Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My noble friend is absolutely right. I would have preferred to have had the opportunity of being on a committee to scrutinise the Bill before it came before this House. I would have been happy to deal with some of these points during the pre-legislative scrutiny. However, I know that many of my noble friends will want to come in on one or other of these 12 amendments and I certainly do not want personally to detain the House any longer.

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, the statement from the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, that he does not wish to detain the Committee any further will perhaps be a welcome relief to the small number of people who may be watching the parliament channel at the moment. Anybody who is watching or perhaps even reads this debate in Hansard tomorrow will clearly see that in the past 26 minutes we have had yet again an extensive and irrelevant filibuster in the Committee, rather than serious scrutiny. I suggest to anyone following this debate that, were they to look at the last half-hour of our debates on Wednesday night—or the early hours of Thursday morning—which were again led by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, they would see the clearest possible proof beyond any reasonable doubt for any Member of the Cross Benches, any Member of this House or any member of the public that these are simply delaying tactics of a wholly unreasonable nature. Students of political history such as me will have studied how—

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords—

[Lord Rennard]

No, my Lords, I am sorry. I am not going to give way because we should try to make progress. I will say why: there are some significant points that we should be looking at in terms of scrutiny. I agree with some of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has made on the ward boundaries. If we were to look at all 12 amendments in this group, the last three of them, which are in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Tyler, are technical amendments to flag up formally to the Boundary Commissions the importance of the ward boundaries. Unlike Amendment 74B in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, they are rather more correct because they deal with the issue of the ward boundaries in its relevant place within the Bill, rather than in just one place.

Unlike other arguments relating to other amendments within this group, it seems to me that the importance of our amendments is that they are not prescriptive in that they do not demand that ward boundaries never be crossed. However, they say to the Boundary Commissions that they are an important building block. They should not necessarily always be adhered to but they should be taken into account to some degree. The origin of these last three amendments within the group was my own puzzlement in looking at the wording of the Bill, where there is a reference to wards in Northern Ireland but none to ward boundaries in England, Scotland or Wales. I thought that it would be helpful if a little clarity were given to the Boundary Commissioners about the importance of ward boundaries as one of the factors that they should take into account.

As we know from the informal evidence provided by their members, the Boundary Commissions will, in any event, have every intention of looking at ward boundaries, but it would be better if the legislation were improved, if possible. I hope that the Minister will respond by saying that this is something that might be considered as an improvement to the legislation.

The language with which we look at issues such as ward boundaries or other boundaries is, in my view, of some importance to the Boundary Commission processes. There are alternatives within these different amendments, using either “should”, “must” or insofar as they see fit. It seems to me that there is a good reason why the previous legislation on Boundary Commissions and this legislation tend to use the phrase “insofar as they see fit”. You can suggest that boundary commissioners look at different criteria when they redraw the constituency boundaries, but it is very hard to rank them in any priority or say that one carries more weight than another. The commissioners have to look at competing priorities. By saying, “in so far as they see fit”, independent and impartial people would be given the power to choose the relative weight of geographic ties, minimising inconvenience and such factors, and we would also avoid the danger of getting to the end of this process and the boundary commissioners being drawn into political rows and continuous legal challenges. By using the phrase, “in so far as they see fit”, we would allow the boundary commissioners to exercise their judgment while minimising legal snarl-ups thereafter.

[Lord Kinnock]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord and I have a great deal of sympathy with the case that he is putting forward. However, will he not join me in recognising that, before any Boundary Commission gives consideration to this Bill, let alone the Bill as amended in the way that the noble Lord wants, they are completely ensnared by the reality that, in all and any circumstances, they must return boundaries for precisely 600 constituencies, or, more appropriately, 598 constituencies because two are protected? Does that not remove a great deal of the effective discretion that should be employed, in the way that he suggests, by independent-minded boundary commissioners taking full account of precisely the arguments that he is making and arguments that have been deployed on both sides of the Chamber in our debates hitherto?

[Lord Rennard]

I do not accept that the democratic principle is such a constraint. The criteria in the Bill given to the four Boundary Commissions are remarkably similar to the criteria we have had in historic legislation dealing with how the Boundary Commissions work. There is then the issue of the number of seats, but I do not accept that the number of seats will affect too much the way in which the boundary commissioners choose to judge the importance of those competing factors.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

My Lords—

[Lord Rennard]

I am sorry but I will not give way again on this point. Perhaps I may be allowed to finish the point that I am responding to from the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, and again make the point that I have had to make when this position has been taken many, many times in debate on many amendments during the passage of the Bill over the 12 days of Committee so far. It seems to me that it is not uncommon in many countries for Parliaments to fix the size of Parliaments, usually through a written constitution. As the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, will know, my party, and I in particular, think that it is very important to have a written constitution. I believe that in this country we are moving, in one way and another, towards a written constitution, but it is absolutely not unprecedented nor considered remotely undemocratic in other countries for Parliament to determine the number of seats that there should be. In the United States, for example, it is the constitution that sets out that there shall be two members of the Senate for each state. That appears very early in the principles of the United States constitution. Therefore, I do not accept that the Boundary Commissions are unduly constrained in this way.

