Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Debate between Lord Foulkes of Cumnock and Lord Kinnock(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My noble friend is right. I could not have put it better myself. He also reminds me that our noble friend Lord Sewel made a pertinent intervention earlier, to which neither the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, or the Minister replied, about the Act of Union. Something that we might look at over the coming days is whether the provisions of the Act of Union are being adhered to or whether they are being broken by this Bill. That is something that we had not really thought of until the noble Lord, Lord Sewel, raised it, but there may be some provisions in the Act of Union giving particular guarantees to Scotland that are not contained in this Bill.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation in a recent report said that since the 1980s wealthier people have moved to the suburbs while the poor remain in inner cities, again strengthening the case for some account being taken of the wealth of the constituency.
Lord Kinnock
In an earlier exchange, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, was somewhat scornful of arguments made from this side of the House that additional workloads had to be borne by Members of Parliament representing deprived areas, such as inner-city areas or poor rural areas. Does my noble friend think that in those circumstances, with a reduced number of Members in the House of Commons, the people of whom he speaks, who have relatively low incomes and who live in relatively deprived circumstances, would take up the suggestion offered by the Minister to resort to electronic means of contacting their Member of Parliament? What does my noble friend from his extensive experience think would be the incidence of resort to electronic means of communicating with Members of Parliament satisfactorily undertaken by people from deprived backgrounds, particularly the elderly?
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My noble friend is right. It is the highly articulate middle-class people who have access to a range of electronic equipment and can use it. As my noble friend knows, until the end of March I am an elected Member of the Scottish Parliament. I get a lot of e-mails from constituents, but they are almost invariably highly articulate middle-class constituents, particularly younger and middle-aged people. The older, less well off do not have the same access to this kind of equipment.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My noble friend is again right. I sat through about half of the debate on housing benefit and was really impressed by the speeches from all sides, particularly from the Liberal Democrats— including my old friend the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope—all arguing against the cuts in housing benefit. The cuts will certainly make it more difficult for poor people to access their elected representatives. As my noble friend said, cuts to library services will have the same effect.
To illustrate the increasing demand in MPs’ casework, I quote a couple of examples that I hope, since they do not come particularly from Labour, might convince Members opposite. According to Wilks-Heeg and Clayton, authors of Whose Town is it Anyway? The State of Local Democracy in Two Northern Towns, published in 2006 by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, an MP in the 1950s or 1960s, which is even before I was a Member of Parliament and probably even before my noble friend Lord Kinnock was—
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
At that time, the report says, an MP,
“might have required less than a few hours each week to respond to the handful of letters she received from constituents. By contrast, a newly-elected MP told a Hansard Society meeting at a party conference in Autumn 2010 that she had received over 20,000 emails to her parliamentary address between May and September 2010”.
That indicates the growing volume of work. An eloquent description of the crushing casework demand of an inner London MP was written by Greg Hands, then Conservative MP for Hammersmith and Fulham, in December 2007. He said:
“Incredibly, I have at present between 700 and 800 unresolved immigration cases—that’s out of a total constituency of just over 80,000 electors”.
If a third of an inner London MP’s casework is immigration-based, an inner-city MP is likely to be doing half as much other casework as an MP with very few such cases, as I had in a rural area in Scotland. That is not satisfactory in terms of equality of representation. This points to the sense of equality of population rather than registered electorate being the key criterion, as an MP represents the whole constituency. That is covered in an amendment to which I shall come later this morning.
Viscount Eccles
Does the noble Lord not think that he is stretching the meaning of the word “scrutiny” rather wide? In that connection, I strongly recommend to the party opposite that it should not try to form a team for “Just a Minute”, because it would be ruled out of order in no time at all both for repetition and for deviation.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
Has the noble Viscount seen the groupings list for today? Is he aware that in this group there are 12 amendments, all dealing with matters of great importance? I am talking to two of them—one in relation to the ward, which I dealt with in about five minutes, and a very important one about poverty. I know that the noble Viscount perhaps does not understand poverty—