Debates between Alec Shelbrooke and Shaun Bailey during the 2019-2024 Parliament

Thu 18th Jun 2020
Parliamentary Constituencies bill (Second sitting)
Public Bill Committees

Committee stage: 2nd sitting & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons

Parliamentary Constituencies bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Alec Shelbrooke and Shaun Bailey
Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 18th June 2020

(4 years, 6 months ago)

Public Bill Committees
Read Full debate Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020 View all Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Notices of Amendments as at 16 June 2020 - (17 Jun 2020)
Alec Shelbrooke Portrait Alec Shelbrooke
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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 Portrait Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)
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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.