Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Wills Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maples]

I prefer to make my own speech, and that is not a subject that I want to deal with. This Bill is about boundaries, not about increasing turnouts. A large part of the cause is the difference in the size of constituencies. It is not, I agree, the only cause. Differential turnout and the stacking up of votes in safe seats is certainly part of it, but the differential size of constituencies is part of it, and it is demonstrated by some of the figures I have just given.

[Lord Wills]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. He has been very generous with his time. To what extent does he think these differences are attributable to underregistration?

[Lord Maples]

I think that it is undoubtedly a problem, and it is particularly so with young people, but it is much easier now to register than it has been for a very long time. When I first got involved in elected politics, the registers were changed, I think, only once a year in the spring before local government elections. They are now updated every month, so it is perhaps up to all elected politicians of all political parties to encourage people to register. There is no bar to them doing so, and it has never been easier.

As I have said, Wales is over-represented. We have had quite a lot of former Members of Parliament in their speeches saying how some constituencies are much more difficult to work with than others. But in my experience—having represented two constituencies, one of which I represented not at the same time but in common with the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and the other was Lewisham West in London—they could not be more different. One was three square miles of concrete and the other was, I think, 600 square miles of south Warwickshire farmland with the town of Stratford-on-Avon in the middle. Each presented its own problems and difficulties. There were certainly more people with social problems and more immigration and housing cases in Lewisham. But a constituency such as Stratford-on-Avon has a very articulate electorate who write lengthy letters to their Member of Parliament demanding their opinions about this and that. When they decide to get a local campaign going about something, they are incredibly well organised.

Lewisham did not have an identity with Lewisham: it was just three square miles of south-east London. I do not think that many people knew which borough they lived in. As the noble Lord will know, in south Warwickshire, the historic town of Stratford-on-Avon represents about one-quarter of the electorate. There are 132 villages and parishes. A big issue in one part of the constituency can be absolutely irrelevant in another part. If, as has recently happened, the eastern part of our old constituency is hived off into a new one, I do not think that those people will feel that a great historical link has been broken.

In Scotland, the discrepancy was largely represented in the Scotland Act, but there are still two extra seats. There are 59 seats when there should be 57. In Northern Ireland, the quota is 16 to 18 seats, and it has got 18. As a result the average constituency size in Northern Ireland is 10 per cent less than it would be in England.

What gives rise to the discrepancies between English seats? The first is population shift. People are moving on the whole out of old inner city areas to new suburban areas. That is happening the whole time, but because of the nature of the way in which the Boundary Commission works, it uses old registers. The recent election was fought on, I think, the 2000 or 2001 registers. At the time when I moved my Ten Minute Rule Bill, Banbury was 19,000 voters over the average and Sheffield Brightside was 19,000 under. At the last election, on the new boundaries on which the election was fought, that discrepancy was already being repeated. Banbury was 9,000 over the average and Sheffield Brightside was 9,000 under. Therefore, one of the faults of this Bill—one of the few faults I say to my noble friend the Leader of the House—on which I might try to move an amendment is that the Boundary Commission should have the right to look forward at potential population changes that are known about because of housing and population movement. Otherwise, the figures will be out of date before they start.

Secondly, the Boundary Commission cannot cross county and local government boundaries, which is a small price to pay for fairness. But it is illustrated again in Warwickshire where for all the time when I was a Member of Parliament we were entitled to 5.45 seats on the quota, so we got five seats. On the last boundary review, it went up by 0.07 per cent to 5.52 and we got six seats. That is nonsense. There was no difficulty in managing a constituency the size of Stratford-on-Avon. There was no need for that extra seat. But it is this ratchet in the way that the Boundary Commission works which produces an ever larger pool. The basing of electoral boundaries on electoral registers which are already many years out of date is part of the problem.

My Bill, which was introduced five years ago, sought to have a maximum 5 per cent discrepancy from the average, which I am delighted to see that this Bill has; that the rules should be the same for the whole of the United Kingdom; that the Boundary Commission should be able to cross local government boundaries; and that there should be reviews every four years, which is what I wanted, but five years would be fine if we are going to have five-year Parliaments.

Those noble Lords who talked about the disruption that this will cause are wrong. This review will be big, but after that a small review every four or five years will cause much smaller changes than a big review every 12 or 15 years, which is what we have at present, with wholesale changes of constituencies such as we saw at this election. I would like to see the use of projected population figures.

I am absolutely unconvinced about the special case for the two Scottish Highland seats. They are so much smaller than the average. I am sure that there are geographical difficulties in working in those constituencies, but there are difficulties in other seats that I am sure they do not have. I expect that they do not have huge immigration problems to deal with.

Lord Wills: My Lords—

Lord Maples: I have given way to the noble Lord once and I do not think that I will do so again. They do not have many of the problems the others seats have, such as a large seat like I had. The case for those to be so far below the quota—I think that in the case of one of them there are 22,000 voters and in the other 33,000—is very difficult to justify. If they are to have special representation for their position within Scotland, those two seats should come out of the Scottish quota and not the United Kingdom quota.

On the 2010 election, which, as I say, was based on electoral registers which were already 10 years out of date, only 218 seats were within this 5 per cent band. There were 161 between 5 per cent and 10 per cent; more than 200 between 10 per cent and 20 per cent; and 60 were more than 20 per cent out. Of those, 59 were too small, and one, the Isle of Wight, was too large. Of those 60 seats, 45 were in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Isle of Wight was the only one that was too big.

There has been a lot of argument about whether this is party political and what the advantage is. I believe that it will correct a massive unfairness in favour of the Labour Party. But of the 10 seats that are too small at the moment, only two are Conservative, three are Labour, two are Liberal Democrat and three are held by nationalists. Of the 10 that are too large, four are held by the Conservatives and six are held by Labour. One has to be slightly careful about calling where party advantage lies in all of this.

