Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Lord Phillips of Sudbury and Lord Falconer of Thoroton

Tuesday 10th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

My Lords, the opportunity has not been taken, so we must now build on the work done by this House. I am very disappointed in the lack of interest in this rather staggeringly important constitutional Bill—which confirms that this House seems to have the same view as the people in the Dog and Duck to whom the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, referred. I will leave it to noble Lords to get to the Dog and Duck.

This is an important Bill: it will have an impact constitutionally. It is a Bill to take seriously in the course of this scrutiny at Report stage, which will last two days. I am grateful to the usual channels for providing two days, which seems entirely appropriate. It is time for this House to take decisions, building, I would respectfully submit, on the work that this House and the other place have done. When I say building on the work that has been done, I include the work done by the Select Committees in both Houses—the one chaired by Mr Graham Allen in the other place, and the one chaired by my noble friend Lady Jay. I am very glad to see my noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith and other members of the committee in the Chamber today.

We as a party support fixed-term Parliaments. However, the investigations done by both Houses, including both Houses’ Select Committees, have increased Parliament’s doubts about fixed-term Parliaments. Our own committee, the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution, said that the case made by the Government for fixed-term Parliaments had “not been made out” to its satisfaction. A similar view was expressed by the House of Commons Select Committee.

There were three specific anxieties that underlay that view. The first was the length; both Select Committees concluded that four years was better than five. Secondly, both Select Committees concluded that the provisions could be abused by a Prime Minister who, with a majority in the House of Commons, could go for an election whenever he wanted. Thirdly, the Houses of Parliament were seeking to include in legislation the House conventions in determining when a Government lost the confidence of the House of Commons, which is a critical part of our constitution.

These anxieties were well expressed in good debates on Second Reading and in Committee in this House. In today’s Report stage we on this side of the House intend to try to address those specific anxieties, and to support the Government and other Members of the House who have tabled amendments to try to resolve them. However, resolving these specific problems will not deal with the underlying sense of anxiety which still exists in this House about the Bill.

In those circumstances, the opposition party—the Labour Party—intends to support the amendment to be introduced by a number of Cross-Benchers, including the noble Lords, Lord Pannick, Lord Butler of Brockwell and Lord Armstrong, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd. The effect of their amendment is that if there is to be a fixed-term Parliament after each subsequent election, it will have to be approved by a resolution of both Houses. That seems to us a suitable response to a constitutional Bill which is of such importance but which has been introduced without pre-legislative scrutiny, proper public consultation or an adequate response from the Government to the particular issues raised. So I preface my remarks by indicating our support for that amendment. It does not stop us going into the Bill’s detail or—in the context of a Bill with this provisional aspect—seeking to improve it.

The first three groups of amendments concern the length of a Parliament, the issue being whether it should be four or five years. We have evidence on this: I refer to the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, in Committee. He completely demolished the argument that it is a matter of judgment—the implication being that if it is a matter of judgment, any period would do. If it is a matter of judgment, it is all the more important, as the noble and learned Lord pointed out, to analyse what the “good judges” have been saying about what the right conclusion is. The first judge, I would respectfully ask the Government to bear in mind, is the person who introduced the current arrangements, namely Herbert Asquith. When introducing them in 1911, he rightly said that a maximum of five years was likely to produce Parliaments lasting about four years, which is close enough to the previous election or the coming election to ensure that Parliament remained properly accountable to the people.

The weight of academic evidence given to both Select Committees was overwhelmingly of the view that a fixed-term Parliament should be four years rather than five. Professor Robert Hazell told the Commons Select Committee:

“The balance between four and five years is more even than folk memory might suggest. But those parliaments which lasted for five years did so because the government had become unpopular and did not want to hold an earlier election. The Prime Minister stayed on hoping that his or her party's luck might change. It did not, save for the case of John Major, who scraped through with a narrow majority in 1992”.

Professor Blackburn, who has done a lot of work on this, was quoted by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, in his speech. The Select Committee in the Commons reported:

“Professor Blackburn suggested to us that when governments have lasted five years between elections, ‘the last year of every one has been pretty awful’”.

