Parliamentary Constituencies Bill (Seventh sitting)

Debate between Alec Shelbrooke and Christian Matheson

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 30th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Paisley. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ceredigion on having tabled this probing amendment, because our whole debate about clause 6 has emphasised the point about local ties and local communities. We must use this Committee to emphasise to the boundary commissions that although we do not necessarily need to legislate—the hon. Member for Ceredigion presented this amendment as a probing amendment, to spark that debate—we are discussing a very important section of this Bill, as I said last week, and it is incumbent on the boundary commissions to take notice of what has been said.

Rule 5 in the 1986 Act is exceptionally important. One can only draw on one’s local experience, so I come back to Leeds, because that is my area; it is where I live in Yorkshire, but there is a world of difference between inner Leeds and outer Leeds. The communities are very different. I have made reference to the long-serving previous Member for Leeds East, George Mudie, who was horrified at the thought of such different communities coming into an area that he had represented for so long. I hope that when the boundary commissions do the reviews, they take real notice of the debates about clause 6. Intelligent and sensible points have been made by Committee members on both sides of the Committee during this debate, which should act as the key guidance. Rather than us putting things on the face of the Bill, the commissions should consider the over-driving will and well-thought-out arguments in all the areas we have debated.

Again, I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on having tabled a thought-provoking and important probing amendment to this Bill, because it is important that we probe all of its aspects. Everything that has been said during this debate—even on the comical side, such as the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood, on the other side of the Pennines, and I joshing last week about the wars of the roses—shows the importance of local identities and how they are put together. That is a very important aspect, and I hope the boundary commissions will take notice of it when they are drawing up their first draft.

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

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Alec Shelbrooke]

We are almost straying into new clause 2, which I think we will debate this afternoon. The hon. Gentleman is talking about how much easier it is with the 7.5%, and I hope that we can explore that further. In Leeds and in Kirklees, two West Yorkshire constituencies, 7.5% does not do it; we still have to split wards. Perhaps he can challenge my argument this afternoon.

[Christian Matheson]

I would not challenge the right hon. Gentleman. I take the advice that his local knowledge makes him an expert to give. We listen to each other and say, “Actually, in those circumstances it wouldn’t work.” However, the number of areas where we would not need to do that would be far fewer. I think that the Leeds issue, with wards of 17,000, is quite an extreme one. I suspect that some of those will have to be split anyway, but we make heavy weather by making the number of those instances, and their frequency, much greater as a result.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Alec Shelbrooke and Christian Matheson

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 25th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Christian Matheson]

The hon. Member for Loughborough —forgive me. I do not know her well, although I know the Minister, because we have been sat together in statutory instrument Committees many times. She listens; I do not always agree with her, and she does not always agree with me, but she listens. The hon. Member for Walsall North and I have worked together on a couple of matters, and if I may say so, I consider him a friend. He is on the other side of the House, but I trust him to listen, at least.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

He is a Whip!

[Christian Matheson]

He is for now; he will not be after I have said that. [Laughter.] I know him, and I trust him to listen, but I also trust him to take the best collective view, which is what I think most hon. Members do.

One of the depressing aspects of the evidence sessions was that people who were not MPs but were senior academics were saying, “I don’t trust MPs.” That plays into a narrative that I object to. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I trust MPs, including hon. Members on the other side of the House who I know and have worked with on cross-party issues. I believe that, even if I disagree with their political principles or their position, they are probably doing this job for the right reasons.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christian Matheson]

Yes, the Wilson Government in ’69. I ask the right hon. Lady what the difference is between political considerations at the end of the process and political considerations at the start of the process, when the criteria are set out. We have to get the balance right. That bookending with a return to Parliament is a good thing.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned setting out criteria for setting the boundaries. That is what the Bill does, and we will vote on it in Committee and on the Floor of the House. Once the Bill is passed, the criteria will have been set, so we will not have removed parliamentary oversight and given it to the Executive. The House of Commons and the other place will vote on the criteria being set out.

