Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Cat Smith Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Tuesday 10th November 2020 Commons Chamber

I hope that these Government-backed amendments bring additional certainty that the recommendations of the Boundary Commission will be implemented without political interference or unnecessary delay. I therefore trust that the House will agree to these particular Lords amendments, and commend them to the House.

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

I welcome the Leader of the House to his place this afternoon. He is, of course, standing in for the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), who, given her recent health diagnosis, is taking some time away from this House, but not from her work. I want to put on the record how much the Labour party wishes her a speedy recovery, because I agree with the Leader of the House that he is a poor substitute for the formidable Minister!

The Labour party supports a boundary review in time for the next general election. Throughout all stages of the Bill, Opposition Members and their noble lordships have worked constructively to use this opportunity as a chance to improve and enhance the UK’s democracy. I thank the noble Lords for the constructive amendments that we are considering, and urge all Members to support them. The amendments all have the same central aim, which is to ensure that our parliamentary constituencies are drawn using data that is as complete and accurate as possible.

As I watched the US election unfold last week, I was reminded that our democracy and strong constituency links should not be taken for granted, and that we should be working constantly to improve and defend our system of parliamentary governance in this country. At every stage of the Bill, the Government have had ample opportunity to improve democratic representation— from filling the gaps in our electoral register to ensuring that our constituency boundaries properly reflect the communities within them. Sadly, though, the missing 9 million people from our electoral roll will now not be included in next constituency map of the UK.

Turning to the Lords amendments before us, I want to begin by addressing Lords amendment 6, which ensures that the appointment of members of the Boundary Commissions is made and seen to be made independently of Executive influence. This amendment is important because of the significant change of removing parliamentary oversight. In the past, Parliament has always played a democratic role in the boundary review process. This Bill will remove the very backstop that secured the existence of the 650 constituencies we all represent in this House today.

The passage of this amendment would ensure that, much like the appointment of judges, the appointment of boundary commissioners was wholly independent. Deputy chairs of the boundary commissions for England and Wales would be appointed by the Lord Chief Justice, not the Lord Chancellor. Commissioners would be appointed by a selection panel comprising the deputy chair of the relevant commission and two others appointed by the Speaker of the House of Commons. A report would be submitted to the Secretary of State saying whom the panel had recommended. As it stands, this Bill allows Government Ministers to have undue influence over their appointments, and the Government’s track record on appointing their close friends to positions of public authority speaks for itself. I simply do not trust a Government who have shamelessly appointed their mates to run the BBC, Ofcom, NHS Test and Trace and other major bodies.

I would also like to address Lords amendment 7, which seeks to alleviate the inevitable break-up of communities resulting from a too narrow 5% quota. While this might seem dry, at its heart the change has a real consequence for communities in the UK. Constituencies must be of broadly equal size in a fair and representative democracy—and on that point, I hope we all agree—but international best practice recommends that flexibility should be baked into the system to allow for consideration of geography and community ties. The Council of Europe’s Venice Commission code of good practice in electoral matters recommends allowing a standard permissible tolerance from the electoral quota of plus or minus 10%.

UK experts who gave evidence to the Bill Committee recognised that the tight 5% quota will force constituency boundaries to cut across communities, ward boundaries, rivers, lakes, mountains and of course motorways to engineer the right mathematical numbers. Indeed, the secretary to the Boundary Commission for England admitted that a smaller tolerance makes it

“much harder to have regard to…factors…such as the importance of not breaking local ties, and having regard to local authority boundaries and features of natural geography.”––[Official Report, Parliamentary Constituencies Public Bill Committee, 18 June 2020; c. 7, Q3.]

When the 5% variance was first introduced in 2011, the Government at that time were committed to having a 600-seat Chamber. The average number of electors per constituency therefore would have been much higher, meaning that the 5% that the boundary commissioners would be working with would actually include more electors to work with in the margins of these seats. This is an important point, because by failing to widen the tolerance while increasing the size of the Chamber back up to 650, the commissions actually have far fewer electors to work with—roughly in the region of just 3,000 electors. If we consider that the average urban ward in England is about 8,000 electors, we can appreciate the significance of needing at least 4,000 electors either side of the quota to prevent the breaking up of wards and communities.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

Does the hon. Member agree with me that, arguably, having such a narrow tolerance could create a butterfly effect, whereby a housing development in one constituency might then tip it over the edge? In fact, we are looking at two thirds of the current constituencies being changed as a result of this strict limit.

