Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Foulkes of Cumnock and Lord Trimble

Tuesday 25th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, we now return to Scotland. We have heard a few mentions of the Clyde—the River Clyde in particular—from my noble friends Lord Harris and Lord Bach. Of course, the arguments that we had in relation to the Tyne, the Thames and the Mersey rivers apply equally to the Clyde and to the River Forth. I think it is inconceivable that we would have a constituency in Scotland that would straddle the River Forth. It would create so many problems, and it has never been considered by the Boundary Commission for Scotland. This brings me to my second preliminary point. During the previous debate—and I have no quarrel with it because we were talking about rivers in England—there was constant reference to the Boundary Commission, singular; but, of course, there is more than one Boundary Commission. There are a number of Boundary Commissions; and, of course, my particular concern is the Boundary Commission for Scotland. This amendment would insert in the Bill, on page 10, at the end of line 21, the following sentence:

“The Boundary Commission for Scotland may”—

and I use the same word, “may”, as is used in the Bill for other factors—

“take into account the boundaries of constituencies of the Scottish Parliament”.

I think the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, will be the Minister who will reply to the debate, and I welcome him back to our discussions. As I said on a previous occasion, he is an old friend and he used to be a constituent of mine. We have worked together—not always on the same side—for a long time. He knows Scotland well, and I think that he will understand some of the arguments that I am going to make.

In starting to think about how the Scottish constituencies would be allocated and distributed by the Boundary Commission for Scotland, I came up against a particular problem. It is one of these things that keep coming back to hit one as one sits through more and more of these debates—namely, that in this Bill there are many more problems, difficulties, traps and obstacles than seems to be the case initially when one reads it and thinks about it. The particular obstacle that I came across in thinking about the allocation of constituencies for Scotland is how many constituencies there will be for Scotland in the new arrangement if this Bill is enacted. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, will give us some indication of that when he first replies, as it would be useful.

I looked at page 11, line 12 onwards, relating to the allocation method. I have tried very hard to work out from this how many constituencies there will be. If we have 600 for the whole of the United Kingdom, if we have the two preserved constituencies, how many will there be for Scotland? The allocation method—which we will discuss in greater detail later on amendments laid down to change it—is referred to in rule 8(2) as follows:

“The first constituency shall be allocated to the part of the United Kingdom with the greatest electorate”.

I am not sure whether this means that England—because England has the greatest electorate—or the constituencies that have the greatest electorate would be the first to be agreed. If the latter, I assume that if the Isle of Wight remained one constituency it would be the Isle of Wight, and if it does not, it would be Daventry on the present arrangement.

[Lord Trimble]

If the noble Lord will give way, I think I can help him. Rule 3 at page 9 refers to the four parts of the United Kingdom, which are named there. In that case, “part” in the rule must refer to one of those four parts.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I am really grateful to the noble Lord opposite—I never thought that I would be saying that. That is really helpful. That was my initial understanding, that the part of the United Kingdom would be England. Therefore the first constituency is allocated in England. The rule goes on to say:

“The second and subsequent constituencies shall be allocated in the same way, except that the electorate of a part of the United Kingdom to which one or more constituencies have already been allocated is to be divided by … 2C+1 … where C is the number of constituencies already allocated to that part”.

By the way, when they say,

“the part of the United Kingdom”,

I do not understand why they do not say England, because it is so manifestly obvious that England has the greatest electorate, greater than any other part of the UK if we are talking about countries. Nevertheless, I accept that the noble Lord’s interpretation is right. It goes on to say:

“This rule does not apply to the constituencies mentioned in rule 6, and accordingly the electorate of Scotland shall be treated for the purposes of this rule as reduced by the electorate of those constituencies”.

We can understand that. Orkney and Shetland and the Western Isles are not included, so it is mainland Scotland. I have tried to work out how many constituencies this would give Scotland, and I have not been able to do so. The Minister has many more resources than I have. He has behind him all the departments—principally the Cabinet Office, as well as the Ministry of Justice. It would certainly help our discussions today and subsequently if we could get some indication of how many that would leave for mainland Scotland if the Bill were enacted as it stands and there were 600 constituencies for the United Kingdom, with the two preserved constituencies.

Then we come to a dilemma. As I said in an earlier debate—I do not blame the present coalition for all of this—in Scotland we have a plethora of constituencies and of voting systems. These include council wards and council areas which have been changed on a number of occasions. We have election by single transferable vote. We have the Scottish Parliament constituencies, the Westminster constituencies and the whole of Scotland—which is one constituency for Europe. We also have the eight European constituencies, which are used for the regional elections to the Scottish Parliament, which makes it particularly difficult. As a result, we have ended up with 73 Scottish Parliament constituencies, elected by first past the post, 70 of them on mainland Scotland; we have the Western Isles as a separate constituency, Orkney as a separate constituency and Shetland as a separate constituency. Therefore, we have 70 mainland constituencies electing Members to the Scottish Parliament by first past the post.

Furthermore, we have 59 Westminster constituencies electing Members of Parliament to the House of Commons by first past the post. However, because of the way that the Boundary Commission decisions have been made in the past, of course there is no correlation, there is no contiguity, there is no exact coterminosity between the Scottish Parliament constituencies and the UK Parliament constituencies. There could not be—59 and 70 are different numbers. As I said earlier, it was originally planned that, when the number of UK constituencies was reduced to 59, the number of Scottish Parliament first past the post constituencies would also be reduced to 59 on the same boundaries. However, this was not done by agreement across the parties of the Scottish Parliament and, I think, against the wishes of this Parliament. Nevertheless, the power had been devolved to the Scottish Parliament. Therefore, we end up with constituencies for the Scottish Parliament which are totally different from the constituencies for the UK Parliament. Very often, the overlap is not just that each Member of the UK Parliament has two MSPs to deal with. Sometimes it is three MSPs, sometimes four, because the overlap is so great and the system is so complicated.

When the Boundary Commission for Scotland looks at the new constituencies for the UK Parliament, it should take account of the Scottish constituencies and try to get a greater degree of contiguity. It will not achieve 100 per cent, of course—it cannot—but it might achieve some greater degree of coterminosity. I have thought about whether it would be worth suggesting that each Westminster constituency should consist of two Holyrood constituencies, but in fact the arithmetic does not work out because there will be more Westminster constituencies than half of the 72—there will be more than 36. I do not know what the number will be, but I certainly know that it will be more than 36.

It is still possible for the Boundary Commission to draw up boundaries for the UK Parliament that cover no more than two Scottish Parliament constituencies. To take a random example, there must be a new Rutherglen parliamentary constituency, outside Glasgow, for Westminster. It would include the Rutherglen constituency in the Scottish Parliament and part of just one other constituency. In this case it would be Hamilton. That would make things a lot easier and understandable, and I think that it could be achieved. It is a very simple suggestion. It would be helpful for the public and the Members of Parliament and it would produce a much simpler and more coherent system for the Scottish constituencies. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, on behalf of the Government, if he cannot accept the proposal in the form that I have put it, will say that it should be given sympathetic consideration.