Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, I am asking the Committee to agree to delete the words,

“may take into account if, and to such extent as they think fit”,

and insert “should take into account”. Some noble Lords may think that that is just an emphasis of words; it is much more than that. Changing “may” to “should” shows our intent. We want that to happen; it is important; I think that it must happen. It is vital that the Boundary Commission takes into account special geographical considerations, local government boundaries and local ties that would be broken by changes in constituencies and the inconveniences attendant on such changes. If the Boundary Commission does not do that, frankly, what is the point of the Boundary Commission? Surely all noble Lords would want the Boundary Commission to take these factors into account, not to leave the provision at “may”.

I am hopeful, as are many other noble Lords, that there may be some movement on the Government side to take in the concerns expressed in this House. I hope that we will not be disappointed later this week. This is this House doing its job, because there is no one else left to provide the detailed scrutiny. Is it not right that the Boundary Commission should take it into account that having a constituency on both sides of the Mersey or on both sides of the Thames may not be the best drawn constituency? Is it not right that the Boundary Commission should take into account the realities of rural communities in Lincolnshire and the relationship between those communities? Is it not right that the Boundary Commission should take it into account that Nottingham City is a unitary authority? It has three Members of Parliament representing seats contained wholly within its boundaries, and there are considerable differences between the city and the rest of the county. Is it not right that the Boundary Commission should look at the historic county of Rutland and decide that it is better that it stays with Melton to form one parliamentary seat, rather than being chopped up and thrown to the winds? Is it not right that the Boundary Commission should take account of ward boundaries, as they are the building blocks of our constituencies? Is it not right that the Boundary Commission should take into account the uniqueness of Corby?

As I draw my remarks to a close, I look forward to the debate and the Minister's response.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

We touched on this matter before, but it seems to me important to make the point quite clearly that there seems to me to be all the difference in the world between “may take into account” and “should take into account”. I ask noble Lords to put themselves in the position of members of the Boundary Commission—or members of any commission charged by Parliament to undertake an important task. If you have a criterion that says that you “may” do something, that is not a positive criterion; that is not guidance that this is a value on which Parliament sets some store; that is not a message from the people via Parliament to respect certain considerations or to take them into account. It is not a positive criterion at all—it is the absence of a negative criterion. The phrase “may take into account” means that, if you are minded to do so, if you really want to do so, we do not prevent you from doing so. We do not deny you the opportunity of doing so. However, there is no positive suggestion whatever that these considerations should be taken into account. Can that seriously be the Government’s intention? Is it seriously the intention of anyone in this Committee that some positive value should not be ascribed to considerations such as local government boundaries, for example, or, going back to our former debates, a sense of local community and so on? Surely the whole tone of our debates has been that these are genuine values, and the question is: what sort of trade-off should we make between these considerations and the desiderata, which are genuine, as I have always admitted, in terms of uniformity of numbers? I give way to my noble friend.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

When the Bill says “may take into account”, is it not either disingenuous or simply confused? In reality, the 5 per cent limit in tolerance around 76,000 voters means that in practical terms it will be impossible for the Boundary Commission to take these other factors of geography and local government alignments and so forth into account, should it wish to do so. It can perhaps take them into account but there is nothing it can do about them.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My noble friend makes a very important point. It is a separate point but it is obviously clearly related. If you allow someone to do something or if you provide a purely permissive criterion—what I would call the lack of a prohibition; that is all it is—the question is whether they will have the slightest motivation in the first place to use that permissive ability that they have been granted. As my noble friend says, there is no suggestion at all in the Bill that these matters should be given any consideration or value whatever.

It is perfectly true that, until now, historically the Boundary Commission has in practice tried to respect local government boundaries and county boundaries in almost all cases, although I gather from our earlier debate this evening that there may be some exceptions in respect of ward boundaries, for example. Nevertheless, we are now giving the Boundary Commission new instructions which do not set any explicit value on these things at all. The Bill says, almost reluctantly, “Well, you can take account of these things if you really insist on doing so”. However, as my noble friend said, we then provide other constraints—particularly that of the 5 per cent rule and the requirement to reduce the number of MPs by 50 to 600, which we know will produce a very large number of boundary changes. In practice, that will make it certain that, even if the Boundary Commission is minded to take advantage of its ability under the Bill to consider matters of local boundaries, it will not be able to do so. The commission is receiving no indication whatever from Parliament in the Bill as it currently stands that it might be desirable to retain the tradition which it has long maintained of respecting these boundaries. Therefore, I think that there is all the difference in the world between “may” and “should”, and I congratulate my noble friend on bringing this dilemma to the fore. It is something that we really do need to discuss.

