Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Snape and Lord Rooker

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, I did not intend to speak on this but I will add a new example on the time element. We would not be having a debate about the time element were it not for the contents of the Bill from page 9 onwards in new Schedule 2, which deals with the rules for the redistribution of seats. I note that one of the factors that the Boundary Commission may take into account—I realise that it will be in May—is,

“local government boundaries as they exist on the most recent ordinary council-election day before the review”.

Timing and names are not unimportant given the ward building blocks in present constituencies. I represented part of the city of Birmingham when I was a Member of the other place. Birmingham had the largest building blocks in the country, with an average ward size of 19,000 electors. My figures are now out of date but were correct when I was a Member of the other place. If you then decide how many constituencies you are having and you get an odd number, and the policy is not to split wards, you end up with some Members having three wards with 60,000 people and others having four with 80,000 people. That is what happened in my case and that of colleagues. Noble Lords may say that that will not happen under the formula in the Bill and that wards will have to be split, but that is something that you avoid doing. Herein lies the problem.

One of the rules set by the Boundary Commission, which is buried somewhere among its procedures—we came unstuck on this on one occasion—stipulates that the constituency in a county borough, which Birmingham is, has to be named after one of the wards in the constituency. My former colleague Terry Davis was really upset about this because we lost the ward of Stechford and had to change the name of the constituency, which was virtually the same. If you have to split the wards because they do not make arithmetical sense in this situation, this problem may arise. Nobody wants more councillors in Birmingham; we are already at the limit with some 120 to 124 and the extra ones for Sutton Coldfield.

You cannot sort out this situation in two years. It is not just a matter of changing the boundaries; you are potentially rewriting local government boundaries in the big cities. I think that Leeds is the only other city with such large wards—there is an average of some 15,000 electors in a ward. You can see the difficulty that arises when you start moving these large building blocks around. The difficulty does not arise in London boroughs, where the wards are very small, at about a third of the size of those in Birmingham, and have better representation in terms of councillors.

This issue has to be addressed within the two-year period. It is a question not just of the building blocks but of names and the division of current local authority building blocks in our big cities. As I say, the problem will arise in Birmingham and Leeds. It applies to Manchester but to a lesser degree, as its wards are much smaller than those of Leeds and Birmingham for historical reasons. This factor means that more time will be needed to tackle this issue. As I have said before, I think that the boundaries should be equal, but the fact is that the rules in the Bill mean that the review cannot be done in two years without upsetting a lot of people through splitting wards and consequently redrawing local government boundaries while you are trying to tackle parliamentary boundaries. I do not think that you can do both together.

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, I rise to speak to my noble friend’s amendment, as I have tabled a similar one that we shall discuss later in the proceedings and I have no wish to detain your Lordships further by discussing virtually the same matter twice. Much of the debate on my noble friend’s amendment has been about numbers and electors. However, as my noble friend Lord Rooker has pointed out, other matters will have a direct impact on any redrawing of the boundaries as proposed in the Bill. Like my noble friend Lord Kennedy, who pointed out some of the difficulties that had arisen in Coventry, which were put right by a local inquiry into Boundary Commission proposals, and my noble friend and fellow sapper, Lord Dixon, who pointed out the historical arrangements in his part of the world, I encountered such a difficulty when I was a Member of the other place.

The boundaries for the then new seat of West Bromwich East, which I fought in 1974, had been drawn up by the Boundary Commission in the 1960s. The natural boundary between the constituency of West Bromwich East and that held with such distinction by the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, as she now is, was the former Great Western Railway line. Unfortunately, before I arrived on the scene, that line was closed—actually in 1972. The cutting through the centre of West Bromwich had been virtually filled in and therefore there was no natural boundary between our two constituencies. It took a local inquiry after the 1980s boundary review to point that out and the dividing line between our respective constituencies was then redrawn on to a dual carriageway that represented a much more natural break between the two seats. That was electorally advantageous to the incumbent in West Bromwich East, which just so happened to be me. It was not quite so advantageous to my then honourable friend on the other side, but I got my representations in first and congratulated that local inquiry on the common sense of its new recommendations. I am glad to say that the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, has forgiven me over the 25 years since and we are back on speaking terms. The point that I am seeking to make is that the anomaly was pointed out only because of that local inquiry. The Boundary Commission in its wisdom went purely on numbers and did not look at geography, the contours of the ground or a natural boundary between our constituencies.