Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord McNicol of West Kilbride Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab) [V]]

Like many who have spoken, I welcome the Bill. The first eight clauses are probably the meat of it. I will try to touch on a few points on Clauses 2, 4, 5 and 8.

Clause 2 touches on the need for the approval of both Houses. This is sensible, as can be clearly seen. If we had not had a system of the approval of both Houses when the previous discussions about the boundary changes and the move to 600 went through, the changes would already be in place. So needing the approval of both Houses is both sensible and a very good backstop.

I have a question on Clause 4 regarding public hearings, which I do not think has been touched on yet, and the move from the first to the second consultation. It is sensible for input on the public consultation to be in the second round. That will allow communities and parties to have sight of other proposals that are made. My concern would be with the boundary commission having more set plans and being less able to effect or bring forward changes if we have already gone through the first part of it. Most importantly, public consultations need to be fair, open and transparent.

I have another point on Clause 5 with regard to the voice of the smaller nations. I completely understand and get the idea of moving to constituencies of a similar size. The 5% plus or minus will make it very difficult to fit in more council boundaries, so looking to move that would be sensible. However, my point goes back to what the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and my noble friend Lord Hain said about the nations. Currently, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have 117 constituencies, with London and the south-east having 156. These proposals will change it so that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will have 106 and London and the south-east will have 164. That will further endanger the unity of the union. Other considerations could be brought into the Bill with regard to rural constituencies that are distant from Westminster, et cetera, that would trump the size of the constituencies.

Finally, on 23 July Jon Cruddas MP wrote to the Prime Minister raising real concerns about Havering Council’s Conservative group and conversations about the gerrymandering of boundaries. That obviously brings back for all of us memories of the wilful misconduct that happened in Westminster City Council. I raise this to put it on the record as a concern. It needs to be addressed and dealt with.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord McNicol of West Kilbride Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Grocott explained perfectly how well my noble friend Lady Hayter introduced this set of amendments. She took us through the main issues and the main points within them. I wish to emphasise just a couple of issues that my noble friend Lord Foulkes touched on at the end of his speech.

British politics is cyclical. Removing proper parliamentary scrutiny is not just wrong but could prove to be a very short-sighted action by this Government. Empowering the Executive over Parliament raises issues and concerns. If this was the only change brought forward in the Bill, we would be questioning it and raising issues with it, but what makes it more concerning is that it is coupled with other changes that make it harder to have that democratic oversight: the timetabling of any future changes—we will be discussing later the 5% that has been mentioned—and the nominating process for the Boundary Commission.

Boundary Commission recommendations deserve a democratic parliamentary backstop. These are judgment issues: major constitutional issues and changes that could be implemented around the parliamentary landscape. Although MPs, political parties and communities can feed into the earlier stages of the Boundary Commission review, the full oversight of all the packages across the different nations really takes place only when they enter Parliament itself.

We have heard that the Commons would now have 600 MPs if we had the system proposed in the Bill. What happens if the Prime Minister of the day decides that 600 is not right, and that 200, 300 or 1,000 MPs are needed? Not having full parliamentary oversight and decision-making power on would just not be right. Like my noble friends who have spoken, therefore, I am more than happy to support these amendments and look forward to the Minister’s comments and response.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, the speeches by my colleagues before I was called have left me very little to say that is fresh, but I will try to make some new points, if that is possible.

My first point is that I am instinctively opposed to what the Government are trying to do here—to take this issue out of Parliament’s hands—mainly because I see it as part of the general trend of what the Johnson premiership is doing to Britain. It sees Brexit, and the constitutional changes resulting from Brexit, as an opportunity to strengthen the power of the Executive, and not to bring power back to Parliament, which was what the leave people argued for in the referendum. Across the board we see—for example in the Trade Bill and the Immigration Bill—a concentration of power in the Executive, with Parliament having less say than before. This is a deplorable trend, and it is not giving power back to the people.

My second point is that what the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has said about the need for impartial consideration of constituency boundaries, and what the Constitution Committee says about this proposal being appropriate, would be all very well if one felt that one could trust this Executive to behave impartially. The way in which the Government have behaved since the December general election gives one no confidence that they will behave in a decent and impartial way, so why should we give them this power that they currently do not have?