We have heard time and again from the Government and elsewhere on the government side that, other things being equal, they believe it is inherently desirable that local boundaries are respected. Can they not, if they wish to do so, come up with different wording which at least reflects the value that they acknowledge we should be attributing to these considerations? Can they not send a signal to the Boundary Commission which says in effect, “If you possibly could, we would be delighted if you were to take account of local boundaries”? Can we not send some signal or instruction to the Boundary Commission saying, “For generations”—ever since 1949, I believe—“you’ve been right to take account of these considerations. Please don’t drop that now. We aren’t trying to tell you that that was wrong. We aren’t trying to tell you that you should go back on that tradition or those values and ignore them. We’re not just giving you a reluctant permission if you really insist on taking account of these things; we would like you to do so if you can somehow manage it”.

That surely is the sense of the message that Parliament wants to send to the Boundary Commission—the sense of the message that has been articulated in different ways from all parts of House, including from the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, who has taken an important part in these debates. Surely the Government cannot really, on reflection, be entirely satisfied with this very negative formulation of “may”. I hope they can accept the proposal of my noble friend that the text should be changed to “should”. If not, can they not find some better way of encapsulating the message which, I am sure, in good faith, they themselves have been delivering to us, not just tonight but throughout our deliberations on this Bill?

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

We are debating not just the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Kennedy but, if I understand it correctly, we are dealing with 12 amendments—each one of great importance. Perhaps it is worth noting that, if we actually had wanted to filibuster, we could have degrouped all these amendments and taken two hours on each of them. Maybe, since there are no Cross-Benchers here, there is no one here to convince of that, so I will get on to the specifics of the two amendments that I have tabled and left in the grouping.

Amendment 74B, which I particularly want the Minister to take note of, relates to the use of ward boundaries. My recollection was that, in reply to a previous debate, the Minister—the noble Lord, Lord McNally—confirmed that he saw ward boundaries as the building blocks for all of the boundaries that we were going to look at, whether there were 600 or 650, whether they were preserved or whatever. We on this side were all encouraged by that. If he wants an amendment to encapsulate that very simply, and to accept an amendment—which would be really welcome on this side—Amendment 74B is exactly the one he could accept. I do not think there is anything deficient in it; it is exactly the right thing.

I remind my noble friends in particular that when I first stood for election in 1970, both for the United Kingdom Parliament and for the City of Edinburgh Council—I got elected to that council in that year but not to the Westminster Parliament—at that time in Scotland, there were effectively two layers of government: local government, elected by first past the post, and the United Kingdom Government at Westminster, elected by first past the post. I am sure my noble friend Lord McAvoy remembers those halcyon days only too well. In 2011, we now have councils and larger wards elected by the single transferable vote; we have the Scottish Parliament, elected by the additional member system; we have Westminster, still elected, thankfully, by first past the post, and the European Parliament, elected by a strange system of proportional representation.

I am not blaming the Government or their predecessors for all of these—

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I am grateful to my noble friend for giving way. I have been fascinated by this description, which is very clear and concise, of the extraordinarily complicated voting system there is in Scotland. What proportion of his former constituents does he think would be capable of setting out as clearly as he has just done the clear categories involved in voting for these different levels of government and the mechanisms employed in each case?

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Actually, quite a lot of them, because we still have a very good education system in Scotland, at a very high level. We have provided explorers, inventors, and leaders, not just for the United Kingdom but for the Commonwealth and around the world. The first Labour Prime Minister anywhere was in Australia and he was a Scotsman—indeed, he was an Ayrshire man, even better.

Nevertheless, the noble Lord’s point is absolutely right. It is a very complicated system, not just for the Scottish voter, who can understand it, but for the administration. That is why anything that can be done by the Government to simplify the arrangements instead of making them even more complicated would be good. As I was saying in mitigation, I do not blame Conservative or Tory-led coalition Governments for bringing in all these schemes. Far from it—Labour Governments brought them in, and I think it is unfortunate that we have ended up with such a complicated system. That is why I argue the case for Amendment 74B. I hope that some of my colleagues will elaborate on that at a later stage.

The other amendment that I want to talk to at a little greater length is Amendment 74A. I think that, with no disrespect to my other amendments, it is one of the most important, if not the most important, amendments that I have tabled. As I mentioned on an earlier amendment, page 10 sets out that a Boundary Commission may—one of the amendments suggested “must” should replace “may”—

“take into account, if and to such an extent as they think fit … special geographical considerations, including in particular the size, shape and accessibility of a constituency”.

My amendment is probably not the most elegant, but I think it is a key amendment. It adds “the wealth of a constituency”. That is probably not the best word to use. It could have been “deprivation” or “poverty” in contrast to wealth. The Minister, with all his advisers, will correct me if I am wrong, but my recollection is that way back in the early 1970s when the Boundary Commissions were looking at boundary reviews, a similar factor was included for their consideration. I seem to remember going to boundary hearings—which we still have, unless this Bill becomes an Act—and as well as arguing the physical boundaries, arguing the case for the relative poverty and deprivation in an area. I think that should be included.