This Bill will implement that maximum 5 per cent discrepancy and reduce the House of Commons to 600, with which I have no problem at all. It could easily be reduced to 550 at an election after that, but it needs a bit of time to do that. I agree with those noble Lords who have said that that requires a reduction in the size of the Executive as well. If the House of Commons were to be reduced much below 600, an Executive of 95 in the House of Commons would be far too dominant.

I agree completely with the five-yearly reviews, crossing local government boundaries and removing the massive distortion in favour of Wales. But the Bill still looks backwards. In five years’ time, the election will be based on registers that will by then be four and a half years out of date. In the long run, 600 Members of Parliament will be too many. I do not agree with the exemptions for Orkney and Shetland, and the Western Isles. I will not attempt to pronounce the Scottish name of the constituency. I agree with reducing the size of the Executive in the House of Commons.

But the idea, as the opposition spokesman in the House of Commons said, that this Bill is gerrymandering is simply standing the truth on its head. The truth is that the current system contains a massive unfairness in favour of the Labour Party, which is unwilling to see that change and is wrapping up self-interest as high principle in a very hypocritical way.

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[Lord Davies of Oldham]

Has the noble Lord not noticed that the tolerance level around the figure of 76,000 is a mere 5 per cent? If the noble Lord cannot see the straitjacket within which the Boundary Commissioners will be operating across the country, he is not showing that degree of insight into local politics and boundary-drawing which I would have expected from him.

[Lord Wills]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I wonder if he has noticed that this is the second intervention in which the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, has only quoted part of the Bill. The part of the Bill that he has quoted goes on to say that that provision, that rule, will be subject to Rules 2 and 4, on the electoral quota. In other words, all those considerations are still subject to that electoral quota rule, which only goes to prove the point that my noble friend was making.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

I am so grateful to my noble friend, although he will recognise that I said that I would speak briefly and he is already extending my time. I want to get on to my third point on the size of the Commons. We all remember the histrionic gesture in this debate yesterday that suggested that the number did not emerge from anything more than thin air, as indicated by my noble friend Lord Dubs. I think we all know the motivation behind the reduction in numbers. The motivation, of course, is a £12 million cost saving and fairly obvious gerrymandering on the part of the party opposite.

It might be thought that I have dropped into a fairly severe partisan contribution at this stage and I want to avoid that. After all, we are talking about constitutional change and should, if we possibly can, avoid partisanship. I want to offer my congratulations to a Conservative Member of Parliament in the other place. He happens to be my Member of Parliament, because he represents the constituency in which I live. He is Charles Walker, the Member for Broxbourne. His concern, in the Chamber in the other place, was straightforward. He wanted to ensure that the House of Commons maintained, or perhaps increased, the capacity to hold the Executive to account when, as we all know, that capacity has been reducing over time.

There is no doubt that the Bill significantly reduces that capacity. It reduces the number of Members of Parliament and says absolutely nothing about the number of Ministers. The payroll position increases in proportion to the Commons and, crucially, affects its capacity to hold the Executive to account. I am pleased to agree with a Conservative Member of Parliament who tabled an amendment at the other end that got short shrift. What did not get short shrift were the guillotines on a constitutional Bill at the other end and the Government using their whipped majority to ram it through.

We are a revising Chamber: no more than that. We ought not to appropriate to ourselves any greater responsibility, particularly with regard to how the other place is elected and how it organises itself. Therefore I suggest that in the course of the Bill’s proceedings we merely give the other place the chance to think again, that we look at the size of the Executive—unchanged, of course, under the proposals that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, is about to defend—and that we provide opportunity for further consideration. I have no doubt that the principle on our side will be quite clear. I have hopes that we will get support elsewhere in the House, and I do not have the slightest doubt that there are enthusiastic advocates at the other end for that change to the Bill, including my own Member of Parliament. Lest it be thought that in my fulsome praise to him I automatically pledge him my vote at the next election, I will remind him that I do not vote in general elections.

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[Lord McNally]

Let me give one example. The noble Baroness, Lady Nye, shed crocodile tears over the missing 7 per cent on the election. Where was the action from the Labour Government in 13 years to deal with those very issues?

[Lord Wills]

I will tell him exactly what action we took, and I want to bring him back to a question that he has avoided answering so far, about the action put on the statute book by the last Labour Government, which placed on the Electoral Commission a duty to ensure that the register was comprehensive and accurate. It was given new powers to achieve that end, which I noticed the Deputy Prime Minister boasting today he is going to bring forward. That was the action that we took.

I should now like to ask him about one of the distortions that he is so keen to avoid addressing. That is the distortion of a wholesale revision of constituency boundaries on the basis of a register which everyone knows is neither comprehensive nor accurate. If the Government waited just a few months, we have every likelihood of having a register that is comprehensive and accurate. Why will he not wait until the register is comprehensive and accurate? Why not?

[Lord McNally]

Because we have put the legislation before the House and are taking it through the House. Just to go back to—

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[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Wills]

I actually want to help the noble Lord, I really do. He is in a lot of trouble and here is my suggestion to him. Rightly or wrongly, there is a great deal of suspicion here, which he will recognise, that that figure of 600 was chosen because it was the figure of maximum advantage to the coalition parties. Now, he can remove that suspicion immediately by answering the question that I asked him in my speech yesterday. Did the Government—the Liberal Democrats or the Conservative Party—do any modelling of the different effects on their representation in the House of Commons of its size being 600, 585 and 500? If they did, what were the results? He can answer that question now and remove all discussion about this.

[Lord McNally]

I have absolutely no idea whether such modelling has taken place. If someone tells me afterwards that it has and I can get my hands on it, I will send it to the noble Lord, but it really is—