I also believe that there has been inadequate consideration of the Bill, in the Commons and in our own House as a result of the way we are now dealing with the Bill, of the very big issues that it raises. If you apply a strict population basis to representation in this country, you will gradually see a shift in political power to London and the south-east, where most voters are. The Government decided to opt for 650 Members rather than 600 because they were deeply aware of the fact that the redistribution is likely to see a shift of representation from the north of England to the south, and that with the new “red wall” MPs who have been elected, a further reduction in the number of MPs would lead to very considerable party problems for the Conservative Party in the north of England, where it has just won representation.

We ought to be taking a bigger look at these issues. Representation is not just a feature of the arithmetical equality of the size of constituencies; it is also about whether, within a union such as the United Kingdom, all parts are fairly represented. I deeply regret that the numbers of Scottish and Welsh MPs are being reduced—when the debate about the union’s future is becoming critical, this is a grave mistake.

Similarly, within England, we need to think about the balancing of power between the regions of the country. My noble friend Lord Foulkes and I would probably agree that we would like to see this done through reform of the upper House—but, while we cannot achieve this, it is a bad political and constitutional mistake for the Government to go down the road of strict arithmetic equality. The different parts of the United Kingdom have to be decently represented.

So I support these amendments, for the fundamental reason that you cannot trust this Executive to behave fairly.

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[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, it is a delight to follow my noble friend Lord Randall, who was a superb Deputy Chief Whip when I had the privilege to be Chief Whip of the Conservative Party. We are both supporting the excellent arguments made by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, who, among his many jobs, was Chief Whip of the Conservative Party at least once. I say to the Minister that if he has three colleagues who have served at senior rank in the Conservative Whips’ Office, our point of view, as we are unanimous in this, should not be dismissed too lightly.

Since I am speaking from the cheap seats at the far end of the call centre, let me make the cheap political point first. The Conservative Party, of which I am a proud member, has absolutely clean hands on Boundary Commission reports. I want to keep it that way and I want the perception to be that way. The only parties that have mucked around with those reports were Labour, when Jim Callaghan ditched the boundary commission proposals in 1969, and the disgraceful ploy by the Lib Dems to kick into touch the 2011 review. They are responsible for our boundaries being eight years out of date. Those are the political points. The Conservative Party has never done that and I do not want it ever to do that and I do not want there to be the slightest ability for it to be perceived to be able to do that.

That is why it is terribly important that, in a Bill that has got everything else right—reducing the number of seats and cutting out the possibility of Parliament interfering and kicking Boundary Commission reviews into touch—we have an amendment that says it must be delivered within three months. I do not need to go through any of the excellent details that my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham delivered—in any case, I do not have that ability—but a couple of other points struck me as crucial. One is that everyone else in this process has to perform within strict time limits, but not the Government. The Government should also be held to a strict time limit, and three months is right. Six weeks is too little.

This has nothing to do with the Delegated Powers Committee, which I have the privilege to chair. We did not comment on this Bill because there was nothing relevant to us, but time after time in the Delegated Powers Committee we see skeleton Bills coming along with all the details to be filled in later by complicated regulations. Yesterday, I participated in the Chamber on the immigration Bill. The opposition spokesman criticised the Government, understandably, for bringing in a regulation which would run to dozens of pages on highly complex new Immigration Rules, which would be made under the “made affirmative” procedure and take effect immediately.

If it is possible for the Government in that instance—they are doing it on dozens of occasions—to invent, almost overnight, highly complex regulations, it is a piece of cake for them to pass a simple regulation that, as my noble friend pointed out, on the last occasion consisted of no more than 27 lines. It would be simple for them to produce an Order in Council implementing someone else’s report. The Government have no work to do: it has already been done by the Electoral Commission. All they have to do is make a simple order in Parliament and bring it into force within three months.

My noble friends Lord Randall and Lord Young of Cookham have made impeccable arguments for implementing the Boundary Commission reports within that three-month timescale. I conclude by repeating my opening remarks: the Conservative Party has had an impeccable record on this and the Bill is excellent in every detail, except for this one lacuna. I say to my noble friend the Minister: let us plug that lacuna and remove any possible suspicion that a Conservative Government could muck around with Boundary Commission reports and delay them.

[Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)]

The word of the day seems to be “automaticity”. The noble Lord, Lord True, wants to remove any political interference or influencing from future boundary reviews. But as the noble Lord, Lord Young, eloquently said, this is the one area where any future Government could use political influence or interference, with the Executive slowing down the implementation of such future boundary reviews. You cannot pick and choose your automaticity. If it is good enough to remove Parliament from the ability to debate, question and vote on the boundary review, it is good enough to remove any possibility of the Executive delaying the implementation of a boundary review, especially if they do not like it. I offer another word of advice to the Minister. I seriously suggest that, apart from adopting this amendment, the Government should look at getting the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, back on to the Front Benches.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Young, on the exemplary way in which they have introduced their amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Young, suggested that I might follow on from some of his detail. I do not want to bore the Grand Committee with excessive detail, but I will make one or two further observations on the process.

Until 1986, there was no timetable for any part of the process of boundary reviews. The 1986 Act introduced one change: to identify the point at which each review should start. Later legislation introduced timetables for each stage with one notable exception, as the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra has just said, which is the concluding stage. If we have moved to a position where we should identify the timing for each stage in the process, it would be sensible to do so for the conclusion as well.

As I have said, there is just one stage that has no timetable, but it is worth looking at the justification for “as soon as reasonable”. As the noble Lord, Lord Young, has said, it is just 27 lines with vast quantities of pages thereafter. The argument made to me on previous occasions was, “Well, the maps have to be prepared; we have to ensure that we have got the wards right and all the rest”. As already identified in an earlier debate, however, all the political parties spend their time throughout the process trawling around the edges of every single ward—and nowadays even the polling districts—with a view to ensuring that the right arguments are put forward and the right boundaries are set.

There is absolutely no reason why much of the work cannot be done in advance. The noble Lord, Lord Young, has identified many of the timescales, but it is worth while looking within the process of each review. When a review is brought forward, the initial recommendations are tabled by the boundary commissioners. Some 50% of those are changed, meaning that 50% are not. Some of the changes are agreed across the political parties. In the last abortive review, all three parties put forward exactly the same proposal for Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole. This means that officials can start working if there is excessive work, which I am not convinced that there is, since the councils have much of the detail anyway. Given the way the review process works much of the preparatory work on maps, street identification and the like can be done well in advance.

From 50% of the initial recommendations being changed, depending on which review you look at you might get down to changes of perhaps 8%. There was one review where the final stage resulted only in the change of the name of Yvette Cooper’s constituency. There was an argument about whether two locations or three should be identified within the constituency name, rather like that of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes.

There is an enormous opportunity, in this day and age, for a large amount of preparation. Most of the data is already computerised. It is readily available: you can go on the web and look for the ward map or constituency map. I could do it for any constituency in the country within 30 seconds. It was suggested that it needs a long time. The noble Lord, Lord Young, identified the timescales. I must admit that when he showed them to me, I cynically observed that they seemed to be getting longer, despite the advances in technology associated with the process.

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The history of this long campaign is that we are gradually moving closer and closer to this important addition to the franchise. Therefore, it is only right that we should take some preliminary, precautionary steps along the lines recommended in the amendment. The franchise is such a fundamental foundation stone of the UK’s representative democracy that we should work constructively to achieve consistency throughout our country. If the UK is still a united kingdom, surely that must be the eventual outcome. I am delighted to support the amendment. It is just a modest step in that direction and I very much hope that it will be passed. I am glad to be one of its sponsors.

[Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)]

My Lords, 16 and 17 year-olds already participate very actively in politics, whether as young members of the parties in the Grand Committee today or through involvement in single-issue campaigns. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, touched on the Scottish referendum and how well the lowering of the voting age worked in 2014, with individuals registering, taking their responsibility seriously for such an important issue and delivering their vote, and on how they handled it afterwards.

Lowering the voting age will also encourage more politicians to listen to what young people have to say. Especially through Covid, when they have not been at schools, colleges or universities but have been at home, many have been through a very difficult period. They can also feel very ignored.

Young people’s lives would also be improved if they felt that they had the ability to influence the wider country and wider communities. Interestingly, no advocate for lowering the voting age argues that all young people will always vote intelligently—especially since not everyone can agree on what that means—but the same could also be said for those aged over 18. When one of the strongest arguments against lowering the age is that young people do not have a mature enough understanding of the world they live in or of politics, why are they held to a higher standard than everyone else who is allowed to vote?

