to my noble friend for his intervention. My fear is not that the maps that are used will be flat but that they will make no difference. They may well show the contours of the mountains in between, but no notice could be taken of them, in any event.

I anticipate that the Minister’s answer to my question will reference the overriding principle of equalising seats. However, that principle is of course breached by the Bill in several areas and there should not be any ideological block on debating whether it ought to be breached even more. If the Minister were to try to explain the rule by reference to the accessibility of a constituency and the ability of the Member of Parliament to travel around it, why are Argyll and Bute, with its 13 islands, or St Ives, which incorporates the Isles of Scilly, not included also as exceptions to the parity rule?

It may furthermore be argued that the further loosening of the electoral parity rule by asserting the strict threshold imposed by the Bill merely brings Britain into line with other countries and international states. However, that assertion has been blown apart by an analysis of international electoral systems published this month by Democratic Audit, which concludes:

“Differences in constituency size … are to be found in Australia and the United States—where equalisation supposedly rules. Constituency size is always modified by locality and geography in some form”.

The article states:

“The startling truth about the government’s proposed equalisation scheme is that it would be the most extreme version used in any national legislature based on single member constituencies in the world”.

I repeat that,

“it would be the most extreme version used in any national legislature based on single member constituencies”.

The quotation continues:

“This is true both in terms of the number of tolerated anomalies and the uniformity imposed on the bulk of constituencies”.

The Government need to respond to these concerns. Their approach to constituency boundaries is too rigid and too uniform, but they still have time to correct the problem. There is no reason why these major reports should be rushed through without any proper consultation or analysis. We invite the Government to pause for thought and to take some time to examine how their changes would impact in practical terms—the only terms that matter—on UK constituencies and the communities that make them up.

The noble Lord, Lord McNally, told the House last June that common sense and a sense of history and geography would have an influence on this process. The narrow exemptions from the electoral parity rule currently contained in the Bill are inadequate to allow for that to happen. As with so much contained, we fear, in Part 2 of the Bill, the Government need to go back to the drawing board with respect to rule 4, which is what our amendment invites them to do. I beg to move.

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[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, I intervene briefly because in the debate on the amendment on the Isle of Wight, which my noble friend moved so successfully, I touched on the issue of Ross, Skye and Lochaber. There is a famous painting by Erskine Nicol called “Lochaber No More”, which depicts the clansmen saying goodbye to their families as they leave for the New World. It is now a part of the Fleming collection and is the picture that is most frequently in demand to be loaned abroad. There is a long tradition, and I am sure the noble Lord will forgive me for correcting his pronunciation of Lochaber.

[Lord Bach]

It is I who should apologise to the Committee for having got the pronunciation wrong.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I mention “Lochaber No More” because I suspect that that will be the consequence of this. As I said in the earlier debate, when I read the Bill I thought that this was a protection measure for Charles Kennedy’s constituency. He set me straight on that when I had lunch with him the other day. The most likely outcome is that the Boundary Commission will start, as it has always done, in the north; the constituency that is currently represented by Lord Thurso will become larger; and there will then be a fight between Mr Kennedy and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury for the remaining constituency. I do not know what my right honourable friend’s views are on primaries but they have always been enthusiastically embraced by the Liberal Party. If there is to be a contest, my advice to him was that he does not want it to be a primary because I think Mr Charles Kennedy will win hands down.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McNally]

The Bill helps it in its work. This is not a time to go back to the drawing board. Most of the arguments have been rehearsed. Charles Kennedy himself pointed out the difficulty of operating in the present constituency with his five-hour drive. One of the possible consequences of the amendment is that we would be faced with even larger geographic constituencies.

