Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Christian Matheson Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 2nd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith]

I understand the argument on census data, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for putting it, but I do not think it is the right thing to do. I am very happy to explain why, notwithstanding the perhaps obvious point that censuses are only every 10 years—they are on a different frequency to even the amended cycle we have here in front of us—so straightaway they are not suitable because of a different rhythm. There is an important point that we ought to recognise, which is that in a census a different group of people are counted. For example, censuses, naturally, count people who are not citizens and electoral registration must count those who are eligible to vote. That is an important distinction and I think it is right that we use electoral registers as the basis of the data. Another point on which we must all agree—I am confident that he does—is that we all ought to encourage everybody to be registered to vote, because that is the core answer to his point.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

When somebody from my constituency seeks my assistance, I will represent them whether they are a citizen or not and whether they are on the electoral register or not. My hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) makes a fair point. We represent everyone in our constituencies and surely the electoral register should be based on that number.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

Contrary to what we are hearing from Government Members, I warmly welcome the Bill and its main provision, which is the reversion back to 650 Members of Parliament—as, I think, do many colleagues on the Opposition Benches. It is a misrepresentation to suggest that we are opposing the Bill tonight. The Opposition are entirely within their right to put down a reasoned amendment that suggests areas where we would like to see improvement. We will not be opposing the Bill on Second Reading, although we do have concerns.

I have to say that I am also a bit frustrated to hear Government Members saying that we need to get on with the process. We could have been getting on with the process two years ago, with the private Member’s Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan). It was the Government, with the lack of a money resolution, who held that process up, so we will have no more of that in the debate.

I absolutely support the idea of an independent Boundary Commission that will work independently. We do have confidence in the Boundary Commission. What is not independent, however, is the instructions that are given to the Boundary Commission. That is where the manipulation by the governing party comes in, and that is why the Opposition are right to question the judgment being made tonight. The obvious example is the strict adherence to the numbers and the primacy of the numbers over every other consideration, such as communities of interest or geographical size. That strict adherence will give distorted constituencies, especially with a tight variant from the national average. We will lose community cohesion. We will have very large geographical areas that make it extremely difficult for hon. Members to represent them. That is why—I think the hon. Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) touched on this—there has to be some disparity in the numbers to take into account other factors.

We talked about the December 2020 cut-off date being far too late and said that people will fall off the register. At this stage, I was going to talk about other areas where I believe the Conservative party, the governing party, has introduced measures of voter suppression to stop people from getting on to the register or voting. However, the Minister made a significant concession, almost, or recognition—she is not in her place now—about the possibility of having to use the 2019 snapshot, which is the most up-to-date, accurate snapshot we have. It has been published only this week, because that is how long it takes. I welcome what the Minister said, and I hope we can work with her on that.

I am suspicious of anything that removes Parliament from these processes—from any process, frankly. Parliamentary scrutiny is absolutely essential. I do not like the idea of Parliament being sidelined, even when we are discussing matters concerning our boundaries, because these matters are central to our democracy. If Parliament had been removed from the issue of boundaries, then in my area we would now have the notorious Mersey Banks constituency—it was one of those constituencies where we would have had to go out of the constituency, through another, and back into it—because the proposals would not have been able to have been challenged in this House.

I want to raise one final issue: the future of the Union. It is imperative that the Government do not allow us to get into a situation where Wales and Scotland, because of their geographical sizes and the rurality of some of their areas, take a bigger hit than England in terms of reduction in constituencies. The Union matters to me, and I believe that it matters to many Members in this House—it certainly matters to Members on the Labour Benches. If we have fewer Welsh MPs and fewer Scottish MPs, the strength of the Union will be damaged. That may be an unintended consequence, but it is a consequence that Ministers must bear in mind.

Parliamentary Constituencies bill (First sitting)

Christian Matheson Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 18th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[David Linden]

Q It would be very difficult for Members to cover as well. My final question is on the idea of building constituencies not necessarily based on ward boundaries but on polling districts. Do you have a view on that, and how that would work in Scotland?

Isabel Drummond-Murray: We do not use polling districts, in part because there has not been an available Scotland-wide, up-to-date dataset that we could access. We create our own postcode datasets, so when we come down to split below ward level, if necessary, we do it on the basis of postcodes. We have always been able to split wards in Scotland, if necessary.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

Q Can I ask both witnesses how they prioritise the various different factors, for example, the numbers and the tolerance, the geography and the communities of interest? How do you weight each of those, and what process do you use to draw those up?

Tony Bellringer: In essence, there are two categories. One is mandatory—the plus or minus 5%—which we have to stick to and is obviously our primary factor. About half a dozen other statutory factors are set out in schedule 2 of the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986. We do not prioritise any of them formally. I guess we would look first at the rule about having regard to existing constituencies. So far as possible, we actually start off by asking how many constituencies that are currently there already fit the plus or minus 5% and whether we can start by not changing those. We then look at those that are not within the plus or minus 5% and think, “Okay; that is going to have to change, and that is going to have to change”. That is why you often find, unfortunately, that you may be sitting as an MP in a constituency that perfectly meets the plus or minus 5%, but your constituency changes because some of the neighbouring ones have to change and have to take in some of yours, or vice versa.

        As I say, we do not have a firm ranking, but we then probably look at local ties. To a certain extent, you would expect existing constituencies to have already respected local ties, which is why it is not higher, because local ties are generally what people feel most strongly about—in fact, probably more than the numbers, to be honest. They accept the principle of electorate parity, but if you ask most people on the ground, they are more concerned about their local communities being split off from each other in the drawing of the lines. That is what the vast majority of responses to our consultation are about, so we do look at whether we are breaking local ties.

There is also the obvious map factor of physical geography and what are termed significant geographical features. River estuaries, mountain ranges and motorways are fairly obvious bits of physical geography that can have quite a significant impact on how you would want to look at drawing a constituency. Is that enough for you?

[Christian Matheson]

It is, yes, thank you. Ms Drummond-Murray wanted to answer as well from the Scottish point of view.

