Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I cannot agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, but I too congratulate my noble friend the Minister on introducing this excellent Bill, which I support. Last December, the general election was run with constituencies ranging from 60,000 to 99,000. No one can argue that that is fair or democratic, so we must have equally sized constituencies with no more than a 5% variation.

The Opposition want much larger variations, on the basis that they would keep special and unique local identities together. Those of us who have been through boundary changes have always used that argument to try to bend boundaries to maximise our political advantage. I have been at public inquiries here in Cumbria with my Labour and Liberal opponents, and we all argued for the most tortuous-shaped constituencies imaginable based on them conforming to local travel-to-work areas, social habits, local boundaries, communities, cultural norms, mountains and lakes, motorways, shopping habits or ancient history—such as the route followed by King Edward III when he invaded Scotland in 1356. They were all bogus arguments, as my noble friend Lord Robathan said. We were all after a constituency boundary with sufficient wards to give us a safe majority, but to give away enough of our supporters so that we could take the neighbouring seat for our party. Let no former MP now in this House deny that that was the game, because we all played it for political advantage.

Council boundaries are not nearly as important now as in the past. My former constituency of 1,500 square miles stretched from the Irish Sea to over the Pennines. I had one county council and three district councils. While all of it was in England, we had some Scottish postal codes, as well as Cumbrian pupils going to school in Northumberland. One boundary was a little stream between Cumbria and Northumberland, which ran right through the middle of the village of Gilsland.

There was no great difficulty dealing with those different authorities. Council boundaries are not sacrosanct. Politicians must not be allowed to shelve Boundary Commission reports or amend them. The more I heard Labour Members today asking for the right of Parliament to interfere, the more I became highly likely to support my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham in imposing a time limit for implementation. In 2012, we saw the disgraceful ploy by the Lib Dems to kick into touch the 2011 review. They are responsible for our boundaries being another eight years out of date. That follows the precedent of Jim Callaghan, who ditched the Boundary Commission proposals in 1969.

Boundary Commission reports must be approved automatically, in a tight timescale. There is a track record of the Labour and Lib Dem parties sabotaging them for political advantage. Some also want the December 2020 registers to be used, rather than those which we had on 2 March this year. It is a bit rich for opposition parties to demand a register that would be just eight months newer, when they have voted to keep in place registers that are 20 years out of date. The Bill is a manifesto commitment and I trust that we will not see the games that occurred in 2012 played here.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am speaking to Amendments 7 and 9, to which I have added my name, along with those of three of the most noble of colleagues from the other place, for whom I have the deepest respect. What has already been said, particularly by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, says it all.

My noble friend Lord Cormack spoke about the Executive and I think he is right to have a cynical view of Executives of all political colours. As was said in a previous debate, the governing party should always remember that the electoral cycle will go round and it will be on the receiving end of some of these measures and they may not seem like such a good idea. I cannot see a good reason for not accepting these amendments, to be perfectly honest, as my noble friend Lord Young has eloquently expressed. It would be very wise for the Government to have a little think about this and insert a time limit. It might not be 12 weeks—although 12 weeks seems like an excellent idea—but, to make sure that they do not look like they have given in, they could make it 13 weeks, and then it would be a government victory. That is the way I see these things evolve.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, it is a delight to follow my noble friend Lord Randall, who was a superb Deputy Chief Whip when I had the privilege to be Chief Whip of the Conservative Party. We are both supporting the excellent arguments made by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, who, among his many jobs, was Chief Whip of the Conservative Party at least once. I say to the Minister that if he has three colleagues who have served at senior rank in the Conservative Whips’ Office, our point of view, as we are unanimous in this, should not be dismissed too lightly.

Since I am speaking from the cheap seats at the far end of the call centre, let me make the cheap political point first. The Conservative Party, of which I am a proud member, has absolutely clean hands on Boundary Commission reports. I want to keep it that way and I want the perception to be that way. The only parties that have mucked around with those reports were Labour, when Jim Callaghan ditched the boundary commission proposals in 1969, and the disgraceful ploy by the Lib Dems to kick into touch the 2011 review. They are responsible for our boundaries being eight years out of date. Those are the political points. The Conservative Party has never done that and I do not want it ever to do that and I do not want there to be the slightest ability for it to be perceived to be able to do that.

That is why it is terribly important that, in a Bill that has got everything else right—reducing the number of seats and cutting out the possibility of Parliament interfering and kicking Boundary Commission reviews into touch—we have an amendment that says it must be delivered within three months. I do not need to go through any of the excellent details that my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham delivered—in any case, I do not have that ability—but a couple of other points struck me as crucial. One is that everyone else in this process has to perform within strict time limits, but not the Government. The Government should also be held to a strict time limit, and three months is right. Six weeks is too little.

This has nothing to do with the Delegated Powers Committee, which I have the privilege to chair. We did not comment on this Bill because there was nothing relevant to us, but time after time in the Delegated Powers Committee we see skeleton Bills coming along with all the details to be filled in later by complicated regulations. Yesterday, I participated in the Chamber on the immigration Bill. The opposition spokesman criticised the Government, understandably, for bringing in a regulation which would run to dozens of pages on highly complex new Immigration Rules, which would be made under the “made affirmative” procedure and take effect immediately.

