Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Tyler Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Tankerness
Because we are going to win the referendum.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, for his amendment. I particularly thank all noble Lords opposite who have shown such concern for the interests of the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party. It has been very touching. On behalf of the Liberal Democrats and my Conservative colleagues, let me say how appreciated it is.
When we eventually got around to it, the motive behind this amendment was that it got us back to the supplementary vote, which was the product of what was, I am sure, a stimulating dinner party in 1989. To be fair to the noble Lord, he has persisted in this throughout these debates.
The amendment would provide that the first boundary review, which would create fewer and more equalised constituencies, would not have effect until the referendum had taken place and only then if the electorate had voted yes. As Members of the Committee will be aware, there are differences on these Benches on the merits of the alternative vote system and first past the post. We have made no secret of that. However, both parties in the coalition are agreed that the public should choose which system we use and should do so in a referendum.
Linking the boundary changes to the referendum would effectively mean asking more than that, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, said. If we change the Bill in the way proposed by the noble Lord, we effectively make a vote against the alternative vote a vote against the boundary changes, too. He described that as a way of incentivising the Conservatives to support the alternative vote. If the referendum result were to be no, it would prevent the modest and sensible reduction in the number of seats, for which the Bill provides, from taking effect. The amendment would see the existing constituency map, with its inequalities in electorate size based on data from, as far as England is concerned, 10 years ago, continue until those data were even older.
As a democrat, I would be bitterly disappointed if the people voted no in a referendum on the voting system, but I would accept that that was the vote expressed by the people. It would be wrong to use that as an excuse to break off an agreement.
Lord Tyler
I wonder if my noble friend has noticed that for hours in this Chamber we have been told that the whole Bill is a political carve-up to enhance the potential support for both coalition parties, yet for the past half hour or so, with commendable and encouraging concern for our political support, we have been told that it is nothing of the sort and that the proposals in the Bill will have a neutral effect on the Conservative Party and Labour Party in the future and will damage the prospects of the Liberal Democrats. Will Members opposite withdraw all their accusations of gerrymandering that we have suffered for hours and hours in the Chamber, not just today but on many previous occasions?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I had reflected on that. I thought that it was somewhat ironic that, having been lambasted, as my noble friend said, for allegedly bringing forward legislation of a partisan nature, we were accused of having partisan advantage as a basic motivation for supporting the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. That was a perverse argument.
Lord Campbell-Savours
To explain, it is the second review that worries me. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, looks on it favourably. The second review will be under a system of individual registration. That will be extremely damaging to the work historically done by the Boundary Commission. As my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton mentioned, there will be huge variations in registration levels in the various authorities throughout the United Kingdom because of problems in securing reasonable returns under individual registration arrangements by local authorities. To reply to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, on this issue of gerrymandering, I have never accused the Government of gerrymandering.
Lord Campbell-Savours
No, I am sorry, but that is not our case. Our case is that to handle legislation in this way is an abuse of procedure in the House of Lords. Were the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, sat on this side of the House—as he was until last May—he would be getting up and arguing precisely that case at this time of the night. He knows that it is an abuse of procedure. What is happening is that the Liberal Democrats feel that, in the longer term, they will gain seats. We are not talking about gerrymandering. The reality is that the Liberal Democrats will pick up seats, but only under that portion of the Bill that deals with AV. Under the other portion of the Bill they will lose seats.
I should make it absolutely clear in moving my amendment that I have always supported much of the Liberal Democrat position on electoral reform—certainly over the past 10 or 12 years. I have had many discussions with the Liberal Democrats over the years. My noble friend Lord Lipsey is a passionate supporter of AV and my noble friend Lord Soley said this evening that he is wavering. It may well be that the arguments being deployed by the few interventions that come from those Benches, along with the interventions of my noble friend Lord Lipsey, are beginning to convince him, although I suspect that if he goes into detail on this Bill he will end up in exactly the same position as I did when I looked at the matter in 1989.
To get the record straight, it was not a dinner party but a dinner table in the House of Commons dining room. Mr Brian Sedgemore, the late Mr Roland Boyes, Mrs Ann Clywd and I had a dinner where we argued about whether we could change the electoral system. The result of that was the inquiry that I undertook.
I thank my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton for his speech, which I understood to be asking a series of questions. Did he get answers? I wonder whether the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, might care to rise to his feet to answer those questions specifically. The speech of my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer was brief and precise and contained no embroidery of language. He asked specific questions, to which I believe he deserves answers.
Notwithstanding the failure of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, to get to his feet to answer those questions, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment. I suggest to the noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches that they should send Jessica a bunch of flowers, which I am sure she will appreciate, for the work that she has done on their behalf.
