Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 18th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone). He made a thoughtful and powerful contribution on the issue. Our politics might not be the same, but he is undoubtedly a champion for parliamentary democracy, and his contribution shone through in that respect.

I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) for introducing this important Bill. She has done a lot of work on it, and she makes a powerful point that she is not doing so for her own political advantage because, as she told the House, she is not standing at the next election. I place on record that that will be a great loss to the House. She has been a great Member of Parliament for the people of North West Durham in the time that she has been here, particularly with her expertise on education, and she will be missed. If the last act that she performs is to ensure that the House of Commons can hold the Government to account in the future, she will have done a fine job. Opposition Front Benchers fully support her Bill.

The Labour party agrees with the principle of equal-sized seats, which has long been written into law and is the main purpose of the boundary commissions’ work. Before we hear messages to the contrary, we have to remind the House that when Labour was in office, we enacted the fifth boundary review in 2006—it was politically detrimental to the Labour party in terms of seats lost—because we believed then, as we do now, that we have to have boundaries in place that fully reflect the general populace. However, the proposals to redraw our boundaries are unfair. They run the risk of being undemocratic. In many parts of the United Kingdom, they are unacceptable to the local populations.

To see evidence of that, one only needs to consider what the Government have done while espousing the need to cut the costs of an elected Chamber. The nub of the Bill, as the hon. Member for Wellingborough said, goes beyond how many MPs there should be or who represents where. It is about how democracy in the United Kingdom functions. I remind the Minister that, in opposition, the Conservatives promised to curb the costs of government and limit the number of special advisers, but the number of those advisers has increased by more than 20%, from 79 before the May 2015 election—the most recent election—to 97 in December 2015. That is the highest recorded number for a majority Government ever. In total, this Administration have spent £45 million on wages and severance pay for special advisers during their time in office. It is curious that Government estimates show a saving of £12 million from the cutting of 50 Members of Parliament. That is roughly the same cost to the public purse as the severance packages that the previous Prime Minister handed out to those who left office at the same time as he did.

When the new occupant of 10 Downing Street came into office in July, space had to be found for those special advisers and close friends who had been so callously thrown on to the scrapheap. They might not be experts, but they surely need a chance, too. In September, the bloated Benches of the other place swelled even further when a raft of them were ennobled by the former Prime Minister, taking its membership to more than 800—far greater than the size of this House. That act debased the other place’s responsibility to check and challenge the Government, turning it into little more than an opportunity to honour former party donors and friends.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray]

Is the hon. Gentleman implying that Baroness Chakrabarti was a Conservative appointment?

[Andrew Gwynne]

The hon. Lady knows that the custom and practice is that when the Government increase the number of lords, other parties also have that opportunity. However—this relates to my next point—the noble Lady that the hon. Lady references is an active Member of the House of Lords and of the Labour Front-Bench team. Many Members of the other place do not make an active contribution to the work of that Chamber and that needs to be looked at.

Only yesterday, the Government announced their intention to drop proposals aimed at changing the powers of the Lords, citing that the world has changed. Well, yes, it has, and if Brexit is the reason for stepping back from curtailing the powers of the other place, it is also a sound and justifiable reason to think again about the changes proposed to this elected Chamber. Although Lords reform is not directly linked to the Bill, it is an important part of how a fully functioning democracy works. It is worth recognising that over two thirds of the public have consistently supported real reform of the other place, yet cynicism and power are all that the Government seem concerned with when overloading the other place with former spin doctors and party workers.

I am heartened, however, by the fact that other people share my concern and that we may actually have support from the most unlikely of sources. When recently asked about his responsibilities in the Lords, Baron Lloyd-Webber of Sydmonton responded:

“I was put in as an honour, not as a working peer. Not as lobby fodder. I’m fed up with the fact that I keep being asked now to go in and vote for things about which I don’t have knowledge.”

The other place is so bloated that it is second only to China’s National People’s Congress—the largest legislature in the world—which is odd considering that China has 1.2 billion more citizens than the UK. For a more learned and respected opinion, I ask right hon. and hon. Members to heed the warning of the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), who rightly stated:

“It seems perverse to reduce the number of elected representatives in this place while the Lords continues to gorge itself on new arrivals.”—[Official Report, 8 September 2016; Vol. 614, c. 502.]

[Wayne David]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the figure of 600 to which this place will be reduced is entirely arbitrary? There is no logic or common sense behind it whatsoever.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Absolutely. I can remember my hon. Friend making that point when the legislation was going through. Why 600? Why not 500 or 400? Why not 700 or 800? Nobody has actually set out a reason for 600. That is why it is right to retain the 650 Members of Parliament that we have today and have had in previous Parliaments.

[Sir Hugo Swire]

Does the hon. Gentleman really believe that anyone other than politicians believes that there are too few of us?

[Andrew Gwynne]

The facts are in front of us. At a time of global uncertainty and change, we need to reconsider the proposals because it is more than likely that we will have 73 fewer politicians in the coming years because no one will be elected to the European Parliament. Their workload will come to this place—not only the scrutiny of laws that are currently scrutinised in Brussels and Strasbourg, but all the extra work that goes with that. I am sure that all the lobbyists will find a track to Westminster. They will be cancelling their tickets to Brussels and will be wanting to speak about legislation to Members of Parliament here.

