Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Lipsey and Lord Touhig

Monday 24th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey]

I accept my noble friend’s apologies, which have added to the gaiety at this time of night.

In this amendment, we move from Scotland to Wales, but I hope that this will not be the debate when we consider the general issues about the reduction of Welsh representation under this Bill from 40 seats down to 30 seats. That falls to be considered under Amendment 89BA, tabled by some of my noble friends, and we shall no doubt want to have a full discussion on that at the time.

This is about a single constituency, Brecon and Radnor, where I have the great privilege and pleasure of living, so I know a tiny bit about it. The aim of this amendment is very simple: to afford to Brecon and Radnor the protection offered in Clause 11 to the Scottish seats that we have just been discussing, so that the Boundary Commission may—not must—if it is satisfied that other factors make this desirable, decide that the seat is big enough as it is and should not be extended.

I do not rest my case on the fascinating political history of Brecon and Radnor. I was interested in it long before I lived there, because I visited it with the then Prime Minister Jim Callaghan in the run-up to the 1979 general election. At that time, it was one of the genuine three-way marginals in Great Britain. Indeed, it was held by Labour and Caerwyn Roderick, who was a junior Welsh Minister at the time. At the last general election, Labour’s share of the vote was 10 per cent, so I think that I can be absolved of any accusation that in trying to save Brecon and Radnor I am trying to advance my party’s interests. We have an excellent candidate, but I am not absolutely confident that even at the next general election the constituency will resume its status as a Labour marginal. It was also the site of an extraordinary by-election won by my near namesake and much lamented friend, Lord Livsey. It is right that the House remembers him when it debates this matter. I might be wrong, but I fancy that he might have spoken on my side had he been here still, as we all so wish he was.

Last week, one of my noble friends was widely quoted when he referred to prime numbers in the setting of the figure of 600 Members of the other House. When he was quoted on the radio, I think that he was regarded as making a rather jokey remark, not a serious point. I am about to venture into mathematics—knowing as I do that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, so loves it—to make a serious point, although I am aware that it may not appear quite so serious on the radio tomorrow. At first blush, it may seem that Brecon and Radnor has very few claims to be too large a constituency because it is much smaller in area than the Scottish constituencies that we have just been considering. Brecon and Radnor runs to 3,014 square kilometres, which is only one quarter of the square kilometrage of Ross et cetera—the constituency that we were just discussing. If you are a Member of Parliament, however, it is of course not the area of your constituency that determines how far you have to travel. It is, in fact—the noble Lord, Lord McNally, will be taking close notes at this point—the square root of the area, which determines the distance between the points of it.

In terms of its square root, the area of Brecon and Radnor is much less different from the area of those constituencies in Scotland. It is not a quarter of the size, as it is in area, but half. If it was a square constituency, journeys in Brecon and Radnor could extend to 55 kilometres—as opposed to 110 kilometres on average in the Highland seat that we were discussing—but, believe me, those journeys are also very long and difficult. The byroads of Brecon and Radnor compare with any in the kingdom for narrowness, snowiness and the general intervention of tractors between one’s vehicle and progress. The sheep outnumber the people, as my noble friend Lady Hayter points out, although I am not suggesting that the size of the constituency should be based on the number of its sheep as well as the number of electors.

There is also a particular difficulty if you decide to increase the size of Brecon and Radnor, as you would have to, because the size of the electorate at the moment is only about 54,000. It is that Brecon and Radnor is bordered on one side by England. We have talked about ward borders, but one thing that you cannot contravene within the rules of this Bill is national borders, so the constituency cannot move out to the east to take in Leominster or any of the county towns out there. To the south, you have the valley constituencies, which are already undersized and out of which it will be extraordinarily difficult to make natural constituencies in any case. If you pinch bits of the valleys and put them into Brecon and Radnor, you make their problems worse without creating a coherent Brecon and Radnor. As your Lordships will see, that gives only two possibilities. One is to extend to the west; the other is to extend to the north. Again, with my pronunciation difficulties I am not going to say which counties and constituencies that would mean extending into, but it gives the Boundary Commission a horribly difficult task in where it is going to find the 20,000 or so extra electors that Brecon and Radnor will need to bring it up to the same size.