As my noble friend Lady Hayter said, this amendment is very short. It is not even looking to change the position or the law. It asks the Boundary Commission to carry out a review of

“the impact on constituency boundaries of extending the entitlement to vote at a parliamentary election to those aged 16 or 17”.

It is not going the full way. It is basically a first step to look at what the impact of making those changes would be. I support the amendment.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord McNicol of West Kilbride Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 10th September 2020 Grand Committee

Maintaining the number of MPs from the devolved parts of the United Kingdom will of course still mean that England can outvote them by about 5:1, but at least their voices will be there. The smaller the voices, the less noise will be heard and the more disregard the Westminster Parliament will have for the continuation of the United Kingdom. The Government should take heed. This is something they should take very seriously if they really do care about what they call the precious union, but which they treat with disregard and disdain.

[Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)]

For me, this is about priorities. I suppose that is what I shall try to appeal to the Minister about. My priority is the future of the union and what I see, if the Bill goes through in its current form, as the undermining of its unity. The argument we are getting back is that the priority has to be the number of electors in a constituency, the size of the constituencies and how that gives equal weight to votes. However, as we heard on Tuesday, our current first past the post system for Westminster, although I support it, does not offer equal votes with equal responsibilities. We would have to change the electoral system, which I do not want to do, to get to a situation where votes are of equal value.

On Tuesday, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, got half of it right and half of it wrong. The half that was right was about the devolution of powers to mayors, the nations, local authorities, councils and local councillors, which I fully support. However, one of his big attacks, which he repeated today, was on numbers. I touched on this at Second Reading: currently, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have 117 constituencies, with London and the south-east having 156. If these proposals go through, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would be reduced to 106, with London and the south-east having 164. Even within the history of United Kingdom, MPs in London and the south-east would easily be able to outvote those from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

That takes me back to the priority of the union. The best way for us to protect the union, which I think the vast majority, if not all, of us in the Grand Committee want to do, would be to have the voices, concerns and issues of constituents, communities and people across the nation aired well and loudly in Westminster. These reductions in Scotland, and in Wales, as we have heard from far more eloquent speakers, will undermine that. The points that my noble friends Lord Foulkes and Lord Hain made about geography and community are absolutely right and important, but my appeal to the Minister is that if we can retain what we have, we will give those who seek to undermine and break up the union fewer arguments. If we move forward with the proposals as they are in the Bill, it will enhance those arguments for the break-up of the union.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

I want to speak specifically about Amendment 14. I am glad to see it on the Marshalled List, because it raises some important and specific issues about the situation in Wales, introduced very ably by the noble Lord, Lord Hain.

The reference to the 1944 Act in this amendment reminds us that Wales has always been accepted as a special case. In terms of population, its smaller rural constituency sizes have been accepted as a practical necessity. The formula that the Government propose would see 32 Welsh constituencies, which is clearly inadequate. Some would argue, as the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, has, that, now that Wales has devolution, it no longer requires this protection.

My answer is that the Senedd still has unrealistically low numbers of Members—only 60. That is quite out of kilter with Northern Ireland, for example, which has a smaller population and 90 Members of its Assembly. As it has gained more powers, the Senedd has a greater rather than a lesser problem; it is now within the Senedd’s own power to increase its size, and it has been Welsh Liberal Democrat policy for many years that there should be greater powers for the Senedd and at least 80 Members. If that were to be the situation, we would not oppose a reduction in the number of Welsh MPs. I considered tabling my own amendment on this, but I could not find a way to cast it that would be acceptable because, as I said, it is the Senedd that decides its membership, and I very much hope that it goes on and approves an increase in membership very soon.

The news yesterday and today in Wales is dominated by the UK Government’s internal market Bill, but in Wales there is an additional concern about it because the Government intend to recentralise some powers that were previously devolved. MPs from Wales will therefore apparently be busier than they are now, so it seems a strange time to cut the numbers so drastically.

