Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord Beith Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 8th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, and I encourage him to press his amendment to a vote. I do not wish to repeat the observations I made in Committee in support of the noble and learned Lord, save to say that, first, as he has outlined, the office of Lord Chancellor is much more political now that it is held in the Commons. Instead of a quasi-judicial figure who sat as a judge in the Supreme Court and usually had no further political aspirations, we now have a highly political and mobile politician as Lord Chancellor in the Commons; these are not personal remarks.

As one who campaigned for the Ministry of Justice to be headed by a Commons Minister, and welcomed that, because it is a spending department, I have no complaint. But a political Minister should not have his hands on the machinery of elections—or, indeed, anywhere near it. The office dealing with elections should be manifestly independent.

There is one point that I wish to repeat: it is a parallel and wider argument. I noted the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, a few moments ago, and in Committee I gave my experience as Secretary of State for Wales in appointing the chairman of the Welsh Local Government Boundary Commission. I certainly was a political Minister, and headed my party’s campaign in Wales for six years in my tenure as Secretary of State.

Local government boundaries are one of the building bricks of parliamentary constituency boundaries. On the previous amendment, the Minister confirmed that. I once lost the eastern part of my constituency because of a new county council boundary, and I had to be compensated by the addition of a number of wards from the same county council area to the rest of my constituency. My submission, therefore, is that not only should a judicial figure appoint the Boundary Commission, but the Government should also consider doing likewise for the Local Government Boundary Commission.

Since the power of appointment might already have gone over to the Government of Wales, it would too late to legislate for Wales. But the Government could certainly legislate for England. Indeed, I believe that they should do so. I shall be interested to hear the Minister’s views. Local government boundaries are inextricably linked to parliamentary boundaries, and decisions should be politically distanced on both of them.

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, when the Constitution Committee considered the Bill, we took the view that the removal of Parliament’s power to block Boundary Commission recommendations was constitutionally appropriate and therefore welcome. But we warned that automatic implementation of Boundary Commission recommendations would protect against undue political influence only if the commission itself is genuinely independent. This makes the selection and appointment of impartial boundary commissioners, independent of political influence, all the more important.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, has, at this stage of the Bill, moved an amendment that incorporates both his own original and entirely appropriate insistence that the Lord Chief Justice, not the Lord Chancellor, should make the appointments, and some of the other suggestions that the Constitution Committee referred to, which have been mentioned, in particular, by the noble Lord, Lord Hayward. The Minister should listen carefully to the noble Lord, who knows what he is talking about when it comes to boundary hearings. His insistence that we need to safeguard independence is entirely justified, and I hope that his disagreement with other aspects of the amendment will not deter him from continuing to support the efforts of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, to achieve the kind of independence that the noble Lord has recognised is important.

No assurances the Minister can give could possibly satisfy us that we have guarded against the danger that lurks here. That is because we are talking about any future Government, of whatever political party, who have a majority in the House of Commons, and thus the prospect of using that majority to disrupt the electoral process, or pervert it to their advantage, in ways that will always be defended on the most respectable grounds, beneath which, however, will lie political motives —motives of party advantage and protection.

What is extremely likely to happen is that, at some time in the future, a Government, recognising that they can no longer block Boundary Commission recommendations or delay them until after the next election, will say, “We’d better make sure we don’t get unwelcome recommendations that are disadvantageous to us, and which we might think are wrong in principle. We must stop that from happening by appointing to the Boundary Commission people who have got the political message—people who understand the significance of ensuring that our views remain predominant in any future Parliament.” These things happen; they are part of the reality of political life, and constitutional provisions are there to protect us from their malign influence.

Along with that, of course, goes perceived impartiality, to which the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, referred. We are in an era when the principle of getting one’s revenge in first seems to apply in the United States. President Trump says, “If I win the election, it’s fine, but if I lose, it’s because the election has been rigged.” So he has already started his attack on the postal ballot provisions in American election procedure. That is an illustration of the fact that the impartiality of the electoral process is easily traduced or complained about, and if there are aspects of it that, on sound authority, can be shown to be at least weak in protecting impartiality, they will be criticised and exploited, and will be used as arguments to question the validity of the democratic process, at least in some individual seats, if not in the election as a whole.

This is an important matter, and I am disappointed, because I thought the Minister had realised that something could be done about it. There is still time for a Third Reading amendment that would at least pick out some of the proposals of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas. To fail to act on that is to compromise an otherwise sensible and constitutionally appropriate change, by leaving this matter open to political pressures of a kind that cast doubt on the validity of elections.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

My Lords, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, has argued, the amendment reflects a constitutional principle. In an effective democracy, in which the power of the Executive is limited both by the rule of law and by the scrutiny of Parliament, regulatory authorities independent of undue executive influence play a vital role. Separation of powers between legislature, courts and Executive is central to constitutional democracy —and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, said, they must be seen to be separate.

We are all painfully aware of the baleful impact of gerrymandering in American politics. The institution of independent Boundary Commissions is there to ensure that political representation in the United Kingdom does not follow any distance down that path. The change in the position of the Lord Chancellor that took place in 2005 makes it entirely appropriate, therefore, that the Lord Chief Justice should now inherit that role in England.

Our current Government have recently demonstrated worrying tendencies towards authoritarian populism. Their attacks on the Supreme Court and on judicial review have uncomfortable echoes of the approaches of the Polish and Hungarian Governments. The Electoral Commission is now under sustained attack, including from a co-chairman of the Conservative Party, for attempting to enforce the rules on campaign spending and political advertising. Calls from some Conservatives for its abolition suggest that they reject regulation of electoral campaigning as such.