The Bill seeks to make it the norm that we should have five years. I would respectfully ask this House, if it wishes to have a proper process of scrutiny, to acknowledge where the weight of evidence is from all those who have looked at the issue, including Members of this House. I also pray in aid the following people: Mr Tony Wright, who introduced a Bill saying four years; my noble friend Lord Rooker, who is greatly respected in this House, and who introduced a Private Member's Bill in the House of Commons saying four years; and Mr David Howarth, no longer an MP, who introduced a Bill for fixed-term Parliaments which said four years and had the support, as co-sponsors of the Bill, of Mr Simon Hughes, Mr Chris Huhne, Mr Nick Clegg, Mr Danny Alexander, Mr David Heath, Ms Lynne Featherstone and Mr Paul Burstow. I mention these names only because every single one of them, with the exception of Mr Simon Hughes, is now a Minister in a Government proposing five years. Furthermore, the noble Lord, Lord Plant, who is not in his place, conducted an inquiry into our constitution in 1991 and 1992 and he recommended that there should be fixed-term Parliaments. He also said four years. The Liberal Democrats, as they proudly point out, have said for many years that there should be fixed-term Parliaments and that they should be four years.

Perhaps I may say with respect that if you are responding to a proper analysis of the evidence, the conclusion would be four years, not five years. If it should be four years, should it be four years for this Parliament or should it be five years for this Parliament and four years for subsequent Parliaments? In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said—I suggest with a heavy heart—that it should be five years to give this Government their coalition agreement, but four years thereafter. As I made clear on 21 March at cols. 505 and 512, I do not support that siren song. I have three reasons for not supporting it.

First, if five years is wrong for the future, it must be wrong for this Parliament. Secondly, if the reason that five years is wrong is that you end up with an “awful” fifth year, to quote Professor Blackburn, imagine the circumstances that we are currently facing. We have a number of politicians, the Liberal Democrats, who are greatly respected by all in this House. Let us assume that they do what every other politician in their position—that is, facing defeat—does; namely, they cling on until the last moment. If we pass a Fixed-term Parliament Bill of five years, we will allow the Liberal Democrats to do what MPs have done since time immemorial—to cling on to the bitter end. We are going to have an awful fifth year. I strongly recommend not succumbing to the siren song of five years for this Parliament and four for the next.

The third reason that we should not succumb to the argument is this. I can imagine no worse precedent than a Government coming into power and setting in place special arrangements for how long the first Government should be and then changing the constitution for everyone else thereafter.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I commend the noble and learned Lord on the eloquence and persuasiveness of what he has been saying so far, but might it be the case that the fifth-year syndrome he has described, and to which Professor Hazell referred—that the fifth year is always difficult—might just be a final-year syndrome? Might it not then become the fourth year that would be misery hereafter?

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

No, I do not think it would. Can you identify a third or fourth year which has been as been as awful as the fourth or fifth year? I also refer to what was said during debates in Committee by the professor and noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, who sadly is not in his place. He said that it was extremely unlikely that any Government would have something proper to fill in their fifth year. So there is no historical precedent for the fourth year being as bad as the fifth year, nor do I think that if the fixed term were four years would the third to fourth year become awful. But that is a matter of judgment for this House to make. My own judgment of it is that the third to fourth year would not be remotely as bad as the awful fifth years that we have had on previous occasions.

We in the Opposition are going to vote for Amendment 1, which alters the date of the first election from five years from the date of the last election to four years, and we are then going to vote for four years thereafter. We are going to vote for what might be called the “Baroness Boothroyd, Lord Pannick, Lord Butler of Brockwell, Lord Armstrong” amendment because we do not think that the Government dealt effectively with the fundamental criticisms of fixed terms.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Phillips of Sudbury and Lord Falconer of Thoroton

Monday 14th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

In the light of the wording of his amendment—which is a bit strange, if I may say so, particularly the section that reads,

“will not be broadcast if they deal with pictures or implied support of any particular side”—

what if the Lib Dems put out an election broadcast, let us say, six weeks before the referendum in which they said, for example, that they are strong supporters of constitutional reform across the board, or words to that effect? Would that fall foul of this amendment?

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I accept the noble Lord’s implied, or indeed express, criticism. My wording is not good and that is my fault. It would have been much better if the amendment had said: “Party election broadcasts during the referendum period will not be broadcast if they support any particular side in the referendum on the voting system”. It would have been much simpler if I had just said that, and then one would have known where one stood.