Isabel Drummond-Murray: It is a broadly similar process. As Tony said, you weigh up the factors and go through the process of the various consultation rounds. That is an important part as well: whatever we have weighted or not at the beginning, by the time we go through the consultation, it is all open to change. In the 2018 review, by the end, only 10 of our mainland constituencies were unchanged from the initial proposals. Whatever we do at the start is open to public views on things such as local ties, names and so on.

[Christian Matheson]

Q Can I ask both of you—it may sound like a pointed question, but it is not intended to be—whether you ever feel that you have got it wrong? I will give a couple of examples. In my area, the notorious proposed Mersey Banks constituency attracted quite a lot of opprobrium and obloquy. One of Mr Linden’s colleagues, albeit under the 600 distribution, talked about having a constituency that would be equivalent in size to, in England, the area from Westminster to Nottingham. Do you ever think, “Flipping heck, we didn’t that do very well there”?

Tony Bellringer: Er, yes. [Laughter.]

Isabel Drummond-Murray: I was going to say that we never get it wrong—we have a technically correct proposal—but as I say, in consultation, we listen to people’s responses. Certainly, in our initial proposals, we set out constituencies that were very unpopular and we listened and changed them where we could. You are then constrained by how much you can change within the legislation and all the knock-on consequences of the change that you also have to throw into the mix.

Tony Bellringer: To clarify my initial flippant response, it is largely as Isabel says. You could almost say that we deliberately put some proposals out there at the initial consultation stage that are quite radical and, yes, get quite a lot of negative responses—Mersey Banks is a classic case. The other one that I have had to talk about quite a lot is moving the city of Gloucester out of Gloucester in the 2013 review.

We do that in the full knowledge that it is only the first round of consultation and people will tell us if they genuinely think it is a really bad thing to do. There are actually reasons for doing those things, but as I mentioned earlier, you are somewhat constrained by what is happening around that constituency. It might not be an ideal solution for that constituency, but it might have allowed us to solve a number of issues in neighbouring constituencies. It is not ideal, but we put it out there and test the water, because it is the first stage of consultation and we know full well that if we get a huge pushback on it, we will change it to something better.

[Christian Matheson]

Q Is it not better to try to get it right first, rather than be a bit provocative and stir up public interest? Is it not better to get it right first so there are fewer changes?

Tony Bellringer: Yes. We would like to get it right first, but we are cognisant of the fact that if we do not get it exactly right first time, we have a process whereby we can correct it.

We genuinely do not know. We feel that it is probably going to be unpopular in that particular constituency, but, as I say, we have had to do it there. We think that, as a whole in the wider area, it provides a better solution. It is not a good solution for that constituency, but any alternative we have been able to come up with creates problems in those other constituencies. As an overall balance, we think that is probably best, but we recognise that you are not going to like it if you live in that particular constituency, so let us test the water and see what the general public opinion is in that area. Everybody in the area could come back and say, “No, there’s a better option.”

[Christian Matheson]

Q A final question from me, Chair.

[The Chair]

This is your third “final”.

[Christian Matheson]

I will not push it to a fourth. Do you have any consideration of constituencies that have multiple local authority areas? Some Members represent two local authorities and others represent three. Do you have any rules or guidance on minimising that?

Tony Bellringer: Yes. One of the statutory roles is having regard to local authority boundaries and local government boundaries. As far as possible, we try to limit the number of local authorities that the prospective MP of the proposed constituency will have to deal with. That is very much in our mind.

[The Chair]

Isabel, did you want to add something?

Isabel Drummond-Murray: No, I was just agreeing. That would be the approach we would take, too.

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[Chris Clarkson]

Q My points dovetail nicely with my colleague’s questions. We have been talking quite a bit about the necessity, or desirability, of ward splitting in England. Obviously, it is a slightly different situation in Northern Ireland because, in addition to wards, you have electoral areas. I want to understand what you use as the principal building blocks for drawing the new seats—is it electoral areas or wards? If it is electoral areas, at what stage do you start splitting those back down to constituent wards?

Eamonn McConville: Our building block is set out in the legislation as the local government ward that exists. In Northern Ireland, our electorate in each of those wards is smaller than, for example, in England. Tony spoke earlier of wards with 10,000. Ours typically have 2,000 to 3,000.

We still face the issue of how small we are geographically, plus having Lough Neagh right in the middle of Northern Ireland, so there are times when we are balancing all the factors. Consideration of splitting a ward does arise, but, like my colleague, there is no ready-made data set through which we could split a ward. We have to take that into account, whether by looking at geographical features or through another method. For the last review, we decided not to split any wards.

[Christian Matheson]

Q Mr Bailey may have touched on this in his question about local government boundaries after the contraction. Mr McConville, what efforts do you make to keep the constituencies as coterminous as possible with the new boundaries? I asked two of your counterparts earlier about constituencies that cross over multiple local authority boundaries. I wonder if you have any views on that, too.

Eamonn McConville: It is really a matter of mathematics. We have 11 local government areas and in the last review we had to create 17 constituencies. It is one of the methods that we try to take into account, initially and as the process proceeds.

Simply from a mathematics point of view, it will require splitting off the larger local government areas into the various constituencies. As I said, as well as the local government areas, we will take account of responses that come in from the public to inform the proposals and the creation of the constituencies as the process proceeds through the review.

[The Chair]

Eamonn, may I take this opportunity to thank you for presenting us with this evidence and for giving us your time this morning? Right on cue, like a Swiss clock, you have managed to get us to the end of this session on time. I appreciate that. That brings us to the end of this morning’s session. The Committee will meet again at 2 pm in the same room to take further evidence.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Eddie Hughes.)

Parliamentary Constituencies bill (Second sitting)

Christian Matheson Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 18th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[David Linden]

Okay, can I finish off with one question going back to the equality of the United Kingdom? You said yourself that Scotland stands to lose two or three seats. How would you, as a representative of the Conservative and Unionist party, reconcile that with what people in Scotland were told in 2014—how we were better together and we should be a United Kingdom?