[Christian Matheson]

The right hon. Gentleman is right, and that is the nature of parliamentary democracy, but it is also true that at any one point—in the past few years it has tended to be the exception rather than the rule, but we are now back in the rule again—one party has a majority and can drive through its preferences for the criteria. Later, I shall pay tribute to the Minister for showing some flexibility on the matter, but the fact is that the criteria are set by the majority party. That is why there is politics at one end and politics at the other. We have to recognise that.

Let me come back to the issue of the safety valve. I want to respond to something that the right hon. Member for Basingstoke said in her speech, when she talked about inappropriate political interference. Let us be clear: my party did not want the reduction from 650 to 600 seats; I do not think that the nationalist parties wanted it, nor did the majority of Conservative Members, including—I suspect—a majority of those on the Government Front Bench. I do not know whether it counts as inappropriate political interference, but the reason those changes did not go through was that there was not automaticity at the time, and hon. Members simply did not support the change. They would have voted for it on Second Reading, but that is very different, particularly for Government Members.

Let us talk about the practicality of that: it is very different for Government Members to vote against something on Second Reading and then have private conversations, which we all know go on, to make changes. That is the safety valve that non-automaticity—if I may use that phrase—provides. Bringing that process back to the House of Commons and the House Lords would provide that safety valve. We know about the 1969 event because the history books tell us about it, but such occasions are, largely, very rare.

Normally, the changes would go through, but they have not on the last two occasions because they simply lacked the support in Parliament, for genuine reasons. For example, as the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell said, the view on the Conservative side changed to the idea that leaving Parliament in those conditions no longer stood. Of course, if we had had automaticity, hon. Members would not have had the opportunity to do that, we would have left the European Parliament and we would have been down to 600 seats.

This is not a wrecking amendment; it would maintain parliamentary approval as a safety valve in case the Boundary Commission got the review wrong. During the evidence sessions, we heard the phrase “marking our own homework” about MPs. That is misleading and is not what is happening. As I mentioned to Professor Wyn Jones in the first evidence session, we give the Boundary Commission its criteria; it goes off and does the job, consults, does more of the job, consults more and then comes up with the final proceedings; and then, the process rightly comes back to Parliament to tick the boxes and say, “Have they done exactly what they were asked to do according to the criteria?” There is nothing wrong with that at all.

That is absolutely normal procedure. Anybody who is doing any type of project is given the terms and criteria, and off they go to do it. The people in charge can then come back and say, “Yes, that job is done.” There is no desire on this side of the Committee to hold the Bill up any longer, but it is absolutely right that we have final parliamentary approval to ensure that the job has been done properly and that we are able to sell what the Boundary Commission gives us to the communities we serve, so that the new boundaries reflect those communities. I urge hon. Members, particularly on the Government Benches, think of this not as a wrecking amendment, but as one that would maintain Parliament’s role and sovereignty in that whole procedure.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Paisley. I want to make a few points about automaticity and why it is worth removing. The hon. Member for City of Chester just made the point that if the change to 600 seats had gone through, that it is where we would be, but we have changed our minds before. That is true for any legislation. No Government can tie the hands of a future Government, who can bring in any Bill they wish. Earlier, I said with a certain flippancy to the hon. Member for Glasgow East that we could increase the number of seats to 700. That does remain an option, of course; any Government can move boundaries or introduce any Bill they want in a future Parliament. Indeed, this Government could do that by tabling an amendment later on.

As the hon. Member for City of Chester said, we were in slightly extraordinary times in the last decade, with coalition and minority Governments instead of majority Governments. That gave the House of Commons a huge amount of power. It also showed that the House of Commons could introduce Bills that the Government did not want, and those Bills went through. It was an extremely powerful time for Parliament. There is still that ability to bring a Bill to stop the boundaries, even with automaticity. With a majority Government, of course, it would probably fall.

[Christian Matheson]

Members can bring in a Bill, but the Government still have to move the money resolution.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Absolutely. As the hon. Gentleman will know, however, the former Speaker showed the House that there is a way to twist everything, so none of these things is insurmountable.

My argument is simple. When we talk about MPs voting at the end, I think the argument is false, because Parliament has always had the ability to vote. I agree with the hon. Member for City of Chester that whether that is at the beginning or end, the Executive in Parliament have that power over what happens, yet it is still a parliamentary process.