What is certainly clear is that there can be no solution to those problems within the present boundaries of the county of Powys. For noble Lords who are not used to what happens in these sparsely populated areas, it is scarcely imaginable how large Powys seems, even now. My wife and I would pack the car with supplies for days to make a journey to visit the north of the county. It took me an hour and a half to get to a Labour Party meeting in the south of the county quite recently. These are enormous places, which, incidentally, create enormous difficulties for political organisations. The Brecon and Radnor constituency party is asking people to drive to meetings when they require an hour and a half or two hours’ drive to get to them, even now. Without the political parties, like them or loathe them, there would be no political life in this country. That is just a reality.

The thought of extending the constituency is difficult to stomach and the thought of the degree of the extension that would be required, given that there are no heavily populated bits anywhere near to north or west that you could add to it, is mind-boggling. This would be an absolutely enormous and unmanageable constituency. We must add to that a factor that I suspect applies in some of the Scottish constituencies, too—it certainly does in the Highlands and Islands, although not in every constituency—which is that, if you are the Member for Brecon and Radnor, every constituent expects you to know them by name, as, certainly, the late Lord Livsey did. This becomes such an unmanageable constituency that the Member, if he is to cope at all, will find it extremely hard to devote his attention to the other matters of national and international politics that should fall within the attention of Members.

I add finally that, so far as I can judge local feeling—I am not a Member of another place, so I probably do less door knocking than I would if I were—local feeling is extremely strong, if not yet as well articulated as in the Isle of Wight, that the constituency should be left as it is into the future. When noble Lords look at all these facts, the case for an exemption for Brecon and Radnor—I know that the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, will not agree with it, but he would not agree with it for anywhere—is extremely strong. This amendment would make it possible for the Boundary Commission to make such an exemption, but that decision would rest with the Welsh Boundary Commission, so it would not be imposed by this House. If the commission found a flaw in my argument, of course I would subject myself, as would the constituency, to its judgment. I believe that the constituency should be given a chance to make its case to the Boundary Commission and I commend this amendment to the House.

[Lord Touhig]

Before my noble friend sits down, I hope that he will let me point this out. If Brecon and Radnor were to be extended north, it would go into Montgomeryshire. If it went west, it would go into Ceredigion. The electoral populations of these three parliamentary seats put together would only be enough for about two parliamentary seats under the criteria that the Government propose, so there would be two parliamentary seats from the heads of the valleys in south Wales to Wrexham in north Wales and west from the English-Welsh border to Cardigan Bay.

[Lord Lipsey]

My noble friend is entirely right and, if I had dared to pronounce the words that he has just pronounced, I would have made precisely the same points. The knock-on effect from changing this constituency would be absolutely extreme. It is an example, incidentally, on which the whole House might like to reflect, of the way in which one change leads to another change and eventually to a complete, wholesale redrawing of the constituency map, to whose consequences, it seems to me, the Government have given not one moment’s thought.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Lipsey and Lord Touhig

Monday 10th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey]

I made my criticisms of Part 1 during its passage. We have another chance to consider it on Report. I think it can be improved but I am broadly in favour of everything about it except the referendum date. That is my broad position. It is also my position that Part 2 needs much more improvement than Part 1. I am grateful to my noble friend for giving me the chance to make that point.

Without absorbing too much of the Committee’s time with interventions, perhaps I may be forgiven if I take one example of the kind of issue drawn from the long and comprehensive list in my noble friend’s amendment on which really considered inquiry and judgment is needed. That is the number of MPs. The figure was snatched out of the air. Half the time Ministers admit that. It should not have been snatched out of the air. There are lots of facts that are relevant. It is true that since 1950 the number of MPs has grown by 3 per cent. It is also true that the electorate have grown in the same period by 25 per cent. That is to say that every MP has 22 per cent more constituents to service. On the servicing of constituents, I have never been in another place but I did work for a Member of another place, Anthony Crosland, in 1972, and if we received 30 constituency letters per week we were astonished. They were dealt with by his constituency secretary and his local party without difficulty. Now I am told that 300 letters is the average and there is much more communication in other ways.