Roger Pratt: I still think you are better together, obviously. I do not think the fact that you will lose two or three seats affects that in any way. You will still have the same equal representation; actually, slightly larger because of the Western Isles—I apologise, but I cannot pronounce it in the way you did—and Orkney and Shetland, so there is a slight advantage there for Scotland. But I think it is right that it should have the same equal quota as the rest of the United Kingdom.

It is just right that Scotland should have the same quota. I do not think it means that the whole of the UK is an equal and fair place. I noticed that in the Bill brought before the House by the Member for Manchester, Gorton, there was no change in either Scotland or Wales; they would have been exactly the same. There was a change in the Bill to Northern Ireland, but no change as far as Scotland and Wales are concerned. That is absolutely right and I support that part—not others—of the Khan Bill.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

If it helps, Mr Pratt, I believe the correct pronunciation is Na h-Eileanan an Iar.

Roger Pratt: I am not going to try!

[Christian Matheson]

I thought I would get that one in.

I have just one question. Moving away from the numbers, what is your experience of being able to influence local proposals once they are already out? How flexible have you found the Boundary Commission and the assistant commissioners to be? What are the most useful arguments to deploy when considering the ones that perhaps resonate most with the boundary commissioners when you consider local proposals?

Roger Pratt: Thank you very much indeed. Absolutely, the Boundary Commission and the assistant commissioners do listen. That is very important.

The whole point of this process is that it is consultative. It is a three-stage process and I think the changes to that process are right. You have got the initial proposals coming out and then you have got the secondary consultation stage, including the public hearings when people can discuss not only the Boundary Commission proposals but any alternatives that have been put forward, which I think is absolutely right for that secondary stage, and then you have got the revised proposals.

The commissioners do listen and they change their minds. I have found them to be very accommodating to what should be changed if people make a good argument. The arguments have to be based around the factors in rule 5: existing constituencies, local government boundaries, local ties and geography. Those four factors are the way in which you persuade them to change. Indeed, we changed them a number of times: in the last review, the Boundary Commission for England changed the composition of more than 50% of the constituencies. That showed they were prepared to listen.

During the Second Reading debate, you referred to the notorious Mersey Banks constituency, which illustrates the issue very well. I entirely agree with you: it was one of the strangest proposals I have ever seen from a boundary commission, but like the Labour party, the Conservative party opposed it. We all opposed it at the initial stage, and the boundary commission came out with revised proposals. They never came out with final proposals because the review was effectively suspended, but they changed Mersey Banks so there was no detached constituency. That is the whole point of the process: you have a proper consultation, then they come out with the proposals that best meet the factors within the quota tolerance level.

[The Chair]

We still have nine minutes with you, Roger, so I will call John Spellar.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)]

Q Will you elaborate on whether you think the allocation of seats between the nations of the UK is appropriate, and on whether your party has any views on the status of Ynys Môn?

Tom Adams: That raises an important question, particularly when it comes to Wales, because Wales is due to lose such a significant number of seats; it is quite a drastic overhaul of the number of Wales’s constituencies. While there clearly needs to be some decrease to equalise the electorate sizes in constituencies, it seems slightly odd that Wales has no protected constituencies at all, yet there will be two constituencies on the Isle of Wight, the electorates of which will be roughly the size of an average Welsh constituency. The introduction of protected constituencies in certain places in Wales is one possible way of achieving that, and Ynys Môn would be a good example.

This big drop of eight in one go is quite significant, and we should be mindful of the impact that it will have on representation in Wales. Having additional protected constituencies—Scotland obviously has several and the Isle of Wight has two guaranteed, whereas Wales does not have any—is perhaps something to look at.

[Christian Matheson]

Q This is the same question I asked Mr Pratt: how responsive and flexible has the Labour party previously found the commission, the assistant commissioners and the consultation process, in terms of the representations that the party has made? How flexible are they in responding to the party’s representations?

Tom Adams: The first thing to say is that I am relatively new to this responsibility in the party. However, generally, they are quite flexible and accommodating. Particular MPs clearly have quite a large role in that, and their submissions are often taken quite seriously. The commissioners clearly do an excellent job of trying to balance all the competing priorities, but they are sometimes potentially constrained by things such as the 5% threshold. However, within the guidelines that they have, I think they do a good job of taking everything into account and coming up with proposals that are genuinely reasonable for everyone.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Q I am seeking clarification on your justification against the automaticity. You gave the example of its being at 5%, when it could be 7.5%. If the Bill went back for approval by Parliament, is it to be taken as read that, because it is set at 5%, your party would vote this down because you think it should be 7.5%? If that was to happen, the 2024 election would be fought on the current boundaries, which are 25 years out of date. Where does the balance come?

Tom Adams: Whether we would vote it down is probably a question for the politicians in my party, rather than for me; I work in a technical role at head office. Obviously, it is likely that if the Government supported the proposals, they would still pass Parliament, even if Labour voted against them. I think there is a role for Parliament in finally approving those proposals when they come back, as has been the case for previous reviews.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ben Lake]

Diolch yn fawr i chi. Thank you very much.

[Christian Matheson]

Q Thank you. Good afternoon, Professor. You piqued my interest when you talked about Arfon in comparison with Cardiff South and Penarth. Knowing Arfon as I do, which is one of the most beautiful constituencies in the whole of the UK, I know that one of those is an urban area and part of a city and the other is not only a very sparse rural area but very mountainous. Is there not a trade-off between that mountainous, very sparsely populated rural area and the numbers, as opposed to an urban area where you can get the numbers quite easily? Where does the balance lie? At the moment, you are suggesting that the numbers are—and should be—the primary concern.

Professor Wyn Jones: This is, as you know, a knotty, difficult issue. A century ago, we ended up with a system that was horribly weighted against more built-up areas and in favour of rural areas, because we had seen a lack of boundary reform. That was deeply unsatisfactory. There are, no doubt, more challenges in terms of MPs moving around in rural constituencies. On the other hand, urban areas often have different kinds of problems that may take up more time. I guess the point I am making is that you could make an argument for Powys being particularly rural. Then again, if you compare it with the north of Scotland or the isles, it looks relatively compact.