On whether the proposition put by the noble Lord in his question would fall foul of my amendment, if the six-week period is within the referendum period, then it would. I would have to check with the Minister because I am not sure whether the six-week period is within the referendum period. However, if we assume that it is within the referendum period, then saying, “We are strong supporters of constitutional change”, implies support, I would have thought. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I hope that I can move this amendment even more briefly than I did in Committee and on Report. I, too, thank many Members of the House who have supported the principle of the amendment, not least the opposition Front Bench.

It is a straightforward, practical and modest amendment but it goes to what many noble Lords will think is one of the hearts of the Bill—the bit which seeks to ensure that as many of our countrymen as possible take part in the referendum. In paragraph 10 of Schedule 1—I pay tribute to the Government for including this from the outset—there is a series of provisions under the heading “Encouraging participation”. Among them is one which casts upon each of four officials—the chief counting officer, a regional counting officer, a counting officer and a registration officer—a formal duty to encourage participation in the referendum. As noble Lords will see from the way in which I have drafted the amendment, it simply maximises the effect of the provisions in the Bill by ensuring that someone seeks to co-ordinate the activity between those four sets of officials. Without someone having that responsibility—not to order them what to do but to facilitate co-operation—one might find black holes and serious and unnecessary overlapping and, of course, we have little time in which to generate interest and informed interest in this referendum. The amendment simply seeks to do that.

If anyone has questions about how I have moved the amendment or about the amendment itself, I will be happy to answer them. I hope that that is sufficient to spread understanding of the amendment and I invite your Lordships’ appreciation of it. I beg to move.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

My Lords, we support the amendment and we supported it previously. The noble Lord invited our appreciation of the amendment. I expressly appreciate the amendment for its drafting and also its mover who has spent a lifetime supporting participation of this sort. He thoroughly deserves to get his amendment.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Phillips for the amendment and I join in the general approbation of it. For all the difficulties that we have had during parts of this Bill, a common theme in all parts of the Chamber has been the importance of participation in the referendum process. As my noble friend indicated, this paragraph of the schedule does that anyway but he has highlighted the way in which it can be done even better. I am grateful to my noble friend for the constructive discussions we have had on this and the result of those is that the Government agree that the proposal adds useful clarification to the Bill, particularly by emphasising the importance of co-ordination and co-operation. I am pleased to urge the House to accept my noble friend’s amendment.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Phillips of Sudbury and Lord Falconer of Thoroton

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I hope to deal with this amendment quickly. It is a modest and practical amendment, and it is similar in effect to the amendment moved in Committee. I see that a number of Members of the House do not have a copy of this manuscript amendment and I hope that it will be in order for me to read it out:

“The Chief Counting Officer must take whatever steps the officer thinks appropriate to facilitate co-operation between that officer and the officers to whom sub-paragraph (3) applies in taking any steps under sub-paragraph (1) or (2)”.

The nub of the amendment is a desire to ensure that there is co-operation between all those who under paragraph 10 of the schedule have a duty to “encourage participation”. The regional counting officer is given that duty under paragraph 10; so, too, is every regional counting officer, every counting officer and every registration officer. Your Lordships may remember that, when I moved a similar amendment in Committee, there was support for it all around the Chamber, and the noble Lord, Lord Bach, was very generous in strongly supporting it. This amendment brings back that principle, and I have tabled it following very helpful discussions with the Minister and the Bill team.

I think that I need say little more. The point is that, under the Bill as it stands, no one is given the task of co-ordinating what could be extremely dislocated efforts to encourage participation. This amendment, as I said, simply states that, among the four groups of officials involved, the chief counting officer has the role of ringmaster in trying to maximise the encouragement of participation, because everyone in this House wants this referendum to engage as many members of the public as possible. That is the size of it. I beg to move.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

My Lords, the manuscript amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, comes under the part of the schedule headed “Encouraging participation”. As I understand it, he wishes to place on the chief counting officer responsibility for co-ordinating the activities of a regional counting officer, a counting officer and a registration officer in performing their duties under paragraph 10 to encourage participation. It is very hard to see how anyone could object to that. I do not know whether there are any technical objections to the terms of the noble Lord’s manuscript amendment, but it seems a sensible measure, because there is no one in the House who does not want to encourage participation.

