Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Hart of Chilton Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hart of Chilton]

My Lords, I put on record that I am a member of your Lordships’ Constitution Committee, whose report was published last Thursday. The Bill today is one of three promoted by the coalition. Two have commenced their parliamentary process and the third, for an elected House of Lords, will appear at some unspecified date next year. Each impacts on the other, but the coalition is proceeding with them in isolation. The evidence of the Deputy Prime Minister and Mr Harper was that the underlying purpose for constitutional reform is a desire to win back the confidence of the British people by electoral reform, greater accountability and legitimacy, reducing the power of the Executive and increasing the power of the legislature. Those are important ideals and put in a rather more high-flown way than the noble Lord, Lord McNally, put them this morning on the radio, when he said that the Bill was really about ironing out a few wrinkles. That seemed to assume that the House of Commons was a crumpled frock that needed a bit of tightening.

The Constitution Committee points out that proposals for major constitutional reform should be subject to prior public consultation and legislative scrutiny. There are obvious advantages in doing that: first, by seeking consensus on important issues, not just in principle but in detail, in order to ensure that the principles work; secondly, by testing the evidence for the proposals; thirdly, by considering the implications of one proposal on another; and, fourthly, by seeking to explain and justify, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, constantly reminds us, how the proposals fit into an overall constitutional framework.

The coalition seeks to justify the rush to legislation on the basis that the referendum on AV needs to take place on 15 May next year, but that only justifies Part 1 of the Bill. It does not justify Part 2. The timetable for the Bill is so tight that it runs the risk of deadlines not being met. That is why the Bill was rushed through the Commons. Hansard records the controversy in the five heavily whipped and guillotined days, with some Members of the other place expressing the hope that your Lordships would provide the scrutiny that they could not, while the report from the House of Commons Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform is heavily critical of the Bill.

The absence of any full, proper and normal consultation and scrutiny for a constitutional Bill is nowhere more apparent than in the provisions relating to parliamentary constituencies. There has been: no coherent explanation for the number chosen for the reduction in constituencies to 600; no analysis of population shifts and increases; no proper analysis of comparable legislatures or the missing millions from the electoral register; no proper examination of the roles and functions of MPs; no action on the increase in the power of the Executive at the expense of the Back Bench; and no account of the inter-relationship of the House of Commons and your Lordships’ House in the context of proposals for another elected House. How ironic—somebody has mentioned this already—that as 50 elected MPs are hurtled to oblivion from the other place, the door to paradise in here is thrown open and in come another 50 unelected Peers.

Many of your Lordships will wish to comment on the speeding up of boundary reviews, so I simply observe that if the fixed term of Parliament is shorter than five years, for whatever reason, a review could be completed a mere six months before the next election, with the attendant crisis at local level as attempts are made to adapt the new constituency boundaries and contests. Similarly, many will wish to comment on the proposed basis for equalisation. Here, there has been no attempt to achieve consensus and no consultation with the public. What evidence is there that a strict arithmetic formula with little flexibility—just 5 per cent—is preferred by the electorate to more weight being given to geographical, customary or traditional local and historic boundaries?

Finally, may it not be that by removing a right to a local inquiry, many will feel that a sense of legitimacy has been taken away from them, for no good reason, at a time when the confidence and trust of the public is so important? How is this Bill likely to achieve the objectives that I outlined as being the coalition’s avowed intentions? First, the Bill will increase the power of the Executive, not diminish it, while by an absence of consensus, consultation and scrutiny, and by an absence of any solid evidence for its proposal, it has failed to make out a case for greater transparency and accountability for constitutional change. All these arguments are ones that the two parties opposite constantly put forward when in opposition. I see now from the papers that the coalition is going to have the audacity to ask us all whether we are happy. I fear that there may be many who, when they actually hear of the provisions of the Bill, will answer in the negative.