Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

I will intervene briefly on this subject as it was raised in the debate on the amendment of my noble friend Lord Fowler on the Isle of Wight. I have the very greatest reservations about putting any exemptions whatever into the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has made the very good point that it seems rather odd that so many of these exemptions seem to concern themselves with Liberal Democrat constituencies. There might be an argument for saying that if the only representation that the people had in these enormous geographical constituencies was in Westminster, perhaps you should keep the population of the electorate somewhat smaller, but of course that is not the case. As my noble friend Lord Forsyth has pointed out, an inordinately large number of Members of the Scottish Parliament can answer many of the worries and concerns that the electorate might have in Orkney and Shetland and in other such places in Edinburgh. That would deal with all problems of education, the Scottish legal system and many other areas.

As we all know, one reality that we live with today is that Scottish Members of Parliament who come south to Westminster have extremely little to do—except, of course, to vote, often on English matters that are of no concern to their constituents. I must confess that I am sad that the whole business of English and Welsh votes on English and Welsh matters, which was a commitment of the Conservatives in their manifesto, is notably absent for some reason from the coalition document. Presumably we must assume that the Liberal Democrats are quite comfortable with the idea of Scottish Members of Parliament coming south to vote on matters in English constituencies that do not concern their constituents at all, because they are dealt with by what is now not even the Scottish Parliament—I am told that it is now the Scottish Government—north of the border.

The whole rationale for saying that such an enormous geographical area should have fewer people in the electorate does not stand up any more when you have devolution and a Scottish Parliament that deals with so many of the problems with which people in those enormous geographical areas will be concerned. I have every support for removing that provision from the Bill. I think that it is a very great mistake on the part of those who put the Bill together to produce those exemptions in different forms, which is why I was so much against my noble friend Lord Fowler's idea that for some reason the Isle of Wight should be exempted. Once you start down the road of exemptions, there is no end to it; you produce a justification for practically every amendment that we have been hearing to this half of the Bill.

I pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, when he summed up my noble friend Lord Fowler’s amendment: that I was a bit of a purist. I do not quite know whether that was supposed to be an insult or a compliment, but in the circumstances I will take it as a compliment and I hope that this amendment gets a serious reading, because we must try to clean up the Bill and make it rather more rational.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

Speaking as a unionist, I will not necessarily rise to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, about what Scottish Members of Parliament can do these days, but I agree that there is a real inconsistency in the exemptions in the Bill. This is the second time in our discussions that we have had to question the choice of a number. It almost seems as though those who drafted the Bill had a book of random numbers in front of them, if we are to believe the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, who, when asked about the number of 600 Members of Parliament said that, well, it was a nice round number. Where does the number of 13,000 or 12,000 come from? It is blatantly obviously to protect the constituency of Ross, Skye and Lochaber. I will be amazed to see the Minister get out of that one.

It troubles me that the Bill has been put together in such a haphazard manner that we have these inconsistencies. If there was a pressing need to protect constituencies because of their size or their shape, I must ask again why Argyll and Bute, another Liberal Democrat constituency, is not in the Bill. I know Ross, Skye and Lochaber very well indeed. It is a vast constituency, but it is much easier to move around than Argyll and Bute. There are certain parts of Argyll and Bute—particularly some of the islands—that you cannot visit in a day. In certain areas there is no normal ferry service—you have to go either by a chartered boat or by trawler—yet it receives no special consideration in the Bill. Is it that Alan Reid is a more loyal member of the coalition than Charles Kennedy? It seems to me that those issues were raised at the time when there was some speculation that certain members of the Liberal Democrat party were not wildly enthusiastic about the coalition.

Therefore, I very much look forward to the reply of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, on this. I ask him not to go back to the book of random numbers but to give us an explanation of this very bizarre choice. My noble friend Lord Bach talked about the equalisation of constituencies in places such as Australia. I remember asking a Member from the Northern Territory how many electors he had. He replied, “Oh, I’ve got about 10,000”. I was rather startled and pointed out that in Airdrie and Shotts I had about 68,000 and that he must know the inside leg measurement of every voter. However, he pointed out that his constituency was the size of Portugal, so, even in countries where there is equalisation, there is a realisation that you cannot have the concept of constituency by block.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, I know that the Minister is happy only when dealing with amendments that involve equations, particularly complex ones, and therefore he may not have been happy at the prospect of addressing this amendment. However, I want to point out one subsidiary advantage to the Bill of the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Bach—namely, that it removes an otherwise technical flaw in the Bill.