If there are technical problems with the manuscript amendment, I imagine that they could be tidied up at Third Reading on Monday. On the basis on which it has been advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, we support the principle of the amendment, subject to any difficulties that we have not foreseen to which the Minister may draw our attention.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury for tabling the amendment. He gave a history of the debate in Committee. We agreed when he withdrew his amendment in Committee that we would have further discussions. I am pleased that we have been able to have those discussions. In Committee, the Government indicated that we were not persuaded that such an amendment was necessary. My noble friend and I have agreed that there was merit on both sides. Our meeting has added clarity. It has put the issue of co-operation right up front. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, has emphasised the importance of co-operation, with which we all agree, in trying to ensure encouragement of participation in the referendum, usbregardless of which side of the campaign one might be on.

It is a manuscript amendment. If my noble friend is willing to give us the opportunity to reflect on its wording, I very much hope to be able to come back to him with a definitive response during Third Reading. Perhaps he would be prepared to withdraw his amendment at this stage on that basis.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I hope that there was a clear implication that my noble and learned friend accepts the nub of the amendment and that it is just a question of technical jiggery-pokery.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, for making two loud noises from a sedentary position, but his point was precisely that which was going through my mind about the noble and learned Lord’s response. It was not clear from what he said whether he would come back with something or whether he was just considering something. The response of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, is exactly the response that I would have given.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Phillips of Sudbury and Lord Falconer of Thoroton

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I apologise for not making this clear. It will, but with the benefit of the recommendation made by the chair after a local inquiry.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

The noble Lord has been extraordinarily patient, but I am sure that he wants us all to understand—and I may not be the only person in the Chamber who does not from his explanation—whether cross-examination will be allowed.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

It will be entirely a matter for the chair, probably operating in accordance with guidance given by the assistant or deputy chairs of the Boundary Commission. We will encourage a process that is streamlined and non-formal. If cross-examination would help let it be so, if it would not let it be a matter for the assistant chair hearing the inquiry on the day. I trust the right people to make the right decisions on how to get to a conclusion as shortly, as economically and as appropriately as possible.

In our amendment we propose that the chair of such a public inquiry must be a legally qualified assistant commissioner, appointed by the chair of the Boundary Commission, with the power to make recommendations. We say this must be a legally qualified person because they will have experience of ensuring short, sharp hearings, which I think is what everybody wants. Without that, the system of hearings put forward by the Government is little more than a public reading of statements. It will lead, I am sure, to a sense of frustration because there is no response of any detailed sort.

The issue of public inquiries is one of the most central concerns we have with the Bill. The Government’s initial response to the debates we had on this matter was pivotal in breaking the deadlock in Committee. We have understood that they would respond favourably to this and other amendments on public enquiries; it matters hugely. However, we have put the proposal forward in a spirit of compromise. We have sought at every stage to listen to what the Government have said.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Phillips of Sudbury and Lord Falconer of Thoroton

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

My Lords, we agree with the principle of creating more equal-sized seats, but we have practical concerns about the way in which the legislation seeks to pursue this reasonable objective. Our amendment would inject some common sense into the rigid mathematical formula for redrawing parliamentary boundaries that is proposed by the Bill. Clause 11 of the Bill proposes an entirely new system of rules for drawing parliamentary constituency boundaries, based on the paramount requirement that, save for some protected seats in Scotland, the electorate of any constituency shall be no less than 95 per cent of a UK-wide electoral quota, and no more than 105 per cent of that quota. The Deputy Prime Minister explained in evidence to your Lordships’ House’s Constitution Committee that the 5 per cent disparity limit had been chosen because the Government believe, having consulted the Boundary Commission, that it was the closest to absolute mathematical equality that could be practically achieved without forcing the Boundary Commission to split wards. Yet the heads of the four Boundary Commissions told the Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee in another place that:

“The electoral parity target may require the Commissions to work with electorate data below ward level in many cases”.

That sentiment was forcefully echoed by Professor Ron Johnson, one of Britain’s foremost psephologists. He told the Select Committee that:

“It seems to me that the Commissions will be in great problems in some parts of the country”.