If it is possible for the Government in that instance—they are doing it on dozens of occasions—to invent, almost overnight, highly complex regulations, it is a piece of cake for them to pass a simple regulation that, as my noble friend pointed out, on the last occasion consisted of no more than 27 lines. It would be simple for them to produce an Order in Council implementing someone else’s report. The Government have no work to do: it has already been done by the Electoral Commission. All they have to do is make a simple order in Parliament and bring it into force within three months.

My noble friends Lord Randall and Lord Young of Cookham have made impeccable arguments for implementing the Boundary Commission reports within that three-month timescale. I conclude by repeating my opening remarks: the Conservative Party has had an impeccable record on this and the Bill is excellent in every detail, except for this one lacuna. I say to my noble friend the Minister: let us plug that lacuna and remove any possible suspicion that a Conservative Government could muck around with Boundary Commission reports and delay them.

[Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)]

The word of the day seems to be “automaticity”. The noble Lord, Lord True, wants to remove any political interference or influencing from future boundary reviews. But as the noble Lord, Lord Young, eloquently said, this is the one area where any future Government could use political influence or interference, with the Executive slowing down the implementation of such future boundary reviews. You cannot pick and choose your automaticity. If it is good enough to remove Parliament from the ability to debate, question and vote on the boundary review, it is good enough to remove any possibility of the Executive delaying the implementation of a boundary review, especially if they do not like it. I offer another word of advice to the Minister. I seriously suggest that, apart from adopting this amendment, the Government should look at getting the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, back on to the Front Benches.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 10th September 2020 Grand Committee

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

My Lords, the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, on the size of the House of Lords are not quite relevant, with respect. When we discussed this before, I said—I was a lonely voice—that our efforts to reduce the size of the House of Lords were bound to fail because of the grim truth that no one could restrain future Prime Ministers. It is the like the puzzle you had as a schoolboy doing your 11 plus or the equivalent—filling the bath at one side and emptying it on the other; there is no means of controlling the end product. That is what I would say on the relevance.

The noble Lord, Lord Norton, whom we all respect for his contributions in this field, has put his case very strongly. There is no magic number of 650. Nobody has explained to me why it should be 650 and not 651 or 649, or whatever number is justified. There is no case in my view for reducing the present membership of the House of Commons. That is why I support the principle, whatever the details of the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Norton.

Being an MP is now much more demanding. In 41 years of representing my own constituency, things were fairly level. There were other problems, mainly industrial problems, but now the task of the MP has become much more difficult. There is an expectation, with the development of email, of instant action on behalf of a demanding constituent. I tried to pursue two professions—of being a Member in the House of Commons and practising at the criminal Bar—and I hope that I succeeded. I doubt that in the present circumstances, such are the demands on a modern Member of Parliament, one could have done the same thing for 41 years.

This is an important amendment. I support it on the principle that the greater the number of MPs, the lesser the chance of wrecking the physical make-up of the membership in Wales. Under the present proposals, the county that I represented in part would again be subject to a huge wrecking operation to justify an equality of numbers for each of the new constituencies. Therefore, the principle of the greater number helps me in my argument of trying to preserve representation that offers some degree of continuity. I used to speak for constituents; those were the people I represented. They value continuity, value the membership of the House of Commons and value the fact that they know who their Member of Parliament is. In my part of the world that may be more important than in a major industrial area, where perhaps there is more anonymity. In our area, it is important that constituents know who to go to when there is trouble.

I support this amendment very much, because it tries to meet present needs, and a reduction in the House of Commons to 650 is no more justified than the original proposal to reduce it 600.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I am speaking to your Lordships from the far end of the Room. It is not that I consider noble Lords extra-contagious, and I hope they do not consider me so, and I am not extra-social distancing; it is just the only place that I can get into in my wheelchair. It was an absolute delight to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, speak, and I agree with every word she said. I hope that that does not do irreparable damage to her reputation, but there you have it.

First, I did not intervene at the end of the Minister’s last speech, but I was very surprised by the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for whom I have the utmost respect. I thought she was treated abysmally by Jeremy Corbyn, and I am glad she is back in position. I say simply that I recall from 1997 onwards that Tony Blair stuffed every single quango full of Labour Party apparatchiks and the Tory party is a bit slow in catching up.

I go back to the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth. I am afraid that I disagree profoundly with him. There are too many MPs already. I regret that we have gone back to 650 from 600, but I can live with that—I am okay with it. We will come to this later, under the next amendment but, in my opinion, Scotland is heavily overrepresented. Scottish MPs at Westminster have little to do and are earning money on false pretences. English MPs have to deal with all political matters, but Scots at Westminster have MSPs who do the bulk of the work. However, I shall say more about that under the next amendment.

