Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Williamson of Horton Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Lords Chamber

I very respectfully suggest to the Minister who is to answer this debate that wisdom and maturity on the part of the Government require recognition of the importance of consensus in this sensitive political context. This amendment recognises the strength of the competing arguments on both sides of this debate. I commend it to your Lordships as being reasonable and workable. I beg to move.

[Lord Williamson of Horton]

My Lords, my name is also on the amendment, so ably presented by my noble friend in moving it, and I rise to support it. The amendment is of course a compromise, but it is perhaps all the better for that, because I think that some noble Lords think that compromises have not been very frequent during the long passage of the Bill.

There are two, very strong reasons for noble Lords to support the amendment. First, with the proposed reduction in the number of Members of Parliament and the redrawing of the constituency boundaries, we are entering into, through the work of the Boundary Commissions, a very substantial operation. It is very difficult to foresee where some of the difficulties may arise for the drawing of sensible constituency boundaries. Is the 5 per cent proposal in the Bill enough? We are not sure. This is perhaps a typical situation where a very small increase in the margin for exceptional circumstances could make the difference between a good-sense constituency and a nonsense constituency.

Secondly, this amendment has been very carefully drawn up, as my noble friend explained, to ensure that, while providing a small additional margin for use in exceptional circumstances, it does not significantly conflict with the Government’s objective of achieving an equalisation of the size of constituencies. This is quite clear, because the use of the extra margin in the amendment is limited to cases where it is “necessary”—a very strong word—to achieve a viable constituency. Surely the Government want viable constituencies. The amendment provides also that such necessity must arise from special geographical considerations—inconveniently placed mountains and so on—or local ties of an exceptionally compelling nature. These considerations or local ties are already in the Bill at Clause 11, but, in this amendment, they are permitted to play a role under very strict conditions.

From time to time, I speak to schools about the work of the House of Lords. I intend to cite this amendment as an example of a wholly reasonable amendment that has been tabled in the spirit of the way in which we work in this House. It would certainly help me if I could cite it as an amendment discussed and then included in a Bill. I hope that the Government will accept it and make that possible.

[Lord King of Bridgwater]

My Lords, perhaps I may make a wholly reasonable response to the noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Williamson, and commend them on the way in which they have put forward their amendment. I entirely accept the spirit in which it has been proposed. We have had some pretty unhappy times in past days in this House. I have not yet spoken on the Bill, but I felt that we had reached the moment when I wanted to make a contribution.

I am one of the Members of this House who has had his boundaries changed often enough in his earlier life. It is not totally world shattering; it happens; there have to be adjustments. There has sometimes been rather too much suggestion that it is almost a criminal offence to change some constituency boundaries. I do not regard it in that way. It is a necessary move. With population changes and demographic growth, there is an obvious need at times for boundaries to change.

As noble Lords said, the amendment is a compromise. It is not unfair to say—I do not wish to misrepresent the noble Lords—that it might have been conceived at a moment when it appeared that there was deadlock in this House and when we were going through a very unhappy period. I think and hope that the House is now conducting itself in a way that many of us hoped for, where there is reasonable debate and where there are then proper votes on which—as is clearly the Government’s point of view—you win some and you lose some. That is surely what democratic debate is about.

I come to this part of the Bill with two considerations. I believe that there must be more equal constituencies. I do not know whether anyone in this House would challenge the fact that there are serious discrepancies in the size of constituencies that must be put right. I believe also that that must be achieved by 2015. I was very struck by a comment by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, who said in moving the opening amendment yesterday:

“If we took no action, the next boundary review may not take effect until 2020. This would mean that in 2018 there will be electors who reach voting age and register to vote who will not even have been born when the basis of the pattern of representation in the Commons was determined”.—[Official Report, 8/2/11; col. 128.]

We all know that it is very constipated and far too slow a process.

Does the amendment help? Is it making constituencies more equal or less equal? There is only one answer to that. At the moment, the Government are proposing a spread of 10 per cent. This amendment proposes a spread of 15 per cent, which would allow for the possibility of less equal constituencies. I admired enormously the noble Lord, Lord Pannick—I hope that that does not sound patronising—when he said that the knock-on effect of moving from 10 per cent to 15 per cent, meaning that other constituencies might have to have more or less, is not different in principle. Of course, he is right, but it is rather different in quantum. I think the noble Lord will understand that point as well. This amendment allows the possibility of less equality, so I cannot support it on that ground.

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[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, it is good to follow the noble and learned Baroness from across the water and probably across the frontier too. I support the amendment and I endorse everything the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said about the view of the people of Cornwall, particularly of those at the eastern end where I live. The noble Lord did not mention the treaty between the Celtic Cornish and the Saxon English signed in AD 936 by King Athelstan which started all this off. I would compare this debate about the Tamar and the problem of mixing two races with the thought of what would happen if there was a constituency that crossed the border between Wales and England. I do not think that the people of Wales would like that.