The research think tank, Democratic Audit, has produced some other facts that should be weighed. For example, it turns out not to be true, as the Government have argued, that we have vastly more representatives than other countries. We have barely more than France and practically the same as Italy. But other countries benefit from having far more local elected representatives to deal with a great many other things that our Members of Parliament have to deal with themselves. Whether we should go down that road is another matter but that is what was concluded. Then there is the question that has been raised briefly in this debate about the danger of cutting the number of MPs but keeping the number of Ministers precisely as it is. The Executive become even more dominant in our politics and in our political culture and even more able to get their way with the minimum amount of criticism and fuss.

I do not say that these arguments are conclusive and that the number of MPs should stay as it is, be reduced or increased. I understand the populist wave of emotion that causes people to think that the number of MPs should be decreased. It may be that an objective inquiry concludes that that is right. I do not express any opinion on those matters at this stage. All I say to the Committee is that it is surely reasonable that arguments and facts such as these should be independently weighed and considered before a final verdict is reached and before legislation making it the law of the land is forced through Parliament.

[Lord Touhig]

The Committee should be grateful to my noble friend Lord Wills for his amendment because it gives it and the coalition partners the chance to take stock and reflect on this seventh day in Committee on the Bill. If they were to adopt the proposals in the amendment that my noble friend has moved perhaps we would start to move towards some consensus on major constitutional change. That would be the common-sense approach, although I well remember as a teenager, my mother used to say to me, “Son, in life you’ll find that sense isn’t that common”.

My brief remarks all relate to subsection (2)(b) of the proposed new clause, which says that this inquiry would take,

“into account the need to maintain the Union”.

This is a matter I referred to at Second Reading because I believe that the Bill as constructed is a threat to this precious thing we have: the union of the nations in these islands. The noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, briefly referred to the Bill’s impact on Wales, where it would reduce the number of Members of Parliament by 25 per cent. If the Parliament of the United Kingdom treats Wales in this way, it will have an adverse effect on the view, Wales takes of the Union.

Welsh is the first language of the majority of people in five parliamentary seats in Wales—Ynys Môn, Arfon, Dwyfor Meirionnydd, Ceredigion, and Carmarthen East and Dinefwr. Wales is the only part of the Union where a substantial number of people—some 20 per cent of the population—speak two languages. If my noble friend’s amendment were accepted, it would at least give an opportunity to look at the impact that this legislation has on the representation of people whose first language is Welsh in this Parliament of the United Kingdom. Only Wales has a big linguistic issue so far as the rest of the union is concerned.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Lipsey and Lord Touhig

Monday 20th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey]

I entirely agree with my noble friend. Indeed it is not just the poll tax; there are a number of factors the whole time that cause people to avoid anything that identifies them as individuals and which they think the authorities could catch up with. It may be for bad reasons: they may perhaps be illegally in the country or fear they are here illegally; or good reasons: that they fall for some of the liberal myths about the nature of the modern state and think that they may all end up in prison if they are identified. I do not take it by any means for granted that the improvement in the electoral register will continue over time.

It is rather like opinion polls. Opinion polls measure less and less because fewer and fewer people are willing to answer the questions because they are frightened that they may be held to task for the answers they give. There is therefore a serious risk of the deterioration of the electoral registers, which makes it all the more wrong that this Bill should have the exact number on the electoral register and the exact number of people in each constituency as its target and also makes it right that, in so far as we can improve these things at all, the amendment moved by my noble friend should be adopted to make them as good as they can be. But that will never be very good.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I should like to share with noble Lords my own experience of the problems of electoral registration. Prior to the 2005 general election, when I was in the other place, my honourable friend Wayne David, my neighbouring colleague and MP for Caerphilly, and I were absolutely staggered to find that the new register had come out and our electorates had dropped by thousands—I think more than 8,000. We had a meeting with the electoral returning officer who was an official of his association and he explained to us that across the country electoral registration officers were pursuing different approaches to compiling the electoral register. Some were doing canvasses, some were sending out letters, some were sending out post cards and so on and so forth. The real top and tail of it was this: the council was simply not providing sufficient money for the electoral registration officer to carry out an annual canvass.

With the best will in the world, rolling registers have helped but they are more of a convenience. I do not think there is a great deal of evidence to show that many more people have actually registered. I am a bit concerned about individual registration—