Although I am sure that Members on both sides will not shirk their duties, where is the sense in cutting the number of elected Members here when we have a massive job to do of unpicking 40 years of legislation regarding our relationship with the European Union and our partners within it and of scrutinising new trading arrangements with the rest of the world? Where is the sense in cutting the number of Members when the job of holding the Government to account is absolutely vital? With larger constituencies, we will inevitably have larger caseloads from our own constituents, too.

[Andrew Stephenson]

The hon. Gentleman is making an eloquent case for the Bill, but we had about 650 MPs before Brexit and before we went into the Common Market. We now have the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, the Northern Ireland Assembly, police and crime commissioners, and elected mayors. We are just about to get a huge devolution of power in Greater Manchester, which he knows about and has spoken eloquently about. I would therefore suggest that this House can be reduced probably even further than the modest reduction proposed in the 2011 legislation. I would go for 400 MPs. I would happily see this place reduced much further.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I just do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. There is no case for reducing the size of the House of Commons when we have in front of us the big task of making a success of the Government’s negotiations with our European and global partners. If we cannot hold the Government to account on that, this House will be failing in its duty.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. Another argument for retaining the current number of Members of Parliament is that we have reports, including from the former head of the civil service in no less than The House magazine, that the number of civil servants will have to be increased quite dramatically. So the civil service will increase, but the number of people overseeing and directing the civil service and making laws will be reduced. By the way, the number of Assembly Members in Northern Ireland is going to decrease.

[Andrew Gwynne]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point, because we are talking about the costs of government here, not just those of Parliament. The two cannot be disentangled.

Moving on to the review itself, its unfairness and unequal nature are compounded by the fact that many individual voters have been omitted from the calculations used by the boundary commissions. I wonder how the Government can defend their position on equalising the number of voters in each constituency, which each and every Member would support, while using information based on an electoral register with close to two million voters not counted. As Government Members will be aware, the spike of newly registered voters enthused by June’s referendum and the increased sign-up from May’s local election mean that around 4% of the electoral register has not been counted in the review. That serious omission risks producing a distorted picture of our nation and alienating hundreds upon thousands of younger first-time voters under 30. How dare we tell the 700,000 young people who signed up in a few short months in the run-up to the referendum that we want them to engage, but that their voice is irrelevant in deciding the political map of our communities? Put plainly, the omission of close to 2 million voters has completely distorted the boundary review process, so the aim of equalising our constituency boundaries will not be possible.

[Mr Harper]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was listening when I made my remarks about the independent analysis that has been done on the 2 million figure. If these 2 million voters are equally spread across the UK, they make no difference to the distribution of seats. Either what I said, quoting an independent source, is true or it is not. If he does not think it is true and he has a different analysis produced by some independent people, perhaps he could share it with the House; otherwise, this makes no difference to the distribution of seats and is a false argument.

[Andrew Gwynne]

What the right hon. Gentleman says is on the premise that this is equally spread, but of course it is not. There were increases in the number of people on the electoral register in every constituency, but in parts of the country where there has historically been under-registration, the spikes were larger than in other areas.

[Wayne David]

The Library has produced facts that contradict what the right hon. Gentleman has said. They show that if extra electors brought in for the purpose of the referendum were taken into account, London would have two extra constituencies, whereas the south-west and Northern Ireland would each have one fewer, so there would be a material difference.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. friend is absolutely right about that and he brings me to my next point.

Let us consider the example of London, a global city with a growing population that is expected to rise by more than 1.5 million in the next decade. Strangely, the same city is expected to lose a dozen MPs from its contingent of 73 if the current proposals go through unchecked. As my hon. Friend has said, to compound that, research from the House of Commons shows that over the six-month period from December 2015 to June 2016 the London electorate grew by 6%. That did not occur in isolation; during the same period, the south-west saw a rise of 4.7%, Yorkshire and the Humber’s rise was 4.2%, Wales’s rise was 4.1% and the increase in the west midlands was 3.2%. Those citizens are eager to play their part in the process, but for this purpose they are citizens whose voice no longer counts.

As we have heard, many of the proposed constituencies make very little geographical sense, homogenising vast swathes of rural Britain and tearing up historic counties. For example, dramatically cutting the number of Welsh MPs will do little to address the democratic deficit felt by some within rural Wales. Any constitutional changes, including in the very make-up of the constituencies we stand here to represent, should be done fairly, and everyone’s voice should be heard.

The truth about the plan to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600 is that no real reason has been given for it. As my hon. Friend said, when the original Bill was being discussed, no Minister could give a real reason for picking the 600 figure. New boundaries, a smaller House of Commons and the shift to individual electoral registration all tilt the electoral battlefield further not just towards the Conservative party, but towards the Executive. There are no plans to cut the size of the ministerial payroll, and having fewer MPs to hold Ministers to account is not good for democracy. It cannot be democratic, fair or even competent to advance this review at the same time as we are stuffing the other place with unelected and often unprepared peers. Put all this together and we face a boundary review being conducted on the basis of a completely lopsided electoral register. If we proceed as planned, we will see a huge transfer of parliamentary representation from areas that are growing to areas that have not seen the same growth.

The Opposition are confident that this Bill will significantly improve the process of drawing up new parliamentary seats on a fair and equal basis. We believe that 650 is the right number of MPs to hold the Government to account. We give our full support to this Bill in the hope that the Government pause—

[Mr Chope]

rose—

[Andrew Gwynne]

I am coming to the end of my speech. We give our full support in the hope that the Government pause, look again and proceed with changes that are agreed consensually with Members in all parts of this House and with all nations of the UK.