Parliamentary Constituencies bill (Third sitting)

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Clive Efford]

Q In order to achieve making sure that communities are kept intact, is it desirable that the Boundary Commission has flexibility and is not kept to a maximum of 5%?

Dr Renwick: I think there should be a maximum, but there is a good case for saying that the maximum could be extended a little bit without undue cost to the equality of the vote.

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

Q It is always dangerous to go head to head with an academic, but in terms of the 5% and the 10%, my reading of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe report is that it is a 10% variation between seats, not a 20% variation. May I clarify, Dr Renwick, that when you talk about the 5% difference, that actually gives an overall difference of 10% between seats, whereas a 10% difference would give an overall difference of 20% between seats?

Dr Renwick: What I am referring to is the guidance from the Venice Commission. My reading of that is that it implies a 10% deviation from the average. If we look at other countries, we see that in New Zealand the deviation is permitted as 5% from the average, and in Australia it is, so far as possible, 3% from the average, and not more than 10%. Therefore, numbers around 5% to 10% seem to be fairly standard. There is no answer that an academic can give you as to what is the correct number, but something in that region is appropriate.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Q To follow that up, given that we are talking about keeping communities together, as the hon. Member for Eltham has said, does the Bill need to give more clarification to the Boundary Commission for England? In Scotland, the system is much more in-depth, with smaller building blocks. I believe that Scottish constituencies do not have as many arguments as the English ones. Do we need to give more guidance about how the constituencies are built, taking into account communities, rather than change the boundary limits based on the electorate?

Dr Renwick: The difference between Scotland and England is in the practice of the Boundary Commissions with respect to splitting wards. The Boundary Commission for Scotland is much more willing to split wards than the Boundary Commission for England. As I understand it—and you heard evidence on this last week from Tony Bellringer—it is very difficult for the Boundary Commission for England to split wards, because it does not have sufficient evidence to do that. It seems clear to me that, if you can split wards in a way that does not break community ties, that is a better way of achieving the balance between the principles of equality of votes and maintaining community ties than by increasing the margin. If the Boundary Commission for England were able to split wards more often, that would certainly help the overall process.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

Q Dr Renwick and Professor Hazell, good morning. I have two quick questions. First, the two previous Boundary Commission inquiries, which were not voted on in the end, lacked political support because, I believe, they reduced the number of constituencies from 650 to 600. That did not have overall political support. The proposals would also have meant that some constituencies would simply not have reflected the communities that MPs represented. The Government have now recognised that by reverting back to the number of 650. Is it not therefore a good thing that we have that safety valve of final approval from Parliament to reflect the lack of community cohesion that might be introduced by boundaries that do not reflect community needs?

Dr Renwick: No, I do not think so. I think the principle should be that Parliament sets up the rules in the first place that will allow the boundary commissions to produce a satisfactory set of recommendations, and that those recommendations should then be implemented.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Spellar]

Q Should we have districts?

Professor McLean: Well, since we have more time than we thought, we could have a discussion about US congressional districts, but Members may wish to move on.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Q Gentlemen, thank you for giving your time today. As you have probably picked up from reading previous reports, one of the issues this evidence inquiry is trying to get to the bottom of is how we are going to advise the commissions about the best way to do these boundaries.

Building on what you have just said, Professor McLean, about keeping the right size and in terms of communities, about which one can always argue, can we look at rule 5(1)(c) in the 1986 Act, which is about keeping boundaries in existing constituencies? My question, to both witnesses, is about whether the Bill needs to have some clarifications put in it, especially around what we are struggling with regarding the Boundary Commission for England. The evidence from the Boundary Commission for England was pretty much, “We are always going to try and do it with wards, and we will just get the numbers to work.” That overrides almost all the rules in clause 5, including geographic considerations. I gave the example of a North Yorkshire ward that one can only get to by completely leaving the constituency and spending a considerable amount of time on the road, but it would make the numbers work.

Can I probe your minds on the resistance to building outside of the wards, or, in other words, splitting wards down, as they do in Scotland, in order to try to keep existing communities together? What are your views on the different definitions of county constituencies and borough constituencies? How does that play into the building of constituencies? Does the Bill need further guidance to try to equalise the United Kingdom’s approach to how it builds constituencies, with the gold standard of Scotland being a good example?

[The Chair]

Would you like to ask that to both witnesses?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Yes or whoever feels it is more appropriate for them to answer it.

Professor McLean: If John is willing, I will go first, but John will wish to add something about the practicalities of the Boundary Commission for Scotland, which he has written about in academic articles.