The answer is not to have more MPs or Peers but to increase the powers of parish councils, district councils, county councils, unitary authorities and elected mayors, and to devolve authority down. I agree entirely that the House of Lords should not be larger than the House of Commons, but the answer is to cut the number of Lords and not increase the number of MPs. I am afraid that we have seen, as I said in my detailed report to the committee looking into the size of the Lords, that Prime Ministers will not play ball with recommendations voluntarily to restrict the number of Peers they create. They cannot and will not do it, for many well-known reasons. Like it or not, we are going to have to take matters into our own hands and, at some point, invent a system to have retirement of Peers over a certain age—whatever that may be—and chuck out those who attend less than 20% or 25% of our sittings. But that is for another occasion.

I will also say that MPs do not have a heavier workload now there are no longer MEPs. I am not sure that I ever had any constituents who went to an MEP to handle local problems. They expected the MP to do it. In my experience, most constituents who had a complaint about an EU proposal came to the MP.

I know that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, said that, with email, people expect instant answers. That is the case, but there is also instant availability of the answers on government websites, and on information supplied by the political parties and by the House of Commons and House of Lords Libraries. I do not accept that the workload is so exceptionally increased that we need to increase the number of MPs. I hope my noble friend the Minister will reject the amendment. Admittedly, it was well argued by my noble friend Lord Norton, but I hope he will still reject it.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, made an interesting speech and made points that the Minister might find hard to answer, but he did not make a case for this amendment. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, made an argument in support of it because he wants there to be more Welsh MPs, even if this means more MPs in every other part of the UK. However, I doubt that this proposal would ever make it into a serious party manifesto.

The key question for the Minister is whether the Government accept the principles of the Burns committee and agree with the House of Lords, which wants to reduce the number of its Members. The amendment is clearly born out of frustration that the Prime Minister has just appointed more than 30 new Peers. Perhaps the Minister will explain why.

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The same situation happened going from east to west in the county of West Glamorgan where there were five constituencies. They had to chip in a little bit here and a little bit there in order to make up the numbers. I was fortunate in building up a new relationship with the new part of my constituency over a number of years. I was very lucky, but it is not easy to build up a new relationship after a long time representing another area in South Wales. I commend the amendment.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I listened very carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Hain, expanding on his amendment. While he was talking about the unique difficulties of these extremely large Welsh constituencies and the difficulty of travel, I must confess I was quite sympathetic. When he concluded his remarks, I did a little Google search to find out the largest constituency in Wales. It seems to be Brecon and Radnorshire; the twelfth largest in the UK, it is 1,164 square miles. When I read that, I changed my mind and thought, “Lord Hain, so what? Big deal. Dry your eyes and get over it”. My constituency in the Lake District was 1,450 square miles and stretched from the Irish Sea on one side to the Pennines on the other where it was closer to the North Sea than to the other side of the country. If I wanted to travel from the Scottish border to its southern extremity, it was only an hour on the M6, even sticking to the legal speed limits. If I wanted to go from west to east, it was at least two and a half to three hours on minor and difficult roads. I am not quoting that as a sob story, merely to point out that Wales is not entirely unique in having large constituencies. I think the Richmond, Yorkshire constituency of the noble Lord, Lord Hague, was the second largest to mine, although he did not like to hear that.

In a spirit of being helpful, I did not want to be too provocative and stir up the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock. I cannot call him my noble friend but, in some ways, he is my noble pal because we worked together at the Council of Europe. I was tempted to put down an amendment reducing the number of Scottish constituencies to 30. However, I realised that if he was present physically, or even on the large screen, that could cause a bout of apoplexy, so I did not do it. I do not know if Scotland is unique, but the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, certainly is and the House of Lords is a better place for it.

Scotland—and, to a certain extent Wales, but I do not know much about that—does not need all these excess MPs because the MSPs are doing the majority of the work. I remind the Committee of the matters devolved to Scotland which MSPs are in charge of, taken from the Scottish Government’s website: agriculture, forestry and fisheries; education and training; environment; health and social services; housing; land use; planning; law and order; local government; sport and the arts; some forms of taxation; and many aspects of transport. That is what MSPs do; United Kingdom MPs from Scotland do not have those matters to handle. The reserved matters, in which they can legitimately have an interest and on which they can claim to be working, are: benefits and social security, which I accept is quite a big one; broadcasting; constitution; defence; employment; equal opportunities; foreign policy; immigration; and trade and industry.

Those noble Lords who have been Members of Parliament in the Commons will realise that the former category of devolved matters involves the vast bulk of constituency work. Scottish MPs only have to do the reserved matters; English MPs have to do the whole shooting match—everything that is devolved to Scotland and all the reserved matters as well. I was interested to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, say that in Wales most people now seem to accept that the Welsh Assembly Members are the real powerhouse. They are the ones who do all the work and people are increasingly looking to their Welsh Assembly Members to fix all their problems, not the United Kingdom MPs from Wales who come to Westminster.

It cannot be right that we have so many Members of Parliament from Scotland and Wales who are doing half the workload of English MPs. It is notable that all the advocates of these amendments have talked about constituency size in geographical terms, not about the number of constituents or the much-reduced workload for United Kingdom representatives from those countries. That is not right. Rather than halve their salaries, I would like to see their numbers cut to equate to their responsibilities. I am therefore happy to support the Bill in its present form.

