Queen’s Speech

Debate between Lord Rennard and Lord Davies of Stamford

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard]

It was the beginning of the last Labour Government. The manifesto said in 1997 that,

“the House of Lords must be reformed ... to make the House of Lords more democratic and representative”.

In particular, the 1997 Labour manifesto said that,

“the legislative powers of the House of Lords will remain unaltered”.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I have noticed—as has the whole House—that he has not attempted at all in his remarks to contest my hypothesis that the Lib Dem party is, in this matter, pursuing an entirely selfish party-political agenda. While we are quoting manifestos, can the noble Lord explain to the House why the Lib Dem party appears to have abandoned its commitment in favour of a referendum on this issue, which was certainly in its most recent general election manifesto in 2010?

[Lord Rennard]

With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, there was absolutely no promise of a referendum on the issue of Lords reform in the Liberal Democrat manifesto in 2010. I believe in representative democracy. I think there are many problems with referendums, as I shall elaborate. The Liberal Democrats did not promise any such thing in 2010.

In answer to the noble Lord’s basic premise that the Liberal Democrats are acting out of pure self-interest in this matter, I point out the major flaw in his argument. In common consensus around the Chamber tonight, we have talked about there being perhaps 400 or 450 Members of this House who are particularly active. I draw noble Lords’ attention to the fact that there are now 90 Liberal Democrat Peers. That is not far off some 23% of the active membership of this House. I also point out to noble Lords that many people who talk about the effectiveness and work of this House have said that it is effective because no one party has an overall majority. No one party has an overall majority if you have a system of proportional representation.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Rennard and Lord Davies of Stamford

Monday 24th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

Indeed, and that is necessary in the circumstances. I do not hold to every word of these amendments, as I shall explain in a second if the noble Viscount will give me an opportunity to do so. However, their main thrust seems absolutely right, as, indeed—I do not want to anticipate the next debate—are the amendments that have been put forward by my noble friends on the Front Bench, which I hope that we will get to in the next section. In fact, the first thing I want to say on the detail of the amendments, with great respect to my noble friends Lord Snape, Lord Kennedy and Lady McDonagh, is that I wonder whether the first amendment relating to county councils achieves, technically, what they want it to achieve. The amendment states:

“Each constituency shall be wholly within a single county boundary”.

As I read that text, it means that counties that are too small to constitute a normal sized constituency would have to be a constituency on their own. I think of Rutland. That would be a very peculiar result to emerge from the amendment. That is why I fear that I cannot support that amendment in its present form if it came to the vote. However, I may have misunderstood it and the problem I have may be dealt with adequately in another context. If that is the case, I shall either give way to my noble friends on that matter now or look forward to hearing an explanation subsequently in the debate, but that aside, I am totally in favour of the spirit of that amendment for two reasons. The first concerns a matter I have already dealt with in another context in these debates, so I will not dwell on it, and that is the all-important issue of the extent to which the individual elector identifies with the constituency in which he or she finds himself or herself. Counties are enormously important. We have already heard about the great sensitivity which would arise if constituencies were spread across the traditional historic Lancashire/Yorkshire divide.

I assure the Committee that if there were any suggestion of taking bits of Lincolnshire and putting them into a constituency with parts of Nottinghamshire, Cambridgeshire or Leicestershire, there would be the most appalling outcry. I do not doubt for a moment that that would lead to some people not bothering to vote in either county council elections or parliamentary elections as a protest. That would go in the exact opposite direction from the one in which we wish to go.

Speaking from my considerable experience as a former constituency Member of Parliament, I want to make a very practical case. It is very important so far as possible to have an exclusive, or at least a limited, relationship with local authorities as it is only in that way, when one has a large agenda, a lot of give and take and when one sees the same people in different contexts, that one can effectively do business together, and where there is an atmosphere of confidence and trust, which there needs to be between a Member of Parliament and a local authority, irrespective of political party. That is enormously important. It is important to avoid the conflict of interest which could otherwise prevent local authorities, which may necessarily have a rather bureaucratic mentality, contacting a Member at all. If there are two, three, four or, God knows, more MPs with bits of a particular local authority, county, district council or whatever it is, they might well feel that they cannot possibly talk to one of those MPs without saying exactly the same thing in exactly the same circumstances, taking exactly the same amount of time, with all the others, so they would not bother to do it at all, and so the co-operation, discussion and mutual understanding would not occur. There are real practical arguments of this kind in favour of trying, wherever possible, to keep county councils within county boundaries. We are, of course, preaching to the converted with the Boundary Commission. The noble Viscount made that point. The last thing the Boundary Commission wants to do is to split counties or to incorporate in constituencies parts of different counties. That is something it has managed to avoid doing in general. However, we need to strengthen its hand to prevent it being pushed in that direction.

Even more important than counties are wards. They really are the grass roots at which politics is conducted and are the way in which individuals are brought into our political system and take an interest in civic affairs through meeting with their friends and neighbours locally to discuss common problems. It is incredibly important that a ward and a ward committee in a political party has a relationship with one Member of Parliament. Immense synergies flow from that because when you go out campaigning you want to be in a position to talk about local and national issues. All Members of Parliament have to talk about local and national issues and all their supporters ought to be in a position to do that. It is no use campaigning for a council seat when if somebody raises a national problem you say, “Actually this is not the constituency of the Member that I support and so I cannot talk about this national issue”. That is a hopeless system. It is very important that Members of Parliament know their county and district councillors, that county and district councillors know their Members of Parliament, that they tackle a common set of problems, work together, understand local issues and as far as possible have the same views on local issues. That may not always be the case but at least they feel that they have the same responsibilities which are coterminous. It is only in that way that the whole political system we have has a degree of coherence and therefore of credibility, and has in the minds of the electorate a degree of functionality and purpose. All these things would be very badly damaged by breaking up wards between different constituencies. That is the point on which I feel most strongly.

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, at the conclusion of today’s business, no doubt in the small hours of tomorrow morning, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, will say exactly the same thing as he did at the beginning of his speech: namely, that we have not witnessed any filibustering. If so, by the time we get to the end of today’s proceedings we will have made great progress on this Bill, with proper and legitimate scrutiny.

It seems to me that the legitimate area of scrutiny in the amendments is about how far there are guidelines for the Boundary Commission to follow or how far we have prescriptive rules which it must follow. I see the merits of the case for either strict rules or for guidelines, but there are strong and reasonable arguments about what level of discretion the Boundary Commission should have as it endeavours to equalise the size of the electorates for different constituencies. I see that as a reasonable argument to have.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. He is making a useful contribution and he is absolutely right: there is a choice for us in this House this afternoon about going down the guidelines route or the firm-rules route. If we went down the guidelines route, which has attractions, would the noble Lord be in favour of giving the Boundary Commission some hierarchy of guidelines so that, for example, when the issue of community feeling or of ward boundaries conflicted with the numerical targets which are being imposed—the 5 per cent rule, for example—it would give the former priority and not the latter?