The presumption against disturbing existing constituencies is no longer sustainable because these are based on electorates in 2000. Population movements, in what will be 24 years before the new constituencies are implemented, will make it impossible, in more than the odd coincidental case, to give any priority to the maintaining of existing constituencies preference. I think 5% plus or minus should be enough for the boundary commissions and the county-by-county inquiries to deal with difficult situations, such as the one the Member mentioned of a large, empty area in the middle of a constituency. I take it that that is the geographical problem that the Member mentions.

There are other well-known problems of estuaries, such as the problems in the Wirral area last time. Plus or minus 5% should be enough to cope with that. At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, I think it is right that in the 2011 Act, which this Bill importantly does not modify, the plus or minus 5% is given priority over the other local ties rules.

As to whether local government wards are the essential building blocks, that is non-statutory. It is the practice of the English commission, but it has not been the practice of the Scottish commission. I will now hand the floor to John to answer that part of the question.

Professor Sir John Curtice: There is a crucial difference these days between local government wards in Scotland and those in England. Scottish local government is run under the single transferable vote in multiple constituencies system. When that system was introduced, it was introduced without changing the number of local government councillors significantly. All the wards elect three or four members. As a result, every ward in Scotland was increased by three or four. That means, therefore, that the building blocks in Scotland are large, making it difficult for the Boundary Commission to respect more badges. There are one or two instances in England, such as Birmingham, where that issue can also arise, but it is relatively limited.

It is also true—this is not the area of my own expertise—that some entrepreneurial past secretaries of the Boundary Commission for Scotland have ensured that the Boundary Commission has a much better geographically-referenced database than the one in England. I was reading some of the evidence given to the Committee last week and that came out. I am tempted to say that that is one of the advantages of living in a small country: it becomes possible to administer things in finer detail. We have referred to county and borough constituencies. That only relates to the rules for expenditure. It does not otherwise make a great deal of difference.

Beyond that, I simply observe that in this conversation and this morning, and in much of what the Committee seemed to be talking about last night, seems to be about what this Bill is not about, as opposed to what it is about. The Bill does not fundamentally change the rules of redistribution that were introduced by the 2011 Act and implemented by the Boundary Commissions in their 2013 and 2018 reviews—sadly, neither of which were implemented. Apart from changing the number of MPs, it does nothing to change that—apart from a minor and perfectly sensible change with the rules about respected local government boundaries. I suggest that at some point the Committee might want to focus on the significant changes the Bill does introduce as opposed to the areas that the Bill does not propose to change at all. I understand, of course, that some Members may wish to unpick the provisions of the 2011 Act.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Q One reason we are probing how constituencies are built is because there is removal of parliamentary oversight. It needs to be done properly the first time. You rightly referenced the size of the wards in Birmingham. I am a West Yorkshire MP. There are two councils in West Yorkshire, Kirklees and Leeds—out of the five councils—where the wards are far too big not to be split.

This comes down to guidance. As you pointed out, the large wards and the way they are managed in Scotland has allowed a more detailed approach. When you get to the arguments of whether it should be plus or minus 10% or 5%, I am seeking your view as to whether the arguments about the variations can be overcome by the guidance, which goes more explicitly to the Boundary Commission for England in splitting wards.

In the past, there has been a habit of them trying to form some strange shapes, like American congressional districts, just to get the numbers right, forming very strange communities. They have almost always then changed the first draft significantly in the second draft. The guidance that will go in this Bill, especially for the Boundary Commission for England, should try to avoid that situation.

The parliamentary oversight is going, which I believe is the correct thing to do. But we must get this right the first time and use this Bill to iron out these issues. Is this Bill strong enough, in terms of the Boundary Commission for England, to construct constituencies, which have an eye to what has gone on in the past, but do not end up with peculiar shapes and communities just to make the numbers work?

Professor Sir John Curtice: Can I respond to that? It is true that the current arrangements for parliamentary oversight do not make it very easy for the House of Commons to change the detail of the provisions. It basically has to say yes or no, and only after it has said no can the Government attempt to change the provisions of the Commission. That is the first point; otherwise, it is a guess on my part, but I would anticipate that now we are going to a House of 650 seats rather than one of 600, some of the difficulties with supposedly major constituencies may be less sharp.

The final thing to say is that even with us going for 650 seats rather than 600, the next boundary revision is bound to be a major one. Because Parliament has blocked both of the last two redistributions that it ordered, we now have boundaries that are 20 years out of date. We are also finally getting around to dealing with the differences in the allocation of constituencies to England, Scotland and Wales, so this is bound to be a disruptive redistribution. It will be somewhat less disruptive than it would have been with 600 seats, but it is bound to be disruptive, in much the same way as the one that was introduced in 1983, because that got affected by the direction of local government.