Lord McNally
This side of the House has treated serious amendments seriously, but I invite any future historian to read Hansard and then they can make their judgment.
Lord Tyler
I wonder if my noble friend might note that amnesia, rather than paranoia, seems to be the prevailing atmosphere. Only a few months ago, those over on the other side were pushing the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill through this House, with no pre-legislative scrutiny for huge chunks of it, trying to do so at great speed before the general election. Amnesia, not paranoia.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I want to raise the issue of these reports. I have done two inquiries, but I have never seen the Boundary Commission documentation, which I presume must be made available to inspectors during the course of their inquiries. What happens here? When the commission issues its review and sends it first—if I remember correctly—to individual Members of Parliament in political parties, it provides a report, but I have never seen that document. This is important, because in constituencies in places such as Cumbria—the noble Lord, Lord Henley, who lives near Carlisle, knows exactly what I am talking about—the boundaries of the mountain ranges that separate parts of Cumbria are critically important during the course of consideration of boundary reviews. I wondered in what circumstances individual Members of Parliament are entitled to have access to the documentation produced by the survey officers for Land and Property Services in Northern Ireland, and for the Ordnance Survey within the United Kingdom.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Tyler Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Lipsey
Goodness, you hardly get to sit down before you have to stand up again.
I am not sure that this amendment is right. It suggests a seven-year periodicity of reviews instead of five years. I am not sure whether seven years is the right answer. At the moment we have reviews broadly every 10 years, which is broadly every two elections. Seven years would not sustain that, although there is a case that it should be sustained. I am sure, however, that five years is daft. It is strange coming from a coalition Government led by a Conservative Party, but five years is a recipe for permanent revolution. It will mean much upheaval; you will hardly have finished with one review of boundaries before settling into another. It means that there will be no stability in the system and many people will only just have discovered who their MP is when it changes, not as a result of their decision at a general election but a Boundary Commission decision. That is the result of a combination, which I believe is toxic, of the 5 per cent variance in the size of constituencies and the five-yearly reviews of constituency boundaries.
Stability matters tremendously to MPs. Under this system, they will hardly get back into the other end before they will be wondering which seat to look to represent next time. Will your present seat continue to exist or, if its population is growing, is it about to be dismembered and replaced by another constituency? Every Member of another place will, under this system, be carrying a permanent carpet bag, ready to find himself or herself a new seat.
I do not think that that is a good recipe for anything, including the good governance of this country. If you are thinking the whole time about where your seat is going to be, you are not going to be thinking the whole time about what policy should be. Some of us believe that there has been a dangerous development in our politics, whereby the sheer degree of constituency issues which every MP must consider—I defer to those who have been Members of another place; I may be quite wrong about this—and the sheer weight of constituency work which they face, make it extremely hard to give attention to the wider national issues for which, in a sense, they are elected.
That has been a substantial change over the years. If you read the biography of Gladstone by Roy Jenkins, you will find that he hopped constituencies every few years and had no constituency work or contact at all. Nowadays, any MP has to be deeply embedded in their constituency—a bit like bishops. The ones who are doing a good job really know their areas, their patch, and their people. They will not get embedded in that way if, at the next general election, they know that their patch and their people may be completely changed and that they may be starting again on fresh turf, as Gladstone did. Gladstone ran the Midlothian campaign, but I did not hear of him running many campaigns for the repair of drains in the constituencies that he represented.
That instability for MPs is not the main problem. Anyone who seeks a sympathy vote for MPs is on a losing wicket these days. The main point is the effect that it can have on constituents. Constituents come in all shapes and sizes. I am sure that every Member of this House who has been a Member of another place had many constituents that they would have been delighted never to see again at their surgery doors, but they built up a relationship with their people and people built up a relationship with their Member.
When I was working as a political journalist, I found, when I had conversations with a Member of another place about the great issues of politics, that I was often not wholly overwhelmed by the breadth of knowledge and vision that they had on world problems, and so on. Where I always learnt from any conversation that I had with a Member of another place was when they turned to the issues in their constituency. That is how I understood the reality of the decline of manufacturing industry. It is there where you understand the dilemmas involved in what services you improve and what services you have to hold back on. That was the whole basis of what they brought to our national government and governance.
We had a wonderful example from the noble Lord, Lord Dixon, this afternoon. Could that knowledge be picked up by anyone who happened to be passing through Jarrow on a Sunday afternoon? Would that knowledge be held by the civil servants sitting in Whitehall, or even in the north-east? No, it was detailed constituency knowledge based, as the noble Lord said, on 50 years of living there and representing people there. That is a terrible thing to throw lightly aside, and it is the constituents who will lose. They will not know who to write to; they will not know whether to trust who they write to; they will not know what they are hoping to achieve when they do; and they will not have that intimate relationship that both they and MPs value so much.