There is often a tendency for those of us who live in and who have been brought up in Wales to view ourselves as being particularly rural. Actually, in comparative terms, even Arfon is relatively built up. I really wouldn’t want to exaggerate the differences there. I am afraid I am not really answering your question directly, because I don’t think there is a “gotcha” answer to that. I still think that equality is the place to start from. Then you can say that the very northernmost parts of Scotland, or Shetland and Orkney, have rurality issues that are so obvious and pronounced that they trump the equality argument, but I struggle to make that argument in the Welsh context.

[Christian Matheson]

Q You made an interesting point about the previous proposals to reduce Parliament to 600 MPs: you said that it was not politically viable—in other words, it did not have political support. Did you think it was a good idea?

Professor Wyn Jones: It certainly did not have the support of elected Members—that is why. Obviously, there was a manifesto commitment, and an election was won on the basis of that manifesto. The usual practice is that that is a mandate and should be enacted, but it was clear from talking to, for example, Welsh Conservative MPs that they were absolutely not keen. They did not view themselves as tied down by that mandate.

[Christian Matheson]

Q Professor, did you think it was a good idea to reduce to 600 MPs across the UK?

Professor Wyn Jones: As I think I indicated in response to one of your colleagues, I do not really have a very strong opinion. I know that academics are meant to have strong opinions on everything, but is it 600, is it 625, is it 650? From a Welsh perspective, it is not a massive difference, because we are so over-represented at the moment. Equality is the key thing—if it is 600 or 650, it is not a massive difference in terms of the number of Welsh MPs. I have no strong feelings about that.

[Christian Matheson]

Q You did indicate support for removing Parliament from the approvals process. Are there any other areas of public life where you think Parliament should not have a say, or that Parliament should not be allowed to scrutinise?

Professor Wyn Jones: I think I have been very clear in saying that Parliament does have a legitimate role in scrutinising and, in fact, in setting up the basic policy—forgive me if I was not clear in saying that. Parliament should very much be involved in establishing the parameters within which the boundary commissioners work. That is absolutely what Parliament should be doing.

I was saying that there is a very strong in-principle argument for removing Parliament from the final approval. In effect, I advocate a system in which MPs, in particular, are voting from behind the veil of ignorance—they do not know what the particular parameters that they are voting to approve would mean for them as individuals. They should be involved at the start of the process, but then the boundary commissioners carry out Parliament’s will.

I am absolutely not saying that Parliament should not have a role; I am saying that it should be a specific role at the start of the process. The human temptation for MPs to look at whatever the commissioners come up with through the lens of their own self-interest is too strong.

[Christian Matheson]

Q As an academic, do you ever supervise your students’ research?

Professor Wyn Jones: All the time, yes.

[Christian Matheson]

Q You will give them parameters, but you do not then leave them to complete the job themselves, do you?

Professor Wyn Jones: For example, you will guide a PhD student, but you do not mark their homework; you get external examiners in who decide if the standard is good enough.

[Christian Matheson]

Q It is not MPs marking MPs’ homework, but MPs marking someone else’s homework. My point is, setting the parameters and then making sure that the parameters have been set is something you are fairly used to and would understand.

Professor Wyn Jones: But with respect, we are all human, and I think that asking MPs to look at the results of a Boundary Commission review in the abstract, without considering what it means for them as individuals, is asking for an inhuman level of self-denial. The experience of the last two reviews suggests that there is every likelihood that, if we continue with the current system, these boundaries are going to become so out of date that they actually endanger the legitimacy of the democratic process.

[Christian Matheson]

Q Okay, but the last review was, as you quoted other people as saying, “politically unacceptable”. Did we not get out of jail by, fortunately, having that pressure valve and not reducing to 600, meaning that we now have a better set of boundaries as a result?

Professor Wyn Jones: I do not think that the pressure valve was in any way related to an in-principle view that 650 was better than 600. There was a democratic mandate for reducing the size of the House of Commons. The reason why it did not happen, at least from what I understand after talking largely to Conservative MPs, is that too many people were unhappy about what it meant for them personally. It was not a great defence of principle that won out but—forgive me for saying so—pretty naked self-interest.

[Christian Matheson]

Thanks very much, professor.

[The Chair]

Professor Wyn Jones, I thank you on behalf of the Committee for giving us your time and for the evidence you presented. That is very much appreciated.

Professor Wyn Jones: My pleasure. I thank all the Members.

Parliamentary Constituencies bill (Third sitting)

Christian Matheson Excerpts

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

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Q To follow that up, given that we are talking about keeping communities together, as the hon. Member for Eltham has said, does the Bill need to give more clarification to the Boundary Commission for England? In Scotland, the system is much more in-depth, with smaller building blocks. I believe that Scottish constituencies do not have as many arguments as the English ones. Do we need to give more guidance about how the constituencies are built, taking into account communities, rather than change the boundary limits based on the electorate?

Dr Renwick: The difference between Scotland and England is in the practice of the Boundary Commissions with respect to splitting wards. The Boundary Commission for Scotland is much more willing to split wards than the Boundary Commission for England. As I understand it—and you heard evidence on this last week from Tony Bellringer—it is very difficult for the Boundary Commission for England to split wards, because it does not have sufficient evidence to do that. It seems clear to me that, if you can split wards in a way that does not break community ties, that is a better way of achieving the balance between the principles of equality of votes and maintaining community ties than by increasing the margin. If the Boundary Commission for England were able to split wards more often, that would certainly help the overall process.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

Q Dr Renwick and Professor Hazell, good morning. I have two quick questions. First, the two previous Boundary Commission inquiries, which were not voted on in the end, lacked political support because, I believe, they reduced the number of constituencies from 650 to 600. That did not have overall political support. The proposals would also have meant that some constituencies would simply not have reflected the communities that MPs represented. The Government have now recognised that by reverting back to the number of 650. Is it not therefore a good thing that we have that safety valve of final approval from Parliament to reflect the lack of community cohesion that might be introduced by boundaries that do not reflect community needs?