We propose as a maximum size roughly that of the current largest constituency area. Since it was recommended by the Boundary Commission, we believed that it gave the best benchmark to use in our proposals. Ultimately, this is a matter of judgment. We see no reason to risk turning what are now challenging but manageable factors into potentially unmanageable and damaging factors for MPs and their constituencies in these areas. I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords on all sides who have spoken in what everyone who has listened must consider to be a proper and sensible debate at Committee stage on an important matter. The Minister did not convince me in the slightest as to why the rule is in the Bill and I have a feeling that he did not persuade the Committee either. That is quite a serious state of affairs, because rule 4 stands out as being the one whose presence in the Bill cannot be understood at all. I do not, I am afraid, get the point about the Scottish Boundary Commission. I hope that the Minister will in due course help the Committee by telling us chapter and verse about the Scottish Boundary Commission, but the rule seems effectively to apply to only one constituency in the whole of the United Kingdom. If the Government wanted to exempt that constituency, why did they not just exempt it, as they have the two others and now the Isle of Wight?

I said in opening that, even if the original intention was to protect a particular constituency, it has become apparent that that objective would not be delivered. I suppose that if there is one thing worse than trying to protect a particular constituency, it is trying to protect it and failing to do so. I fear that that may have happened on this occasion. I cannot think—I think that other noble Lords are of the same mind as me—what other explanation there can be for the rule appearing.

As for other speakers, I accused the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, the other night of being a purist. It was meant entirely as a compliment rather than an insult; indeed, he took it as though it were a compliment, which I was slightly surprised at. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, proposed a very sensible amendment the other night, which the Front Bench on the other side said that it would look at and take up. We very much hope that it does so, because the points that he made in his short speech tonight showed how important that should be. I am grateful also to my noble friends Lord Stevenson, Lord McAvoy and Lord Foulkes.

I was intrigued by and grateful for the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, because he has real history in that part of the world. He said that he did not like the Bill as it was worded but that he liked our amendment even less, but I was not quite sure what he wanted. I look forward to hearing in more detail at some stage what he would like to see in place of both the Government’s attitude and ours. He said that we should be looking for votes of equal value that are balanced by a sense of constituencies being represented by an individual. We know exactly what he meant by that and we agree with him; it is exactly what we are looking for in this case. We do not see how this clause helps us to achieve that.

The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, asked the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, why the rule could not just be taken out and reliance made on rule 5. I think that the answer to that is that rule 5 is subject to rule 2, which is the one that sets the quota, but rule 4, which is the one that sets up this particularly odd territorial constituency size, is not subject to rule 2 in the same way. They have equal worth. If tonight we took out rule 4, we would be left with rule 5, but that would be subject strictly to the 5 per cent rule and, therefore, would not prevail. I think that that is the answer to the question that the noble Lord posed.

I do not intend to divide the House tonight on this issue. We have had a very sensible Committee debate. The Government must have heard concern from all sides of the House about this clause and I am sure that they will go away and consider carefully whether this is really the right clause to be in this Bill and whether they could come up with a better version of it. It is unsatisfactory and we will undoubtedly bring the matter back at Report. By then, all sides of the House—and I do not just mean my noble friends alongside me and behind me—will want to have a better explanation as to why rule 4 is in the Bill. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 71B withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I am sorry; 613. I got the number wrong.

[Lord Bach]

It is important that we get this absolutely right at this stage. I do not want to prolong this. I want to speak on my amendment in a moment, but let me just say that rule 1(1) of 1986 rules says:

“The number of constituencies in Great Britain shall not be substantially greater or less than 613”.

You add to that the Northern Irish figure, which is between 16 and 18, making a total not more or less than 630. I think the wording is very important, and I think the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, will appreciate that. This Bill does something quite different.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I am sorry. I got the numbers wrong, but the point that I am making is very simple. It was not a cap; it was a target. That is what is wrong with this legislation. We are talking about caps and not targets. When you have targets, the Boundary Commission then has flexibility. It knows what Parliament wants, it knows what people are moving towards, but it can take into account all the additional pressures and considerations that normally arise during the course of public inquiries about decisions that it has to take.

I turn now to the actual wording of the rule. The amendments that we are dealing with are essentially about rule 5(1) on page 10 of the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, quite rightly refers specifically to this question of, “If they think fit”. Those words are very important, because they are part of the first sentence in the rule:

“A Boundary Commission may take into account, if and to such an extent as they think fit”,

when considering these matters. That leaves it with two options. It can either take them into account or it can ignore them. If it goes on to ignore,

“(a) special geographical considerations, including in particular the size, shape and accessibility of a constituency;

(b) local government boundaries as they exist on the most recent ordinary council-election day before the review date;

(c) any local ties that would be broken by changes in constituencies;

(d) the inconveniences attendant on such changes”.

in my view it would not be carrying out its function.