You might want to investigate the forces that have resulted in boundaries going out of date—that is, population movements, which historically for most of the post-war period meant people moving out of the inner city into more suburban and rural areas. The last analysis of this I read, which was by the expert Tony Champion, indicates that this has been going on to a lesser extent; it is notable that somewhere like London is now gaining population and is certainly not going to lose out from the current redistribution. Of course, nobody knows what is going to happen in the wake of the pandemic, but it is worth being aware that some of the demographic forces that have given rise to the kinds of inequalities we have been used to may no longer have quite the same force as in the past.

Professor McLean: If time permits, Chair, may I come in on part of the Member’s question, which was to do with whether the guidance in the Bill should be more explicit than this current draft? My view is no, for the following reasons.

The legislation is UK-wide, as you all know. As this discussion has revealed, the English and Scottish—and, may I say, Northern Irish—commissions have all taken different approaches to the local government boundary question. Those different approaches are all legitimate within the text of the Act that this Bill amends, and it does not amend that Act in any material way. Therefore, I do not think there is any need to give guidance to the Boundary Commission for England that, if it wishes, it can be more flexible in Birmingham and West Yorkshire than its predecessors have been. It already has that discretion; that discretion is exercised by the Boundary Commission for Scotland, and to pick up a point of John’s, if at the last review the Boundary Commission for England had invested in geographic information systems that were as up to date as the Scottish commission’s, some of the problems that the Member mentioned—which I know concern a lot of Members—could have been avoided. My view is that as the existing statutory framework gives the commission the authority to ignore local government boundaries if it has to, there is no need to change the draft Bill in that respect.

[Clive Efford]

Q Professor Sir John, how much does locality and shared common experience in a community influence how individuals vote?

Professor Sir John Curtice: The research on this goes back quite a way, and the answer is “to a degree”. For the purposes of answering this question, I will go back 20 years psephologically, because the psephology of party support has changed so much over the past 20 years that this is not necessarily true now. If we go back 20 years, to an era when a middle-class person was markedly more likely to vote Conservative than Labour, and the opposite was true of someone who was working class—that, by the way, is not currently the case—historically, it had long been demonstrated that if you were a middle-class person living in an area that was predominantly populated by people in working-class occupations, you were more likely to vote Labour than if you were a middle-class person living in a more middle-class area.

There were two potential forces going on there. One is that, to some degree, middle-class people who choose to live in a more working-class area may actually already be rather more of a Labour disposition, but equally, it has certainly long been argued that to some degree, you are influenced by the social interaction to which you are exposed, so if you are living in a working-class community, you are more likely to be exposed to pro-Labour arguments than if you were living in a Conservative one.

Of course, the world has moved on in terms of the demography of party support, which is much less clearly structured by class, and social interaction is no longer as geographically bound as it once was and can now take place over social media. Iain may know more than me, but it has certainly been a while since I have seen anybody doing anything major on the extent to which community makes a difference. The only thing that I would say is that, undoubtedly, one of the reasons why MPs will always be concerned about any redistribution is that it upsets the connection between them and their existing electorate.

One of the things that we certainly do know—again, this may also be relevant to your question—is that if somebody has been elected for the first time at the last election and defeated the incumbent MP from another party, there is a fairly consistent tendency now whereby, in view of the next election, that new Member, who has probably just won a marginal seat, has a great deal of incentive to be representing their community and to be visible and so on, to get something of a personal bonus. You can see that in the way that the Labour party defended some seats in 2019, with newly incumbent, first-term Labour MPs doing well, and it was similar for the Conservative party in 2017. To that extent at least, yes, you can certainly also argue that a minority of voters—in some instances a crucial minority—will vote for their individual MP rather than for the party, but of course, if you get a boundary redistribution that carves up an individual MP’s constituency, that link is broken.

In truth, in our electoral system, there is a continuous and perpetual tension. We want our electoral system to do two things: on the one hand, we want it to provide local representation, and on the other, we want it to be a system that provides a means by which the electorate can choose between alternative Governments. I am afraid that I have spent the last 40 years pointing out the potential conflict between those two objectives and that, if you wish to ensure that the system is fair in the ability of voters to choose between alternative Governments, at some point you have to let go of the emphasis on local representation.

In a sense, the debate that we are having now about mathematical equality versus respecting community ties is a sub-part of that broader debate. Decide what your elections are about: if they are about the election of individual MPs and less to do with Governments, you can focus on representing communities; if you think that it is a system for enabling us to choose between alternative Governments, which is the traditional defence of the single member plurality system, I am afraid that local representation has to be given a lower priority.

Parliamentary Constituencies bill (First sitting)

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 18th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

You are very welcome with us virtually. Thank you both for taking the time to join us and for allowing the panel to proceed.

