Parliamentary Constituencies bill (Third sitting)

Bim Afolami Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

Q Professor McLean, you mentioned that you felt it would be difficult for the preference of existing constituencies to be kept to if we keep within the 5% quota, because there would need to be quite a substantial revision, and Professor Curtice made similar remarks. Could you expand a little on your analysis of how that might shake out? In terms of our recent electoral history, where do you think this disruption will rank?

Professor McLean: A problem is caused when you are going by a regional area. The practice of the English commission has been to go by counties for some of its units, including administrative counties such as the former metropolitan counties that were abolished in 1986. That is a defensible practice, because the larger the unit within which you operate, the easier it is to reconcile conflicting criteria. Therefore, if you are in a unit of, let us say, three constituencies, one of which by happenstance is the right size and the others are not, it might be difficult to maintain the right-sized one and observe the other rules. If you are in a unit of 15 constituencies, one of which is the right size, the commissioners have more freedom to draw a map that retains the constituency that happens to be the right size while altering the others.

I said earlier that it is likely—I do not have the data, but John may—that there are now very few constituencies anywhere in the UK that are the right size, which is to say, one 600th of the House, given that we have had 20 years of migration and the disruption mentioned in Scotland and especially Wales. So I think it will be very hard to preserve existing constituencies.

Professor Sir John Curtice: All I can add is that I did look quickly at what statisticians call the standard deviation of constituency size—that is simply a measure of the extent to which the number of registered electors in a constituency varies between one seat and another—and that number is constantly increasing. Basically, there is now a greater difference in the size of constituencies than there was in 2017, there was a greater difference in 2017 than in 2015, and there was a greater difference in 2015 than in 2010. Although politically this redistribution may not be as dramatic as people on both sides of the House might imagine, there is no doubt that getting the constituencies to reflect electorate sizes is bound to be disruptive.

[Bim Afolami]

Q Do you both think we will end up with more cross-county constituencies, particularly in the south-east of England?

Professor McLean: That is going to be up to the operating practices of the Boundary Commission for England if it remains non-statutory, and it is not proposed in this Bill that it should be given statutory instructions different from those in the 1986 Bill. Thinking on my feet, I think that with the exception of the Isle of Wight, which is not a true exception because it is one of the preserved areas, county populations in the south of England are sufficiently large that—sorry, we are not here treating Rutland as a county—

[Bim Afolami]

It is not a proper county anyway.

Professor McLean: If we take out the Isle of Wight and possibly Rutland, it should be reasonably feasible for the English commission to operate at county level, but that is an operating matter for the commission. At present it is not in the Bill. If an amendment to give greater respect to county boundaries were introduced to the Bill during its progress, that might imperil the equality rule, which the current law gives as trumps.

[Bim Afolami]

Q One final question, if I may. We have talked a lot about the automaticity of this and how Parliament does not have the ability to vote it down. Bearing that in mind, do you both have a sense of how you feel the boundary commissioners might behave differently now that they would almost have a bit more freedom because of Parliament’s not having its ability to vote it down? Do you think they will behave differently in their judgments? They are obviously very professional people and will do their work as best they can, but we all live in the real world and we know that if we think that Parliament has the ability to vote it down, that might affect how radical the final findings we present are.

Professor McLean: The only one of the four commissions that has possibly felt itself at risk under those conditions in the past is the Northern Ireland one, where there are deep issues of community and sectarianism. I am all for protecting commissions from that sort of pressure. Having observed the operations of county inquiries in England—I have never done a Scottish inquiry—I would say that the boundary commissions’ staff and inspectors have always maintained great professionalism. I would not expect that to change under the sort of behavioural issues that you raise.

Professor Sir John Curtice: I would trust the boundary commissioners much more than I would the House of Commons on this subject, to be perfectly frank with you.

[The Chair]

I would like to take the two final questions together because we have only three minutes left. First, Mr Matheson and then Mr Clarkson.

Parliamentary Constituencies bill (Fourth sitting)

Bim Afolami Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Mrs Miller]

Q Thank you, Dr Larner, for your evidence today. It is incredibly helpful in the Committee’s deliberations.

