Parliamentary Constituencies bill (Second sitting)

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 18th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Christian Matheson]

Q This is the same question I asked Mr Pratt: how responsive and flexible has the Labour party previously found the commission, the assistant commissioners and the consultation process, in terms of the representations that the party has made? How flexible are they in responding to the party’s representations?

Tom Adams: The first thing to say is that I am relatively new to this responsibility in the party. However, generally, they are quite flexible and accommodating. Particular MPs clearly have quite a large role in that, and their submissions are often taken quite seriously. The commissioners clearly do an excellent job of trying to balance all the competing priorities, but they are sometimes potentially constrained by things such as the 5% threshold. However, within the guidelines that they have, I think they do a good job of taking everything into account and coming up with proposals that are genuinely reasonable for everyone.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Q I am seeking clarification on your justification against the automaticity. You gave the example of its being at 5%, when it could be 7.5%. If the Bill went back for approval by Parliament, is it to be taken as read that, because it is set at 5%, your party would vote this down because you think it should be 7.5%? If that was to happen, the 2024 election would be fought on the current boundaries, which are 25 years out of date. Where does the balance come?

Tom Adams: Whether we would vote it down is probably a question for the politicians in my party, rather than for me; I work in a technical role at head office. Obviously, it is likely that if the Government supported the proposals, they would still pass Parliament, even if Labour voted against them. I think there is a role for Parliament in finally approving those proposals when they come back, as has been the case for previous reviews.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Q You rightly point out the size of the metropolitan boroughs in Birmingham and in my city of Leeds, which can easily have 18,000 or 19,000 people. A threshold of 5% or 7.5% will not stop you having to split wards in those big areas—they are enormous. Are we not talking arbitrarily about numbers, when we just need to get down to trying to get within the OSCE boundaries and working out the best way to split these enormous metropolitan wards?

Tom Adams: In the last review, not that many wards were split in the end. I think you are hearing evidence later from academics who have done some research on the difference between 5% and 7.5%, and the better outcomes that 7.5% produces. It is not quite an arbitrary number. Their research found that even the difference between 5% and 7.5% has quite an impact on the outcomes. While there are obviously likely to be occasions when you still need to split wards, clearly any increase in the threshold will improve your ability to maintain community ties and to not have to split wards or create constituencies that seem slightly odd.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I just add that the last time, we were able to form much bigger constituency numbers.

Tom Adams: Yes, that change will have an impact.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

Q I want to pick up on the point about wards and to explore your answer. Is there any particular reason why you do not think that wards should be split? An ordinary member of the public in a city often does not know what ward they live in. Prior to becoming involved in politics, I was not really aware of where I lived. What is the democratic principle?

Tom Adams: It certainly creates challenges from the perspective of political parties and others who are reliant on electoral geography boundaries. Given that wards are created by local Boundary Commissions to have some sense of community ties, and they are created for a reason, if you split them you are further cutting community ties, and potentially creating more challenges, in the sense that people are cut off from people who they would see as firmly part of their community by cutting across a ward. Obviously, you cannot always come up with a perfect arrangement.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Q Just as a quick point of principle, do you believe that voters in Scotland should have a greater representation than voters in Yorkshire, which has a similar population?

Geraint Day: This is coming down to the constituencies of the United Kingdom vis-à-vis the nations of the United Kingdom. This is one of the consequences of our current constitutional set-up, without a parliament for England, which Plaid Cymru is quite supportive of. The other option if you have equal levels of constituencies in the UK is a reduction in the representation of the Celtic countries of the United Kingdom. Certainly, we do not support the reduction in the number of MPs.

[Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)]

Q Speaking as someone who cut his political teeth in Wales, actually in Ceredigion, the idea of language and culture is quite an important one. I am keen to understand and probe more into the language element. If we take Ceredigion as an example, when you have been faced with scenarios in previous consultations where there has been a crossover and, as in the example given before, there is a predominantly Welsh language community with one that is less so, how would Plaid Cymru engage with that process? What would be the thought process that you would go through in that scenario?

Geraint Day: Under the rules the Boundary Commission operates with, I can give an exact example from the last review. The Boundary Commission originally proposed putting Llandrindod in with Ceredigion. Llandrindod is in Powys on the other side of the Cambrian mountains from Ceredigion. That was a very strange decision. The argument on local links was that the main trunk road to Ceredigion goes right by Llandrindod. The subsequent argument that we put together, which I think was supported by every other contributor to the response, was that that should not be the case because the linguistic links and levels of Welsh speaking in Llandrindod are much different to those in Ceredigion. Instead, we proposed to look north into Machynlleth and the Dyffryn Dyfi area and take that into the proposed constituency of Ceredigion, which was subsequently adopted by the Boundary Commission.

That worked because there was unanimity of view among those giving comments to the Boundary Commission. Where you would find difficulty is where the different parties and individuals who give evidence differ in their approach. If one or two of the parties had said, “No, we want Llandrindod to go in,” we could have ended up with a very different end result from the Boundary Commission. If it had been required to consider the impact on the Welsh language right from the start, it would not even have made the initial proposal. That is the main reasoning behind it and that is where we come from.