Sometimes the arguments we have can seem esoteric to the public. Oddly enough, the boundaries and the reduction in Parliament did cut through to them. We may view this as a technical argument, but it was relayed on the doorstep several times over many years that constituents asked whether the House of Commons would be cut to 600 seats. The connection the public make is that they do not like politicians, and they want fewer of us, but that point did cut through and there was frustration that things had not happened.

I do not like the phrase, “Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.” It is flippant. It undermines the thought processes that we give to this issue. There were, without doubt, specific moments—political moments in political history—that stopped those boundaries happening, as people looked at what went on.

At the very start of our proceedings on 18 June, Mr Paisley, you said:

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

To which I chuntered from a sedentary position:

“Isn’t that all of us?”––[Official Report, Parliamentary Constituencies Public Bill Committee, 18 June 2020; c. 5.]

It is impossible for us not to have an interest in what will happen to our seats. I do not believe that that is because we need to pay our mortgages. Of course that self-interest comes into someone keeping their job, but I believe it is deeper than that. The hon. Member for City of Chester was elected with a majority of 92.

[Christian Matheson]

It was 93.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I have done the hon. Gentleman out of one vote. He will forgive me if I am unaware of what his majority is now.

[Christian Matheson]

It is 6,164.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I do not know him particularly well, but he strikes me as a Member who cares about his community and has built that up. I took on the seat of Elmet and Rothwell in 2010, a newly formed seat with a Labour majority of 6,000. My majority at the last election was 17,353.

I have worked that seat, day-in and day-out, with each of my constituents, not because I am trying to secure my job, but because I love my community and working for my constituents. I have lived in my constituency my whole adult life. There is, therefore, an emotional tug on a seat that has 81,000 people and would absolutely have to change with these boundaries. Even if the later amendment of 7.5% went through, the seat would still have to change.

I doubt there is an hon. Member in this room who wants to give up part of their constituency. As the hon. Member for City of Chester says, we do care. We are in it for the right reasons. We want to represent our communities. Many of us—like myself—have lived in our communities throughout our adult life, and it is a matter of pride and honour that we represent them.

I get great joy—not for any narcissistic reasons—from the fact that when I am shopping in my local town, about 5 miles from where I live in my constituency, people come up to me all the time and ask me things. That is not narcissism; it is the fact that I am their representative, and I always wanted to be somebody who they could come up to and speak to.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Alec Shelbrooke and Christian Matheson

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 25th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Christian Matheson]

I will briefly make two observations and pose a question that the Minister might be able to answer. On the amendment tabled my the hon. Member for Glasgow East, I think we heard in evidence that the Scottish building blocks reflect the reorganisation of local government in Scotland. As such, they are slightly different from those in England and Wales—perhaps in terms of size, although the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell has talked about wards of 17,000 people in Leeds, which are extremely large. I hope that we do not take our own experiences of wards in our areas—although I might do just that in a moment—and impose them on other parts of the United Kingdom where they are not appropriate.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Just to quickly address the hon. Gentleman’s point—it is something that I did not say—he is quite right to say that there are 17,000, 18,000 or 19,000 people in a ward in Leeds. We have similar issues in Kirklees, and I think Birmingham has been mentioned. I am thinking about specific areas where there are huge wards, created from a bunch of wards—in order to reach the right number—that contain totally disparate communities. That is the area we need to look at. In the metropolitan constituencies and councils, that is really important. That might help the hon. Gentleman.

[Christian Matheson]

I am grateful for that clarity. I am less keen on formally using polling districts as building blocks—we will come to this issue when we debate a different amendment—on the basis that they lack the formality of a consulted-on review by an independent body.