Under these provisions there are four protected constituencies, as you know: two are on the Isle of Wight, near my own constituency of Basingstoke, and two are in Scotland, but there are none in Wales. When the proposal was to reduce to 600 constituencies, it was difficult to give protection to Ynys Môn, yet under this proposal it is easier to do so and stay closer to the potential threshold for constituency sizes. I have tabled an amendment to that affect, which I do not know whether you have had a chance to look at. Can you see any problems with introducing such an amendment into this legislation? I declare an interest as I was brought up in south Wales.

Dr Larner: On the face of it, I certainly do not see any problems. I have also seen some people discussing the idea of some of the constituencies on the west coast of Wales, where there are far more Welsh speakers and very rural constituencies, being considered for something like that. Obviously, Ynys Môn is not as isolated geographically as some of the Scottish constituencies, but, when you consider that the Isle of Wight is involved in these protections, it is reasonable to suggest that Ynys Môn should be too.

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

Q Dr Larner, you mentioned at the beginning that you studied electoral and voting behaviour. In the evidence sessions we have heard a lot about the impact on people when they feel that local ties are not respected or that their community is being broken up by a constituency boundary.

Have you come across any evidence from the last few boundary reviews on what a more disruptive boundary review does to voting behaviour, as regards the parties or candidates people vote for, or whether they vote at all?

Dr Larner: Not necessarily in the way you put it, but there is interesting evidence if you compare strategic voting in Scotland and Wales, especially at devolved elections. In Wales, constituency boundaries for devolved and UK general election elections are coterminous, which is a silly word meaning the same, and in Scotland, they are different; they do not overlap. There is a lot of very interesting evidence on those elections. When people are faced with different boundaries, how do they calculate who they will vote for? There is some evidence from Scotland that there is more confusion when faced with different boundaries and boundary changes. For example, people are not always sure which is the strongest candidate, or which is the favourite or second favourite candidate. There is evidence that those boundary changes, which are consistent and repeated—they are not one-off events—cause some confusion among voters.

[The Chair]

Dr Larner, you waited a long time, but the Committee had plenty of questions for you, and we are very grateful for the time you spent with us. Thank you.

Examination of witnesses

Dr David Rossiter and Professor Charles Pattie gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Cat Smith]

Q Finally, are there any other opportunities to strengthen or improve the Bill in Committee?

Professor Pattie: One of the areas that I was quite pleased to see in the Bill was a re-examination of how the inquiry and hearings are held, because that is problematic.

However, there is still a bit of a challenge for the public hearing process, because the areas in which those hearings now operate are just so incredibly large. There was some discussion earlier in your deliberations about ways in which the process might be improved to allow greater flexibility in local discussion. But you must remember that you are talking about entire regions, and about entire countries in Scotland and Wales, and people can turn up at a hearing in one corner of the region or country to talk about a seat in quite another part, and the chances of having a meaningful conversation about those proposals are remarkably small.

I am not sure that I have a clever proposal for you, but I think that is something to worry about; the extent to which those hearings really produce helpful information in all bar a few cases would be a concern that I have. I cannot suggest a fix for you, but if you want to look at something, that is another area that it is worth just having a bit more thought given to it.

[Bim Afolami]

Q I suppose that this question is for both of you. If you think back to previous reviews that have taken place—admittedly, obviously, under different rules—to what degree of magnitude do you think this review will end up changing the existing constituencies?

Professor Pattie: Big is the very short answer. This is liable to be one of the most disruptive reviews that we have seen for quite some time. As Dave mentioned earlier, on our estimates you are looking at major disruption again, and again, and again, into the future, especially if you hang on to that 5% tolerance. So, this will be big. Further reviews will also be big, so this will become a feature of the system going forward.

Dr Rossiter: If I can just add to what Charles has said, when we did our 2014 exercise we estimated that approximately half of seats would experience major change at this first review, but we based that on 2010 data, because that was the data that was available at that time. So, we were looking at rectifying changes that had taken place over 10 years, plus the change to the rules. We will now be looking at an exercise that has to rectify the changes over 20 years and I think that we will be looking at something like two thirds to three quarters of seats experiencing very significant change at this coming review.

