Parliamentary Representation

Debate between Alan Reid and John Stevenson

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Westminster Hall

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) on securing the debate. I agree that when the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill was on the Floor of the House, we did not have an opportunity to explore the issues as fully as we would have liked. I am glad to have the opportunity to do that today.

The role and purpose of Members of Parliament can be divided into two separate functions. First, we effectively form an electoral college for electing a Prime Minister, and secondly, we represent communities. Unlike the Scottish Parliament, for example, there is no formal vote in the House of Commons to elect a Prime Minister. As a Government can exist only if they have the confidence of the House of Commons, Members of Parliament effectively form an electoral college for electing a Prime Minister. It is clear that for the fair election of a Prime Minister, Members of Parliament ought to represent constituencies that have the same number—or as near as possible to the same number—of constituents.

The other role of Members of Parliament is to represent communities. It is obvious that not every community in the country is exactly the same size, and it is fair to have slight discrepancies in the number of people in each constituency, particularly when taking into account that representational role. When the representational role was originally introduced, for many centuries Members of Parliament represented whole boroughs or counties, some of which had more than one representative. In the early days, the representational role was considered more important and boundaries were drawn to that effect. Obviously, as the years went on and people moved, it became more important to have, as far as possible, the same number of electors represented by each Member of Parliament. However, we still have those two roles. Clearly, the role of an electoral college would support having exact numbers in each constituency, while the role of representation would need a bit of flexibility. We must reconcile those two different roles.

Until this Bill, the reconciliation of those two functions was left exclusively to the Boundary Commission. It has always had the flexibility to take community boundaries into account, rather than just seek the same number of electors in each constituency.

[John Stevenson]

Could that difference not be dealt with by the ways in which Members of the House of Commons and Members of the House of Lords are elected? That is a way those two issues could be reconciled.