I want to mention just one other thing. Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly have recently been awarded a local enterprise partnership, one of the first to have been made. It is a great tribute to the county council and the other people who promoted it, and it is a fine achievement. It also demonstrates that the Government think that Cornwall is different and that it is separate. It has economic problems as well as many other ones, but the LEP demonstrates that one part of the Government thinks it should be separate. I trust that the Minister, when he comes to reply, will express his support.

[Lord Williamson of Horton]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, referred to the human factor, and I think that I am actually the human factor, so on this occasion I wish to intervene. I carry a heavy load of family history in relation to Cornwall. My grandfather was the vicar of Padstow on the north coast, the vicar of Falmouth on the south coast, the archdeacon of Bodmin in the middle, and the canon of Truro, which is the county town. As I say, I carry rather a lot of weight that favours the amendment, and I support it. Incidentally, I am now 76 years old. The first memory I have of my entire life is that of my first visit to Cornwall, which was made in 1939.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

Briefly, I ask my noble friend why, if this river and estuary are to be written into the law in this way, others should not be? We have already had arguments about the Mersey. I live in Essex and the Thames is at least as substantial a division between Essex and Kent, I suspect, as the Tamar is between Devon and Cornwall. One can think of a number of other rivers including the Severn, which is a big division between the south-west and Wales, so why are we going to pick out only one? The problem with most of these rivers—I am afraid I do not know the West Country well enough to know whether it is thus with the Tamar—is that a dividing factor at the mouth, where that is so big, becomes a uniting factor further inland, where towns straddle the same river: the Thames, the Severn or whatever it might be. It is not rational to build this kind of consideration into this kind of legislation.

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[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

My Lords, the government amendment inserts the creation of a committee to review whether the decrease in the number of constituencies is right. The committee has no end date. The committee comes into effect only after the introduction of the reduction of the number of Members of Parliament. Yesterday, during Report, the Leader of the House, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, described the committee as the starting point for the changes in the reduction from 650 to 600. He was right to describe it as the starting point, because most people, looking at whether to make a major change, look at the evidence first, examine it and then reach a conclusion whether or not to act. That is why it is called a starting point. That seems sensible. This Government, however, will instead make the change and then set up the starting point—which, with respect, seems absurd. That is why our amendments make the arrangement that the committee is set up first, before the change is done.

That is illustrative of the lack of care which has been taken about these changes, and it is a serious matter. This should not be dealt with in a flip or unthought-out way. A committee without an end date, without a process for choosing a chair, and with the most limited terms of reference is by no means ideal. We accept that there should be a committee. If this hardly thought-out piece of work is what is being offered, we will take it because nothing else is on offer. I would have hoped that the Government could have tried a little harder.

[Lord Williamson of Horton]

In this case, as in many others, timing—in particular, the timing of this review—is the principal question. That is apparent from the amendments tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. I sometimes think that it would have been instructive if, when we started the whole of this great debate on the Bill, we had installed a couple of clocks on the wall of the Chamber—not clocks to keep a record of the length of our speeches but to show the number of hours and minutes remaining until a referendum on 5 May, and until the completion of the constituency and boundary changes in October 2013.

It is those periods and the Government’s fear that proposals might prejudice them which have determined the fate of many proposed amendments. In the case of this amendment, as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said, there have been a lot of questions about the decision to move to 600 Members of the House of Commons, the reasons for that change and a demand for some independent study of the consequences. The most comprehensive of those was the amendment moved yesterday, which was not accepted, by the noble Lord, Lord Wills. In Committee, I myself proposed an amendment that would have deferred the coming into force of Clause 11 until the end of the Boundary Commissions’ work, thus providing some time in which it would have been possible to undertake some examination of the consequences. The Government, however, made it quite clear that any infringement of the march to October 2013 is not acceptable to them. I assume that they will have the same difficulties with the amendments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer.

We should therefore consider the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, on its merits as a proposal for post-legislative scrutiny—which is what it is now. For myself, I think that it would be useful to have it in the Bill. It is a requirement that there should be a committee to carry out a review of the effects of the reduction and the changes to the constituencies; otherwise we may very well not get one at all, ever. Who knows what Government will be in power from 2015? It will be useful to have a review to draw some conclusions. I do not think that we should overrate its importance, but I think that it would be useful to do that.

I am aware that yesterday the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, described Amendment 28A as “almost contemptible”. I do not agree with that. However, I was extremely glad that he included the word “almost”. I think that it is reasonable to have this proposal which the Government have now put forward in the Bill, and I hope that it will pass this evening.