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendment 23, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes. I apologise for not having signed it, because I agree with it wholeheartedly. I could not agree less with what the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, has said. Not only is he being provocative, but he has knowingly missed an important point.

During my time as an MP and a candidate, I experienced four boundary reviews and I know how disruptive and traumatic they are. The first-past-the-post system sets great store by the connection between an MP and his or her constituents; boundary changes weaken, and can destroy, this, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, pointed out. This is why the commission should seek to minimise disruption and retain community and geographical links as far as possible. At a time of tension in relations across the UK, a reduction in the number of MPs representing its devolved parts will not be well received.

When I embarked on my parliamentary career, we had 72 MPs in Scotland. Following devolution, we now have 59— just over 9% of the total. The change was made for a particular reason: the effect of devolution. The rural constituencies in Scotland are now, on average, larger areas than their counterparts in the south, in spite of everything mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. They are further away from London and, in most cases, certainly when they are from the north of Scotland, MPs have to fly in order to attend the House of Commons. Travelling time to, from and within constituencies is often greater and it is not practical to nip back for a constituency event during the parliamentary week, other than in exceptional circumstances. It is true that, prior to devolution, details of Scottish policy that are now handled by Holyrood were decided by Westminster. Much of domestic policy is now devolved, but that is why we had the reduction in MPs previously, as the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, pointed out.

The Government are embarking on a range of radical proposals which have far-reaching implications for Scotland and the future of the UK. I completely refute the case that Scottish Members of Parliament—or Welsh or Northern Irish ones for that matter—will have less work to do. On the contrary, this Government’s cavalier lack of interest in the continuation of the United Kingdom means that they will have far more to do than they have had since devolution began. Right now, apart from this Bill, there are the immigration, Trade, Agriculture and internal market Bills, which require detailed scrutiny by representatives from Scotland as well as Wales and Northern Ireland. I have been, and will be, involved in debates on these Bills, seeking to strengthen the devolution settlement and moving us towards a more federal union. Yet the Government are resistant to requiring consent to legislation from the devolved Administrations or considering a form of qualified majority voting to balance the fact that England can always outvote the devolved legislatures.

It is argued that numbers should prevail, but federal countries such as the USA, Canada, Germany and Australia all provide checks and balances between the centre and the parts that make up the whole. For example, California has two senators, as does Wyoming, which has the smallest population of all the United States. I understand the case for approximately equal numbers, but I believe that this can lead to unsatisfactory outcomes. Through the different boundary changes during my time in Parliament, my constituency started out in Aberdeenshire; then it was part of Aberdeenshire with part of Aberdeen; then part of Aberdeenshire with parts of Banffshire; then, finally, part of Aberdeenshire with part of Aberdeen, although not the same part. The Aberdeen part was the northern suburbs, which was confusing as the constituency of Aberdeen North did not include the northernmost wards of the city. All this makes a mockery of the special link between the MP and the constituency, although I was fortunate enough to get myself elected, in spite of these changes, on seven separate occasions.

When the Scottish Parliament was set up, the Westminster constituencies and those for the Scottish Parliament were the same. This was not sustainable when the number of Westminster constituencies reduced. At the foundation of the Scottish Parliament, the Gordon constituency had an MSP and an MP for the same territory. Once the boundaries were changed, the constituency then included parts of east Aberdeenshire, parts of west Aberdeenshire and parts of Donside, which caused further confusion for almost everybody. Even more frustrating, at the start of each boundary review, the electorate of Gordon was almost exactly on quota. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, seemed to have had the same issue. Yet the Boundary Commission drew up the boundaries of the surrounding constituencies and took chunks out of Gordon to make up their numbers, which is why I had so many radical constituency changes. I did manage to persuade the Boundary Commission to keep Huntly in Gordon, given that it was the seat of the Dukes of Gordon and the recruiting base for the Gordon Highlanders. It would have been pretty ironic to keep the constituency name and remove the Gordon connection.

I hope the Boundary Commission will have learned from previous reviews and take seriously the need to minimise disruption between Westminster and Holyrood boundaries and anomalous breaches of community links. However, its task will be made harder if amendments such as these and other related ones are not accepted to change this rigid application of numbers, with a totally cavalier disregard for the implications for further tensions in the United Kingdom. The Government are not prepared to consider how the devolution settlement can be updated to allow the devolved Administrations to have a genuine say in UK decisions, rather than a situation where the United Kingdom can overrule them.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Bates) (Con)]

With the consent of the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, I call the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, next.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, these are important amendments—among the most important in the Bill. I congratulate all noble Lords who have made such telling arguments about the need for flexibility so that communities and local links are retained intact, and made them with a straight face and an earnest tone. For a moment or two, I was almost convinced, then I came back to reality.