Contrary to what I think are some of the optimistic views that were expressed earlier in proceedings, I see little chance of county boundaries remaining intact in large parts of the country. I think that most county and unitary authority boundaries will need to be breached. I also think that many more constituencies will be split across local authorities, and vice versa, and many more seats will have orphan wards in them.

Again, looking at this in an historical context, there have not been that many reviews that have had to deal with 20 years of changes, so it is probably not too helpful to concentrate on the disruption this time round; it was always going to be like this. I think that what is much more worthy of consideration in terms of legislation is realising the longer-term implications of it, because the danger is that if these changes are not realised, you only have to go back to the 1954-55 debates in Parliament, when MPs suddenly realised what had happened in the previous legislation and said, “We do not want our constituencies changed on this basis. Why are we having all this change?” Four years later, legislation was introduced to reduce the need to change to meet an arithmetical standard. My fear, obviously, is that that will be repeated.

[Bim Afolami]

Q That is interesting. Out of interest—I could go and check this now, but I do not have it in front of me—on the 2018 review, which obviously did not happen, for various reasons that we have discussed already, what percentage of seats underwent what you would consider major revision?

Dr Rossiter: I do not have that figure to hand. One of the problems is that this affects different parts of the country differently, so, for example, during the 2018 review, the south-east of England was little affected because it was set to lose only one seat during that review. Now that we go back to 650 seats, because of the growth in the south-east of England, the south-east will gain seven seats. Gaining seven seats inevitably results in a huge amount of change.

So, it can be helpful to look at what happened in 2013 and 2018 as exemplars of what results from this, but this is the problem: the devil is always in the detail. It is always in the specific geography of the area. It is always in the specific number of electors—whether a county, for example, has an integer entitlement or a non-integer entitlement. I have near me the example of East Sussex. East Sussex at the moment is entitled to eight and a half seats. With a 5% tolerance either way, that will mean that the East Sussex boundary has to be bridged. Kent is perfectly okay. West Sussex is perfectly okay. Therefore, in sorting out the problem in East Sussex—this is all provisional on 2019 data not changing an awful lot—we will need to see something that goes across the county boundary in one way or another.

Until we know the final figures, we will not be able to be absolutely certain on any of these issues. At least half of seats were changed during the 2013 and 2018 reviews, and when I say that the forthcoming review would be between two thirds and 75%, that is simply a reflection of the fact that it is trying to deal with that extra amount of time. What seems surprising is that maintaining 650 seats does not necessarily help a huge amount. It helps slightly, but not a great deal, in minimising the disruption that is going to happen. I hope that that is helpful.

[David Linden]

Q Thank you very much, Professor Pattie and Dr Rossiter, for coming before the Committee. I have a couple of questions that I want to explore with you. You may have seen in previous oral evidence there has been some discussion of the idea of the building blocks for constituencies, whether those are used by polling districts or wards. Can you offer a view on that? Perhaps Professor Pattie would start off.

Professor Pattie: This is an interesting issue, isn’t it? The issue here again is obviously over, partially, the practice of splitting wards—which clearly can be done—and partially the pragmatics, if you like. I know you have had lots of evidence already about data sources, software availability, etc. I will leave that to people who are more expert in handling those data systems, but clearly that causes an issue. I think I would raise just two points, here. First of all, harking back to our 2014 McDougall Trust report, we did try there to estimate the relative effects on disruption of playing around with the tolerances versus playing around with ward splitting. Ward splitting certainly helped to reduce the amount of disruption, but in our estimates it did not reduce disruption anything like as much as widening the tolerances moderately. The second thing you have to bear in mind here is that we are talking about disruption to communities. Remember how the Boundary Commission’s local government wards operate. It tends to be quite strong on the idea that, in building the ward suggestions, it is trying to represent people, so when you split a ward, arguably you are splitting a community—you are doing the very thing that you are trying to avoid, to avoid the thing that you are trying to avoid, if that makes sense. You end up in a strange circular process in which you disrupt a community to save a community. Where the white line is on that is anyone’s guess, but ward splitting is neither technically a global panacea, nor conceptually a panacea, precisely because in splitting a ward, you might well be splitting a community.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill (Eighth sitting)

