Parliamentary Constituencies bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Bim Afolami and Cat Smith

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

[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.