All of us in this Room may not in a technical sense be noble friends, but we are political colleagues. Let us in the closeness of this Room, with no one listening in, be honest with one another about the arguments that we have all made to inspectors hearing constituency boundary inquiries. All noble Lords who were MPs, myself included, have sat at inquiries and made the most earnest arguments that boundaries should be changed or not changed because, as I said at Second Reading, they conformed with local travel-to-work areas, social habits, local boundaries, communities, cultural norms, mountains, lakes and rivers which could or could not be crossed, motorways, shopping habits or ancient history such as the routes followed by King Edward III when he invaded Scotland in 1356.

It is always a pleasure to listen to my pal, my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock; I think that he would have made an excellent governor-general in parts of Africa in his dress uniform and cocked, plumed hat. However, I care to bet that, at some point in his distinguished career as a Member of Parliament for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley—is that not a magnificent name?—the noble Lord would have quoted Rabbie Burns as justification for including or excluding a part of Ayrshire. After all, there were few parts of the county to which Rabbie Burns did not wander in his travel to work as an exciseman or travel for favours in pursuit of many bonnie Jeans and bonnie lassies.

I think that I had a run-in my noble friend Lord Hayward who, wearing his hat as a national Conservative Party expert on constituencies, had a plan for boundary redistribution in Cumbria. At that time, Carlisle had about 50,000 electors, while I had more than 80,000 and the largest geographical constituency in England. Thus it made sense that part of my constituency should be added to Carlisle. I opposed it on the selfish basis that I did not want to give away part of my 18,000-strong majority, and the Labour Party strongly opposed it on every ground under the sun when the real reason was that it was afraid that an influx of Tory voters would lose it the seat. I recall us arguing for the creation of a new seat in Cumbria that was more than 100 miles long and banana-shaped, stretching from Barrow-in-Furness in the south and up the west coast, taking in Maryport and Whitehaven and almost reaching Carlisle. We said in all honesty to the inspector that this was a traditional travel-to-work route and a shopping route, and that people did this for recreation et cetera. The inspector said that, in that case, he would drive it next day and check it out for himself. I do not think that the poor fellow was ever seen again, lost in the wilds around Sellafield.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

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

[Lord Campbell of Pittenweem (LD)]

My Lords, I will be brief, taking full advantage of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, whom I wish to congratulate on bringing this matter to the attention of the Committee and, indeed, persevering with it to the extent that we now know that consensus has been achieved. In that respect, it would be only right and proper to thank the noble Lord, Lord True, for being constructive in these discussions. The noble Lord referred to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, who certainly deserves a mention in dispatches as having been a very fervent supporter of the principle, albeit with a different figure in mind.

The mischief that this amendment seeks to address is the fact that, under the previous legislation, the Government had what one could reasonably describe as an unfettered discretion, which has now been substantially removed. The consequence is that the onus will rest with the Government to establish whether or not the exception that is contained can be fully supported. I venture to suggest that the Government—any Government—will find it a lot more difficult to defend exceptional circumstances that would have had reasonable practicability.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to welcome this amendment and to add my name to it. I can also be brief because of the excellent speech by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham. I strongly supported the three-month provision in Committee, and I welcome this amendment, because it keeps the Conservative Party’s hands absolutely clean and above board. I make no apologies for reminding the House, as I did in Committee, that there have been only two occasions when Boundary Commission reports were abandoned: one was the disgraceful episode involving Jim Callaghan’s Government, who scuppered the report; and the other was a rather grubby move by the Lib Dems in 2011 to scupper the Boundary Commission report then. That was done purely out of spite because they had lost the PR referendum.

Enough of going over old bones: this now means that this Conservative Government will deliver on the commitment to make sure that Boundary Commission reports are presented automatically within four months unless there are these exceptional circumstances. My noble friend Lord Young cited a couple; they do seem to be rather serious and very exceptional circumstances. I will be grateful if my noble friend the Minister has got any more examples, but they do seem to set a standard that it would be very exceptional circumstances indeed before a Boundary Commission report did not proceed. Therefore, I welcome this compromise and I commend it to the House.

[Lord Grocott (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I certainly support this amendment; without it the Bill would have been based on a false prescription

Repeatedly during the passage of the Bill, we heard from Ministers that through it, Boundary Commission proposals can be brought forward without political interference. The dreadful word “automaticity” entered our vocabulary —or was refreshed—repeatedly. Under the system prior to this amendment, which I hope will pass, there certainly was not automaticity; there was automaticity “up to a point, Lord Copper”. An automatic car goes up through the gears without any interference from the driver. In the case of this Bill, the Boundary Commission proposals could move forward seamlessly over the first few hurdles, but at the point where the Order in Council had to be presented, that involved the driver, who, in this case, of course, is the Minister. The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Young, deals with that problem to a considerable extent—not quite as far as far as I would have liked, but there we are.

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Young. I reread his Committee stage speech and it really was masterly. The Minister, in fairness, realised this and all but said, “game, set, match and tournament” when he was winding up. Of course, we still do not quite have automaticity, and the part of the amendment that maybe I should have put down an amendment to and do not feel too happy about is that the four-month requirement for the laying of the Order shall proceed

“unless there are exceptional circumstances.”