Bim Afolami Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 30th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[John Spellar]

That is rather my point—exactly. With a wider area of appreciation, it is possible to take account of that. It becomes much more difficult the narrower it is. It also comes down to the size of the building blocks. I think the right hon. Gentleman mentioned that some of his wards are in Leeds and some are in the country. For those MPs who represent rural areas or small towns the wards are quite often 1,000, 1,500 or 2,000. In most of the metropolitan areas they are in the 8,000 to 10,000 mark. In certain areas—not Birmingham, any more, since the change in the boundaries and all-up elections—including in Leeds, for example, my under- standing is that the number is somewhere around 16,000 to 19,000. That makes, again, for a sizeable building block.

There is, frankly—and with all due respect to our colleague the hon. Member for Glasgow East—no point talking about Scottish wards, because they are much larger, being based on a single transferable vote system, If, heaven forbid, Conservative Members now seek to move towards STV in the United Kingdom, that will be another issue entirely. However, there is not the same identity of ward members as we have when we must have much wider wards. The idea is to keep, as far as possible, structural organisation for a ward, although there may need to be some minor exceptions. The boundary commission initially crossed borough boundaries as an exception, to deal with problems in London, as I recall. Now, it seems to almost totally disregard such boundaries. That is one reason why the Labour party, unsuccessfully, still wanted to allow Parliament to act as a constraint on the self-fulfilling activities of the boundary commission.

It is enormously important to maintain some sort of coherence and identity. It is not just constituencies that should have geographic and community coherence, but wards as well. There should not be gerrymander-style wards, similar to some American constituencies, which get close to having exact mathematic equivalence but end up being utterly extraordinary shapes and sizes. That is why we should not take note of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe recommendation to look at size of population, as the United States does, rather than electoral registers. The United States bases its wards on census figures, not electoral registration. In some areas, authorities might be encouraged if they had to focus on electoral registration rather than registration suppression, as happens in a number of states, whipped on by Donald Trump.

For that reason, one probably has to have slight, and probably unjustified and unworthy, suspicions, about the vehemence with which the argument for 5% is being mounted by Government Members. We have been told, both by the Conservative party witness and by Members, that the OSCE report firmly says that the total variation should be 10%—in other words, 5% on either side. They prayed that in aid as justification for their case, but that is not what the OSCE says in its recommendation. It clearly states:

“The maximum admissible departure from the distribution criterion…should seldom exceed 10% and never 15%, except”—

it even says this—

“in really exceptional circumstances”.

There are practical reasons in favour of the proposal. We need to ensure the maintenance of communities and prevent considerable inconvenience similar to that experienced as a result of the previous boundary changes. We have heard evidence that 650 seats may or may not make it easier, but these very tight margins make it more difficult for the boundary commission, parliamentarians and, most importantly, the electorate.

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

I listened with interest to the right hon. Member for Warley and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell. I want to make a couple of points.

Bearing in mind that my party is keen on approving of Democratic Presidents in the US these days, one of my political heroes has always been Lyndon Baines Johnson. When asked about Gerald Ford, who later became President after Nixon’s resignation, LBJ said that he was “so dumb he can’t even pee and chew gum at the same time.” The intention of keeping the 5%, while maintaining relationships between communities within a constituency, is an example of how this Bill and this boundary commission, which I trust and respect, can and will be able to pee and chew gum at the same time.

I found the speech by the right hon. Member for Warley strange as he was, in effect, making the argument for what we have now, which is a wide appreciation of the number, so as to make it easier, so he says, for communities to stay together. I understand that argument. It is not a wholly illegitimate one, but if we take that view and do not trust the boundary commission to get this right, over time—probably quite quickly, bearing in mind the speed of population movements these days—we will get to the same position we are in now. I think there is broad agreement across the House and this Committee that we should take this opportunity to make a change to this system, given that these boundaries have been out of date for 20 years or so. If we are to do so, it is very important that we have a tight margin of appreciation so we can set the dial to make sure every vote counts as equally as possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Spellar]

Would the hon. Gentleman consider the possibility that it is because we have been through a couple of boundary commission recommendations, and found how inadequate and badly based many of them are, that we distrust them?

