Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Ben Lake Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Cherilyn Mackrory]

I will press on, because we need to get other hon. Members this afternoon.

Constituency boundaries should coincide, where possible, with local administrative boundaries, which should help my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie). I am pleased that the Bill, by reviewing the number of MPs needed for fair and effective representation, ensures that the United Kingdom will continue to have 650 Members to serve in this House and six whole, passionate, hard-working Cornish MPs.

It is worth remembering that, as well as protecting the culture and identity of national minorities, the framework convention seeks to protect the political integrity of territories. I am of the opinion that the Bill will help to protect the Cornish people as a national minority by affording us fair representation for effective government, and our boundaries will stay intact. Once the Bill has passed, it will be for the Cornish MPs, the local authority in Cornwall and local residents to work with the Boundary Commission to ensure that the identity of Cornwall is protected, with its six constituencies within its boundaries, to offer the equal and fair representation that the people deserve.

There is an appetite in Cornwall to look further at greater autonomy, and I am sure that the Government will be more than happy to work with Cornwall towards that goal. It is through that mechanism that I call for more permanent protection of Cornwall’s historic boundary, and I look forward to future conversations with Ministers to that end. If the local authority in Cornwall is serious about greater autonomy, I invite it to be part of those conversations with the Government at that time to achieve that. However, for now, I will continue to do what I can to ensure that my constituents in Truro and Falmouth get the fair representation that they deserve, as well as continued support through the current crisis and beyond, and I thank the Government for their part in that.

To that end, I support the Bill, and I support the Government’s attempts to safeguard and encourage democracy throughout the whole country.

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)]

It is a pleasure to participate in this debate, and a particular pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory), with whom I agree quite strongly that Cornwall is its own nation and should be respected. Indeed, in Committee, we received quite a bit of evidence to that effect from Cornwall Council and Councillor Dick Cole, who drew our attention to the fact that the UK Government recognised Cornwall as a minority nation back in 2014, and that its territorial integrity in terms of representation in this place must be respected.

I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Member that that should be addressed. Where we might disagree somewhat is that I believe we perhaps need to go further —this is something that could be looked at again under this Bill, perhaps in the other place—to see how we can ensure that those safeguards for the people and the nation of Cornwall are adequately protected.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I am a fan of the Kingdom of Sussex and I still sing “Sussex by the Sea” on our national day, but is that not an argument for keeping within county boundaries or historic national boundaries? We therefore need a higher variance on the number; otherwise, the Cornish will be saved this time, but they will not be saved next time.

[Ben Lake]

The hon. Member makes a good point in terms of the fact that the protections are temporary, in so far as the mathematics, or the population, this time around is protected and works for Cornwall, but in the future there need to be other safeguards.

[Cherilyn Mackrory]

I would like to take this argument when we have further devolution calls; at that point, because Cornwall has a special status, I would like to see the boundary protected.

[Ben Lake]

That is a very good point well made.

To return to more familiar ground—Wales—let me say in passing that I was very pleased to see Ynys Môn included as a protected constituency. I see that the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) is here. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) on her amendment. I tried to table a very similarly worded amendment—I see the right hon. Member gesturing—but it did not quite fit the bill. What is important is that the change got through. It is a rare day indeed when the Labour party, the Conservative party and Plaid Cymru find common cause on anything, so in that sense it is very good.

I am conscious that I was distracted earlier, so I will now keep to some points about Wales, and particularly a question raised during Committee stage that I believe warrants further debate, and which the right hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) touched on: the allocation of seats between the nations of the UK. Other Members have already drawn attention to the fact that Wales is likely to lose quite a significant number of seats at this initial boundary review, which, yes—before anybody intervenes—is partly a result of our not having had a boundary review for so many years. The hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson) and I had a good exchange on that in Committee.

However, although I completely understand the arguments for applying a single UK-wide electoral quota and agree with its proponents that it has a logical coherence, I think that the unintended consequences of such an approach should be addressed. In Committee, some practical issues with changing to a single UK-wide electoral quota were addressed, including that we are tying ourselves to demographic changes, with automaticity clauses meaning that further changes are implemented without further discussion or decision by this place.

Reference has been made to the fact that we base our electoral registers on those who are eligible to vote, as opposed to populations, but for the sake of argument, between 2001 and 2018 the population of Wales grew by some 200,000. Projections suggest that between 2018 and 2028—just before the further review—it will grow by another 2.7%. However, it is likely, according to the evidence we received in Committee, that the number of seats that Wales will send to this place will be reduced initially by eight, or perhaps seven, and a further one or two at the next review.

Some practical issues, including the creation of large geographical constituencies, have been addressed, particularly by the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone). However, there are constitutional considerations as well. Wales will lose eight seats initially, and unless demographic trends change quite significantly in the coming decade, we stand to lose further representation in this place. The right hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan made the valid point that one thing that has changed in the last decade or two is the devolution settlement, although that was not necessarily the rationale put to us for the move to a single UK-wide electoral quota. But if we were to adopt that logic, as the representative from the Liberal Democrats told us in Committee, there should be no reduction without further devolution.

[Alun Cairns]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that, for a cohesive society to sustain itself, equal representation is fundamental?

[Ben Lake]

I completely acknowledge and note the right hon. Gentleman’s arguments, but we fundamentally disagree. I consider the UK to be a union of four nations, as opposed to a single entity. I think we are at an impasse and will never be able to agree. I acknowledge that his argument is coherent, but I do not agree with it, which is more than I can say for other Members.

The representation of the peoples of the UK could be addressed if we were to explore reforms to other parts of the constitution, most notably the other place. Other countries have shown that second Chambers can be very good at doing this. However, that is not on offer at the moment and, indeed, is not a measure before the House. For that reason, I encourage Members to support new clause 2, to at least make us pause and make sure that it is a conscious decision to reduce the number of MPs from the respective nations of the UK.

[Mrs Miller]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake). I am pleased to hear his support for my old new clause 10, which now makes up clause 7 in the Bill. I think he will find that his amendment was what we call technically defective. However, it is good to hear his support.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to this group of amendments on Report, but before I do that, it says it all when Labour characterises boundary changes, as the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) did, as unnecessary nuisances. The Bill is all about the quality of our democracy. Fair and equal-sized constituencies are at the heart of it.