Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Winston and Lord Soley

Monday 17th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston]

My Lords, perhaps I may interject, although of course I have not been a Member of the other place either. This aspect of the situation strikes me as odd, and perhaps noble Lords can explain it. In every other branch of employment that I have been involved with—in education, running an embryology laboratory, running a research laboratory, running nurses within the National Health Service organisation, looking after doctors and appointing them to a particular service within the NHS—we have tried to ensure that we employ the number of people who are needed to fulfil the employment that is there. As I understand it, no one in the discussion on the Bill seems to have actually asked the important question that some of my noble friends are asking: what is a Member of the House of Commons required to do in terms of his duty in caring for his constituency and representing it? Unless we can answer that question, it seems impossible to arrive at a satisfactory number for him to represent in a constituency.

[Lord Soley]

When I come to the next amendment, Amendment 59, I want to focus on how we decide the size of Parliament, which I think is a critical issue—more important than the numbers. One of the strands running through the debate is the question, “Why 600?”. The Government have not answered that, although they have a duty to do so.

I start from a position similar to that of my noble friend Lord Wills. I have argued before that there is a case for reducing the size of the House of Commons. The noble Lord, Lord Maples, expressed a similar view. Although I do not agree with all that the noble Lord said, there is a case for it. I seem to remember the noble Lord, Lord Baker, arguing the same thing when we were both in the House of Commons. No doubt he will correct me at some stage if I am wrong, as I may be on this, but I think that he argued at the time that the size ought to be agreed by all parties concerned. That is one of the important principles that we will come to.

The issue of the figure of 600 puzzled me, and I began to look at the background to this. The issue is not new; there has been a debate about the size of Parliament for years, as people have mentioned, but it became more intense in the early part of this century. One of the people who put it in perspective was the Conservative MP, Andrew Tyrie, who in 2004 wrote the Conservative Mainstream document called Pruning the Politicians. After the expenses scandal the phrase became “culling the politicians”, which says a lot about the strength of feeling on the issue. It bubbled away along the lines of the arguments in that document. In an article in the Independent in March 2008, Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, argued that we should cut the figure by 150.

Andrew Tyrie’s document is well argued. I do not agree with a lot of the statistics in it, where I think he has left things out about the nature of how other countries represent people within their borders, but he makes a good case for reducing the size of Parliament. However, he does two things that are very important, and I hope we will cover them more fully in the following debate on my Amendment 59. First, while he does not say that there should be all-party agreement, he says that the changes should be agreed with the Labour Party; I would change that to “agreed with all parties”. Secondly, he says that if you reduce the size of Parliament, you must reduce the size of the payroll vote as well. That is very important but is not dealt with in the Bill.

My problem with the numbers issue is that, whatever number you choose, whether it is 600, 650, 550 or whatever, it is like pulling on a loose cord on a jumper—if you pull too hard, you suddenly find that you are wearing only the sleeves. The problem is that the number in your Parliament affects a whole range of other things in your constitution. That is why this issue is so important and is a constitutional matter, and it is why I would have liked the Government to have accepted the amendment of my noble friend Lord Wills, which was drawn up by someone who had the experience and knowledge of Government to do just that.