Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay]

My Lords, that was a very thoughtful and honest speech, which I am sure the House followed with interest. However, I found the beginning of it and the previous speech rather interesting examples of the cross-dressing that seems to be going on in this House. There have been some very powerful speeches against the Bill, but none more so than that of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. I am sure that, with friends like him, my noble friend Lord McNally will feel when he winds up that he does not need enemies.

I, too, want to talk a little about islands. I cannot believe that the Isle of Wight has ever been mentioned so often in one day in this House before. I should start by admitting that I am not an islander but an overner—as they are called on the Isle of Wight—although I am Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay. However, we have happily had a holiday cottage on this beautiful bay for many years, and my wife’s family has had connections there for nearly a century. The Isle of Wight Liberal Democrats and many local people of all parties and none have asked me to help their campaign to keep the island as one seat.

If it is kept as one seat, the Isle of Wight’s electorate of 110,000 will be 34,000 more than the new quota of 76,000. That is much closer to the quota than either of the two constituencies preserved in the Bill as it stands. Orkney and Shetland, with 33,100 electors, is nearly 43,000 below the quota, while the Western Isles, with 22,200 electors, is no less than 53,800 short. To put it another way, the Isle of Wight would qualify for 1.45 seats, whereas Orkney and Shetland would be on 0.44 of a seat and the Western Isles would be on only 0.29 of a seat, which is barely a quarter of the quota.

I support the exceptions made for the two Scottish island seats, but there is an even stronger argument for adding the Isle of Wight as a third preserved seat. I intend to move an amendment to that effect in Committee. The island, as local people call it, has a strong sense of identity and is clearly divided from the mainland, physically and psychologically, by the Solent. If a third of the island had to be joined to a mainland constituency, those islanders would consider themselves to be second-class citizens. There are three main ferry crossings, so either Ryde would be joined to part of Portsmouth, the Cowes area would have to link up to Southampton Water, or West Wight would be linked to the New Forest. What would be the names of these seats? I suppose that you would probably have to name them after ferries. You might be the MP for Solent Hovercraft, Solent Red Funnel or Solent Wightlink, but those would be highly hybrid constituencies.

All the main political parties on the island support the “One Wight” campaign, led by our excellent weekly paper, the Isle of Wight County Press. The island’s MP, Andrew Turner, and the Liberal Democrat candidate at the general election, Jill Wareham, presented a petition to Downing Street with 17,000 names. People of no party feel equally strongly that they should keep a single MP. Last time I had a pint at the Pilot Boat in Bembridge, the customers were all signing the “One Wight” petition on the bar. That must be a first in popular participation in parliamentary redistribution.

The Isle of Wight is nearer the electoral quota than the two Scottish island seats. The other key reason why the Isle of Wight has an even stronger claim to preserve its status is that it is asking not for special treatment, through extra representation at the expense of other constituencies, but quite the reverse. The island wants fewer MPs, not more, than it is entitled to. Although the mood of most islanders is clear, that could raise a theoretical problem if some people were to argue that petitions do not prove what voters want and that they should not be deprived of extra representation by having just one MP serving 110,000 constituents.

However, there is a simple and cheap answer to that. The Bill provides for an AV referendum to be held everywhere on 5 May. Why not have a second, local referendum on the Isle of Wight on the same day to ask electors whether they want the island to stay as a single seat? The extra cost of printing and counting the second set of ballot papers would be very modest as the polling stations would all be open anyway. I have no doubt that the vote would be overwhelmingly for one Wight, but it would be only fair to let that be confirmed if electors were being asked to give up some theoretical representation. Island people feel different. They want one clear island voice in Parliament, not mixed messages from an MP with divided loyalties across the Solent. I hope that the anomaly of the Isle of Wight will be sorted out sensibly.

This is a fair Bill that is long overdue for our democracy. For many years past, Britain's electoral system has been skewed in Labour's favour. First past the post on out-of-date boundaries is simply a fix. Labour's two worst performances at general elections since the First World War were in 1983—as has been referred to already—and 2010. Each time, it got less than 30 per cent of the vote. I remember the 1983 election well, as I came close to winning Cambridge on first past the post and certainly would have won on AV. However, in the national election Labour beat us by a whisker—8.5 million votes to 7.75 million—but it got 209 seats to our 23, or 34 per cent of the seats to our 4 per cent. This year, Labour received only 25 per cent more votes than we did, but it still got 4.5 times as many seats, or 40 per cent of the seats to our 9 per cent.

Our hopelessly slow system of boundary reviews also has the effect of loading the dice in Labour's favour. As Balinski, Johnston, McLean and Young point out in their very useful report for the Royal Academy, Drawing a New Constituency Map for the United Kingdom, if Labour and the Conservatives had received the same number of votes nationally, Labour would have had 185 more seats than the Tories in 1997, 142 more in 2001, 111 more in 2005 and 54 more in 2010, even on the new boundaries. That cannot be right.

We must move now to a fairer voting system. As my noble friend Lord Rennard pointed out, to be fair to Labour, it did at the end of its term at least open up to that—and thank goodness for that. We must now move both to a fairer voting system and to fair and much more frequently updated parliamentary boundaries.