Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Butler of Brockwell and Lord Desai

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, perhaps I may ask the Minister to address one point which is material to the issue. He said that the 10 per cent margin—5 per cent each way—would make it unnecessary to break up any ward in an existing constituency. If that is the case, the risk that one would need greater flexibility than the 5 per cent is either non-existent or very materially reduced. Can he clarify that point? It is relevant to whether we need the extra flexibility provided by the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick.

[Lord Desai]

My Lords, the Government have asked the Boundary Commission to fit 597 out of 600 seats within a 5 per cent margin either way. I have tried to argue before that, in terms of statistical distributions, this will be an immensely difficult task because a standard deviation of 1.7 per cent is too small.

If the Boundary Commission were allowed to fix 95 per cent of the seats within the Government’s favoured margin of 5 per cent and the remaining 5 per cent of seats—30, perhaps 25, seats—were allowed to fall under the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, it would make the tasks of the Boundary Commission and the Government simpler. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has not tried to subvert anything the Government want to do; he has been very helpful in making it much easier for the Government to achieve what they want to achieve. Otherwise it will be very difficult to carry out the task.