Dr Renwick: No, I do not think so. I think the principle should be that Parliament sets up the rules in the first place that will allow the boundary commissions to produce a satisfactory set of recommendations, and that those recommendations should then be implemented.

[Christian Matheson]

Q But the opposition was proved right in the end, was it not? I do not mean Her Majesty’s Opposition; rather the opposition across all parties to the previous proposals, which was proved right in the end because we moved away from 600 and back to 650.

Dr Renwick: Yes, I certainly agree that 650 is a better number than 600, but it was Parliament that legislated to go to 600, so it needs legislation to make a decision to move back to 650.

[Christian Matheson]

Q Secondly and finally, you are calling for what we have termed automaticity, but you are also suggesting that there are concerns in the current set-up that need to be addressed before automaticity takes place. It is a bit of a chicken and egg situation: which comes first, automaticity or changes in these structures? Are you suggesting that this Bill should include changes to the way that the boundary commission is appointed and set up, or are you suggesting that we should not have automaticity this time, but should legislate for it next time, and use the intervening period to change the structure and appoint any mechanisms needed at the boundary commission?

Professor Hazell: Perhaps I could answer that, if I may? We are suggesting both. We strongly support automaticity, as Alan Renwick has said. In conjunction with that, to bolster the independence of the boundary commissions, in our submission we propose four important changes to the way in which the commissioners are appointed. Some of those are already matters of good practice, which I am glad to say are followed—for example, that the deputy chair was on the panel for the appointment of junior commissioners last year. To prevent any backsliding, we argue that those four changes should be written into law, so we are inviting the Committee, if it supports the principle of automaticity, to say that we should also have those further safeguards written into the same Bill, in order to strengthen the independence of the boundary commissioners.

[The Chair]

Order. We have three people wanting to ask questions and three minutes left. Mr Linden?

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Christian Matheson]

Q Thank you, Sir David. I will be brief. We have talked about automaticity and the House of Commons using its political interests to reject proposals from the boundary commissions in the past. Is there not a danger, however, that the instructions given to boundary commissions at the outset through the legislation will also have political considerations in them based upon who has the majority in the House of Commons at the time, and therefore a further return to the boundary commission at the end gives a safety valve to perhaps counterbalance the political considerations that might have outweighed the criteria given to the boundary commissions.

[The Chair]

Thank you. Now Mr Clarkson.

Parliamentary Constituencies bill (Fourth sitting)

Christian Matheson Excerpts

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

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

Q May I first follow on from the question asked by the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell about polling districts? When a local authority makes polling districts, is it simply an administrative process done on numbers and geography? Is there political or democratic input into that? How does it work?

Peter Stanyon: It is a local authority decision, generally in full council. It depends on how individual local authorities approach this, but there is a need within the statutory process to seek views from those affected in the area and those with special skills with regards to accessibility and disability, for example. Ultimately it is, in effect, a geographical and numbers exercise, but it also takes into account what is best for the needs of the electorate in that area, which is where the political aspect comes in, with the council making that decision for the subdivisions.

[Christian Matheson]

Q My own constituency of City of Chester has split wards, with some shared with Ellesmere Port and Neston and one shared with Eddisbury. What administrative difficulties or issues do you have to deal with in terms of split wards? Let me ask a further question: imagine you are an administrator and the Boundary Commission has given you a couple of constituencies in your area that share wards. Do you roll your eyes and think, “Oh God, that’s a bit more work for us,” or is it quite easy to get on with split wards between different constituencies?

Peter Stanyon: That much depends on the relationship between the local authorities. On the split wards situation, the returning officer responsible for running the parliamentary election in that area must comment on the review potentially undertaken by the other local authority. It very much depends again on what local practices are. The ideal situation for an administrator would be to have full control of all the areas—the subdivisions, polling stations, districts, staffing and so on —as that makes life easier for administrative arrangements. It is not insurmountable; it is purely about the local practice.

It gets slightly more complicated when we talk about combined polls. If you have a local government election and a parliamentary election taking place side by side, that adds to the degree of complexity. If it is a stand-alone parliamentary election, it is not quite as difficult to administer.

[Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)]

Q Peter, the Bill allows you to consider ward changes that have not necessarily come into effect yet. For example, in Salford, where I used to be a councillor, there has been a boundary review that should have come into force in May, but obviously the election has been delayed. Considering that, is there a preference about which set of boundaries you use? Do you find the newer, updated boundaries more useful for keeping electorates within quota and drawing more coherent seats?

Peter Stanyon: We welcome the fact that the Bill provides for an understanding of the situation closer to when the decisions are recommended by the boundary commissions. One of the big issues is that where ward boundary changes have taken place and the new constituencies follow the old ward boundaries, there is an awful lot of complication in trying to explain that to electors and trying to change systems to reflect a system no longer in place. When you look at a map and see a boundary going straight through the centre of a ward, you are sometimes puzzled about why that is the case. You go back to how it was, based on the previous situation. It is far preferable for the parliamentary constituency situation to be closer to that of the local authority, purely for the administrative reasons of ensuring that you de-risk the possibility of sending electors, postal votes or ballot papers to the wrong area. We would always welcome the latest situation, which is as close as possible to the review, being the one that is enacted and rolled out in the electoral registers themselves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ben Lake]

Q Finally, some of my colleagues would argue that a fair way of allocating seats across the UK is purely to look at population or the number of electors, and that is a valid point. I was asked last week by a colleague of yours, Professor Wyn Jones, whether there was any logic in maintaining the over-representation of Wales in the House of Commons based purely on population. Since 2001, the population of Wales increased by about 5% to 2011 and again by another couple of hundred thousand to this year. It is projected to increase yet again by 2028, but in all likelihood, due to the relatively slower rate of increase than in England, Wales will continue to lose seats.