It is very noticeable from opinion polling that if you ask people what they think of MPs in general, it is unspeakable. They think that they are nasty, self-seeking men and women on the take. I think they are wrong, mostly, but that is what they think. However, if you ask people what they think about their MP, you get a very different picture of affection and respect that is, in most cases, earned by hard work based on the knowledge that the MP wishes to retain the relationship between him and the constituency he represents for many years ahead. That will go under this Bill, and part of the mechanism by which it will go is the demand that the constituency boundaries be revised every five years.
Whatever we decide on the right variance between constituencies, and we may well make a decision, and whatever we decide about the number of MPs, and we may well make a decision, I hope that between now and the final passage of the Bill, it will not be totally impossible for the Government to think again on this issue and to space the reviews more widely so that this relationship can survive. Not much rope now attaches the people to our politics. It has grown thinner and thinner. The people’s confidence in politics has diminished, as, I fear, has their confidence in Parliament, but it is the constituency relationship and a consistent constituency relationship—
Lord Tyler
Before he completes his speech, will the noble Lord explain the rationale behind the selection of seven years for the review? By definition, that would mean that more constituencies would be subject to change than if it was five years. If he went for a longer period, presumably even more constituencies would be subject to change, so all the arguments that he has been advancing, which I entirely endorse as someone who was very proud to represent an interesting part of the country, would fall by the wayside if more constituencies were changed as a result of his proposal.
Lord Lipsey
I am most grateful to the noble Lord. I have been on my feet in successive speeches, and he must have missed the beginning of my speech when I said that I was not sure that seven years was right. I was simply sure that five years was not right. That is why we have a Committee stage in this place: so that we can explore these things and come to a correct decision when we get to Report. If the decision was made for 10 years, I certainly would see no reason to suppose that it was wrong. I think that five years has a particular defect that seven years avoids, which is that in five years you know exactly the time. If we have fixed-term Parliaments, the chicken run starts two years before each general election, so there are only three years in which it does not start. Seven years would avoid that, so at least you would get another election after you were first elected, and then you would have a period of uncertainty. However, if the noble Lord wished to move an amendment that proposed 10 years, I should be an enthusiastic supporter of it, and it would be good to see him doing it. All I am saying to the House this afternoon, and I am not sure whether he disagrees, is that a five-year permanent revolution under the Conservatives is too short a period.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Tyler Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Lipsey
My Lords, with this amendment, we move from Part 1 to Part 2. I shall make one important observation relevant to the case that my noble friend Lord Wills has made. In the case of Part 1, there was an inquiry—I know, because I sat on it. It was the Jenkins inquiry. It is perfectly true that the referendum will be not on the recommendation of Jenkins but on half of it; namely, the alternative vote. That inquiry did not completely crack the problem, but it moved the debate forward. As we found when we debated Part 1, all the speeches made were informed by the famously articulate report of Lord Jenkins and the analysis that it contained. Some agreed with it and some did not, but it shaped the analysis and therefore enabled us to have a much better debate.
The second advantage to flow from having a prior report is that, between the setting up of Jenkins and the introduction of this Bill, many people, whether mostly or wholly, changed their minds. There are many people, particularly in my own party, who are adamant first-past-the-posters and can still see the arguments for it today, but they are prepared to contemplate the argument set out in Jenkins for moving a little way in the other direction by having the alternative vote, which is an improvement on first past the post in the view of many of them.
A noble Lord
Lord Tyler
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, for giving way. He was a very distinguished member of the commission that was set up and chaired by Lord Jenkins of Hillhead. Why does he think that, 10 years afterwards, we have had no action on its report? Does he not share our cynicism that the proposal of his noble friend is simply a way of privatising, pushing out and delegating responsibility for these important decisions so that nothing should happen? The experience that he and I have had of the complete failure of the Government whom he supported to do anything on the basis of that commission’s recommendation, makes us very cynical about asking somebody other than Parliament to take decisions on this matter.
Lord Lipsey
The noble Lord was very grateful that I gave way, but I am even more grateful to see him popping up to speak. The silence is broken—omertà is finished with. I am sure that we will have many contributions from him in the future.
There is no intention among anyone, I think, to stop this legislation, as considered properly, going through. Let us be clear that what will destroy the legislation is not the danger of delay but the danger of haste. The danger is that this ramshackle legislation, half considered, will be forced into law and that a subsequent Government, seeing that it is half baked, will force it out of law and we will have achieved nothing. That is the plan that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, is urging on the Committee. I beg this House, which is a great example of the benefit of the rational consideration, to reject that way forward.