The Boundary Commission’s function is to consider those matters, but if it cannot carry out its proper consideration of those matters because of the cap, its whole raison d’être is defeated and it may as well not even bother to carry out any function at all. The Government might just as well draw up the map and not even have a Boundary Commission.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Liddle]

I am in favour of the amendments that would change the wording from may to shall or must because I feel very strongly that the wording is being kept as it was in the previous legislation but disguising that a fundamental change is being introduced. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, knows that very well. It is all part of a deal that his party has done with the Conservative Party without consultation with other parties, which is without intellectual justification.

Let us think about the situation in the 1960s when the Boundary Commission suggested that Cumberland should come down from four to three seats. There was an inquiry and it was decided that on grounds of community and geographical representation the four seats should be kept. In the 1980s and 1990s, with the new county of Cumbria, as I mentioned before, the quota did not justify having six seats. The Boundary Commission used its discretion that because of the special geographic nature of Cumbria, there should be six seats. That is what the Government will destroy. The Boundary Commission will not have the ability to show such discretion. We are all in favour of equal-size constituencies and the principle of equality, but you have to have around the edges flexibility to cope with special situations. Therefore, I urge the Government to think again.

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, Amendment 75A, to which I shall speak shortly, is in my name and that of my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer. The Committee has just heard a superb speech from my noble friend Lord Liddle, which both parties in government should take note of. He put his finger on the problem with this part of the Bill more clearly than has been done before. The debate has highlighted once more what we think is the Government’s undoubted folly in seeking to subordinate every other factor in the construction of parliamentary boundaries to the overriding goal of creating seats that fall within the bounds of a very narrow electoral quota threshold.

We do not oppose moves to create more equally sized constituencies; indeed, we support them. That is already the letter and spirit of the present law and what the Boundary Commissions strive to deliver. We recognise, too, that the current law could be improved in that regard. We have tried to help the Government to deliver such an improvement but, alas, they have chosen to reject every amendment that we have advanced. As a consequence of this failure to engage in the normal and proper process of revision in this House, which is the role that this House is traditionally supposed to perform, serious flaws will be left uncorrected in this legislation. I appreciate that the Government have taken away one or two amendments to look at and we welcome that very much, but there has not been the normal give that Governments accord to Bills of this kind.

The focus of this debate is the proposed new rule 5, headed “Factors”, in Clause 11. We believe that this is a prime example of the Bill’s fundamental defects. As the Committee knows, rule 5 lists a number of factors that the Boundary Commissions are permitted to take into account when drawing up constituencies. These include having regard to special geography, issues of accessibility, local government areas, local community ties, the inconvenience attendant on changes to constituency boundaries and the encouragement to work within the framework of the existing European electoral regions. Of course, these are all sensible factors that ought to be considered by a Boundary Commission in the course of its deliberations and should impact on the outcome of such deliberations, but the interplay between this rule and some of the other rules set out in the Bill mean that the Boundary Commissions will not be able to give proper weight to this list of factors.

Take the issue of inconvenience. Rule 5(1)(d) states that the,

“Boundary Commission may take into account, if and to such extent as they think fit … the inconveniences attendant on such changes”.

But if we read across to rule 9(2)—that reference appears to be a small drafting error—we find that,

“rule 5(1)(d) does not apply in relation to a report under section 3(1) of the 1986 Act that a Boundary Commission is required, by subsection (2) of section 3 of that Act as substituted by section 10(3) above, to submit before 1 October 2013”.

In other words, inconvenience attendant on boundary changes may be considered by the Boundary Commission in future reviews but not in the review that the Government intend to rush through before the next general election.

However, even if that anomaly was removed, there would still be a problem about Boundary Commissions taking into account not just inconvenience but any of the factors in rule 5. This is simply—I am sorry if I am repeating a point that has been made before, but it is fundamental to the understanding of this Bill—because sub-paragraph (3) of rule 5 states that the rule is,

“subject to rules 2 and 4”.