We are now in public session to hear evidence from Tony Bellringer, secretary to the Boundary Commission for England, and Isabel Drummond-Murray, secretary to the Boundary Commission for Scotland.

Before I call the first Member to ask a question, I remind the Committee that questions should be limited to matters within the scope of the Bill. We will stick to the timings in the programme order. The Committee has agreed that for this panel we will have until 12.20 pm or thereabouts.

I ask any members of the Committee who wish to declare any relevant interests in connection with the Bill to make those declarations now.

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

Isn’t that all of us?

[The Chair]

I call the first witnesses. Will you please introduce yourselves? We will start with you, Isabel.

Isabel Drummond-Murray: I am Isabel Drummond-Murray, secretary to the Boundary Commission for Scotland.

Tony Bellringer: I am Tony Bellringer. I am the acting secretary to the Boundary Commission for England.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We have four more questions and about 11 minutes on the clock, though I will push it on to get all the questions asked, because the evidence we are getting is very good for the inquiry.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Q It is a pleasure to serve under you, Mr Paisley.

Thank you for your evidence, Mr Bellringer. It has been really informative. I want to explore the building blocks further. To pick up on the polling district, you said that you had done a piece of work and commented that it was difficult to stay on top of the reviews that came through—to be able to understand them—but, as you have also just outlined, you cannot build on shifting sands. At some point, you have to draw a line. In terms of using polling districts to build in this review, do you have a set of data sat there that you could use?

Tony Bellringer: Not this time round—because it was so expensive last time, in time and money, in the resource that had to be put in to develop it, and yet it was so instantly out of date. In the actuality, when we came to it, because in the last review we were still using wards as our building blocks—it is still our general policy to use the wards as the basic building blocks—we only split half a dozen in the final recommendations. So the times that that would need to be used under our existing policy are few compared with the amount of time and effort that needs to go into producing it, and given how quickly it goes out of date, we just felt that it was not worth doing this time around.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Q Your evidence is based on 600, of course, so a much bigger size. I am a West Yorkshire MP, but to look at Yorkshire as a whole region, if I take the situation in North Yorkshire, building as you say on consideration of rivers, mountains and motorways, the constituency in Richmond is knocking almost 85,000—according to the figures up to this point, which we were using in November—and you have to bash around all the North Yorkshire seats to get them roughly into an area. That means, if you are going to go with wards, you cannot get around the fact that you will have big mountain ranges in the way, that people will have to leave the constituency to get to other places in it. I am thinking one of the solutions is the Great Ayton ward in North Yorkshire, which you can look at to come into Thirsk and Malton, to make the numbers add up. The knock-on effect goes down and into West Yorkshire.

It is important that we get some steer on how you could get away from using wards, which is a tradition—it is not legislated that it must be wards—because it negates having to go outside the 5%, which is another Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe recommendation, that for free and fair elections seats should not vary by more than 10%, and would allow the objective of keeping communities together, of keeping county constituencies together and away from borough constituencies. In my city of Leeds, my seat is a county constituency; the other seven seats are borough constituencies. That would be giving regard to keeping those existing seats together.

I am asking both commissions about the practicalities of what recommendations you would make to the Committee before we finalise these laws—how to get to a situation in which you can use the smallest building blocks to cause the minimum disruption, which is what you are really after when looking at constituencies. I am seeking some comment on that. Mrs Miller explored it well, but just outlining—

[The Chair]

I think he has got the question, Alec. We are really appreciative.

Tony Bellringer: The policy of using wards is fairly long standing, and it has always been discussed with the representatives of the political parties in the meetings before each review commences. In the past, they have generally been supportive of that. It goes to the statutory factor of having regard to local authority boundaries, because a ward is a local authority boundary. We view a ward as almost a representation of a local tie; generally speaking, when the Local Government Commission does its work it should try to bring people of the same communities into one ward. We use that almost as a substitute.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Q I have one more question for both commissions. When you have a large constituency and perhaps have different authorities within it, has any member of the public ever made a complaint about other parts of the constituency, which may be tens or hundreds of miles away from where they live? Are their complaints based around their local community? Do you get complaints from elected politicians or members of the public about other areas of the constituency in those purer terms, or is it just about their local areas? Does it really matter to a constituent what the rest of the constituency takes in, as long as their local community is kept together?

Isabel Drummond-Murray: We certainly had a number of complaints about large constituencies bringing together communities that did not feel that they had anything in common with each other. Where possible, we made changes to reflect that. The tight tolerance of 5% meant that, initially, we had to come up with some ideas to put out for consultation. For example, we had a constituency in our initial proposal that stretched from rural south Perthshire down to urban Fife. There was very much a feeling that, “We do not have anything in common with that part of the constituency.” So yes, I think people take account of more than just whether their local community is kept together; some people have concerns about other communities that they are associated with.

