Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 8th October 2020 Lords Chamber

This is not an area where the Government are resting on their laurels. As I said before, I think we are all trying to get to the same place but in a different way. I want to assure noble Lords that we are undertaking considerable action to improve the completeness and accuracy of electoral registers, and great progress has been made. I therefore thank the noble Lord for his amendment. I hope I have gone some way to reassuring him of the Government’s intentions for improving the completeness of the registers and invite him to withdraw.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, I have received no request to speak after the Minister, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Shutt.

[Lord Shutt of Greetland (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords who spoke in favour of this amendment, which is everybody bar the Minister. It is important that this is an all-party affair and that registration is seen as beyond party. I am very disappointed in the Minister’s response, but not surprised. I do not understand how registration is a voluntary act, yet you can be fined if you do not register. That is a very strange form of volunteering.

The Minister has said a great deal about what the Government are doing. We heard about it in Committee and it is all commendable stuff. However, she has not said, for example, how it can be that in 2015 45% of attainers were on the registers and it is now down to 25%. That seems to me failure; it is not success.

I do not think this is good enough. It is not good enough for our young people, so I would like to test the opinion of the House.

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[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, we now come to the group beginning with Amendment 17. I remind noble Lords that Members other than the mover and the Minister may speak only once and that short questions of elucidation are discouraged. Anyone wishing to press this or anything else in this group to a Division should make that clear in debate.

Clause 7: Protected constituencies

Amendment 17

Moved by

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[Lord Lipsey (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, we have had a long, hard afternoon and tummies are rumbling, so I genuinely will not detain the House for long. An absolutely overwhelming case was made in Committee for this amendment exempting Brecon and Radnorshire from the 5% leeway allowed, but it has not got anywhere. The noble Lord, Lord True, was gracious enough to find time to discuss it with me one on one, though he did not give me any hope. I am sad to say that Ministers in the other place were not so prepared to have a meeting with Fay Jones, the Conservative MP for the seat, and I regret that.

Anyway, one has to know when one’s goose is cooked, so I accept that this will not happen, though the people of Brecon and Radnorshire will resent the way the Government have been pursuing what they will regard as their war on Wales.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, my apologies—I was momentarily distracted. I thought the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, had come to the end of his speech. He had certainly stopped speaking. Did I not hear him?

[Lord Lipsey (Lab) [V]]

I have stopped. No word issues from my mouth.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

I wonder if the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, could repeat what he just said. I am afraid I was unable to hear him.

[Lord Lipsey (Lab) [V]]

No words are issuing from my mouth. I have finished; I have stopped; I am ended.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

Could the noble Lord confirm whether he intends to move his amendment?

[Lord Lipsey (Lab) [V]]

I intend to withdraw it after the Minister’s reply.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, I think—I think—I was right the first time and the amendment has been proposed.

[Lord Wigley (PC) [V]]

My Lords, I am delighted to support the noble Lord on this amendment and to introduce my own amendment, which is linked to it. The noble Lord spoke with passion on this matter in Committee and his commitment to Brecon and Radnorshire inspires us all. We all have our memories of the Brecon and Radnorshire constituency. It has been represented by three different parties over my political lifetime. I remember going to Patagonia in 1965 with Tudor Watkins, who was then the Labour Member of Parliament. I served with Caerwyn Roderick, who took over subsequently, and we had Richard Livsey, of course, who was a colleague in this Chamber of many noble Lords. We also had Jonathan Evans as a Conservative MP. All three parties—Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative—had their own roots in the Brecon and Radnorshire constituency and they all had representatives of calibre. It would be a tragedy if a constituency such as this, with its rural nature, was lost just to get the sums right over the whole of the UK.

My amendment links the constituency of Montgomeryshire into this equation. Montgomeryshire is also a rural county—a scattered rural county. I declare an interest as my father and all his forebears came from Montgomeryshire. My wife, Elinor, was born in Llanidloes and both her parents had all their roots in Montgomeryshire. It is a mellow county that does not look to the craggy wildness of Gwynedd to the north-west or to the industrial belt of Clwyd to the north-east. It is a county in its own right and should remain as such. I believe that the way to handle this issue is to define the county of Powys as having two integral seats in the House of Commons. By deciding that those two seats stand, you define to the north—the north-west and the north-east—an area that has a character of its own and can be adjusted to have the appropriate number of representatives in the rural west and in the industrial east; likewise to the south in the industrial belt running through south-west Wales.

I believe that getting Brecon and Radnorshire and Montgomeryshire right—getting the county of Powys right—in the Bill gives the opportunity for the commissioners to do justice to the rest of Wales. That is why I am delighted to support the noble Lord’s amendment and to put forward my own.

[Baroness Humphreys (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I wish to speak briefly to both amendments in this group. In Committee, I spoke to the noble Lord’s similar amendment to add Brecon and Radnorshire to the list of protected constituencies in Wales, and I would like to expand on the comments I made then. I am very familiar with both the Brecon and Radnorshire constituency and the Montgomeryshire constituency, having campaigned and canvassed in both over many years. I can perfectly understand the motives behind these amendments and the desire to protect these constituencies’ borders. Both are in beautiful, rural mid Wales and have a long history, Brecon and Radnorshire having existed since 1918 and Montgomeryshire since an incredible 1542. It is understandable that electors feel a close affinity with their constituency and that a significant community cohesion has developed over many years.

Brecon and Radnorshire and Montgomeryshire hold a special place in the hearts and minds of Liberal Democrats too, and we are proud of the way in which our MPs, Richard Livsey, Roger Williams and Jane Dodds in Brecon and Radnorshire, and Clement Davies, Emlyn Hooson and Alex Carlile in Montgomeryshire worked on behalf of their constituencies and communities over the years.

But now, of course, regrettably, all the constituencies in Wales are facing upheaval and a new reality as a result of the Government’s decisions in this Bill. However much we would like to stay within the comfort blanket of our present constituencies, we have to accept that we cannot lose eight MPs and expect constituency boundaries to remain the same. I am content with the decision that Ynys Môn will become a protected island constituency, but while that makes sense, creating another protected constituency will have an adverse impact on all the other new constituencies across Wales. We must have a fair system that is applicable to all constituencies and we must now have the confidence to allow the Welsh Boundary Commission to work within that system.

However, experience has shown that MPs who represent larger constituencies face a number of practical issues. An example is whether they should establish more than one constituency office—one in the north and one in the south of their area—so that constituents have access to them. How many staff do they need in order to run more than one office? Also, how do they deal with the media that question their expenses? The expenses of an MP in the largest constituency by area in the UK are often compared adversely with those of an MP in the smallest and most compact constituency. I hope that the Government will help to prevent this sort of unfair criticism in the future.

I finish by reiterating one other point I made in Committee. With a reduced voice from Wales in Westminster now, I hope that the Senedd will take the decision to increase the number of Members that the electorate of Wales can elect to be their voice in Cardiff. During the past few months, the Senedd has shown the people of Wales that it can use its powers effectively, and now it must give itself the tools to do so even more effectively.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, has withdrawn from the debate and so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, these amendments draw attention yet again to the problems caused by any attempt to impose strict uniformity on constituencies based on a simple number count. I am particularly drawn to Amendment 19 as it recognises Powys as a county. The integrity of council boundaries has been the subject of much support in debates on this Bill. My noble friend Lord Tyler raised similar issues in his Amendment 15 which emphasises the territorial integrity of Cornwall and its distinct identity, which is clearly fostered by its geographical remoteness.