Oral Answers to Questions

Charles Kennedy Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As the hon. Lady knows, we are confident that we are doing everything we can—we are taking a belt-and-braces approach—to ensure that registration levels do not fall. We have learned from the experience of Northern Ireland and have worked on a consensual, cross-party basis to get this right, because all parties accept that we need to move to individual voter registration. I do not anticipate that the situation she predicts will arise.

[Mr Charles Kennedy (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (LD)]

Assuming that the next boundary review will be—we hope—on a UK basis, will the Deputy Prime Minister look at the unhappy experience of this Parliament and the exceptions that were granted for the Isle of Wight, and the northern and western isles? The manifest absence of any such willingness to appreciate the vast geography of the several constituencies of the highlands and islands of Scotland means that my constituency has one Westminster MP and no fewer than eight Members of the Scottish Parliament serving it. That cannot make sense.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I certainly agree with my right hon. Friend that, as the reviews occur in future, we shall need to be mindful, first, of the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham), ensuring that there is enough latitude in the rules so that boundary commissions are not forced to split up naturally formed communities; and, secondly, of the need not to create such unfeasibly large constituencies that it is almost impossible physically to represent them in this place.