[The Chair]

Q Do you agree with that, Mr Bellringer?

Tony Bellringer: Yes.

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.

Global Britain

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I can assure the hon. Lady that there has been massive consultation over a long period. It is my own personal and direct experience that the UK, although it does a fantastic job with development aid, could do even better with a powerful, single, integrated voice of the kind I am describing and which we will bring into existence in September.

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

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s decision. I know from my work with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy when I was the Vice-Chairman (International) of the Conservative Party that often there are tensions between DFID and the Foreign Office over its funding. Furthermore, as he will know, our friends and allies in the Caribbean felt very let down after the hurricanes when they could not get the support they needed. He will also be aware of the money we have put into the refugee camps for the Syria crisis and other things. Can he confirm, therefore, that this decision is not a watering down but will result in a stronger and more efficient approach and that the most vulnerable people in society and the programmes we have to do will get an enhanced service from the UK?

[The Prime Minister]

That is right. It was one of the absurdities of the rules of the Disasters Emergency Committee that vulnerable island states in the Caribbean were not eligible for ODA, and we had to fight to get that change. Now with this new super-Department we will be able to argue as one across our friends and partners around the world for new perspectives on those problems, and work together to tackle them.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 2nd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith]

And so do I. And so does every single Member of Parliament in this House if they are working hard for their constituents. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman mangled his words at the end of his sentence or if he is making a different point, which is that the electoral register ought to be based on everybody whom he helps in his constituency. That could not be so, because that would, for example, put people who are not citizens of this country on the electoral register so I do not think that that is a good argument.

Let me turn to the other key changes in the Bill. It will introduce a longer boundary review cycle, with reviews taking place every eight years. We think an eight-year cycle will provide for the regular updating of constituencies, but without the disruption of constant change. The Bill will slightly shorten the timetable of the next boundary review by three months to two years and seven months. That is a one-off change which gives us the best chance of updated boundaries being in place ahead of the next general election, recognising that political parties, electoral administrators, electors and candidates need to know those boundaries in good time.

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

Can my hon. Friend just clarify the eight-year cycle? My concern is that with five-year Parliaments we will eventually end up with boundaries coming into effect a couple of months before an election and we will be unable to get the legal parts in place.

[Chloe Smith]

Yes, I am happy to do that. I think there are two points to that clarification. First, we calculate broadly that an eight-year cycle would give us a likelihood of two elections under one set of boundaries and then a third election on a changed set. It is that I to which referred when I said it gives a balance between change and continuity. It is important for constituents to know who their MP is and to do as they wish to do, which is to hold us all to account. Secondly, we operate very carefully to the Gould principle, which states that we should not make changes to electoral matters less than six months before the relevant election. That is a point of practicality. It is a pragmatic thing. It is something I always have in mind when working on elections with those behind the scenes as the Minister with responsibility for election policy. I can give my hon. Friend and the House an assurance that we want the principle to be in place here. There should always be a clear six months between changes to how elections are run and the running of elections.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chloe Smith]

I think the hon. Gentleman will find that that remains in the legislation that is already in place. I was going to come on to that in just a moment, giving the list of factors that must be taken into account, but I can assure him he will find what he asks for in that list.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. I will listen to what she says next, and I will come on to this in my speech, but I just want to get her view on it. What is the reasoning behind trying to keep the boundaries within one local authority? My constituents, for example, have no idea what the boundaries of my constituency are and whether they are within the boundaries of North Yorkshire County Council, West Yorkshire or Leeds City Council. I want to probe her on why she thinks it is important to stay within local authority boundaries.

[Chloe Smith]

That is not exactly what I have said. What I will make clear in just a second is that there is a list of factors that the boundary commissions must have regard to in the determination. I am not saying that any one of those factors is better than the others, and neither are the boundary commissions. There is a list of factors set out in the existing legislation dating from the 1980s, and we are simply saying that we leave that as it is. He will find the answer to his concern there.

Let me talk about how the proposed constituencies will be brought into effect. It will be done automatically by an Order in Council, without debate or approval by Parliament. I know that this is of some interest to Members. The purpose of this change is to bring certainty to the boundary review process. It is to give confidence that the recommendations of the independent boundary commissions will be brought into effect without interference or delay. There will be no change to the Government’s obligation to give effect to the recommendations of the boundary commissions. In fact, as part of this measure, the Secretary of State’s current ability to amend the Order in Council if rejected by Parliament will be removed. The Executive’s power will, if anything, be reduced.

If this Bill does not proceed today because it is blocked, as Labour Members want to do, they will leave more power in the hands of the Executive. Of course, they used that power—or, should I even say, abused that power—in 1969, when the Labour party intentionally blocked the independent boundary review’s recommendations. We do not think that that is the kind of thing that should happen.