By way of example he cited the position in Sheffield, the home of the Deputy Prime Minister. Professor Johnson told the committee:

“Sheffield will almost certainly be entitled to five constituencies under the current reduction. Sheffield has 28 wards. That would be three constituencies of six wards, which would be too big, over the five per cent on one side, and two of five wards which would be below the five per cent on the other side. You would have to either split wards in Sheffield or somehow around the Barnsley/Rotherham interchange manage to create constituencies which cross the boundaries all of which were within five per cent. I very much doubt”—

Professor Johnson went on—

“that is feasible because wards in Rotherham are about the same size as wards in Sheffield anyhow and there are some hills in the way before you get to Barnsley. They are going to have to split wards, I have no doubt about this”.

The facts seem pretty clear—if the Government genuinely do wish to avoid splitting up wards, they must relax the 5 per cent disparity limit.

There are other arguments in favour of a more flexible threshold. A 5 per cent disparity limit will deprive the Boundary Commissions of the flexibility they need to take proper account of history, local ties or geography when drawing boundaries. As a consequence, towns and villages will be divided between constituencies, and natural boundaries will in many cases be overlooked. Let us consider how some instances would have applied at the last election. A number of constituencies that fit well with their local authority would no longer have been able to do so—Wyre Forest for example, which is coterminous with its district, would have had 2,131 too many electors. Similarly, Shrewsbury and Atcham, also coterminous with its district, would have had 1,552 too many electors. A number of counties and boundaries with statutory limits on electorates would no longer have been able to sustain whole numbers of constituencies, and would therefore need to share at least one seat with a neighbouring county or borough.

Take the six seats in the county of Oxfordshire—Banbury, Henley, Oxford East, Oxford West and Abingdon, Wantage, and Witney. They were on average 1,907 electors over the threshold. So, approximately 11,000 Oxfordshire electors would have needed to be shed so that they could be in a constituency shared with a neighbouring county. For example, part of the Prime Minister’s constituency might have had to be shifted to a seat based in Gloucestershire. Another striking example is the historic county of Cornwall, and the Isles of Scilly, which would have had to find 13,138 electors—or an average of 2,190 per constituency—from Devon to make up the number they require under the Bill for six seats.

The problem would have been particularly acute in London. The borough of Barnet—Chipping Barnet, Finchley and Golders Green, and Hendon constituencies—would have had 371 too many electors for its three seats. Enfield borough—Edmonton, Enfield North and Enfield Southgate constituencies—would have had 219 too few electors, with an average of 73 per seat needed from a neighbouring borough. The borough of Sutton—Carshalton, Wallington, and Sutton and Cheam constituencies—would have had 1,119 too few electors for two seats, an average of 560 per seat. The borough of Wandsworth—the Battersea, Putney and Tooting constituencies—would have had 3,427 too few electors for three seats. So you would have had all these constituencies crossing, with a very small number, into neighbouring boroughs.

Looking ahead, a Democratic Audit model of how boundaries would have to be drawn in the future using the 5 per cent proposed in the Bill has found that,

“only 9 out of 46 counties, accounting for 67 of the 503 seats proposed for England, did not need to be grouped with another county”.

Indeed, this sort of widespread disruption resulting from the new rules will be the chief legacy of the Bill if it is left in this form. That is because even in regions and counties where there may be little or no change in the number of constituencies, the knock-on effect of the rigidity of the 5 per cent rule will none the less produce wholesale alterations to the boundaries of seats within these counties whether or not their electorates fall within the proposed 5 per cent threshold.

The existing rules for drawing constituency boundaries require the commissions to take into account any local ties that may be broken by alterations to constituencies. This is widely seen as an essential counterbalance to the mathematics and reflects one of the strengths of the British constituency system, which respects real communities and well understood boundaries, and in turn fosters an identity within those constituencies and a connection between electors and their representatives.

No doubt the Minister will counter that the rules set out in the Bill will similarly allow Boundary Commissions to take into account factors such as geography and local ties. The Minister is correct in that rule 5 does provide for an allowance, but what the Minister will seek to gloss over is that such considerations must be subject to the rule governing the size of constituencies. It is there in black and white on page 10 at line 22. So it is the numbers first, and then as long as you have the numbers, apart from two or three exceptions, then and only then can you apply geography, local ties and history.