[Bim Afolami]

I was about to agree with the right hon. Gentleman. However, the point of our system is that in response to arguments, the boundary commission changes what it has proposed. Members can correct me if I am wrong, but I think that during either the 2013 review or the 2018 one—as we all know, those reviews were abandoned because the House failed to approve them—almost 50% of the changes that were made were changed in response to submissions, both from Members who were in the House at the time and from other interested parties, including members of the public.

I have no doubt that the boundary commission will make mistakes, but I trust the ingenuity of those people who will be able to challenge it: not just Members, but political parties, members of the public and random geeks who do this sort of thing for fun. I trust that the boundary commission will listen to reasonable representations—particularly those regarding local ties and linguistic points, which the hon. Member for Ceredigion spoke about earlier—and that we can get this right. We need to get the margin of appreciation as tight as possible so that the votes of all members of the public in this country can count equally. That is a very important principle, and one that I support.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

I am listening very closely to the hon. Gentleman. The Committee has talked at great length about the importance of voters having an equal say. Does he accept, however, that until people in this House are willing to be grown up enough to address the inadequacies of the first-past-the-post system, we are—I do not want to say “unable to pee and chew gum”—putting our effort in the wrong place? Quite rightly, we are saying that we want to have equal voting in constituencies, but we are unwilling to talk about the inadequacies of first past the post.

[Bim Afolami]

At the risk of straying from the measures covered by this new clause, we can have that debate. I happen to support the first-past-the-post system, but I understand that there are very good reasons for not doing so. However, that is not the place of this Bill. If people wanted another referendum on the voting system, I think first past the post would win, as it did several years ago, but I am perfectly happy to have that debate.

In relation to the point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow East about the inadequacies of first past the post, those who do not like that system need to accept that if one is going to respect local ties and local communities and regard them as important, one cannot at the same time support moving to a system that involves much bigger regions, such as a single transferable vote system, or proportional representation generally. That would negate the original point. There are a lot of things that people say they like about the first-past-the-post system. I am not saying that they like every aspect. For example, there are people in my constituency who vote Green, and it is unlikely that the Greens would ever win in my constituency—although, of course, strange things happen in politics. Those who vote Green might say, “I never get a chance for my vote to count.” I appreciate that, but one aspect that people do like about the first-past-the-post system is the fact that community ties are respected and they feel that their Member of Parliament to some degree represents what they feel their community to be like.

We have talked about the difficulties of this. Of course the boundary commission gets it wrong sometimes, but it is up to us, members of the public, political parties and the geeks who do this stuff for fun to try to ensure that the constituencies make sense, because that, I think, is the core of the legitimacy of the first-past-the-post system. And if—this, I suppose, is a warning to the Government or, indeed, anybody else—this whole process were mismanaged and the boundary commission ended up not listening to members of the public, constituencies, Members of Parliament and so on and not making sure that the constituencies did pee and chew gum at the same time, we would get delegitimisation of the first-past-the-post system, because people would not be feeling that they would be voting for a particular Member who represented their community. Therefore I think that it is a point well made.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I support the new clause, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood. I think that we need to go back and listen to some of the arguments that we have heard in this Committee before, but also some of the evidence that we have taken. People have highlighted the problems with 5% and the rigid use of 5%. The hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden, who just spoke, really made an argument in favour of more flexibility for the boundary commission, because he was saying, “Let’s trust the boundary commission. Let’s set the parameters and let it get on with the job.”

What the boundary commission clearly said in evidence to us was this. Mr Bellringer, when asked about tolerance of 5% plus or minus, said:

“It is something that we always used to be able to do in the past and did do on occasion. Prior to 2011, there was not this hard maximum and minimum, but we would still be aiming to keep constituencies within a broad range. Occasionally we would breach that if we needed to, to provide a better holistic solution.”––[Official Report, Parliamentary Constituencies Public Bill Committee, 18 June 2020; c. 17, Q30.]

The boundary commission was clearly saying to us that it tried to keep within or close to the average, but on the rare occasions on which the local circumstances required this, it would use more flexibility. The argument from the boundary commission is clearly that it would like that flexibility in order to do a good job, and I think we should listen to it.