We think that, first and foremost, the boundary commissions are independent organisations. They develop their proposals through a robust and thorough process involving extensive public consultation. It is really important that their impartial recommendations are brought into effect promptly and with certainty. That avoids wasting public time and money, and it ensures the independence of the process. Countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand use similar approaches to those proposed in the Bill with no interference.

--- Later in debate ---

[Cat Smith]

I completely dispute the hon. Member’s argument; that is absolutely not the case. I am very keen that the Government should be able to get on with this boundary review. I want new boundaries to be in place ahead of the next general election, because at the moment we stand in this House representing constituencies based on data that is two decades old. We should absolutely move on from the status quo, but I am saying that we should ask for a quota of 7.5%, because we could then keep community ties together and represent constituencies that actually look like the communities we stand here and claim to represent.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

The hon. Lady has come on to the 5%, rather than moving on from that, but the OSCE standard around the world states that there should be a variance of no more than 10% from constituency to constituency if there is to be a fair election. Would the hon. Lady like to develop her argument in relation to that international standard?

[Cat Smith]

The Opposition recognise the need for constituencies to be broadly as equal as possible, but anyone who stands up in this House and says that they truly believe that all constituencies should be equal should look at the data from December 2019. If we were to take that data on how the electorate looked and say that every constituency had to be exactly equal, every constituency would have to have an electorate of 72,613. Not 72,614 or 72,612—those figures would be outside the quota. There will always need to be a variance, and it is a question of striking a balance between having constituencies that are broadly equal and constituencies that represent their community ties.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It seems that this afternoon in some of the debate we are dancing on the head of a pin. We all seem to be in favour, and we are now down to whether the variance should be 5% or 7.5%. I come back to the point I made earlier. Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe international standards recommend a variance of 10%.

It is clear from the debate so far that people are worried about the splitting of communities. A lot of that is because the Boundary Commission takes the approach of building on wards. I probed the Minister on this earlier, and was grateful for the analysis that she gave. As she said, the Boundary Commission is following the rules that have been set down. What needs to change is the idea of following county boundaries and local authority boundaries. You know what? Our constituents really do not care whether their MP happens to have in other parts of the constituency council areas from another authority. Today constituents just tap in their address to find out who their MP or councillor is. I doubt that people in the south of my constituency know the small villages in the north of it.

In fact, many of my constituents are surprised at the size of my constituency in the city of Leeds. There are eight constituencies in the city. One seat is a third of the geographical area. So it is difficult to see where the argument lies for the Boundary Commission saying, “We must keep constituencies within a local authority because it confuses people if we don’t.” It does not. People are only interested in who their MP is and who empties their bins. They really do not care which other bits of the constituency might have other bits in it.

On that basis, by far and away the most sensible thing that the Boundary Commission can do in this electoral review is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) has said several times, to build on polling districts, which are much smaller. To put that into perspective, in the city of Leeds the wards are simply too big to build at 650 seats, even with plus or minus 7.5%. The commission has to split wards. Oddly, I have a polling district in my constituency, not just a ward, that is split between me and the Leeds East constituency.

The reality is that we all love our constituencies. I absolutely adore my constituency. It is my home, my community. I am into my third decade of living in my constituency. It is a matter of huge pride and honour every day I come into this place that I represent my home area and people. It is breaking my heart to lose any of my constituency. No one wants to say, “Well it is time to lose this bit here”; the reality is that my constituency is too big. It will have to have areas chopped off it. That breaks my heart because I love every single part of my constituency, from the mining heritage to the farming heritage to all the areas around. I have seen how it has grown in the years I have lived there—decades, now. It is very important to me, and I represented it on Leeds City Council before I was honoured to become its MP.

If we build on polling districts, a great number of constituencies will not have to have huge changes made to them. We may be able to keep the majority of the seats as they are and take just some areas out and put them in other constituencies. The vast majority of constituencies may be able to stay the same. That is important, because for me it is a matter of huge pride, honour and love for every single one of my constituents. It will be deeply upsetting to lose some of them, but it is going to have to happen. If we build on polling districts, we can limit the impact that the boundary review will have.

Future Relationship with the EU: Negotiations

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Tuesday 19th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman, the distinguished former Cabinet Secretary for Justice in the Scottish Government. We want to co-operate with all our neighbours on law enforcement, but we cannot submit to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.

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

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is imperative that we leave on 31 December? On 1 January, new financial arrangements are coming into the EU. A massive net contribution would already come from the UK, but with the rejection of corona bonds and bigger EU budgets, our net contribution would be much bigger, and that would hamper our efforts to get our own economy back on track.