In his speech today, the noble Lord, Lord Young, was all too aware that the validity and strength of this amendment depends to a degree on what is meant precisely by “unless there are exceptional circumstances”. The Minister said that they would be things like the Covid crisis. No one would deny that that is an exceptional circumstance but of course, as far as I can remember in my political life, whenever there are exceptional circumstances of anything approaching that level, emergency legislation is immediately introduced. Among other things, as with the Covid legislation, this sets asides all sorts of aspects of normal political behaviour. It postpones local elections. You cannot get anything quite as interfering in the normal processes of democracy as postponing local elections.

I am quite certain that if exceptional circumstances of the sort the Minister is envisaging were ever to take place and emergency legislation were required, it would be easy to insert a provision stating that the four-month rule must be overruled. I really see no need to put in the Bill the phrase “unless there are exceptional circumstances”. It may have been one of the compromises that the noble Lord, Lord Young, acknowledged are necessary when parties are involved in discussions, but the Minister really does need to address this point when he winds up. Can he please list the exceptional circumstances the Government have in mind and are worried about? In each case, can he give me an example of when it would not be necessary to introduce emergency legislation? Any emergency legislation could easily deal with this issue—I do not think it is a problem, but it is addressed in the Bill—by allowing this “exceptional circumstances” exemption. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about this, because I think it is a weakness in the amendment.

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[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

I have received a request from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, to ask a short question for elucidation.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, this is not a question as such. I want to commend my noble friend Lord Hayward for mentioning the 1983 Boundary Commission review, which I intended to mention but clean forgot. That was implemented by the late, great Viscount Whitelaw of Penrith. He did it, even though it added large swathes of Lib Dem-held wards to his own constituency. In the by-election which followed his elevation to this place, I almost lost the seat because of that. As usual, Willie did the right thing. The Government are doing the right thing now and I commend them.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

Does the Minister wish to respond?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, it was a delight to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, move the amendment. I recall her saying in an earlier debate that everything that could possibly be said had already been said. I suspect we shall hear the same in this debate. It reminds me of a time 30 years ago when I was a junior Whip in the Commons pushing through hundreds of Lords amendments. I had a deal with the opposition Labour Party; colleagues were speaking for one to two minutes each. Then the great MP, Sir Ivan Lawrence, got up and said, “Everything that could possibly be said on this amendment has been said, but not by those of us qualified to say it.” With his having spoken for 20 minutes, the deal fell through and we were there until midnight. I hope that will not happen tonight.

It was also a delight to listen to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon. He is a wee bit older than me, but I would love to have lived in that golden era where constituents loved their MP, did not want any boundary changes, were committed to the community and must have been appalled at having general elections where their MP could possibly be lost to them. It was a wonderful era and I wish we had it now. He mentioned there are many sheep in his constituency. In my part of Cumbria, there were infinitely more sheep than voters and my opponents used to claim that it was where my majority came from. Therefore, I congratulate the noble Peers who have proposed these amendments and spoken in favour of them. I commend them because they did so with an extraordinary degree of earnestness and a straight face.

Anyone who has not participated in the boundary changes game might have been fooled for a moment into believing there was a great mass of constituents who cared passionately about the exact boundaries of their constituencies and the necessity of retaining a relationship with the same MP. Who are we kidding? Let us be honest: the vast majority of constituents have not a clue where their constituency boundaries are and could not care less. They care about the politics of the MP and using their vote to change the Government, as we saw last year. Once an MP is elected, constituents care about issues and someone to take them up on their behalf. Boundaries are irrelevant. I only ever had one constituent who cared passionately about the boundary and that was the late Earl of Lonsdale, who was deeply upset that Willie Whitelaw, as he then was, implemented the 1983 boundary report which put a bit of Lord Lonsdale’s beloved Westmorland into the Cumberland/Penrith constituency.

All of us who have been MPs in a former life have played the boundary commission game, which is a bit like Monopoly but with electors in play rather than money. We try to land a ward or a parish which gives us the voters we want and try to get rid of wards which are unhelpful to our majority. Instead of playing with hotels and railway stations, we use rivers, roads and mountain ranges. We would happily split Park Lane if it aided us and disadvantaged our opponents. The Labour and Conservative parties would give away Park Lane to Lambeth if it helped them retain the seat or win the seat of Kensington and Chelsea.

We have all produced spurious arguments why our constituency boundaries must or must not be changed and have cited ancient history, travel-to-work areas or strong community ties. While there may have been some truth in these facts, the motivation for advancing them was all bogus.

I recall in Grand Committee the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, mentioning that the River Tamar could not be crossed because it was a boundary since pre-historic times. I can imagine the Neanderthal Lib Dem predecessor to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, a good party hack, arguing before a Palaeolithic boundary inspector that their caves in Devon were a distinct community and different from those in Cornwall.

The real motivation behind the representations made by Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative Members and their parties to the Boundary Commissions and the inspectors is to carve up as many seats as possible to give the party more seats. There is nothing wrong or immoral about that, and in my experience the commission has never been fooled by any of these bogus political representations, no matter how hard or earnestly we tried.

