Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Maclennan of Rogart and Lord Hughes of Woodside

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

I know the noble Lord’s constituency well. However, in my own case in the city of Aberdeen, we had many major changes. We went from two MPs in a purely city constituency, two MPs with a vast rural hinterland, to three MPs and back to two MPs. If you go from three to two, somebody has got to go. I do not argue that people should be there for ever—I have never argued that—but this artificial way of consistently changing boundaries makes it difficult for them to do a proper job. We must take into account that people have a great attachment to their constituency and also, thankfully, to their constituency MP.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

The noble Lord enjoyed a degree of stability which has enabled his voice to be heard consistently for decades in politics. I do not think that he personally can have been seriously troubled by the sitting of the Boundary Commission. His position is more the norm than that of the MPs who are fearful about modest changes at the margins to reflect population or electorate changes.

There seems to be an underlying unwillingness to recognise that significant changes can happen in the course of 10 years and that constituency electorates should be broadly comparable to each other. If Boundary Commissions may make mistakes, why should we wait for another 10 years to put those mistakes right? In reality, concerns will be raised if these issues about local communities are not adequately addressed. Consequently, those changes should be made within five years.