Those are the rules relating to the electoral quota and, in the case of rule 4, as we have debated today, to the area of constituencies. In other words, the Boundary Commission may take account of a variety of factors but only within the bounds of the overriding requirement to make constituencies adhere to within the 5 per cent threshold of an electoral quota and consistent only with the special rule on the maximum territorial extent of a constituency.

The major problem here, to which the government side appears deaf, is that the degree of tolerance from the electoral quota is just too narrow. Rule 5 might state that Boundary Commissions may take into account geographical factors, local ties, issues of accessibility and so on, but the Government know that the very tight threshold regarding the electoral quota means that in practice—this is the point that the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, was making—it has very limited room for manoeuvre. We know that because the heads of the Boundary Commissions have said that the strictness of the electoral parity target will mean that local authority boundaries will have to be criss-crossed, county boundaries overlapped and wards divided. We know that islands will have to be split, historic borders transgressed and natural boundaries such as rivers, valleys and the sea just plain ignored. The Boundary Commission secretaries conclude that the application of the electoral parity target is likely to result in many communities feeling that they are being divided between constituencies.

Ironically, the Bill exposes the problems caused by the 5 per cent threshold in the special exemptions that it gives to Northern Ireland and parts of the Scottish Highlands and Islands. That begs the question why Northern Ireland and the Scottish Highlands and Islands are the only places in the United Kingdom deemed worthy of rescue from the iron law of the electoral quota. Why are other islands or areas of peculiar geography not being afforded special protection?

When we come to Amendment 79A, we will debate that more fully. For now, we can rest on the knowledge that many parts of the UK have been, without any adequate explanation, denied that special treatment. We are trying to help the Government to tidy up the Bill and to avoid some of the negative outcomes that are the inevitable consequence of the severe electoral quota requirement, both by suggesting a number of areas that should be guaranteed an allocation of whole seats and by proposing a greater tolerance in the electoral quota threshold.

We propose that, although a 5 per cent disparity from the electoral quota should be the general aim of the Boundary Commissions when drawing up constituencies, an outer limit of 10 per cent ought to be allowed where overriding factors such as those that we have discussed on all sides of the Committee warrant it. The amendment would not make any difference to the Government’s aim of adjusting a perceived electoral bias; it would just deliver a more sensible process. Alas, up to now, the Government in this House refuse even properly to debate this matter and do not give us a response as to why they are taking this attitude.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

For the sake of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, I say that I shall speak to Amendments 73, 74A, 74B, and that my remarks will be about rule 5(1)(c). The noble Lord, and the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, claim that this is a filibuster. He needs to get out more. I remember the Scotland and Wales Bill of 1978. As a young reporter, I remember covering Mr Tam Dalyell during that debate. I want to say that he spoke for days, but that may be exaggerating. On one occasion, he spoke for about six hours. To me, that is a filibuster. In all my interventions, I have kept my remarks very brief—to some extent because the air conditioning is going to my throat; perhaps I will get a cough sweet whenever I get an opportunity to go out of the Chamber.

I compliment my noble friend Lord Kennedy on introducing Amendment 73, because it gets to the heart of where the Bill has gone wrong and reintroduces some common sense. The Bill has been cobbled together from two different directions and been rapidly put through the Clerks with, I repeat, no consultation, no pre-legislative scrutiny, and no discussion through the usual channels. As a consequence, we have a Bill which is a dog's breakfast.

One area that most concerns me is the framework within which the Boundary Commission will operate. All of us who have attended Boundary Commission hearings know that sometimes, when the first stab is made at the shape of the boundary, extremely bizarre results come out. The late John Smith, on 10 May 1994, two days before he died, addressed the Boundary Commission about the new constituency of Airdrie and Shotts, which would have resulted in the town of Airdrie being cut right down the main street because a bureaucrat somewhere had thought, “We need to get some numbers right here”, and took no account whatever of the cohesion of the town, the history and the nature of the communities built up within that area.

If the Government accepted Amendment 73 on rule 5(1)(c), we could ensure that any local ties broken up by changes in constituencies should be taken into account by the Boundary Commission. That is a lot more sensible than the rather vague construction contained in the Bill.