Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Lipsey and Lord Crickhowell

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendment moved by my noble friend and to express my own gratitude for the atmosphere that is prevailing in the Committee today. What a difference a decent lunch can make.

My noble friend made a very powerful case. I know that there are people on all sides of the Committee who believe that there is a powerful case for a 10 per cent rather than a 5 per cent limit. Perhaps I may provide the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, with an answer to his question about constituencies. Roughly 69 per cent of constituencies that exist at the moment could still exist with a 10 per cent limit; only 36 per cent of them could exist with a 5 per cent limit. Enormous disruption could be avoided if we put 10 per cent into the argument.

We have to think of the origin of the views on size expressed by the Benches opposite in the early stages of the Bill to understand what has gone wrong. I think that the Conservative Party saw on the one hand—I do not blame it for doing so—that constituencies were very unequal, which they are. It saw on the other hand that the electoral system was biased against it, which it is. But in the mind these two became conflated, which I can quite understand, as cause and effect: that unequal constituency size caused the bias in the system.

This is a matter on which a huge volume of work has been done by psephologists. I suppose that I am the only person in this House whose favourite bedside reading is psephology, rather than, for example, Agatha Christie, Dick Francis and the rest. I have gone through, for example, John Curtice’s and others’ annex to the British General Election of 2010, the work of Lewis Baston and so on. It is perfectly clear from those that size is barely the cause of the bias that exists in the system. Bias there is: the Conservatives need a 3.3 per cent lead over Labour just to get the same number of seats. I do not defend that, and there are other ways than those set out in this Bill to deal with it. The bias in the system has varied a good deal over time, but I am very pleased to say that it was sharply diminished at the last general election. It was still considerable and still unacceptable, but it was considerably diminished.

However, the bias is not due to size of seats. In fact, the average Labour seat is only 2,000 electors smaller than the average Conservative seat. In England, the difference is roughly half that. It is not size that makes the big difference. One factor, for example, is Welsh representation, which we shall come back to. The main reason for the bias is differential turnout. In Conservative seats, the turnout is 68.4 per cent; in Liberal Democrat seats, it is 67.3 per cent; in Labour seats, it is 61.2 per cent. That means that it takes many fewer electors to elect each Labour MP than it takes to elect each Conservative MP.

Another factor is that voters in seats where neither Labour nor Conservative candidates can win, an awful lot more Tory votes count for nothing in electing an MP than Labour votes—there are 400,000 more of them. Finally, there is the greater willingness of Labour voters to vote tactically, which costs the Tories a number of seats.

I do not want to gild the lily by going on and boring the Committee into the sleep that I enjoy most nights on reading this stuff, but I say to noble Lords that the Bill’s proposal to equalise seat size should be taken on its merits. To me, the inequality in the size of seats is also indefensible, but that is not because it biases the system against the Conservatives. It is indefensible because it leads to too great an inequality between voters. It therefore becomes a matter of the degree to which we want to permit that for other sorts of reasons, such as avoiding crossing traditional boundaries, such as the Tamar, and the desire to keep the Isle of Wight separate, and all the things that we know about.

However, there is not any magic about 5 per cent. There is no difference between 5 per cent and 10 per cent in the results of the general election that was held. So let us consider it on its merits; that is, the principled case of maximum equality achievable against the practical case that a little bit of flexibility in the system should be allowed so as to preserve traditional loyalties and to avoid having too great a swing in seats between one general election and another.

[Lord Crickhowell]

My Lords, I must apologise for not being in the Chamber when the noble and learned Lord began this debate. I was detained by a call I had to take from overseas, but I hope that the House will allow me to intervene at this stage because I have a related amendment on the Marshalled List. It would be much more sensible for me to deal with the points that I would have made on that amendment later on this amendment and to comment on the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey.

I approach this whole issue by looking at the situation in Wales. When I saw a proposed set of possible constituencies presented to a committee of the other place, it struck me that we might avoid some of the obvious difficulties by going to 10 per cent rather than 5 per cent. There are similarities between the Welsh situation and the Scottish mainland situation. I am not suggesting that we go down the solution that exists in Scotland—that is, two very large constituencies with a very small electorate. But in both cases there is a concentration of population in an industrial belt, which is surrounded by large, thinly populated, rural areas.

When I looked at the suggestions of what constituencies might be like, I observed at once that it seemed probable that one would have to detach a small part of my former constituency in Pembroke and put it into Carmarthen; a perhaps rather larger bit of Powys and put it into Ceredigion; and, in the valleys, possibly detaching or placing in neighbouring valleys some parts of constituencies that would be better not separated. I immediately came to the conclusion that a lot of these difficulties could be avoided if we went to 10 per cent rather than 5 per cent.

It was not until I received the interesting paper from Democratic Audit and the points made by Lewis Baston that I really turned my attention to the English situation. It seems to me that that paper makes a very powerful case. It points out that with a 5 per cent variation, there would be serious difficulties with the crossing of county boundaries and so on, and that under a 10 per cent variation there would be much less crossing of county boundaries, much less splitting of wards, fewer and less disruptive boundary changes in future and closer concordance with community identities. Surely, we all want that.

Lewis Baston points out that for a county to avoid sharing one or more seats with another county, it needs to meet a number of criteria. He tells us that very few counties could meet these criteria in England with a 5 per cent limit. A 10 per cent tolerance of variation would transform this chaotic picture. No counties fail outright, other than the Isle of Wight, which we will debate on a separate occasion, although in practice, some might be close enough to the edge to make pairings necessary. None the less, it was found that only two relatively natural pairings—Wiltshire and Dorset, and West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire—would arise under a revised plan based on 10 per cent.

It is also probably impossible to implement a 5 per cent rule without splitting wards in constituencies. Again, that difficulty would be largely overcome. The final positive benefit would mean fewer and less disruptive boundary changes in future. Surely, that is of great significance for the political parties and candidates. As we heard from the noble Lord who is an expert on these subjects, and see from the democratic audit paper, the conclusion has to be that there are no significant differences between 5 per cent and 10 per cent equalisation as regards their partisan effect.

I am then faced with the amendment tabled by the noble and learned Lord and the group of amendments led off by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. On balance, I prefer the simpler, later amendment. I am not sure why we need something that on the face of it appears slightly complicated and obscure but, to a layman and non-lawyer, appears to put slightly tougher criteria on to the shoulders of the Boundary Commission. Here is an opportunity, while meeting all the Government’s main objectives, to improve the Bill. I have not heard their response and there may be obstacles that I do not know about. I shall listen carefully and hope that, on this occasion, the Government will say, “Yes, we can accept it”. There may be flaws in the amendment and the Government could bring their own forward on Report. I hope, entirely in the interests of the political parties, the candidates and those who care about local links, that the Government will consider the arguments. I will support any of the solutions that they say better fit in with the proper drafting of the Bill.