We have had experience of the 5%. We have just been through two reviews, and the complications and difficulties that the 5% created have given us the opportunity to have experience of that without having to implement it, fortunately, because Parliament saw reason. We have the opportunity now to correct that flaw in the process and increase the figure. I would suggest 10%, as the OSCE report suggests, but my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood has found a different solution to the problem.

We also heard from Dr Rossiter, who has investigated this issue. He talks about the situation where these tight tolerances force the boundary commission to go over local authority boundaries, and he respects the difficulties that that creates for Members of Parliament when representing different local authorities. He also made the point that the discretion of the boundary commission enables it to avoid those situations when putting forward proposals. We thus have evidence from an expert that such difficulties may be forced on the boundary commission the tighter we make the plus or minus above the average.

Dr Rossiter went on to say:

“I have noticed, when we have been looking at this, the significant help that increasing that tolerance by very small amounts will provide. As soon as you go from 5% to 6%, you have a big payback from going up by that one percentage point. That payback increases to around 8%, which is why we came to the conclusion in our previous report that a figure of 8% would be much more helpful.”––[Official Report, Parliamentary Constituencies Public Bill Committee, 18 June 2020; c. 140, Q269.]

My hon. Friend’s proposal is 7.5%, which takes us close to the recommendation. That recommendation is based on expert review of the process of creating boundaries and its impact on local communities.

Returning to a point that I made in a previous debate, I firmly believe that we represent communities as much as numbers of people. Obviously, that has to be met within a certain tolerance. We cannot have a situation in which there is one enormous constituency of more than 100,000 people and one such as mine that is below the average. I also entirely accept that we cannot continue with constituencies that are 20 years out of date, which has led to some of the fluctuations in numbers.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill (Seventh sitting)

Bim Afolami Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 30th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)]

I beg to move amendment 1, in clause 6, page 4, line 37, at end insert—

“(2A) In rule 5(1)(d) (list of factors), after “local” insert “and linguistic”.”

This amendment would enable a Boundary Commission to take into account, if and to the extent that they think fit, the effect of boundary change on linguistic ties as well as local ties.

It is, as always, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. It is also a pleasure to kick off this morning’s proceedings by speaking to my amendment 1, which hon. Members will have noticed is designed to probe the Government and provoke a debate on the nature of local ties, what “local ties” might mean, and, particularly with relevance to Wales but not just to Wales, linguistic ties. I will confine my remarks to the Welsh language, although I acknowledge that there are other languages within the United Kingdom to which some of the points I will make may be just as relevant. As I said, this is a probing amendment that I hope will spark some sort of debate.

The amendment would enable the Boundary Commission for Wales to take into account, if and to the extent that it thought fit, the effect of boundary change on linguistic ties, as well as local ties, when considering boundaries. We heard on 18 June, in the first evidence session, from Shereen Williams of the Boundary Commission for Wales. In answer to a question about local ties, Ms Williams mentioned that the commission in Wales looked at electoral wards and communities that are linked through joint programmes and projects. She went on to say:

“Also, quite uniquely, in Wales…is the Welsh language. We take it into account that you have constituencies where there are lots of links to the Welsh language. That is something we would like to keep together.”––[Official Report, Parliamentary Constituencies Public Bill Committee, 18 June 2020; c. 20, Q37.]

My concern, in tabling the amendment, was not that the Boundary Commission for Wales takes no notice of the Welsh language and the links that communities have in certain parts of Wales—far from it. I know from past experience that the commission has been very receptive, and not just in the way in which it consults communities on proposed new boundaries; it has also taken into account, in submissions on certain proposals, what the impact of those might be on the Welsh language and the community. Rather, my concern is how the Welsh language, and indeed the local ties, will be catered for in future developments.

I know that later, when considering another part of the Bill, we will discuss the fact that Wales in particular stands to lose quite a number of seats, which has consequences for the commission’s work in redrawing the electoral map of Wales. It may be difficult for the commission to cater to all the different ties that fall under the statutory rule. In response to the next question, Ms Williams from the Boundary Commission for Wales said that

“it will be just as complex as the previous reviews, because we are losing quite a lot of seats.”––[Official Report, Parliamentary Constituencies Public Bill Committee, 18 June 2020; c. 20, Q38.]

