Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

66C: Clause 11, page 9, line 25, leave out “598” and insert “600”

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lord Maples, I beg to move Amendment 66C.My noble friend has not vouchsafed to me the precise rationale behind his deceptively attractively simple amendment but I shall draw to his attention any answer in Hansard which my noble friend the Minister gives to him, if such a reply is given.

Now that Amendment 66C has been moved, I shall speak to Amendment 78B, which stands in my name and the names of my noble friends Lord Jenkin of Roding and Lord Newby. In introducing the amendment I should refer to my personal association with the City as the parliamentary constituency which I had the privilege to represent as Member for the City of London and Westminster South, as it then was, between 1977 and 1997, and then for the Cities of London and Westminster between 1997 and 2001.

The amendment aims to recognise the position of special authorities. It is aimed at the City of London, which has failed to make it into a very short list of constituencies subject to special provision on account of their particular characteristics even though the City’s individuality has been recognised throughout history. The Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986, which currently governs boundary reviews, continued that recognition. This Bill does not. The effect of the amendment is to require the whole of the City of London to be contained within one parliamentary constituency, as provided for by the current legislation.

As your Lordships will not need reminding, the City of London has existed as a discrete community for a very long time. It had evolved a legal personality by 1189 which, as noble Lords may recall, is the beginning of legal memory. Accordingly, the City Corporation which administers the square mile does not owe its existence to Parliament. Parliament has, however, underwritten the City’s rights and privileges. One of the very few remaining statutory provisions confirming the Magna Carta still in force is Chapter 9 of an Act of 1297 confirming the City’s liberties and customs under the charter.

The current legislation on parliamentary constituencies affecting the City is largely the product of the past 75 years. It is particularly relevant because the Bill marks a substantial departure in the electoral treatment of the City of London.

Permanent Boundary Commissions were established by the House of Commons (Redistribution of Seats) Act 1944. At that time the City of London had no less than two Members of Parliament, and that situation was preserved by the 1944 Act. There was then a business vote in parliamentary elections, as well as a voting entitlement of husbands or wives of occupiers of business premises, entitlements which were removed by the Representation of the People Act 1948. In consequence of those changes, the City of London’s electorate diminished to 4,542. The City was then linked up with the former seat of Westminster Abbey and called the Cities of London and Westminster constituency. To complete the picture, during the period of my incumbency between the February 1974 and 1997 general elections it was named the City of London and Westminster South constituency. Noble Lords will note that the one constant throughout has been its reference to the City of London.

When the changes were made in 1948, it was never suggested that splitting up the City’s relatively tiny parliamentary electorate between different constituencies would be an appropriate option. More than that, there was a specific provision in that Act and the further one which followed soon afterwards, the House of Commons (Redistribution of Seats) Act 1949, which required the whole of the City to be contained in one constituency. That is echoed by the supportive Amendment 85C in this group tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town. Although that amendment goes further than our amendment, the concept is therefore potentially bipartisan. That provision has been repeated in the legislation since and is included in Rule 3 set out in Schedule 2 to the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986.

The effect of this Bill through the replacement of Schedule 2 to the 1986 Act by a new schedule is to remove the provision requiring the City to be contained within one parliamentary constituency. It is perhaps a little surprising that the provision has been removed without a specific repeal. Magna Carta is without doubt a constitutional measure, and so therefore is the Act of 1297 which preserves the City’s liberties and customs. The Bill your Lordships are considering is also a constitutional measure. There is modern legal authority which has been much referred to by academic lawyers giving evidence to the EU Scrutiny Committee in the other place on the European Union Bill suggesting that a constitutional provision requires specific statutory repeal.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Will the noble Lord give way? We are having trouble hearing him, but that might just be the audio arrangements in the Chamber. Can he explain in one sentence what he is actually trying to do? We think that his amendment is a nimby amendment, but we are not quite sure.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, with whom I have duelled on a number of occasions. I shall try to move closer to some form of microphone. I hope that that is better. By the time that I have concluded my remarks, he will recognise exactly what I am seeking to do and why I am doing it in so discreet a manner.

Schedule 11 to the Bill includes in Part 2 the provisions to be repealed, but the 1297 Act does not feature there or in Parts 2 and 3 of Schedule 10, which deal with amendments to existing legislation. I do not wish to make too much of this because a great deal, not least interpretation, is uncertain when dealing with statutes of such antiquity. In the City of London context, significant elements of the franchise are, however, covered by the law of custom, which the 1297 Act protects. This prompts me to query whether the existing very specific provision relating to the City of London, which has been included in the legislation governing parliamentary constituencies until the appearance of this Bill, was inserted in deference to the Act of 1297. Perhaps the Minister might be prepared to offer an observation on the provenance of the existing provision when he replies.