The automaticity of the Bill, should it pass, would mean that Wales would not only lose eight seats in this particular review but a further couple of seats at the next review, unless something drastic happens and everybody wants to live in Wales—there is a welcome in the hillsides, by the way. Should that scenario come to pass—I appreciate it is a hypothetical scenario at the moment—could it have any impact on sentiments within Wales and perhaps attitudes towards the Union?

Dr Larner: It is of course hypothetical, but as I have said, there is the idea—I should point out that we do not have firm evidence on this—that a reduction in the number of MPs is seen by some in Wales as meaning that Westminster is no longer as important to them politically. I know that Professor Wyn Jones has some quite strong views about the importance of rural dynamics and things like that, which I disagree with slightly. It is certainly something to bear in mind, however, especially given the real and rapid increase in the visibility and general salience of the Welsh Government and the Senedd in the last couple of months.

[Christian Matheson]

Q Good afternoon, Dr Larner. I am the MP for the City of Chester, so I share a street with Wales. One side of the appropriately named Boundary Lane is England and the other is Wales. If I think about the areas of north-east Wales that abut the border, I am told that there is a sense within those areas close to mine that perhaps because of the geographical separation from Cardiff, they look to England—to Manchester, Liverpool and Chester—more than down to Cardiff and the south. Do you have any sense that that is the case and do you therefore have a sense as to whether Welshness, if you like, or looking to Cardiff for political leadership, is regionalised?

Dr Larner: We have done some research on that. There is not really much geographical variation in terms of general support or attitudes towards the Senedd. Certainly among some people, there is the idea that devolution has largely profited Cardiff. I would not say that that is a unique feeling in Wales. In most systems, there is a general feeling that the further you are geographically from the centre of power, the more fed up you might feel about it.

In those areas, although people might not look to places such as Liverpool and Manchester politically, those areas and cities have a significant impact culturally. There are also more people working across the border in those areas. In a lot of those constituencies, a higher number of people were born in England and might still consider themselves to be English or British, not necessarily Welsh. That is a big divide in Wales. National identity does determine—well, not determine in a lot of ways, but is a good predictor of—your general attitude to devolution.

[Christian Matheson]

Q Secondly, Wales has some centres of population but it also has areas of sparsity, and some serious geographical issues that a boundary commission review would need to take into account. I made that point to Professor Wyn Jones as well, but I would be grateful for your take.

We have already heard about the south Wales valleys and there are parts of Snowdonia that are very mountainous. I suspect that Wales is more badly affected by losing so many seats because we are focusing solely on the numbers, and that the areas of sparsity and the geographical barriers would lead to much larger constituencies in area. How would you strike a balance between geography, sparsity, rurality and numbers?

Dr Larner: There is an understanding that Wales is the most rural nation in terms of population in the UK. As you say, there are very large constituencies. The issue with the plus or minus 5% rule is that these areas are badly affected. I do not necessarily have a problem with the idea of levelling up constituencies in terms of population size, but I think there are certain geographic limits to what is a manageable constituency. There could be the inclusion of an upper band for the number of square miles in a constituency, or something as simple as that. I know that is a down-the-middle answer.

[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.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill (Fifth sitting)

Christian Matheson Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 25th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Mrs Miller]

I am very pleased to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley, and to speak to amendments 2 to 4 and that clauses 1 and 2 should stand part of the Bill. This gives us an opportunity to explore some of the important principles within this Bill to deliver fair and equal-sized constituencies for our country.

We like to pride ourselves on being a strong democracy. We stand in the mother of all Parliaments. Yet the current provisions do not give us the absolute certainty that each of our constituencies are of the same size. Our constituents do not each have the same power to elect somebody to represent them. Some seats require a larger population—for example, I have 83,000 constituents —and others require up to 30,000 or 40,000 fewer constituents within their constituency boundaries.

I want to put on record my absolute support for the Bill and the hard work that my hon. Friend the Minister has put into it. It delivers, as has been said, on an important manifesto commitment to remove the current flaws in the system. I am somewhat perplexed as to why the Labour party has tabled amendments that would surgically remove one of the important principles in the Bill, which is fairness in the way that the recommendation from the boundary commission is dealt with.

I am not the only one expressing surprise. We heard from some eminent constitutional experts in our evidence session that the current system is worse than flawed. In particular, we heard from Professor Hazell and Dr Renwick from the constitutional unit at University College London, who said in their written evidence that

“the independence of the UK’s process is currently violated at the final step”—

“violated” is quite a strong term coming from an academic—

“when parliament’s approval is required to implement the Boundary Commissions’ proposals.”

Quite simply, with its amendments, the Labour party is choosing to ignore the advice of constitutional experts by continuing to support and promote a system that violates the independence of the approval process, which fundamentally undermines what the Bill seeks to achieve. That evidence goes on:

“Parliament’s current approval role has allowed inappropriate political interference to occur three times.”

I am quite astonished that the Opposition would want to be on the record as ignoring that advice and evidence, and fundamentally changing what the Bill would achieve.

If that evidence is not enough, the OSCE report, which was cited during an evidence session, makes it very clear that when reviewing and reforming a system of legislative processes, there must be fairly and equally sized constituencies. It is not just academics in this country who say that we need to change our system, but an internationally recognised institution, which says that, if reforming, we should be trying to put in place protocols and safety clauses to ensure that constituencies are as equal as they can be.

I hope that the Opposition will provide a stronger reason for wanting to change the Bill than the reasons that they have already given. Otherwise, we run the risk of continuing with a system whereby Parliament, when it chooses, stops reviews going through. At the moment, we are dealing with boundaries based on data that is 20 years out of date. That is not just unfair to individual constituencies but, as we heard in evidence, it fundamentally undermines our democratic process.

I hope that hon. Members, regardless of party affiliation, can see the inadequacies of the amendments and will reject them, as I will, because they are fundamentally wrong for our democracy. It is wrong that the votes of voters in my constituency have less impact that those of voters in other constituencies. I urge the Opposition to withdraw the amendments, which would so badly undermine not only the Bill but our democratic system.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

What a great pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Paisley. I will respond to the questions raised by the right hon. Member for Basingstoke, whom I congratulate—although I might be doing someone else in the Committee a disservice—because I believe it was she who coined the term “automaticity”.

