District Electoral Areas (Northern Ireland) Order 2014

Lord Browne of Belmont Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, as I have said in this Committee before, this represents the end of a 13 to 14-year process, so nobody has broken into a sweat with the effort of getting here. It has taken a monumental length of time to get to this point.

Technically, the Minister is correct that this is needed in order to provide for the elections to take place in May. She is also right to say that commissioners were appointed and held inquiries. I do not necessarily agree with every one of the proposals, particularly, for example, the one in respect of Enniskillen in Fermanagh. Nevertheless, the Secretary of State has accepted the recommendations and they are here before us. However, they show, for those familiar with the geography, that a fundamental injustice has been committed with the designation of the boundaries for some of the councils. A glance at the map and a glance at the proposals for Belfast show that it has been gerrymandered in the most obvious and blatant way. Areas such as Dundonald and Ballybeen have been excluded from the City of Belfast, along with Rathcoole, and included, in the case of Dundonald and Ballybeen, with Lisburn and Castlereagh, with which they have little or no connection.

However, that is not the matter before us. It is merely a point that I have made before and will make again. I suspect that more can be said when we come to the Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill in Committee next week, although we do not know which day each bit will be debated. Nevertheless, I wanted to put on record my dissatisfaction with the fundamentals behind these proposals before us.

[Lord Browne of Belmont (DUP)]

My Lords, I welcome the order and I, too, thank the District Electoral Areas Commissioner, Mr Richard Mackenzie, and his team for all their hard work in preparing it. Redrawing boundaries is always a difficult task, and it is not always possible for political parties to obtain all they desire, but considerable work has gone into this and the areas are now well balanced. Going into the statistics, there are about 2,500 people per area, with a mean variation of plus or minus 5%. Considerable progress has been made. I hope that the discussions next week on the Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill will allow the Northern Ireland Executive to review the role of the Local Government Boundaries Commissioner and, I hope, improve it in the future. In general, I welcome this order.

[Lord McAvoy (Lab)]

My Lords, the Official Opposition, too, welcome the report and the order, and I endorse the Minister’s commendation of Mr Mackenzie and his team. It can be very tricky drawing boundaries anywhere, but in Northern Ireland they have been hotly disputed. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, has expressed dissatisfaction. I would be more worried if nobody had expressed dissatisfaction, so that is actually quite a commendation. My honourable friend Stephen Pound in the other place, who is far more eloquent and far more loquacious than me, has asked a couple of questions, which I would like to ask the Minister to get them on record here.

First, given that the Sandyknowles roundabout has traditionally been a key landmark in identifying the border of the DEA, Mr Pound asked for the Minister’s assessment of the commissioner’s decision to change the name of Sandyknowles to Glengormley Urban. Secondly, the commissioner and his team should be commended for their work in liaising closely with community groups in Derry/Londonderry, particularly given the historic sensitivity that surrounds polling districts in the city. However, does the Minister agree that, on this occasion, the commissioner should perhaps have listened more to the advice of local community groups and accepted the recommendation to change Rosemount DEA to Edenballymore? Those are a couple of technical questions. If the Minister has the answers, fine, but if not she can write to me so we can get them on the record.

As I say, this is a welcome step. It has been a long time coming, as the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said, but it is another step on the road to making sure that Northern Ireland is like every other place in the United Kingdom. Political disputes may go back and forward but there is general acceptance of this measure, as the noble Lord, Lord Empey, was good enough to say. With that, I repeat that we support the order.