The noble Lord, Lord McNally, who generously gave way to me for an intervention in his reply on the previous debate, was arguing very convincingly a conclusion that he did not come to. It was that lots of constituencies have particular problems. In rural Scotland, the problem is sparsity. It is an astonishing fact that Scotland represents one-third of the land area of the United Kingdom and the highlands of Scotland represent one-fifth. That is a very strong argument for what my noble friend Lord Stevenson and others were arguing earlier on about the importance of sparsity.

Equally, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said that others from inner-city areas were arguing the particular problems of inner cities and deprivation. That is absolutely true. This side has been arguing that. They are not conflicting arguments, they are complementary, and they are arguments for not reducing the total number of constituencies. We have been deploying them because some areas have inexplicably been taken out to be made special cases, whether Orkney and Shetland or the figures that we discussed earlier that give special status to Ross, Skye and Lochaber. I think we need specifically to include something in relation to deprivation.

Scottish Government findings have shown that in 2008-09, 34 per cent of individuals in deprived areas were in relative poverty, before housing costs, but in the rest of Scotland, that figure was 14 per cent, which is a huge difference. That means extra problems of benefits and housing that Members of Parliament have to deal with. I know when I was a Member of Parliament, housing and benefits were the top issues that I had to deal with. That was in a relatively deprived former mining area.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I recollect that some 10 hours ago the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, my noble friend Lord Strathclyde and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, encouraged us to be brief and to the point, and I shall be extremely brief and to the point on this very simple amendment. I shall resist all temptation to take a leisurely lane in my constituency—as was the case last week, so often during the middle of the night. Instead, I shall simply move a very straightforward amendment that would be a modest improvement to the Bill.

Under rule 5, there is no reference to existing constituencies. That, I believe, is a pity, and this simple reference in Amendment 74BA would simply add an appropriate respect for existing constituency boundaries to the list of criteria that the four Boundary Commissions should take into account in making recommendations. It is very simple and useful. It would indeed take up the point made by the four Boundary Commissions: that they want to have, to such an extent as they think fit, responsibility for examining these sorts of criteria. I very much hope that my noble friend the Minister will feel able to accept this modest improvement to the Bill. I believe that all parties in both Houses, and, more importantly, the public, will welcome the recognition of the need to avoid unnecessary disruption to existing constituencies. I therefore beg to move.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, may not have expected me to rise to my feet to support his amendment, but I do so willingly. I shall also do so briefly. The effect of his amendment, as I see it, would be to create a bias in favour of not changing existing constituency boundaries. It would in fact be, for the first time in our system, recognition of the costs of change. There are costs of all kinds: costs in disruption, costs to the political parties and to local authorities and, above all, the unquantifiable but very real cost that we have discussed throughout our proceedings of individuals feeling less attached to the constituency that they thought they were a part of.

As I understand it, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has taken into account all these considerations and said, “Surely, when in doubt, don’t make a change”—or even if there is a small doubt, do not make a change. He has not attempted to quantify the instructions that we would be giving to the Boundary Commission if we accepted this amendment. He has left it to the judgment of the Boundary Commission, which is right. However, he has alerted it to what the view of Parliament would be if his amendment were adopted—the view that it is important, whenever possible, not to change existing loyalties and perceptions of local constituencies and much better to preserve the status quo. It is a very sensible amendment. The noble Lord is to be applauded for having conceived it and brought it forward. I hope that it meets with the approval of the whole House.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, this is not only a sensible amendment but a very important one. Because the noble Lord moved it very briefly—he was right to do that, given that he knows that the House is sitting very late tonight and is keen to make further progress—its full significance could not be brought home to us. It is important for what it does, because it is obviously right that this should be one of the factors that the Boundary Commission takes into account. It is more important for what it symbolises—the fact that there is, on all sides of the House, recognition that we should be very chary about going into this situation of a permanent revolution in constituency changes.

By itself, the amendment would contribute only modestly to avoiding that malign outcome, because it has to be combined with what is at the moment the 5 per cent rule in the Bill, which, as we have seen so often, causes knock-on effects. One constituency grows slightly, which changes the next one and the next until, in the end, it is very difficult to preserve boundaries. It also has to be combined with the five-yearly review—another unwise feature of the permanent revolution. Nevertheless, a chink of light has seeped under the door on to the true nature of this Bill and the true changes that need to be made to it. Given that it comes from the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, I cannot believe that the Government will not wish to recognise this and support the amendment that he has laid before us tonight.