[Michael Gove]

I am very grateful for the question from my hon. Friend. He is absolutely right, and that is one of the very important reasons why we need to extricate ourselves from any further payments. I also congratulate him on looking so well. I thought for a second that he had become the Member of Parliament for High Barnet.

Transport Infrastructure

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I congratulate the Prime Minister on grasping the nettle and building this infrastructure in the north, which is really welcome and delivers on our manifesto promises. One reason for the rising costs in Leeds is the incompetence of Leeds City Council—with a Labour leader, who, quite frankly, could not organise an event at one of the local breweries—which is putting the station in a totally inappropriate place. As part of the review, will my right hon. Friend look properly at where the station is located and the ability to use existing rail routes and infrastructure?

[The Prime Minister]

There will be a review—I must be clear with the House. We will be going forward with the whole programme, but we will ensure that we get proper value and proper political leadership and grip of the whole programme.

Debate on the Address

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure and an honour to follow a maiden speech. No, I did not agree with everything said by the hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood), who is new to this place, but remarkably fluent and adept at using the Chamber. However, I absolutely applaud his desire to speak for all his constituents, whether or not they voted for him. I am sure we will be hearing much more from him in this place.

It is an enormous honour to have been re-elected for the third time in a very short number of years to represent my home area of Banbury, Bicester and 62 villages, and it is a great excitement to be part of what the Prime Minister describes as his “stonking” majority. It is also a great pleasure to speak in this debate and to follow some very important speeches including that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), who spoke—as she has done so powerfully before—about social justice. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) also made a very important speech about how we should come together and celebrate being the party of one nation.

It is fair to say that Banbury had the closest result in the nation in the referendum, as we voted to leave by 500 votes. Three years ago probably about half of my constituents wanted to get Brexit done. That is not how they feel now. I have lost count of the number of times people told me our slogan on the doorstep before I said it. There was a coalescence of views from former liberals and former Labour voters, who reinforced again and again their strong belief in democracy, doing the right thing and respecting how people voted three years ago; they were passionate about it. It is important that this Government—this stonking democracy—delivers for everyone. I am thrilled, having gone on about it rather a lot in the previous Parliament, that if tomorrow goes as the Prime Minister expects it to, we will leave the EU with a deal. I also hope that his negotiations for a trade deal next year go as well as he hopes, and that we are able to protect the motor industry in Banbury and the just-in-time jobs on which we depend locally, in so much of our area.

Far more important to Banbury than the EU, though, is the Horton General Hospital. That is what people really wanted to talk about on the doorstep, day after day. I was able to tell them that, with the new investment from this Government, it is likely that we will be able to build a new modular set of buildings on the Horton site that will make the hospital truly fit for the future. I noticed after a very minor and very silly accident that I had during the campaign that we now have a severe parking problem at Horton General Hospital because so many more procedures are being undertaken there. I want to make sure that the buildings are fit for purpose and that we are able to bring maternity back to Banbury in the very near future so that babies are able to be born there, as I was. People also wanted to talk to me about school funding. We live in a historically underfunded area, and I was glad to hear what we heard over the course of the campaign on this issue.

But right up the agenda, before Brexit and just after the Horton, was the environment. That was the subject that people—women in particular, but people of all ages—wanted to talk about on the doorstep, in hustings or in schools anywhere I went. This was an ambitious Queen’s Speech on that agenda, but real change in this area will require from all of us behavioural change that is going to be difficult. I am pleased that I was able to work in a small way on creating ideas like the Great British Spring Clean and in helping to reduce single-use plastics during the last Parliament. There are real green opportunities and a real chance now for the Government to shape policy both across industry and across people’s lives on this agenda, and I look forward to working on that.

Something I learned particularly at the end of the last Parliament was the importance of cross-party working when I was proud to take part in the group of MPs for a deal, which had some enormous success when 19 very brave Opposition Members voted with Conservative Members for the Second Reading of the Bill that became the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. I pay tribute, in particular, to my friend from Don Valley who lost her seat and who did more, perhaps, than any other to represent leave voters on the Opposition Benches at a very difficult time in our parliamentary democracy. Working cross-party was a leap of faith, but, to my mind, it was worth it, and we gained more than we could quantify, perhaps, from the unpleasant atmosphere that surrounded those very difficult votes.

I hope that in this Parliament, despite our stonking majority, we will work together on the environment and, in particular, on social care and on something I have a very personal interest in—achieving good deaths for our citizens—both of which were mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess). As he said, we know that just as taxes happen to us, death will happen to us all. It is important that we focus and work together on the way that we enable people’s deaths to take place—we hope at home and we hope peacefully.