I do not think that I need to exercise any great powers of persuasion to convince your Lordships that the City is demographically atypical. Its administration is quite different from that of the London boroughs. It has a local business franchise as well as a residential one, and business dominates. It currently has 5,939 parliamentary electors, which is slightly more than in 1948 but still very small in comparative terms. For example, a typical ward in the City of Westminster—the other half of my former constituency—has between 7,000 and 8,000 voters.

Having said all this about the constituency and the manner of representing it, I recognise that the Bill before your Lordships’ House lays down precise rules for the conduct of future boundary reviews. I also appreciate that there is a strong desire on the part of the Government to avoid special cases other than those which the Bill itself identifies. Recognising the constraints, I believe that the amendment does not simply seek to reimpose the requirements in the current Act that the City should be part of a single constituency. Rather, it proposes such an outcome where “practicable” —to quote from the amendment—with wording that has been specifically devised to avoid special pleading and to rely on uniqueness.

The amendment would create a strong presumption that this will be the result without making it an absolute. That is the effect of paragraph (1) in the amendment, which also relates the requirement to a “special authority”, a term defined in paragraph (3) in the amendment. In the Local Government Finance Act 1988, which is referred to there, the term “special authority” is defined as an authority covering an area with a population of less than 10,000 whose gross rateable value divided by its population is more than £10,000. In other words, the reference is to an area that is primarily commercial and not residential. The only geographical location to satisfy that definition is the City of London, which simply goes to reinforce how exceptional it is; hence my claim for uniqueness.

Avoiding specific reference to the City of London in the amendment avoids any suggestion of potential hybridity and, therefore, any need for me to discuss it. Paragraph (2) in the amendment is modelled on Schedule 2 to the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986, which requires the City of London to appear in the name of the constituency that includes the City. As noble Lords would expect, I believe the continuation of this practice to be entirely appropriate. I hope that the Minister feels that I have given enough to provide him with the encouragement to look favourably on the City's treatment under future boundary reviews. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

The amendment in my name is, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, has said, slightly firmer in that it leaves out the words “where practicable”, and asks that a constituency shall exist,

“which shall include the whole of the City of London”.

It does not mean only that, but it should certainly include the City of London. I have to confess that when I read the amendment in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Brooke, Lord Jenkin and Lord Newby. I did not understand it, which is why I tabled this amendment. I wondered at that time, “Dick Whittington, where are you when we need you? What is happening to the City of London?”. I was then taken to one side and it was explained that the amendment that has just been spoken to is in effect the same and is to preserve the City of London.

As the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, has said, the City of London has been a special case for longer than anyone’s memory, even in this sage House. Its rights and privileges, including its entitlement to parliamentary representation, were provided for in the Magna Carta, a copy of which I believe hangs behind where the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, is sitting—or not quite; I have just been corrected on the geography. The Magna Carta specifically allowed for the City of London’s privileges, which were preserved by an Act in the thirteenth century.

The present Bill removes the current bit of legislation that is set out in the 1986 Act, which requires there to be a constituency that includes the whole of the City of London and the name of which shall refer to the City of London. It has continued for centuries, not just more recently, as a constituency. Recently, however, the words “City of London” have to form part of the name of a parliamentary constituency. Even these words were inserted into the name of the GLA division, which is now, I think, City and East London. More recently, as has been mentioned, in 2000 the rules for redistribution of seats again preserved the constituency.

There is also the interesting constitutional point, which has been touched on, that the current Bill has been characterised as a constitutional measure and accepted as such by being taken on the Floor of the House in the other place. The early 1297 Act is also a constitutional measure, as has been mentioned, but there has been no provision to amend that.

There are, as has been referred to, many legal arguments. I will spare the House the details that I have here. What is interesting, as far as it affects this House, this Committee and the Bill in front of us, is that the existing provision for a constituency that will include the whole of the City of London, as well as the name, will cease to exist if the Bill is passed. It will not automatically mean that the City as we know it will be split, but it allows for that as an outcome, because there will be no preservation of the boundaries around that. It is important for this House to consider some of the same comments that were made earlier, in the case of the Isle of Wight, of an island surrounded by water.