What makes the work of the inquiry inspector more difficult is when there is a wide range of constituency sizes, thus permitting political parties to mount a range of suggestions for wards and districts to be included or excluded. I support the 10% range in the Bill, from a low of 95% to a high of 105%. My noble friend Lord Hayward, who called himself a political hack—he was a brilliant political hack—tells me that the model constituency will be 73,000 electors. This permits constituencies ranging from 69,350 to 76,650. That is almost 7,000 electors to move about and it should take care of all claimed, so-called unique communities which cannot be split, as noble Lords have argued.

Amendments 12, 13 and 14 would increase the range not to 7.5% but to 15%. Amendment 14 goes even further—to suggest an extraordinary 20% range. If the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, were accepted, one could have a constituency of 65,700 sitting next door to one of 80,300—a 15,000-elector variation. It was noticeable that all noble Lords from the Opposition who have spoken did not mention those figures. It is always: “A slight tweak here, a little difference there, a small percentage change here and there”. The figures are astronomical. I suggest that those figures are utterly unacceptable. They undermine the principle of having constituencies of similar size and electors having an equal vote. I say to my noble friend the Minister: do not play the Opposition’s Monopoly game; do not pass Go and collect 15% and 20% ranges; stick with the range in the Bill.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I think parliamentary language allows me to use the term, balderdash. In a stroke, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, dismisses the constituency link and the identity that people have in communities with one another, speaking to their Member of Parliament and expecting that Member to speak for them. That is why dividing communities, which so often happens with the narrow range, is not about the Member of Parliament and whether people hold them in contempt or could not give a damn about the boundaries, but about the community of interest that people have in their area and the expectation of a voice to speak for them.

All of us know that political parties put forward the best possible case to the Boundary Commissions to ensure they maximise their success in parliamentary elections and local elections. However, to dismiss the notion of a small additional variation in the way that the noble Lord just did is to be contemptuous of the electorate, citizenship and identity. If we want equality in the numerics, as the Minister said in response to Amendments 2 and 3, then let us have a national list system—the noble Lord has actually made a good case for it. Let us have total equality in a crude form of proportionality: the political parties put up their list, the electorate vote, and they get straight down the line the number of seats that the electorate have allocated themselves. None of us wants that, do we? Even the Liberal Democrats do not want a national list system, because they accept the importance of the community link and the identity that goes with it.

The way in which we have started to debate this gets off the point, which is that the Government have accepted that there are five exceptions. At a stroke, they have accepted that it is important to recognise difference, identity and geography. Those who had previously pressed for a larger variation have accepted that getting as close as possible to numeric values does matter—without employing a dreadful algorithm that could do the job for us, leaving us to pick up the mess afterwards. Therefore, 5% to 7.5% gives a greater ability to the Boundary Commission and those working for it to use common sense and ensure that people do not have a boat to get across the Mersey or, in the case of Iain Duncan Smith in the last proposal, to spend three hours going around a reservoir. It is about identifying what really matters, which is common sense, and the proposal of 7.5% in Amendment 13 does that.

I will say one word on Wales. I said in the Grand Committee that I was deeply impressed with the case that was made in relation to what the proposals would mean for Wales. It would matter in terms of the valley identity; it matters greatly. People made the case that, although they had travelled well out of Wales, many people had not actually travelled between the two adjoining valleys because of the nature of the geography. As I said in Grand Committee, my great-grandfather was born on the edge of Brecon and Radnorshire, and I was impressed, again, by the way the description of the travelling time and the size of that constituency affected the ability of the Member to do their job on behalf of constituents.

If we get back to constituents, identity, citizenship and the reason we have elections and the link represented by that crucial Member of Parliament with a voice for, speaking on behalf of and understanding their community, as well as the role of Parliament, we might just take a deep breath and say “When we start arguing on the head of a pin, that is when we turn off the electorate for good.”

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments & Ping Pong (Hansard) & Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 26th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with every word that the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, has said, with the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and with the very eloquent speech by the noble Lord, Lord Woolley. The Minister said that the House of Commons had given a view on this, but it is perfectly reasonable and normal for us to ask it to think a second time on issues where we believe that there is a very strong public interest, particularly constitutional issues, since we are a constitutional safeguard. There are not many others in our system. One is the courts, and we have heard from a former Lord Chief Justice, who also spoke extremely eloquently about the composition of the Boundary Commissions. When a former Lord Chief Justice raises concerns about possible gerrymandering of the Boundary Commissions, we should take note.

For all the reasons that have been given so far, the issue of engagement of young people in our democratic system is fundamental. It is not a peripheral issue for the future of this country, and it is all the more fundamental because of the current evidence of massive underregistration of young people. The noble Lord, Lord Woolley, spoke with great passion about how ethnic minority groups are even more underrepresented than young people at large. The evidence is that in the 2017 election, only 64%—not even two-thirds—of 18 to 24 year-olds were even on the electoral register, so the rest were not even able to participate unless they went through the laborious process of registering themselves during the election. Many would then have missed the deadline, and I had not even thought about the very powerful point made by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, that if they are not on the electoral register, they are not available for jury service either. All these attributes of citizenship, which are fundamental to the future of our democracy, they are not engaged in.

