Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Alan Reid Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr McCann]

We are happy to resolve that problem. All the Government need to do is decouple the measures. We will vote for the AV referendum separately, and against the constituency measure. It is in the Government’s —the hon. Gentleman’s people’s—hands to resolve the matter. However, I will vote against the Bill.

Liberal Democrat voters will still harbour some disappointment about going into coalition with the Conservatives, but nobody should be under any illusions about the duplicity of Liberal Democrats in the affair. Before the election, we had to listen to the nauseating lectures of the Deputy Prime Minister, who told us that his was the only party that had in no way been tainted by the troubles of the previous Parliament. That was not the case—it is factually incorrect—but we were led to believe that the Deputy Prime Minister would arrive on his white steed and there would no longer be any dirty deeds or skulduggery in politics because the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg) would save us all. That stomach-churning hypocrisy pales into insignificance when we consider the Bill.

The Boundary Commission will be given the task of making arithmetical calculations and equalisations, and placing seats of 76,000 first, second, third, fourth and fifth in their deliberations, except in constituencies that have an area that exceeds 12,000 square kilometres, and except for the Shetland islands and the Western Isles. When I saw the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) after the details of the Bill were released, the smile could not have been taken off his face with a blowtorch because he will get that free run at the next general election.

The primary beneficiaries of all the exceptions are the Liberal Democrats. We should remember that the Deputy Prime Minister said in a speech on political reform on 7 April 2010 that only the Liberal Democrats could be trusted on political reform.

[Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is wrong. He should read the analysis of the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran). If there were no exceptions, the Highlands council area and the islands councils areas would have three seats, all Liberal Democrat. The exceptions mean that the area will have fours seats—three Liberal Democrat and one Scottish National party. The one beneficiary from the exceptions is therefore the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil).

[Mr McCann]

That was an opportune intervention, because I was about to cover that point. We cannot base the new rules on the distribution of seats on arithmetic alone and then seek to introduce measures to protect certain seats. In that way, the Government are simply protecting certain communities against others. It is simply not possible for things to be a little bit equal.

The Bill includes other measures that would be detrimental to our parliamentary system, including the arbitrary reduction of the number of constituencies and the permanent revolution resulting from the boundary changes before each Parliament. Trotsky would indeed be proud of the Bill on that basis alone. However, just in case anyone develops the mistaken and untrue impression that only Members of the House are concerned, I also have a correspondence with Keep Cornwall Whole, which demonstrates that people outside the House believe that the Bill is wrong and that it should not proceed.

The AV referendum, however meritorious in its own right, is being abused by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats as a cover for their proposals to break up and gerrymander constituencies. I ask right hon. and hon. Members on the Government Benches, particularly those who have spoken passionately on the Bill, to back the AV referendum and ditch the proposed constitutional reform of our constituencies proposed in it.