I was saying before I gave way to the noble Lord that many first-past-the-posters have been converted to the alternative vote, but I take more pleasure in another form of conversion that has taken place. There were many people, and the Electoral Reform Society was in their hands, who believed in wholesale, immediate electoral reform and full-scale proportional representation. I have never been persuaded of the case made for proportional representation; I do not believe in it and I do not agree with it—nor did Jenkins. However, during those years since Jenkins, and in months and years of debate, those people have moved their position so that now the Electoral Reform Society is a very strong backer of the yes campaign in this referendum. I think that it sensibly sees that a consensus reform that goes half way is better than a wholesale reform that later gets reversed, and that it is more likely to get reform by settling for a halfway house than by holding out for ever for the whole cake.
Through the post-Jenkins process has emerged a greater level of consensus on where we are going. It is not a wholesale consensus—that would require the verdict of the people in a referendum—but there is a greater level of consensus and a greater clarity on the arguments. That makes a hugely strong and powerful case for proceeding by reflection.
Lord Harris of Haringey
No, my Lords, I am suggesting that the noble Lord no doubt had to work 50 per cent harder to deliver the service that he regarded was appropriate at the beginning of his time in the other place. That is fine, but we ought to—
Lord Tyler
I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. He is making a very powerful case for equalising the numerical strength of each constituency.
Lord Harris of Haringey
The case that I am making is that we have to define the appropriate numerical relationship between the electorate and the Member of Parliament. If you want to go down the route of equalisation, you should first define what the appropriate ratio is. If you do not know that, the argument is, frankly, pointless and otiose.
However, I do not necessarily believe that equalisation is the sole point that we should be looking at. One of the dogs that have not barked in this debate has been the question of what other factors are important, and the amendment provides the opportunity to consider the character of localities and their different natures. When I was the elected Member of the London Assembly for Brent and Harrow, I had the privilege of representing the most ethnically diverse local authority area in the country and, separately, the most religiously diverse. To suggest that the characters of those areas did not influence the nature of the work that I did as a public representative is, again, ludicrous. The characteristics of local constituencies matter. You will find that nearly every other jurisdiction recognises that as part of the factors that need to be taken into account when it comes to deciding where to draw boundaries.
The other dog that has not barked has been the size of the House of Commons. The issue has been brought up today but we have not had that debate. What will be the most effective size of the House of Commons to do the work that we believe it should carry out? What is the effective size for both representing constituents and scrutinising legislation? Where is that debate? We are sidestepping it because of the desire to push ahead without proper consideration of these issues.
My noble friend Lord Beecham talked earlier about the relationship with local authorities. My noble friend Lord Knight, who has just spoken, said that he was in favour of this. I have to say that I am against it. The Bill encourages, or at least would make it far easier for, constituency boundaries to cross local government boundaries. I do not believe that that is in the interests of good and effective representation. It will make it more difficult for MPs to cover the ground, and for them to have a relationship with local authorities so that in partnership they can achieve things for their constituents both at local government level and in working with central government in Parliament. Those are the issues that make talking about crossing local government boundaries in this way so inappropriate.
The final issue that I want to refer to, in terms of dogs that have not barked in this debate but that should have been allowed to be considered in detail, is the nature of the electoral data on which all this is based and the frequency with which they change. I have spent all my political life in London. London is an area in which, historically, there has often been underrepresentation because of the number of people who are registered to vote. That underrepresentation was at a particular peak when the community charge—the poll tax—was introduced, and all that went with that. A large number of residents in London chose to drop off the electoral register, as they did in many other urban areas and no doubt elsewhere. That legacy of underrepresentation remains.