I looked at the predicted numbers across all the nations of the UK; the totals give a stark picture of 10 more MPs for England and eight fewer MPs for Wales. It sometimes seems that this Government neglect no issue in their attempts to alienate the devolved nations. I warn them not to take Wales for granted. My noble friend Lady Humphreys has pointed out the increasing support for independence. Yesterday’s resignation by David Melding, the Conservative shadow Counsel General in Wales, makes the point that this is not just a nationalist flurry. David Melding is an ex-Deputy Presiding Officer for the Senedd and one of the leading Conservatives in Wales.

When we argue for the special factors in Wales, it is geography which usually dominates the debate. There is an old joke: if Wales was ironed flat it would be as big as England. The mountains are our glory, but they are also powerful barriers, and there are so many of them. In the north there is Snowdonia, in the middle, the Brecon Beacons, and in the south, dividing the valleys. I live in Cardiff, and have to cross Caerphilly Mountain, or go a very long way around the bottom of it, to get to the next local authority. Combining valleys in one constituency means combining totally different communities, served by different local authorities and services. It already takes two or more hours to drive from one end of Brecon and Radnorshire to the other, so combining it with another constituency is clearly ridiculous, as the noble Lord, Lord Hain, said. All this makes a powerful case for the importance of the Electoral Commissions continuing to take into account local community ties and identities, as they always have.

The truth is that no single system is appropriate for every type of area across the UK, from the Cities of London and Westminster to Orkney and Shetland. In Wales, we have a specific additional factor that must be considered: the Welsh language. It is by far the most developed and flourishing UK minority language. I was proud to be the very first Minister for the Welsh language, and I initiated a strong programme to support and encourage its use. It was all community-based. The language’s areas of strength are geographically based in the west and north of Wales, although nowadays even areas of Cardiff are recognised as Welsh-speaking areas. It would be a mistake to fragment those Welsh-speaking communities by dividing them into different constituencies.

I realise that a number of other parts of the UK might claim a similar distinctiveness. My noble friend Lord Tyler’s Amendment 20 makes a similar point about Cornwall. The following group of amendments that will be considered this afternoon, to which I will not speak, relates to the different percentages that might be used as the permitted variants, and includes Liberal Democrat Amendment 16. These are all ways of attacking the problem that the current 5% variance is too tight to avoid constant reorganisations of constituency boundaries. I hope that when these variations are discussed, this can happen alongside consideration of the importance of local community ties and characteristics.

The proposal for 32 Welsh constituencies is clearly a product of an inflexible approach and an attempt to standardise the fundamentally different parts of this United Kingdom. The 35 seats suggested in Amendment 14 is one way to tackle the issues. Liberal Democrat Amendment 16 is another. It is a different approach, and I hope that they would achieve similar outcomes; they both have similar intention, and I urge the Government to accept one of the proposed compromises.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

I have received requests to speak after the Minister from the noble Lords, Lord McNicol and Lord Lipsey. I first call the noble Lord, Lord McNicol of West Kilbride.

[Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)]

I want to come back to the Minister. The Government seem to put all their weight behind the equality of the number of electors within constituencies, and have said that all the arguments from all the noble Lords who spoke in the debate are irrelevant because we would move away from equal votes of equal weight across the nations.

How does the Minister explain the exemptions that there are already in place for the islands? Yes, they are islands, but in accepting that they are special cases because they are islands, you are accepting the premise that there can be exceptions. I think that, with the arguments made—specifically the point about protecting the future of the union—these exceptions for Wales and Scotland should outweigh this crass, simplistic, mathematical argument.

I just repeat, because it is really important: under our current electoral system, which I support, if we were to make the changes proposed in the Bill and constituencies were of a similar size within quite a small variation, a single vote in Lerwick would still not be the same as a single vote in Luton. With our electoral system, you cannot make that argument.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The five protected constituencies are islands, as the noble Lord has already said, and I think an island is different. The islands need to be of a certain size in order to merit this, but I think that is correct.

I have mentioned the fact that it is for the Boundary Commissions to listen to these arguments about the specifics of constituencies, and that is not just for constituencies in Wales and Scotland; I am sure, as we have heard already today, that similar issues may arise in certain parts of England. Each constituency is unique; every single MP in this country will say that they have a special constituency with unique features which needs unique ways of dealing with these issues.

So, I am sorry, but I do not agree. I think that islands are different, and that is why we have further brought the Isle of Anglesey into this. Any local issues of geography and community should be brought up with the Boundary Commissions when they do their reviews.