Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Blencathra and Lord Bates

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

[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.