She was referring, of course, to the change to 650 as opposed to 600. We also know that demographics and the relatively slower rate of growth in the Welsh population will mean that we will probably stand to lose further seats in subsequent boundary reviews. I am quite concerned about how the commission goes about its work to try to incorporate all the different local ties, including the Welsh language and linguistic links.

If Members needed to be convinced any further about the importance of the Welsh language in Wales, in our afternoon evidence session on 23 June, in response to a question from the Minister, Dr Larner said:

“There is a lot of very well-backed-up evidence in Wales that Welsh speakers, particularly fluent, first language Welsh speakers, tend to hold slightly different opinions on a whole range of ideas…I would absolutely say that the ability to speak Welsh is a really important part of some people’s identity.”––[Official Report, Parliamentary Constituencies Public Bill Committee, 23 June 2020; c. 128, Q245.]

I suppose that gets to the nub of the issue that I want to probe today: how does the “local ties” rule really capture the extent of the different elements that could constitute identity for some of our communities? I appreciate that identity is not something that we could ever capture perfectly, as it is very subjective. Rather, I am probing into whether under the statutory rules we can ensure that the importance and prevalence of linguistic ties, particularly in Wales, are maintained in future reviews.

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

With regard to linguistic ties, how does the hon. Gentleman see dialect as being included within that—not so much the separate languages, but the separate ways and methods of communication and separate vocabulary, as seen in dialects?

[Ben Lake]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for that point. The debate about dialect is very interesting, and could certainly spark quite a bit of interest in Wales. He might be aware that northerners, or gogs as we call them in Wales, hold quite proudly that their Welsh is somehow superior to that of us mere mortals in the south. Of course, I am a west Walian, so I am better than both. However, he makes a good point on the distinction between dialect and language.

For the purposes of linguistic ties in Wales, I think it would be only fair for the Boundary Commission for Wales to consider the language as a whole. It would be unfair, and perhaps impossible, to draw the commission into adjudicating which dialect is more important. People feel quite passionately about whether they speak north Welsh, south Welsh, or west Walian as I do.

It is a good point, perhaps, for other languages. I do not want to interfere in the war of the roses that we had last week between Yorkshire and Lancaster, but people feel quite strongly about their dialects and accents. I would not be opposed to that being captured by the “local ties” considerations as the boundary commissions do some of their work in different regions. That would be a perfectly appropriate consideration for them to make. In Wales, I would not want the commission to have to tie too closely to the different dialects, but certainly the language itself is something that I want it to hold true to.

I reiterate that my remarks are not a criticism in any way of the Boundary Commission for Wales, which does incredible work. I fear that subsequent boundary reviews will be of greater complexity due to there being fewer seats, but the commission’s operation is compliant with Welsh language standards, and I know that it does a lot of work to ensure that it works as bilingually as possible, both in terms of its day-to-day administrative operation and when it consults with different communities. That is so important, especially when consulting with Welsh language communities.

I should mention that the naming of constituencies is not an issue for anybody to be concerned about. I am quite relaxed about that. We have two wonderful languages in Wales and we are very fortunate in that regard. I am happy that the names are bilingual; if anything, it is a bonus and a win-win situation. It is not a matter of the naming of constituencies, although I know there was quite a bit of work on that in the commission’s previous review.

My final point is that in subsequent reviews we may find that there are a greater number of Welsh speakers in the first place. I am happy that there has been progress in recent years in encouraging more people in Wales to be bilingual. This may well be a fear we need not address in the future, but at the moment it would be good to know how the different considerations that we can capture under local ties are prioritised, whether there is a hierarchy and how that works. In future reviews, if Wales has a smaller number of seats to divide the electorate, I would be concerned that the Welsh language may be a secondary or tertiary consideration, and would be relegated in that sense. Naturally, I would oppose that.

Can the Minister say how the Welsh language will be treated in future reviews, especially when the task of allocating seats within Wales will be far more complicated? I would be grateful. Diolch, Mr Paisley.