Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

I agree with the noble Lord. She was a lovely lady.

Of course, there is fantastic compensation in a Member representing a constituency like Argyll. My fondness for the music of the Highland pipes comes in part from the fact that there are so many tunes, Strathspeys, reels and marches that are named after the romantic places of Argyll and the beautiful islands there.

At the moment, the seat is represented by Alan Reid. I have not spoken to him recently, but I received a note from him in which he encouraged me to highlight my amendment. What is significant is that, when I met Alan, serving in the House of Commons as Speaker, I was a Member of Parliament in my own right. Every Thursday I headed north, as did every other Scottish Member of Parliament. Many a time we shared the rooms at Heathrow airport waiting for a plane. I used to say to the officials of the House of Commons when they annoyed me on a Thursday, “Leave me alone. The call of the north is coming upon me. I don’t want to be bothered”; the only Thursday that I did not leave London was in preparation for the Cenotaph. My duty in that travel was to attend to my constituency in Glasgow North East. I was conscious that, when I would meet Alan at the airport—we took the same plane—within half an hour of my arriving at Glasgow airport I could be at a constituency meeting, yet he had a journey of three hours to get to his constituency. After travelling from Westminster to Heathrow, he would need to fly to Glasgow and then drive for three hours more to get there. I could easily have been at a surgery or attending a parents’ night at a local school while he was still travelling.

There is unfairness in that. With a vast area of mainland, the Mull of Kintyre, Oban and all the other areas and then out to those beautiful islands that I have inadequately described, a boundary commissioner would then have to go landward, further into Scotland, to get the numbers up. That would be extremely unfair on any Member who had to take in Argyll. I know that the term “special case” has been bandied about for several days now, but Argyll should be made a special case.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

I support my noble friend’s case about Argyll. I have had a home in Argyll for almost 30 years. The issues that he raises about the complexity of travel cannot be overstated. Most of the roads in Argyll and Bute are single-track roads with passing places. I used to travel up on a Thursday night with Ray Michie. As I pointed out the other night, I would be home in bed before she had even managed to get her car defrosted to do a journey of up to two and half hours to get to Oban in Argyll.

I travelled around the islands a lot, particularly as Secretary of State for Scotland. There are many islands that it would be impossible for the Member of Parliament to visit and come back from on the same day, so the MP would have to remain overnight on the islands.

The unfairness of the way in which Argyll and Bute is being treated in this legislation gives me cause for alarm. The Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, represented a constituency that was a series of islands. He, more than anybody else, knows the complexity of representing islands. It is an oversight of overwhelming proportions that Argyll and Bute should not be given special status in the Bill. If a boundary commissioner were even to visit the islands and look at their complexity, the commissioner would probably be lost for a month.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

The noble Baroness is perfectly correct. She reminds me about the single-track roads. The difficulty is not only in getting around the islands but in getting around the great sea lochs of Argyll, such as Loch Goil. For getting landward from these, it would be easier to go by boat because of the single-track roads.

No noble Lord should be thinking “Well, this is a nice, rural area and it will be just rural problems that have to be looked at”. There are pockets of poverty in these areas, because people cannot travel to their work. There is also a great whisky distilling industry on Islay, which gives a great deal of money to the Exchequer. The present Member of Parliament would have to take representation from the whisky industry and come to this House and the other place to highlight the difficulties that that industry has.

I thank your Lordships for listening to me. My case is not selfish but, knowing the constituency as I do, I think that some special pleading should be made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Anything that causes problems for the IPSA seems like a good idea to me; my former honourable and right honourable friends down the Corridor are plagued by it at the moment. However, there are a lot of possibilities for revenue to come in, particularly from islands such as the Cayman Islands if we were to do this, which would far outweigh the IPSA costs.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

I do not often disagree with my noble friend, but I am always sceptical when he advises me about football, and I am similarly sceptical about these matters. The point that my noble friend Lord Dubs makes about the possibility of part of Northern Ireland being included in a Scottish constituency would be quite apposite for Rathlin Island, which is physically closer to Scotland than it is to Northern Ireland. Is my noble friend aware that the Italian Senate has provision for expatriates? Indeed, there is an Italian Senator who actually comes from Melbourne and has to commute to Rome to sit in the Italian Senate. We might consider that when we look at the form of the House of Lords.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

That is a very interesting argument. Of course, in the European Union it is perfectly open for us to stand for constituencies in any country. In fact, the noble Lord, Lord Steel, stood for an Italian constituency. He did not do very well. I think the fact that he could not speak a word of Italian did not help.