Only 64% being registered is a huge condemnation of the status quo. The Minister cannot say that the system works and therefore, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. The system is fundamentally broken, and not because of changes that go back a long time and which are hard to tackle but because of the introduction of individual registration, a reform introduced only six years ago, and which was itself, in respect of young people, unnecessary because, as the second aspect of this amendment which the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, referred to, makes clear, we know who all the 16 year- olds in the country are. It is not a mystery. They all get a national insurance card. The state thinks that it is important for them to be registered for taxation, but not to be registered to vote. These are fundamental issues, and if we have any role in our constitutional development as a country, we should be drawing them further to the attention of the House of Commons, and we should certainly be putting on the record, as emphatically as we can, that the status quo does not work satisfactorily at the moment.

In the previous two elections, since we have had individual registration playing through, there has been a fundamental underrepresentation of young people, particularly in minority and poorer groups. Also, young people are becoming increasingly politicised because of the scale of the issues affecting them—Brexit, Covid-19 and so on—and as soon as elections come, they suddenly and frantically seek to register. The figures from the Electoral Commission are that in the general election in 2019, 1.4 million young people registered after the calling of the election, and apparently most of the new registrations on 10 of the 15 days with the highest number of new registrations were of young people at that general election.

The Minister might say that this shows that the system is, to some extent, working, but I do not think that it shows that at all. It shows a massive crisis in registration. When young people realise that they are not registered, some, but only a proportion, take the active steps necessary to correct that in that very short window between the calling of the election and the final date for being able to register. This is not a system that is working, it is one that is fundamentally broken, and one where the remedies are very straight- forward. Automatic registration is very straightforward to implement. It could be done immediately and should have been done under this Bill, but the Government rejected it. The further amendment on the paper today, which I absolutely believe that we should carry, would simply draw to the attention of young people that they should be registered.

When there is a fundamental problem of this kind, one does not need to look for the motivation behind it because, in the time that I have been in this House, this is the fourth occasion on which we have addressed the issue of individual registration. It looks very straight- forward and clear to me. Not all members of the Conservative Party, but the electoral advisers of the Conservative Party think they have a direct political interest in voter suppression in general and in the underregistration of young people in particular. Looking at the tactics in this populist movement that has been sweeping the United States and Britain, unfortunately the Prime Minister, who is a representative of it—not as bad as Donald Trump but still pretty bad—is perfectly content to resort to such methods so that fewer young people are registered and vote. On all the evidence, that appears to be the case. This makes me, and, I hope, other noble Lords who take these issues to heart, all the more determined that these issues should be aired, not suppressed, and that we should send this issue back to the House of Commons a second time.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I just popped in today to see this Bill put safety to bed, having participated extensively in Committee and on Report—speaking on it for far too long, noble Lords may wish to shout. I was therefore surprised to see the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, and to hear his speech. I congratulate him on a passionate and thorough speech, but one which should have been made at Second Reading. It was a perfect example of a Second Reading speech, and it would also have gone down perfectly well in Committee.

The noble Lord has apologised to the House for coming to the matter late in the day, as he put it, for which he blamed the pandemic. We have all had to change our modus operandi because of the pandemic, but I cannot imagine why, over the past four months, he was unable to participate in any stage of this Bill, online or in the Chamber. While I participated upstairs in Grand Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, participated from somewhere in the south-west—Devon, I presume—and many other noble Lords participated online. As a new Member, I made mistakes on the procedures, etiquette and courtesies of this House and had to apologise. I know he has apologised today, but the procedure that he has adopted, coming in with this amendment out of the blue at this late stage, is not the right thing to do in this House. I hope that he has not been used as a Trojan horse by the Liberal Democrats, because this has all the smell of a Liberal Democrat ploy. Someone else moves an amendment, the noble Lord has said that he will not vote on it, but it looks as though the Liberal Democrats will force a vote on ping-pong at this stage.

Irrespective of the merits of the arguments and the passionate speech by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, we should follow the usual customs and courtesies of this House at ping-pong.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Blencathra makes a very important point, one that was acknowledged in his speech by the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, when he said that he would not be pressing his amendment to a Division. That is right. Reversing that famous quote from TS Eliot’s “Murder in the Cathedral”, he was doing the wrong thing for the right reason, rather than the right thing for the wrong reason. I have great sympathy with him. We should move on with this Bill now, but we cannot escape facing up to the realities of compulsory registration.

Some of your Lordships may recall the phrase, “no taxation without representation”. If you are obliged to have your national insurance number and to pay tax, you should be obliged to be on the electoral register. I would go one step further: I believe in compulsory voting. That does not mean you cannot destroy your ballot paper or write, “A plague on both your houses” on it. I believe it is a civic duty to take part in the electoral process whether by casting or spoiling your vote.