Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top and Lord Howarth of Newport

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, I have three amendments in this group: Amendments 27AA, 27BA and 27BB. These are technical amendments and I do not think that they have any political implications at all. Certainly I do not think that they do anything to challenge what the Government regard as the principles of this Bill. I am rather puzzled that in the definitions of local government boundaries on page 12 in Clause 10(3)(a), reference is made to the boundaries of each county, each district and each London borough, but no reference is made to the boundaries of other unitary authorities. If the noble Lord is able to tell me that other unitary authorities are covered by these definitions as already stated in the Bill, I have no problem; but I do not think that they are. There are unitary authorities that are not counties or London boroughs. Surely it would be desirable in principle if the Boundary Commissions, in applying rule 5(1)(b) on page 10, were to seek to avoid crossing the boundaries of other unitary authorities when drawing up the boundaries of constituencies. Professor Ron Johnston made that point in his evidence to the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform of another place. He suggested that it was no more than an oversight that other unitary authorities had not been included within the clarification of terms in the Bill.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

My noble friend might like to know that a couple of years ago Durham County became a new unitary authority and is no longer counted as either a county or as being in any of the other categories. There is, none the less, a real pride in being the new unitary authority within the old county of Durham. It would be very weird if we had to stray from wards within that area into Tyneside, Wearside or, indeed, into Cumbria, at the top of the county, and Northumberland. It seems to me that my noble friend has hit on something important—certainly in Durham we would take it as very important indeed.

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[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

We are God's own country.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

Technically, perhaps the county of Durham is no longer a county council as such; I do not know. It seems to me all the more important that there should be recognition in the Bill of the important contemporary reality of unitary authorities.

Among his observations in debate on a previous amendment, the noble Lord noted that parliamentary constituency boundaries crossed the boundaries of a significant proportion of unitary authorities. That is not a good reason to surrender those unitary authorities, assuming that there will be no concern among the people who live within them that their integrity should be preserved when drawing parliamentary constituency boundaries—and, very importantly, the working relationship between Members of Parliament and the local authorities governing the areas, the communities, which they represent. It must be desirable that Members of Parliament deal with the smallest possible number of local authorities. The complexity, the multiplication of tasks, the time-wasting and the cost involved in Members of Parliament having to deal with a proliferation of different local authorities overlapping with their constituencies is clearly undesirable. I hope that the Government will accept that the Bill should be amended on the lines of my amendments.

I say just a word on the question of wards as building blocks. If it has to be accepted that, with the tight tolerance around the electoral quota, it will be more commonly the case than it has been hitherto that individual wards will be bisected in the drawing up of constituencies, some administrative questions follow. What is to be the subdivision of wards that the Boundary Commission will need to take account of? If it is to be polling districts, how can we be sure that local authorities will not redefine polling districts so as to frustrate the purposes of the Boundary Commission?

Those administrative processes ought to be sensibly related to each other. If we are to see the fragmentation of wards, we need some sub-unit which the Boundary Commission will respect. If it is to be the polling district within the ward—which it could be—we need a guarantee that the polling districts will not be arbitrarily chopped and changed. I beg to move.