Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 15th September 2020 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Pitkeathley) (Lab)]

My Lords, I have received no request to speak after the Minister, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab) [V]]

On Thursday, on an earlier group of amendments, I thought that the Minister was correcting my quotation from the Constitution Committee. In fact, he rightly questioned my assertion that it had endorsed, rather than simply noted, suggestions from others as to how to ensure that the Boundary Commissions were independent. He was right; I was wrong. I think that is 1-0 to the Minister.

However, on this amendment, the Minister is on shakier ground, but I shall to try to avoid making what the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, called a “holier-than-thou” speech, especially as I want first to turn to something more serious that the noble Lord said, when he claimed:

“Trying to link this matter to the issue of saving the union is very shoddy politics”.—[Official Report, 10/9/20; col. GC 320.]


I shall not try to pretend that I understand Scotland, but just at the moment in Wales, when the Government seem intent on weakening the devolution settlement via the internal market Bill and when again and again UK Ministers ignore the Welsh Government—indeed, even sharing the internal market Bill with Welsh Ministers two hours after it had been shared with the press—the noble Lord might note that a seismic reduction in Welsh voices in Westminster fuels separatist emotions and the feeling that Wales is a mere afterthought to this Government. I was particularly struck that the Government’s statement on the internal market Bill quoted the Scottish Secretary of State, a Scottish businessman and the Scottish Retail Consortium, with no equivalent endorsement from anyone in Wales, not even the Welsh Secretary.

I am not speaking for Scotland, but I hope that the Government do not think that chopping Welsh input into Parliament has no wider implications. As was said in an earlier debate, the Americans recognised early on that size alone did not matter, with each state being accorded proper recognition in the Senate. The UK Government should give serious thought to binding in each of the four nations if they really want to retain the United Kingdom. This does not go to the heart of these amendments, but it is a response to what the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said. Incidentally, he apologises because he has just left to chair his own Select Committee, but he has been with us thus far.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the case made for respecting communities by implementing the principle of equalisation in a fair and sensible way, as my noble friend Lord Hain put it, is pretty convincing. As I stressed at Second Reading and in Committee, MPs represent and need to know and understand the communities in their patch if they are to be able to speak on behalf of individual constituencies as the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, described. The better MPs know the schools, clubs, local authorities, head teachers, councillors, GPs, hospitals, charities and churches in their area, the better equipped they are not just to understand but to sort out the problems brought to them, hence the need to permit the Boundary Commissions, as they set about their work, to respect community ties.

It is obviously writ large in the case of Wales. One part of my family from one valley was Welsh speaking and the other from not many miles away as the crow flies—although a long way by road—was largely English speaking. As the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said in an earlier debate, we do not want Welsh MPs to have to go up to the Heads of the Valleys, across and then down to the bottom of the next valley in the same seat, a point emphasised today by my noble friend Lord Hain. As has been mentioned, Scotland’s special geography has been recognised in its two preserved seats, as has Ynys Môn, or Anglesey, in this Bill. I used to live in Anglesey. Believe me, it is much faster to cross the Menai Bridge than to travel from one valley to another in the south.

I recognise that I have not served in the Commons and neither has the Minister, but I think we both have enough colleagues who did to know a fair amount about the work of MPs. The amendments in front of us now are partly to help constituents to be well served and partly to help MPs represent those constituencies. They are partly to recognise the importance of communities and partly to give a proper voice to all parts of the union. They are important, and I hope that the Minister will hear what is behind them and be able to respond accordingly.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

I do not believe that we have been able to recover the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, so on that basis, I call the Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, for his understanding. If something is worth saying, it is worth saying twice. I call the next speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab) [V]]

I am not sure whether the Deputy Chairman is inviting me to say everything I am about to say twice, but I will try to refrain from doing so.

I welcome this debate. It illustrates the fallacy of trying to achieve arithmetic equivalence with no recognition of geography, travel habits, infrastructure, community or even the work of an MP in representing her or his constituents and constituency—I make that distinction between the two. We are talking here of a constituency of 3,000 square kilometres—it is larger than Luxembourg—so representing it is already a challenge, not just for the MP who has a 60-mile drive between meetings but for political parties which need to function along constituency lines. Brecon and Radnorshire may have a small number of voters, but it is very big not just in its heart but in geography, as its MP said, from my home town of Ystrad in the south to Knighton in the north-east, much of it with scant access to public transport. I have never done it myself, but my noble friend Lady Gale says it is about a 300-mile round trip. I hope she was not enjoying our views too much when she was driving at that time. So it is very different from my present home in Hackney where it is still possible to beat the bounds, albeit I do it on a bicycle these days—a mode of transport that now defeats me in Wales.

It is already difficult, as we have heard, for the MP to serve this constituency as it is. A larger one would not only be more challenging travel-wise but would break the pattern of travel, which, as we have heard, is currently up and down the valleys and not across mountains. Organising meetings with constituents, interest groups, local councillors and Senedd Members—or organising elections—would be near impossible, with simply no public transport reaching across the constituency.

As I said earlier today and emphasised at Second Reading, MPs do not just represent constituents but communities. An expansion which took the constituency into different places of work with different schools, served by different local authority areas with different histories and even different dominant languages would make relating to all the relevant interest groups and organisations really hard to achieve—particularly when involving different local authorities and a greater spread of elected representatives. Understanding the community, its rhythms, employments, schools, charities, welfare clubs—where we come from it is choirs—is as vital a part of MPs’ work as the casework they turn to every weekend. That is partly because, as I said earlier, dealing with that casework means you need to know the organisations in your constituency.

It is a very rural area, as we have heard, and has a low population. To achieve the quota, even if it were amended, it would have to cover very different areas, possibly Montgomery, as was suggested last time.

As has been said by others, it has been accepted that islands are a special case and that constituencies should not cross water. I have to say, mountains are as high as rivers are deep, and communities have been built up along valleys, not across hills. I look forward to hearing from the Minister—I wonder whether she will take up the suggestion to come and visit the place—how an even larger constituency will serve the needs of the good people of Brecon and Radnorshire.