We should also consider the turnover in big inner-city populations and the number who come in. At one point when I was leader of my local authority, the collection register for the community charge turned over by one-third each year, indicating a great flow of population dropping into and out of the area. That was partly a consequence of migration and partly because of the mobility of populations at that time, but it also involves the recognition of particular areas. Because the Bill is constructed around drawing up these boundaries and quotas on the basis of an already flawed electoral register, we are building into the system an inappropriate bias against areas with historic underregistration and areas with an historically very high turnover.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Tyler Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Tyler
I am very grateful to the noble and learned Lord for giving way. I am finding it difficult to follow him. I think that this is the most important part of his amendment: the trigger to start the process. I should say that I sit on an informal all-party advisory group which the Electoral Commission consults occasionally. I really do think that his amendment imposes on the Electoral Commission a responsibility that it is not ready to take and would not wish to take. How can he suggest that there are criteria by which the Electoral Commission could certify that every local authority has taken all reasonable steps to ensure that the electoral register is as complete and accurate as possible? I cannot see how it can do that. The work done by his Government previously may have helped, but it certainly has not enabled the Electoral Commission to take the very subjective view that he suggests.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I do not think that it is a subjective view. The commission would not be asked to guarantee that everyone, or 95 per cent of people, was on the electoral roll; it would be asked to check that the local authorities had taken all reasonable steps. I envisage that it would set out what it would expect a reasonable local authority to do—for example, house-to-house inquiries if there were very high levels of underregistration; or getting the figure up to 95 per cent in certain sorts of area. It would not be difficult to identify the criteria that had to be satisfied before the commission could be satisfied. There are so many other areas in which public bodies certify that reasonable steps had been taken. I do not regard it as beyond the wit of man for the commission to do the same in relation to local authorities.
Lord Tyler
The noble Lord’s amendment says that every local authority has taken all reasonable steps, so presumably no Boundary Commission operation could start or any review be initiated until every local authority had been able to satisfy the Electoral Commission that it had taken reasonable steps. That is an impossible target. I am sure that, from his ministerial experience, he would agree.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
This new review could not start before every local authority had done that, but what would the excuses be? Why should one, two, three or four constituencies be prejudiced?
Lord Lipsey
The noble Lord has led me to be even briefer, because I was about to refer to his Amendment 89C and to a similar amendment that I myself proposed. It is quite easy statistically to equalise notional electorates. It depends on, for example, the proportion of rented tenure in the given constituency. Perfectly good equations can be developed that pretty accurately project the notional electorate from the actual electorate. Equalise those within whatever limit the House may decide and you have a much more sensible approach than that which is in the current draft of the Bill.
Lord Tyler
I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Will he accept, even if some of his colleagues would not, that one of the disincentives to registration is that people—perhaps particularly if they are transient through the area—think that if it is a very safe seat, their vote simply will not matter? It is the correlation between safe seats under the first past the post system and the disincentive not just to register but to bother to vote even if they do register. I think that at least he will accept that that is one other reason. How does he propose to tackle that problem if, as seems to be his colleagues’ wont, they want to resist any improvement to the electoral system?
Lord Lipsey
I am proposing to tackle it in the very same way as I hope he is proposing to tackle it—by voting yes to AV whenever we get round to the referendum, whether on 5 May or, as I hope, a later date.
Lord Tyler
If the situation is as dire as the noble Lord suggests in a minority but nevertheless presumably in a number of local authorities, I do not understand how the requirements of his noble friend’s amendment could possibly be met.
Lord Campbell-Savours
That is precisely the point. The amendment says that,
“all reasonable steps to ensure”,
must be taken. We might well have to invest additional resources in the inner cities for canvassing teams to go around with forms to ensure that people are being properly registered. Unless there is an enforcement regime to deal with that problem, you will not get the electoral registration levels that are required.
Furthermore, the problem is escalating. I intervened on the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, last week on when the subsequent boundary review—not the next one—will take place. It will take place on the basis of a register that he has drawn up on individual registration. I see a much larger problem arising in the long term, in perhaps seven or eight years’ time—not at the next election, but at the election after—which Parliament has not even begun to consider. When we dealt with this matter during the course of the Bill on electoral registration, we did not consider it because we did not realise that we would be faced with the nonsense that we are being faced with today.
As I said, I do not believe that the resources are there. They must be made available to ensure that the electoral register is as complete and accurate as possible before the Boundary Commission can complete its work.
Elections: AV Referendum and Scottish Parliament
Lord Tyler Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Tankerness
The answer is the one that I just gave to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who is concerned that there might not be a good turnout in places such as London. It is an important issue, and these issues will be well debated. However, I think that those who are suggesting that, somehow or other, people in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and parts of England cannot cope with dealing with two issues on the one day are totally underestimating them. It is an insult for them to suggest that it is not possible to vote on both matters on the same day.
Lord Tyler
Will my noble friend confirm whether there is a precedent for holding a referendum on the same day as local elections? I have been informed that the voters of London were able to vote in a referendum about the future governance of the city at the same time as local elections were taking place. Will he confirm that the people of Scotland are quite as intelligent as the people of London?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I am certainly happy to give that confirmation. I think—I will need to check, but I think—that my noble friend is right that the referendum on the mayoral system for London was on the same day as the London local elections. I think that I was registered in London at that time, when I was a Member of the other place. I remember going to the same polling station as my noble friend Lord Ashdown and, as we entered it, the then leader of my party asked, “Which way do we vote?”.