[Mrs Miller]

It wasn’t me!

[Christian Matheson]

Then I apologise to the coiner of that term. We learn something new every day in Committee, and “automaticity” is another term that I might try to slip into speeches from now on.

I rise to speak in favour of the amendments tabled in my name and, in particular, that of my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood. I am instinctively unhappy about anything that takes Parliament out of the review process. The buck has to stop with Parliament. I remind the Committee that not only would the House of Commons have to approve the legislation, but the House of Lords would have to do so too, so there is no self-interest there.

It is essential that we do not remove Parliament from the consideration of our democracy. Bluntly, nobody is more focused on the quality of our democracy than those of us in this House. That is seen as a negative, but I think it is absolutely a positive to be reminded that at some point, within a maximum of five years, we are going to have to go back to our electorate. To have that sword of Damocles dangling over us is always very important. When I was first elected to this place, I had a majority of 93, and my God, didn’t I know it. That makes us take our electorate and our voters seriously, because they are our ultimate employers. Removing Parliament from that consideration is something I am instinctively unhappy with.

[David Linden]

At the risk of comparing majorities, when I was first elected it was with a majority of 75. The hon. Gentleman is right to touch on this point about the need for parliamentary approval. Does he, as I do, find it a little strange that the Conservative party—largely now made up of Brexiteers—spent the whole Brexit referendum talking about Parliament taking back control and Parliament being sovereign, but now, all of a sudden, it wants to give away control and Parliament not to have approval?

[Christian Matheson]

What an excellent point. I was not going to mention that, but the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: Parliament is not taking back control. I am afraid this is one of a number of examples where that was a somewhat bogus phrase, albeit very successful at the job it was employed to do.

[Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)]

Could I talk about the backstop that the hon. Gentleman mentioned? Surely, the backstop here is in the primary legislation that a future Government could bring forward, should they wish. The outcome of the report would then not be known at the time that other hon. Members were making the decision. At the moment, they know the outcome of the report; they know whether they are turkeys voting for Christmas, and that taints the outcome, rather than those decisions being made at the beginning.

[Christian Matheson]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. One of the advantages of these Committees is that we get to know new Members, and it is great to see her here.

I will give two answers to that. First—I will return to this point—there is a problem, in that this process is affected politically by the instructions that this House gives it. Professor Sir John Curtice agreed with that when I asked him about it during the evidence sessions, and I think my Front-Bench colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood, mentioned it as well. Although the last couple of years have been different, this House normally has a majority of MPs from one party or the other, so there is already a political influence on the instructions that are given.

Secondly, I do not look so dimly on this process. I do not look at it as turkeys voting for Christmas. Of course, there is some self-interest; we know that because when the Boundary Commission publishes its proposals, it gives existing Members within each area—in my case, the county of Cheshire—notice of what those proposals are, perhaps the day before, so we have a chance to take in what is being proposed. We look at our own area first, but the view that is taken is collective. I trust hon. Members. With the greatest respect to the hon. Member for—

[Jane Hunt]

Loughborough.

[Christian Matheson]

The hon. Member for Loughborough —forgive me. I do not know her well, although I know the Minister, because we have been sat together in statutory instrument Committees many times. She listens; I do not always agree with her, and she does not always agree with me, but she listens. The hon. Member for Walsall North and I have worked together on a couple of matters, and if I may say so, I consider him a friend. He is on the other side of the House, but I trust him to listen, at least.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

He is a Whip!

[Christian Matheson]

He is for now; he will not be after I have said that. [Laughter.] I know him, and I trust him to listen, but I also trust him to take the best collective view, which is what I think most hon. Members do.

One of the depressing aspects of the evidence sessions was that people who were not MPs but were senior academics were saying, “I don’t trust MPs.” That plays into a narrative that I object to. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I trust MPs, including hon. Members on the other side of the House who I know and have worked with on cross-party issues. I believe that, even if I disagree with their political principles or their position, they are probably doing this job for the right reasons.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Miller]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Christian Matheson]

Will the right hon. Lady indulge me a moment?

To go back to parliamentary approval is to provide a safety valve, so that the collective overall proposals are not daft or unworkable, and so that they have relevance to the communities they serve. That must be at the back of the minds of the commissioners—otherwise we end up with the Devonwall and Mersey Banks constituencies, where the numbers are all that matter, irrespective of the communities.

[Mrs Miller]

I note from the hon. Gentleman’s CV that we share the same university background, so I hope his notes about academics do not stretch as far as the London School of Economics. That would not be a good thing.

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. In the vast majority of cases, in my 15 years as an MP I have rarely questioned the motivations of individuals here. However, can he explain the comment made by one academic in evidence about the decisions in 1967 not to accept the boundary review? There was a strong indication there that it was a question of political gerrymandering—I will use that word, although I am not sure whether that is the right context—or certainly a little sleight of hand. Now, because of the process that we have in place and the blocks that are there, we are using boundaries that are 20 years out of date. How, then, can he advocate the status quo? It is not working.

[Christian Matheson]

I think it was in 1969, when I was one year old, so my memory of the politics of the time is not, perhaps, good. Maybe there were political considerations within the Wilson Government at the time.

[Mrs Miller]

It was Wilson.

[Christian Matheson]

Yes, the Wilson Government in ’69. I ask the right hon. Lady what the difference is between political considerations at the end of the process and political considerations at the start of the process, when the criteria are set out. We have to get the balance right. That bookending with a return to Parliament is a good thing.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned setting out criteria for setting the boundaries. That is what the Bill does, and we will vote on it in Committee and on the Floor of the House. Once the Bill is passed, the criteria will have been set, so we will not have removed parliamentary oversight and given it to the Executive. The House of Commons and the other place will vote on the criteria being set out.