I have a question for the Committee that might be within the expertise of an hon. Member or the Minister. In my constituency, I already have split wards. I share one ward with my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) and another with the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson). Split wards already exist, and it is not clear why there needs to be consideration of introducing them into the legislation now, if they are already possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christian Matheson]

I am most grateful for that. That might well be the case, although the boundary review area was Cheshire as a whole. I suspect the boundary commission would not want to go over the boundary review area, but that might well be a possibility.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

The hon. Gentleman is being most generous in giving way. There is a split polling district between me and the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon). I have about 26 houses from one of his large polling districts in my constituency; there is also the M1 motorway between my constituency and his. It makes no sense at all and creates some issues. It is noticeable that, in constituencies where there has been a local boundary change afterwards and there is a split across constituencies, the public are not really affected by that. That point was made in relation to what happens when we split wards and look at polling districts. The public are interested in who their MP, councillor and local authority are. I do not think they particularly mind if a different part of the constituency uses a different local authority.

[Christian Matheson]

With the greatest of respect to the right hon. Gentleman, he is now talking about split polling districts—he is doing my head in. My head is fried. I might just jump out the window.

On the contribution of the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton, it might be, as the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell said, that previous local government boundaries were superimposed on pre-existing parliamentary boundaries. That is entirely possible. If there is some clarification, that is fine. If split wards are permissible, that may go some way towards achieving our aims. I am grateful for that contribution.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am not a historian, but there was no war between Berkshire and Hampshire—no wars of the roses.

[Christian Matheson]

I am listening to the points being made by the right hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Member for Basingstoke, but I am not quite clear where the consensus lies. There is an administrative issue that I would ask him to consider when making his argument. He might not want parliamentary boundaries to reflect local government boundaries—no, to be fair, he does not want that to be a primary concern—but there has to be administration of elections, and the fewer local authorities that a constituency is spread across the better.

Once those elections have taken place, there is also less of a workload for a Member of Parliament when he or she represents one local authority, or in some cases two. It becomes difficult to represent more than two local authorities, and the level of service given to constituents is less. Will the right hon. Gentleman take that into account?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making those points, because I have done some research into that. My constituency is covered only by Leeds City Council, and only five wards of it, because we have such big wards—I have 15 councillors in my constituency. In fact, in most of the Leeds constituencies, there are only four wards, which might give him some idea of where we are. In the Morley and Outwood constituency, the Outwood wards are under the Wakefield authority. The Selby and Ainsty constituency, which is in North Yorkshire, has North Yorkshire County Council, Selby District Council and parts of Harrogate Borough Council and Craven District Council. Many seats are spread over more than one local authority.

I have spoken to my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams)—he is my neighbour—and asked him about the specifics, such as whether it creates problems. He says that, overall, he is able to deal with those areas. There is a distinction between spreading across authorities in rural areas and in joint metropolitan areas, or things like that. Perhaps that is what the hon. Member for City of Chester refers to.

[Christian Matheson]

The right hon. Gentleman is being generous in giving way. I am concerned about constituencies spread across more than two council areas. Two is manageable, but I do not believe that three would be, which is why I disagree with his view that we should ignore local authority boundaries.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

As I said, my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty has four local authorities in his constituency, but I seriously take on board what the hon. Gentleman says about more than two authorities. That still comes back to the point that I am making—a constituency does not have to stay within one local authority. We can keep like communities together and make that work—people want the communities that they understand—especially when a region has a situation: North Yorkshire is half a seat short and West Yorkshire is half a seat short, so there will have to be that crossover. It should not just be an arbitrary line drawn on a map; it is about having regard to like communities.

The only point that I am trying to bring out through this probing amendment—I hope the Boundary Commission for England will look at a way to do it—is that, although some of these things seem obvious, actually in communities they are not so obvious. That is why I used the example of the people of Sherburn in Elmet, who are in North Yorkshire and are covered by Selby District Council and North Yorkshire County Council. They are in a different constituency from me in West Yorkshire and the Leeds City Council area, but they think I am their MP because my constituency has the word “Elmet” in it.

There are local considerations that cannot be defined by the local boundaries. I hope that this probing amendment is able to bring out the need for guidance and advice, which we can give to the Boundary Commission and say, “These things are not as vital.” I am sure that it will have heard the hon. Member for City of Chester, who said that two authorities do not seem to be a problem, but it is stretching it when we start to move beyond that.

Parliamentary Constituencies bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Alec Shelbrooke and Christian Matheson

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

[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.

Parliamentary Constituencies bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Alec Shelbrooke and Christian Matheson

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.