So this Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill would thus transform the process of a boundary review from one that seeks to balance electoral equality with community identity to one that would abandon the latter in order to achieve a negligible advance in the former. As well as creating pointless anomalies, the Bill will lead to widespread unnecessary disruption. This is because when allied to the reduction of 50 seats proposed in the Bill, the rigid 5 per cent thresholds for acceptable disparity from the UK electoral quota means that there will be very few, if any, seats that will be unaffected by the boundary changes. Cutting the Commons to 600 seats has the effect of increasing the electoral quota in all parts of the United Kingdom, even in England where it would go up from 71,537 registered electors to 75,800. Currently, only a minority of constituencies have electorates within 5 per cent of the new electoral quota, and even they are not guaranteed to emerge unscathed.

In England, the adoption of an electoral quota of 75,800 would require each constituency to have an electorate of between 72,010 and 79,590. On current electorates, just 204 constituencies have electorates within that range. Clearly, all of the others will be subject to some change but, in practice, every single constituency will probably be redrawn. The chairs of the Boundary Commissions have admitted so publicly, because the knock-on effect is so enormous.

A prime example is what will happen to the county of Hampshire. Because the rules will not allow the Isle of Wight to remain a single seat, the county will need to accommodate approximately 35,000 electors from the island who will need to be allocated to one of the mainland seats. This will have a significant ripple effect on constituencies across the county, leading to significant changes in the shape of Hampshire constituencies. Although that extreme level of disruption would not be seen again after the first redrawing, widespread disturbance of constituency boundaries would none the less be evident every time there was a future review, because population changes will constantly push constituencies outside the 5 per cent threshold. That was confirmed by the heads of the Boundary Commissions in evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee in the other place. It has also been highlighted by Lewis Baston of the Democratic Audit team, who has predicted that,

“there will be only two boundary reviews under these rules—one reporting by 2013 and in force from 2015, and another reporting in 2018. At that point, MPs will revolt at the prospect of repeated disruptive boundary reviews, as they did in similar circumstances in 1958”.

We need to avert this if we possibly can, but we need to get greater equality among the size of constituencies. We can start by revising this Bill so that the goal of numerical parity, which is important and which we support, is balanced with the real-life needs of local communities. That is the purpose of our amendment. It would provide the Boundary Commission with the practical leeway that it needs to balance the different factors which influence the design of constituencies, while still ensuring the creation of more equal-sized seats. Our amendment states:

“No constituency shall have an electorate more than 5% above or below the electoral quota for that part of the United Kingdom unless the Boundary Commission concerned believes there to be overriding reasons under the terms of these rules why it should”.

That would enable the commissions to have a meaningful ability to take account of the geographical and other factors which regularly have a bearing on their calculations at the moment. It will allow the Boundary Commissions to exercise their judgment in a field in which they, after all, are expert. However, to ensure that there is an absolute limit on levels of disparity between different seats, the amendment also states:

“No constituency shall have an electorate more than 10% above or below the electoral quota for that part of the United Kingdom”.

Democratic Audit has calculated that a 10 per cent outside limit would be just enough to prevent the division of wards in almost every case and enough to enable the Boundary Commissions to work within county boundaries, with maybe two exceptions.

Our fundamental argument is simple. We believe that although the majority of seats would and indeed should be within 5 per cent of an electoral quota, there are more instances than are allowed for in the Bill where the Boundary Commission should be allowed to exercise a degree of discretion of up to 10 per cent from the quota.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Can the noble and learned Lord give us any idea of roughly how many constituencies would be, so to speak, saved by his amendment? Are we dealing with 100 or 10? It may be an impossible question to answer.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

No, it is not impossible to answer. The estimate that I gave of the number of existing seats that were numerically outside it is, if I can find it, something like 203. I think that the number that would be outside it would be less than half of that. I shall come back to that when I find the figure, which I agree is important.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Phillips of Sudbury and Lord Falconer of Thoroton

Monday 10th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I am absolutely clear that the Electoral Commission would be perfectly capable of setting out what it would regard as the criteria that had to be satisfied. If you impose a provision like this, I have no doubt—and I have experience of this having been the Minister involved in ensuring good electoral practice—that that would have the effect, as far as the local authorities are concerned—they are, in practice, responsible for registration—of lifting all the votes up. I cannot envisage a local authority that would want to be one of two or three in the country that were incapable of meeting the standard. I cannot envisage that anybody in this House does not want the standard that I have described to be met. If the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, thinks I am imposing too high a standard, I am sure that he wants some standard imposed, and I would welcome his contribution about the margin of error that he would regard as acceptable as far as the Electoral Commission is concerned. I have detected no one in this House who has not supported the proposition that we should try to do all that we can to get the 3.5 million people—a broadly accepted figure—who are not on the electoral register on to it. The effect of my amendment is not that everybody has to get on; it is that the local authorities have to make a reasonable effort to get them on. If they do, and if the Electoral Commission certifies that they have done all that they can, then, and only then, can this process start.