[Cat Smith]

Indeed. The hon. Member is right about the butterfly effect, because of course we cannot change one parliamentary constituency without having a knock-on effect on all the neighbouring constituencies too.

The truth is that constituencies should look like communities. I thought that point was made very effectively on Second Reading by the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller). I hope she does not mind if I quote what she said then:

“Constituencies should not just be numerical constructs; they should be constructed for communities first and foremost”.—[Official Report, 2 June 2020; Vol. 676, c. 804.]

I completely agree.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

Forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I was quoted. Does the hon. Lady agree, though, that a variance of up to 10,000 voters will actually give the Boundary Commission more than ample flexibility to be able to accommodate communities? The figures she was citing earlier were not, I think, entirely accurate.

[Cat Smith]

I hope that the right hon. Lady will be able to expand on that in her contribution; she is next on the call list to speak. However, I do not quite understand the point that she is trying to make, because there is always going to be a balance between—[Interruption.] If she would like to listen, there will always have to be a balance between hitting the quota and getting as close as we can to 0% from the quota—it would be desirable if every constituency had the exactly the same number of electors—while keeping communities together. I do not think that the idea of dividing a street or a housing estate arbitrarily to create exactly the same size constituency boundaries would cut the mustard with the public. The 5% rule runs a coach and horses through those community ties. It creates a kind of painting-by-numbers approach to the boundary review, and it will lead to long-established communities being split from one another and will erode local identities and divide neighbourhoods. Quite simply, we cannot have it both ways; we cannot protect local ties and enforce a strict quota.

Throughout the Bill, the Government have argued that a 5% tolerance will make every vote count equally, but I would argue that even a 0% quota would not make every vote carry the same weight. Leaving aside the fact that millions of voters are effectively disenfranchised every election owing to the existence of so-called safe seats, it is simply not true that every vote would count equally as a result of this Bill, because at any election we now know that in the region of 9 million eligible electors are incorrectly registered and are losing out on their chance to vote. Millions more will potentially join them if the Government’s plans to roll out voter ID come into force, as we have seen, similarly, in US elections.

I turn to Lords amendment 8, which was tabled by Lord Shutt, who, very sadly, died two weeks ago. He was passionately committed to improving our democracy and it is quite fitting that his last contribution was in support of this amendment. I was speaking to the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) earlier today and he told me that he was a down-to-earth, humble, funny and genuinely nice bloke. I would like to put on record the Opposition’s condolences to his family at this sad time.

Lord Shutt’s amendment would represent a significant step forward in voter registration and, hopefully, participation among young voters. As we all know, electoral registers are the fundamental building blocks for constituency boundaries. Sixteen and 17-year-olds can register as attainers head of their 18th birthday. Since the introduction of individual electoral registration, the number of 16 and 17-year-olds who have been registered has fallen from around 45% in 2015 to just 25% last year. This amendment would enable the Government to ask local authorities’ registration officers to add 16-year-olds to the electoral register when they get their national insurance number or, alternatively, ensure that 16-year-olds would be provided with information on how to apply to join the electoral register on receiving their national insurance number.

This sensible arrangement could radically improve the number of young people registering to vote, hopefully helping them to develop a habit of a lifetime of voting, and—more relevant to this legislation—mean that our constituency boundaries are representative of younger voters. The 16 and 17-year-olds that are considered when it comes to drawing constituency boundaries are likely to be the electors at a subsequent general election. For that reason alone, the Minister should give the amendment great consideration.

In conclusion, the Labour party fundamentally rejects the Government’s attempt to end the parliamentary approval of the new constituency boundaries, and we ask that Members think hard about the impact of the restrictive 5% quota. Ministers know very well exactly what needs to be done to enable greater democratic engagement, and the fact that they have consistently failed to take any action tells us all we need to know.

[Mrs Miller]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith). We also seem to have a number of Members of the Public Bill Committee in the Chamber today. It was a vigorous and very compelling Committee and I am sure that the debate today will follow that.