The equation in the Bill, U/598—from memory, it is in paragraph 2 of proposed new Schedule 2 under Clause 11—is predicated on there being only two exempted constituencies. However, if the constituency whose name begins with Ross—I am not going to try to say the Scots constituency name as I will no doubt make some minor mispronunciation—is also exempted under the Bill, then the equation will no longer work; it would need to be U/597, and I have not seen any government amendment proposing that.

Of course, were the Government to accept—and they showed some sympathy for it the other night—the revised equation that I put forward as an amendment to the Bill, which was adaptable to whatever the number of exempted constituencies might be, this problem would be removed. However, as they have not yet accepted it, their alternative is to accept the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Bach. At least the Bill would then be technically competent and the algebra would work, which it currently does not as the Bill is drafted.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, Amendment 75A, to which I shall speak shortly, is in my name and that of my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer. The Committee has just heard a superb speech from my noble friend Lord Liddle, which both parties in government should take note of. He put his finger on the problem with this part of the Bill more clearly than has been done before. The debate has highlighted once more what we think is the Government’s undoubted folly in seeking to subordinate every other factor in the construction of parliamentary boundaries to the overriding goal of creating seats that fall within the bounds of a very narrow electoral quota threshold.

We do not oppose moves to create more equally sized constituencies; indeed, we support them. That is already the letter and spirit of the present law and what the Boundary Commissions strive to deliver. We recognise, too, that the current law could be improved in that regard. We have tried to help the Government to deliver such an improvement but, alas, they have chosen to reject every amendment that we have advanced. As a consequence of this failure to engage in the normal and proper process of revision in this House, which is the role that this House is traditionally supposed to perform, serious flaws will be left uncorrected in this legislation. I appreciate that the Government have taken away one or two amendments to look at and we welcome that very much, but there has not been the normal give that Governments accord to Bills of this kind.

The focus of this debate is the proposed new rule 5, headed “Factors”, in Clause 11. We believe that this is a prime example of the Bill’s fundamental defects. As the Committee knows, rule 5 lists a number of factors that the Boundary Commissions are permitted to take into account when drawing up constituencies. These include having regard to special geography, issues of accessibility, local government areas, local community ties, the inconvenience attendant on changes to constituency boundaries and the encouragement to work within the framework of the existing European electoral regions. Of course, these are all sensible factors that ought to be considered by a Boundary Commission in the course of its deliberations and should impact on the outcome of such deliberations, but the interplay between this rule and some of the other rules set out in the Bill mean that the Boundary Commissions will not be able to give proper weight to this list of factors.

Take the issue of inconvenience. Rule 5(1)(d) states that the,

“Boundary Commission may take into account, if and to such extent as they think fit … the inconveniences attendant on such changes”.

But if we read across to rule 9(2)—that reference appears to be a small drafting error—we find that,

“rule 5(1)(d) does not apply in relation to a report under section 3(1) of the 1986 Act that a Boundary Commission is required, by subsection (2) of section 3 of that Act as substituted by section 10(3) above, to submit before 1 October 2013”.

In other words, inconvenience attendant on boundary changes may be considered by the Boundary Commission in future reviews but not in the review that the Government intend to rush through before the next general election.

However, even if that anomaly was removed, there would still be a problem about Boundary Commissions taking into account not just inconvenience but any of the factors in rule 5. This is simply—I am sorry if I am repeating a point that has been made before, but it is fundamental to the understanding of this Bill—because sub-paragraph (3) of rule 5 states that the rule is,

“subject to rules 2 and 4”.