Another personal priority of mine is justice. During this Parliament I will take a keen interest in the work of the new royal commission on justice that has been announced today. Of course, I welcome that. I welcome any interest in justice; I have been banging on about this area for the past 25 years. Most of my waking thoughts for the past 25 years have been about our justice system. Of course a royal commission is a good thing, but I very much hope that it acts speedily, that the right people are appointed to it, and that it looks very closely at the reports of the Justice Committee, of which I am rather proud, from the last two Parliaments—particularly those on probation and on the prison population, which is quite a large and weighty report, I must confess.

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

Building on the issue of cross-party working, which is very important, the hon. Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) mentioned sentencing. May I urge my hon. Friend to take a serious look at this? Two young lads, Harry Whitlam and Callum Wark, were constituents of mine killed by drunk drivers. Callum’s killer, a Bulgarian HGV driver who drank a bottle of vodka, drove straight over his car and killed him on the day before his 20th birthday, was out of prison in three years. Eleven-year-old Harry Whitlam’s killer, who was five times over the drink-drive limit and killed him on a farm, could be prosecuted only under the health and safety Acts and got 18 months. When my hon. Friend looks into sentencing and bringing this cross-party work together, will she ensure, for the families who mourned the loss of their children—Callum was an only child—that people recognise that if they intoxicate themselves, these are not accidents but manslaughter and should carry a similar sentence?

[Victoria Prentis]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. He raises a very serious issue that has been discussed a great deal on both sides of the House over the last few years. He will have heard the Prime Minister give an undertaking earlier to incorporate that in the sentencing review, but he touches on an important difficulty that we have when talking about justice.

When we consider sentencing, we think about a punitive element, but I hope we will remember that the aim of us all—even those of us who have spent 25 years often advocating for prisoners’ rights—is to reduce crime and ensure that we protect future victims by stopping crime from ever happening again. It is so important that we concentrate on reforming people while they are in prison and do not lock them up and throw away the key, because nearly everybody who goes into prison is coming out again. It is really important that we have informed debate in this House. We must recognise that we are over the 20% mark of people in prison having committed a sexual offence. A large number of sexual offenders in prison are coming out, and we have to think very carefully about the treatment they are given in prison, the effort we put into reforming them and how we supervise them when they are released. That is my band- wagon, as you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, having heard me talk about it before. I would like in this Parliament to concentrate once again on the justice sphere, and I hope that I will be able to do so.

It is a great honour to have been re-elected and to be part of an enthusiastic, one nation Government who are going to get things done. I would like to conclude by asking everyone to remember that Christmas is a time of enormous good will, but it also gives us a few days off to reflect and think about what we are going to do better next year. Merry Christmas to all, and I hope we come back refreshed and enthused about getting Brexit done and everything else we want to do.

Brexit Negotiations

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Thursday 3rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Obviously, what we are proposing is to bring powers over UK fish back to the people of Scotland. It is quite astonishing that the SNP continue to shrug off and to refuse the ability of Scotland to run its own fisheries—quite extraordinary.

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

May I welcome my right hon. Friend’s approach since he has become Prime Minister to getting this matter moving forward? Indeed, may I thank him for spending well over 500 minutes, getting close to 600 minutes, at the Dispatch Box, answering questions on this issue, and I believe that he has approached it with statesmanship, workmanship and a scientific approach to get things done. Yesterday, when I backed my Prime Minister’s deal, I got some—let us just call it—fruity questions on Twitter about how I could be supporting the deal, having always wanted a deal. Does he agree that this is the way to get a deal? For those who want to leave with a deal, this is compromise and it is moving us forward. Those who were quick to bounce down to the media before even the political analysts had a chance to look at the deal gave the game away that they are not interested in a deal and they are not interested in honouring democracy.

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I think that it is quite likely that I will spend many more minutes at this Dispatch Box elucidating these matters, and I am very happy to do so. None the less, he is making the crucial point, which is that, of course, many Members of this House are opposed to no deal and what they see as the damaging consequences of no deal, even though, as I have tried to reassure the House, we can greatly minimise those impacts. If Members are opposed to no deal, they really logically ought to support this deal as the way forward. It is very creative and very constructive. It takes the country forward and delivers on the mandate of the people.

Priorities for Government

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I was relying on the very clear advice of a very distinguished colleague of mine. I will undertake to write to the hon. Lady with further and better particulars about the dispute that seems to have arisen between us about that point of fact.

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

My right hon. Friend, I know to my core, is a great one nation Conservative. In that spirit, will he find time in his very busy schedule to take a close look at my six-year campaign to ban unpaid internships, which I am sure he agrees would bring great meritocracy to this country?

[The Prime Minister]

I absolutely endorse my hon. Friend’s campaign. We should be a meritocracy and people should be able to access jobs not according to who they know, but according to their talents. He is entirely right.