[Lord Soley]

My Lords—

[Lord Rennard]

No, my Lords, I want to make progress on my argument and allow us to proceed with a couple of issues of serious scrutiny that I still want to raise in this group of amendments. The first concerns the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, making the boundary commissioners take into account their perceptions of the socioeconomic base or relative wealth of each constituency. Over the decades in which many of us have been involved in Boundary Commission processes, I have not heard it seriously argued by anybody that the boundary commissioners are anything other than impartial and independent. However, my view is that we should not start asking them to exercise their judgment about the relative wealth of different constituencies, using different, competing socioeconomic factors, or to try to use their judgment to suggest that, because certain MPs have a lot of problems of this nature or fewer problems of that nature, these seats should be varied in some way. How could the boundary commissioners possibly be expected to remain being seen to be impartial and independent in their judgment? I suggest that that is not a serious factor that the boundary commissioners should have to take into account.

Having seen many submissions to public inquiries on Boundary Commission processes and read many of them in the past, I have thought that the criteria which people sometimes think could be applied are not serious ones on which you would expect the commission to impartially draw the constituencies in the way that it has.

Finally within this group, I want to comment on Amendment 76, which concerns eliminating references to the euro regions with particular regard to the way in which the Boundary Commission for England works. That does not seem a sensible way in which to suggest that the Boundary Commission for England should go about its business. The Bill is not prescriptive in saying that it must follow the boundaries of the euro regions but, if it is to work in a sensible way across the whole of England, it could not possibly start in, say, Northumberland, go down to the Isles of Scilly and then go across to Kent. In order to make this effective, we need to retain the language in the Bill suggesting that the euro regions may be building blocks that the commissioners use, saying that they will want to work simultaneously on the south-east, the south-west and the north-east, and have a proper process of scrutiny that could be effective with online representations. They will need to work simultaneously on the different regions rather than across England as a whole.

[Lord Soley]

The noble Lord who has just spoken makes a fundamental mistake when he says that Parliaments in other countries decide the size of constituencies. He is right that they do, but the problem here is that the Government are deciding it. In other countries, political parties agree it, usually jointly or independently. That is all I want to say about that but it is an important point: Governments do not decide the structure and size of Parliaments; Parliaments decide that, and they normally do it by consent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Liddle]

I support, particularly, the first part of the argument of my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours and the argument of my distinguished noble friend Lord Kinnock. The key point about this section of the Bill which the Government have not satisfactorily answered is that the function of the Boundary Commission, as it has operated since the Boundary Commission was established by all-party agreement during the Second World War, will be drastically curtailed by this legislation.

Although all the nice, reassuring words about taking account of communities, geography and so on will still be there, the work of the Boundary Commission will be curtailed as a result of the cap on the number of MPs. The Bill does not say that we should have 600 MPs but the Boundary Commission can increase the numbers by five or 10 or 15 in order to take account of local circumstances; it imposes a rigid number. There is also the corset of the 5 per cent on either side of the quota. The effect of these two measures will be to completely change the flexibility and discretion that the Boundary Commission has been able to exercise, under all-party agreement, since the Second World War. Why do the Government feel that they have a mandate to make that change without consulting all parties through a Speaker’s Conference? What argument do they have for doing this? I do not think that there is a good argument.

Once again, from my own part of the world, I shall use an illustration of what the impact of these changes will be, so that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, understands how he is tearing up decades of cross-party agreement on how the Boundary Commission should operate. Let me talk a little about my beloved Cumberland. Before my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours became MP for Workington, I remember as a young man that the Boundary Commission came up with a proposal that Cumberland—this was before Cumbria—should be created—

[Lord Rennard]

Will the noble Lord tell us which amendment he is speaking for or against in these remarks?

[Lord Liddle]

I am in favour of the amendments that would change the wording from may to shall or must because I feel very strongly that the wording is being kept as it was in the previous legislation but disguising that a fundamental change is being introduced. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, knows that very well. It is all part of a deal that his party has done with the Conservative Party without consultation with other parties, which is without intellectual justification.

Let us think about the situation in the 1960s when the Boundary Commission suggested that Cumberland should come down from four to three seats. There was an inquiry and it was decided that on grounds of community and geographical representation the four seats should be kept. In the 1980s and 1990s, with the new county of Cumbria, as I mentioned before, the quota did not justify having six seats. The Boundary Commission used its discretion that because of the special geographic nature of Cumbria, there should be six seats. That is what the Government will destroy. The Boundary Commission will not have the ability to show such discretion. We are all in favour of equal-size constituencies and the principle of equality, but you have to have around the edges flexibility to cope with special situations. Therefore, I urge the Government to think again.