Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Caroline Flint Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Aside from these improvements, the arrangements for drawing the boundaries will remain untouched. For more than 60 years, the responsibility for drawing constituency boundaries has rested with the four independent boundary commissions. That guarantee of impartiality will remain. This is not, as some critics have sought to suggest, an elaborate attempt to gerrymander the boundaries, because the Government will have no say in where the new constituency perimeters will fall.

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I said I was giving way to the right hon. Lady. Is the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) answering to that?

[Caroline Flint]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, but why has he settled on a figure that is different from the one proposed by him in the Liberal Democrat manifesto—which was to reduce the Chamber by 150, I believe—or by the Conservatives, who sought to reduce the number to 585? Has the figure of 600 been settled on because going any further in the downward direction would affect Tory and Liberal Democrat seats rather than just Labour ones, as proposed?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

We settled on 600 MPs, a relatively modest cut in House numbers of just less than 8%, because it saves money—about £12 million each year—and because we think it creates a House that is sufficiently large to hold the Government to account while enabling us all to do our jobs of representing our constituencies. It also creates a sensible average number of constituents—76,000, as I mentioned earlier—that we already know is manageable because there are already 218 seats that are within 5% of that number. That is why we feel 600 is about right.