My noble friend Lord Lipsey, who I am delighted to see in his place, made a speech before dinner in which he made the point that if we proceed with this very significant change in relation to the drawing of the constituency boundaries on the basis of the December 2010 register, which is what the Government are proposing, we are going to build in the bias. Who is the bias against? It is against young people, those in private rented accommodation and members of the black and minority ethnic groups. It might be said that that group would tend to favour Labour or even the Liberal Democrats, but that is not the point. You do not want to start with a great section of our population—the young people—being disenfranchised because they do not want to vote.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

The sentiments that the noble and learned Lord expresses are wholly admirable. One wants to get every single person on to the register, but as I apprehend it, the problem is not a technical one; it is that there is a mass of disaffected younger people in our country who simply cannot be bothered to vote. They are not galvanised to take part in the democratic process. How does he propose to overcome that?

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I know from my experience as the Minister responsible that if, for example, you do door-to-door inquiries, check who lives there, hand over a form to get on to the register, rather than sticking it in an envelope, and then go back and pick it up, you dramatically increase the number registered. My noble friend Lord McAvoy referred to the effort by the city of Glasgow. In my speech, I referred to the way that Manchester and Birmingham have 95 per cent registration because they are making the effort whereas London and Nottingham have 91 per cent, which is much lower. Picking up the approach of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, work has been done to identify the practical steps that can be taken. That is why I am submitting that it is not unreasonable and does not impose an unreasonable burden on local authorities for the Electoral Commission to say that it expects good practice from everybody. Our democracy is crucial to the well-being of our society and only when all the local authorities have got to that standard, measured not by an absolute number but by doing the right thing, do we then move on to this particular approach in relation to registration. We then avoid the bias against young people, particularly in the BME communities and in the private rented sector.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Phillips of Sudbury and Lord Falconer of Thoroton

Monday 6th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

My Lords, that was a fantastically revealing debate. The noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, delivered an extremely good speech that was rational, reasonable and sensible. It basically said that, if we are going to have a debate about constitutional reform, let everyone have a reasonable choice. Unfortunately—this is no fault of the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky—he has absolutely no understanding of what is going on in relation to the proposal for constitutional reform that is being advanced.

For the past 13, maybe 20, years, our approach to constitutional reform as a nation has been that this House has the role at least of producing as good a constitutional reform as we can. The work of the Cook-Maclennan report, which had lots of years behind it, was to produce the best constitutional reform. Extraordinarily, this constitutional reform, unlike any other constitutional reform I can remember, is being conducted without Parliament having a view on it. Individual parliamentarians like the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, who delivered an excellent speech, have a view on constitutional reform, but neither Parliament, nor indeed the Government, has a view on this reform. They had a view on devolution in 1997, and Parliament had a view on the Common Market in 1975, but this is a process, not support for constitutional reform.

The perfectly reasonable amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, therefore meets a car crash. The first part of the car crash is the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, who, with eyes popping with sincerity, tells us that he is strongly in favour of AV, having never supported AV before. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, then gets up and says that he has been talking about constitutional reform since he was 15—I rather agree with the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, when he says “poor Lord Rennard”, whom we greatly admire in this House—and he says that he supports the alternative vote system. This lot on the Liberal Democrat Benches are therefore standing on their heads. The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, has the nerve to say that they are doing this to restore the people’s trust in our parliamentary representatives by adopting a system that the Liberal Democrats have opposed for so long and which, as has often been said, is described by Mr Nicholas Clegg as “a miserable little compromise”. The public think that they are doing this to get more seats, not because they are sincere, so they are eroding public support. Sensibly, the party opposite has remained completely silent throughout this debate in relation to whether there should be a change to the electoral system. Members opposite looked patronisingly on the Liberal Democrats for being so easily gulled into behaving in a way that brings the whole system into contempt.