Those are the rules relating to the electoral quota and, in the case of rule 4, as we have debated today, to the area of constituencies. In other words, the Boundary Commission may take account of a variety of factors but only within the bounds of the overriding requirement to make constituencies adhere to within the 5 per cent threshold of an electoral quota and consistent only with the special rule on the maximum territorial extent of a constituency.

The major problem here, to which the government side appears deaf, is that the degree of tolerance from the electoral quota is just too narrow. Rule 5 might state that Boundary Commissions may take into account geographical factors, local ties, issues of accessibility and so on, but the Government know that the very tight threshold regarding the electoral quota means that in practice—this is the point that the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, was making—it has very limited room for manoeuvre. We know that because the heads of the Boundary Commissions have said that the strictness of the electoral parity target will mean that local authority boundaries will have to be criss-crossed, county boundaries overlapped and wards divided. We know that islands will have to be split, historic borders transgressed and natural boundaries such as rivers, valleys and the sea just plain ignored. The Boundary Commission secretaries conclude that the application of the electoral parity target is likely to result in many communities feeling that they are being divided between constituencies.

Ironically, the Bill exposes the problems caused by the 5 per cent threshold in the special exemptions that it gives to Northern Ireland and parts of the Scottish Highlands and Islands. That begs the question why Northern Ireland and the Scottish Highlands and Islands are the only places in the United Kingdom deemed worthy of rescue from the iron law of the electoral quota. Why are other islands or areas of peculiar geography not being afforded special protection?

When we come to Amendment 79A, we will debate that more fully. For now, we can rest on the knowledge that many parts of the UK have been, without any adequate explanation, denied that special treatment. We are trying to help the Government to tidy up the Bill and to avoid some of the negative outcomes that are the inevitable consequence of the severe electoral quota requirement, both by suggesting a number of areas that should be guaranteed an allocation of whole seats and by proposing a greater tolerance in the electoral quota threshold.

We propose that, although a 5 per cent disparity from the electoral quota should be the general aim of the Boundary Commissions when drawing up constituencies, an outer limit of 10 per cent ought to be allowed where overriding factors such as those that we have discussed on all sides of the Committee warrant it. The amendment would not make any difference to the Government’s aim of adjusting a perceived electoral bias; it would just deliver a more sensible process. Alas, up to now, the Government in this House refuse even properly to debate this matter and do not give us a response as to why they are taking this attitude.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

For the sake of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, I say that I shall speak to Amendments 73, 74A, 74B, and that my remarks will be about rule 5(1)(c). The noble Lord, and the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, claim that this is a filibuster. He needs to get out more. I remember the Scotland and Wales Bill of 1978. As a young reporter, I remember covering Mr Tam Dalyell during that debate. I want to say that he spoke for days, but that may be exaggerating. On one occasion, he spoke for about six hours. To me, that is a filibuster. In all my interventions, I have kept my remarks very brief—to some extent because the air conditioning is going to my throat; perhaps I will get a cough sweet whenever I get an opportunity to go out of the Chamber.

I compliment my noble friend Lord Kennedy on introducing Amendment 73, because it gets to the heart of where the Bill has gone wrong and reintroduces some common sense. The Bill has been cobbled together from two different directions and been rapidly put through the Clerks with, I repeat, no consultation, no pre-legislative scrutiny, and no discussion through the usual channels. As a consequence, we have a Bill which is a dog's breakfast.

One area that most concerns me is the framework within which the Boundary Commission will operate. All of us who have attended Boundary Commission hearings know that sometimes, when the first stab is made at the shape of the boundary, extremely bizarre results come out. The late John Smith, on 10 May 1994, two days before he died, addressed the Boundary Commission about the new constituency of Airdrie and Shotts, which would have resulted in the town of Airdrie being cut right down the main street because a bureaucrat somewhere had thought, “We need to get some numbers right here”, and took no account whatever of the cohesion of the town, the history and the nature of the communities built up within that area.

If the Government accepted Amendment 73 on rule 5(1)(c), we could ensure that any local ties broken up by changes in constituencies should be taken into account by the Boundary Commission. That is a lot more sensible than the rather vague construction contained in the Bill.