Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2011 Lords Chamber

In the last great constitutional debate, in 1998, I spoke on the second night at 2.30 am. I was speaker 184 in a list of 192. That was all done by agreement. Forget the issues: agreement was reached and we were happy as a Government to collaborate in that situation. When I reflect on the Government's intentions, I find it very sad. The two parties have come together as a coalition and each laid down what they want to get out of their agreement. What suffers as a result is the standing and stature of this place and of the Commons. We should not stand for that here. I am a loyal supporter of my leader, of my Chief Whip and of my Front Bench, and I will do what I am asked to do in this situation. However, I cannot help feeling that this is a sad day and that this is a sad Bill. It is one of many and we should not see any more.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow such a distinguished parliamentarian as the noble Lord, Lord Graham at Edmonton. His remarks exposed the cynicism of the Bill. We are talking in essence about the relationship between the elected Member and their constituents. I am in a unique position as the only Member of the House who has ever taken action to reduce the size of the House of Commons. I was responsible for the legislation that reduced the number of Scottish Members of Parliament following devolution. One reason that I refer to that relates to what the noble Lord, Lord Graham, said about the usual channels. It was done as a result of consensus. The only lack of consensus that I found was from my own colleagues, because I was putting a number of them out of a job. However, the importance on a major constitutional issue of seeking consensus cannot be overstated. In this House, as distinct from the other place, we are appointed and not elected Members, so the quest for consensus should be even greater.

I was very disappointed to hear the Leader of the House criticise our debate the other night on the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Wills, on account of the length of the discussion. He implied that there was a filibuster. Frankly, the amendment went to the root of the issues that we must address. It concerned the complete inability of the government Front Bench to answer the question: why 600? If I have asked once, I have asked half a dozen times: why not 500, which is the Liberal Democrat position; or 585, which is the last known position of the Conservative Party? When I probed this with the Leader of the House, he laughed and said that it was a nice round number. That is an affront to democracy, as is the failure to address some of the substantive points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, about the need for scientific analysis of the job of a modern Member of Parliament. How much time is needed to conduct constituency work?

I return to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Maples. He is not in his place, but I hope that he might read this tomorrow in Hansard. He referred to the change in the number of Scottish MPs after devolution, when we had 129 Members of the Scottish Parliament. It is interesting that the workload of Westminster Members of Parliament did not markedly change. For a start, constituents are not meant to be experts in the constitution. They would come to whoever they wanted to talk to about issues such as education, social services, the local authority and housing. I worked closely with my Member of the Scottish Parliament. If somebody came to me with a problem, I would not tell them to go away because I was not a Member of the Scottish Parliament. I would take on the case and pass it to my colleague in the Scottish Parliament, and she in turn would do the same to me.

It was also interesting, following the reduction in the number of MPs, that all of us who remained had to get to know new parts of our constituencies and new people. The workload did not diminish, but changed in nature. I mentioned the other night, after an excellent speech by the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, about ethnic minorities, that I represented a seat that I had been born and brought up in, which was a white seat. I did not take on an immigration case probably until 2000. To some extent, that was because of demographic movement. People moved into the constituency and suddenly I found myself having to deal with immigration matters that I had never dealt with before. I had to deal with matters relating, for example, to forced marriage. The socio-economic structure of the constituency affects the nature of the work that a Member of Parliament does. I had two towns and 19 villages. Most of them were mining communities. In the areas of multiple deprivation, my workload was much greater than it was in the more middle-class areas of the constituency. This was, first, because the confidence levels of my constituents varied according to their socio-economic background. You cannot take a rule of thumb and say, “This is a constituency with lots of trees, so there will not be problems of multiple deprivation”. The nature of the workload of a Member of Parliament changes in relation to the socio-economic shape of that constituency.

One of the reasons why we had devolution in Scotland—I mention this point because it relates to what we will be going through tonight—was because Scotland had a smaller constituency electorate for its Members of Parliament prior to devolution. At the time of the Act of Union, separate legislation was enshrined in our constitution. At the time of devolution, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, was the Secretary of State for Scotland and the then Scottish Office was the equivalent of 13 different government departments. Scottish Members of Parliament might finish an education Bill in the other place and vote at 10 o’clock at night, then start a Scottish education Bill at 11 o’clock that night. One of the criticisms made of the arrangements at the time was in asking how you could you get proper scrutiny of legislation in the middle of the night. Those who have been Scottish Members—I only had a short spell at that—learnt how to scrutinise legislation in the middle of the night. If we need to do it, we will do it.

I go back to the point made by my noble friend Lord Wills about the pressing need to have some scientific analysis of what should be the ideal size of the House of Commons. It is almost as if people are picking up the pin numbers on their mobile phones in dreaming up the number of MPs that there should be in the other place. There is a need to look at the constituency work of Members of Parliament; there is also a need to look at the parliamentary work of Members of Parliament, whether they serve on select committees or whether they are taking through specific legislation. That is an opportunity that has again been missed. There was an opportunity in this legislation to consider whether people genuinely felt that the time had come to look in detail at the relationship of a Member of Parliament to his or her constitutional and constituency roles. There should have been some proper, defined research on it across the House. It should not be something that has been dreamt up for what can only be defined as an extremely cynical reason.

This Bill is not about improving the constitution of the United Kingdom. It is about buying off two parts of a coalition. That is one of the real reasons why there is such cynicism about the Bill and one of the reasons why it is an aberration on our constitutional arrangements that we should be criticised for seeking to scrutinise the Bill in such detail. I will no doubt return to this matter again and again. My noble friend Lord Graham of Edmonton put it into context. If we lose sight of the people whose interests we are here allegedly to look after—the constituents and citizens of this country—then we have done no service to this House and we certainly have done no service to parliamentary democracy.