The noble Lord, Lord Baker, in an embittered little speech, had the nerve to say, “I have been privileged to listen to a seminar on electoral reform from the Labour Party”. Yes he has, and he is lucky to have done so because no one else in the whole country appears to be debating what the right system is. Surely the least the public could expect is Parliament debating what the best system is, because no other debate is going on. In answer to the noble Lord’s question about how to bring all the strands together, I have great sympathy for the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky. There are problems with it. It is pretty eccentric to choose an electoral system on AV when you are asking the public to determine whether they like AV best. I understand why that is being done—it is a rational way of doing it—but I am afraid he is wasting his time because this constitutional reform is motivated not by what the best constitutional reform is but by a grubby deal that was done that had no reference to what was best for the public.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

The noble and learned Lord has made a rather passionate attack on my position. I am not standing on my head and I have not argued anything other than that I believe that this referendum should be held on an AV system, and I have explained why.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Phillips of Sudbury and Lord Falconer of Thoroton

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Does the noble and learned Lord not think that a merely consultative referendum could depress the turnout, because many people would say, “This is just asking us what we think and they will go back and do what they want”?

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

No I do not, and what happened in the Scottish and Welsh referendums indicates that that is wrong. It is a question of being clear that the referendum is intended to be a precursor to legislative change, as it was in relation to the 1997 referendums in Scotland and Wales. The noble Lord is wrong.

For the two reasons that I have given—namely, that an indicative referendum avoids the need for thresholds and allows for a proper debate on AV—I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Phillips of Sudbury and Lord Falconer of Thoroton

Monday 15th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

Perhaps I may say that the unspoken interventions of my noble friend Lord Dubs are more powerful than the words of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. What is the effect of removing 7.7 per cent—some 50—of the total of MPs? According to Professor King, the respected psephologist, the average constituency size will go up from 66,000, which it was at the end of the Second World War, to around 105,000 by the time of the next election.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Does the noble and learned Lord appreciate that the figure given by Professor King was not of electors but of the total population?

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I appreciate that. The reason why I refer to that figure is because that is the group of people that the MP has to deal with. If someone comes in and says, “I want some help”, I do not think that you say, “Can you prove to me that you are a voter?”.

MPs provide the pool from which Ministers are chosen. That pool would be reduced. The removal of 50 MPs would reduce at a stroke the number of MPs available to scrutinise legislation and to hold the Government to account. Professor King said:

“The House of Commons, compared with other national legislatures, is already a feeble affair. The present proposal would enfeeble it further”.

I hope that, in the five days that it cobbled together this agreement, the coalition thought about what effect this number—to quote the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, “a nice round number”—would have on our democracy.

Why does the coalition propose the reduction? The Deputy Prime Minister, whom I mentioned earlier, said that it was because the legislation underpinning reviews had meant that the number of MPs had crept up. That is what he said in the House of Commons, but it is not so. The number of MPs is lower than it was a decade ago and no higher than it was 20 years ago. It is virtually impossible to discern any principle underlying the proposal to reduce the number of MPs. We will oppose the reduction and we will in any event make any reduction conditional on a proportionate reduction in the number of Ministers in the Commons.

Crucial in the Bill is the method for determining new constituency boundaries. With the exception of Orkney and Shetland and the Western Isles, a new system will apply to all constituencies. The crux of the new system is that the driving factor will be the number of constituents in a constituency. We agree with the need for substantially greater equalisation of constituency size and that there should be a small number of exceptions to the process, but we consider that the constituencies to be treated as exceptions to the system should be identified and chosen in a fair way. Why not choose the Isle of Wight? Why not recognise the importance of keeping Cornish and Devonian constituencies separate from each other? We support the inclusion of the two exceptions that are already there, but we think that there should be more and that their selection should be entrusted to someone other than a politician. Let there be a fair process. If the hybridity route has been rejected by this House, perhaps there should be an inquiry conducted by the boundary commissions, which have proved themselves over very many years to be above politics.

As regional, council and even ward boundaries are crossed in the onward march to perfectly sized constituencies, representation will become more strained and harder to navigate. For instance, the Government’s insistence on only 5 per cent leniency in constituency size would require 385 extra electors to be found for the Forest of Dean and 59 electors to be expelled from Warrington. The prospect is ridiculous.