[Christian Matheson]

The right hon. Gentleman is right, and that is the nature of parliamentary democracy, but it is also true that at any one point—in the past few years it has tended to be the exception rather than the rule, but we are now back in the rule again—one party has a majority and can drive through its preferences for the criteria. Later, I shall pay tribute to the Minister for showing some flexibility on the matter, but the fact is that the criteria are set by the majority party. That is why there is politics at one end and politics at the other. We have to recognise that.

Let me come back to the issue of the safety valve. I want to respond to something that the right hon. Member for Basingstoke said in her speech, when she talked about inappropriate political interference. Let us be clear: my party did not want the reduction from 650 to 600 seats; I do not think that the nationalist parties wanted it, nor did the majority of Conservative Members, including—I suspect—a majority of those on the Government Front Bench. I do not know whether it counts as inappropriate political interference, but the reason those changes did not go through was that there was not automaticity at the time, and hon. Members simply did not support the change. They would have voted for it on Second Reading, but that is very different, particularly for Government Members.

Let us talk about the practicality of that: it is very different for Government Members to vote against something on Second Reading and then have private conversations, which we all know go on, to make changes. That is the safety valve that non-automaticity—if I may use that phrase—provides. Bringing that process back to the House of Commons and the House Lords would provide that safety valve. We know about the 1969 event because the history books tell us about it, but such occasions are, largely, very rare.

Normally, the changes would go through, but they have not on the last two occasions because they simply lacked the support in Parliament, for genuine reasons. For example, as the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell said, the view on the Conservative side changed to the idea that leaving Parliament in those conditions no longer stood. Of course, if we had had automaticity, hon. Members would not have had the opportunity to do that, we would have left the European Parliament and we would have been down to 600 seats.

This is not a wrecking amendment; it would maintain parliamentary approval as a safety valve in case the Boundary Commission got the review wrong. During the evidence sessions, we heard the phrase “marking our own homework” about MPs. That is misleading and is not what is happening. As I mentioned to Professor Wyn Jones in the first evidence session, we give the Boundary Commission its criteria; it goes off and does the job, consults, does more of the job, consults more and then comes up with the final proceedings; and then, the process rightly comes back to Parliament to tick the boxes and say, “Have they done exactly what they were asked to do according to the criteria?” There is nothing wrong with that at all.

That is absolutely normal procedure. Anybody who is doing any type of project is given the terms and criteria, and off they go to do it. The people in charge can then come back and say, “Yes, that job is done.” There is no desire on this side of the Committee to hold the Bill up any longer, but it is absolutely right that we have final parliamentary approval to ensure that the job has been done properly and that we are able to sell what the Boundary Commission gives us to the communities we serve, so that the new boundaries reflect those communities. I urge hon. Members, particularly on the Government Benches, think of this not as a wrecking amendment, but as one that would maintain Parliament’s role and sovereignty in that whole procedure.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Paisley. I want to make a few points about automaticity and why it is worth removing. The hon. Member for City of Chester just made the point that if the change to 600 seats had gone through, that it is where we would be, but we have changed our minds before. That is true for any legislation. No Government can tie the hands of a future Government, who can bring in any Bill they wish. Earlier, I said with a certain flippancy to the hon. Member for Glasgow East that we could increase the number of seats to 700. That does remain an option, of course; any Government can move boundaries or introduce any Bill they want in a future Parliament. Indeed, this Government could do that by tabling an amendment later on.

As the hon. Member for City of Chester said, we were in slightly extraordinary times in the last decade, with coalition and minority Governments instead of majority Governments. That gave the House of Commons a huge amount of power. It also showed that the House of Commons could introduce Bills that the Government did not want, and those Bills went through. It was an extremely powerful time for Parliament. There is still that ability to bring a Bill to stop the boundaries, even with automaticity. With a majority Government, of course, it would probably fall.

[Christian Matheson]

Members can bring in a Bill, but the Government still have to move the money resolution.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Absolutely. As the hon. Gentleman will know, however, the former Speaker showed the House that there is a way to twist everything, so none of these things is insurmountable.

My argument is simple. When we talk about MPs voting at the end, I think the argument is false, because Parliament has always had the ability to vote. I agree with the hon. Member for City of Chester that whether that is at the beginning or end, the Executive in Parliament have that power over what happens, yet it is still a parliamentary process.

Sometimes the arguments we have can seem esoteric to the public. Oddly enough, the boundaries and the reduction in Parliament did cut through to them. We may view this as a technical argument, but it was relayed on the doorstep several times over many years that constituents asked whether the House of Commons would be cut to 600 seats. The connection the public make is that they do not like politicians, and they want fewer of us, but that point did cut through and there was frustration that things had not happened.

I do not like the phrase, “Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.” It is flippant. It undermines the thought processes that we give to this issue. There were, without doubt, specific moments—political moments in political history—that stopped those boundaries happening, as people looked at what went on.

At the very start of our proceedings on 18 June, Mr Paisley, you said:

“I ask any members of the Committee who wish to declare any relevant interests in connection with the Bill to make those declarations now.”

To which I chuntered from a sedentary position:

“Isn’t that all of us?”––[Official Report, Parliamentary Constituencies Public Bill Committee, 18 June 2020; c. 5.]

It is impossible for us not to have an interest in what will happen to our seats. I do not believe that that is because we need to pay our mortgages. Of course that self-interest comes into someone keeping their job, but I believe it is deeper than that. The hon. Member for City of Chester was elected with a majority of 92.

[Christian Matheson]

It was 93.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I have done the hon. Gentleman out of one vote. He will forgive me if I am unaware of what his majority is now.

[Christian Matheson]

It is 6,164.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I do not know him particularly well, but he strikes me as a Member who cares about his community and has built that up. I took on the seat of Elmet and Rothwell in 2010, a newly formed seat with a Labour majority of 6,000. My majority at the last election was 17,353.

I have worked that seat, day-in and day-out, with each of my constituents, not because I am trying to secure my job, but because I love my community and working for my constituents. I have lived in my constituency my whole adult life. There is, therefore, an emotional tug on a seat that has 81,000 people and would absolutely have to change with these boundaries. Even if the later amendment of 7.5% went through, the seat would still have to change.

I doubt there is an hon. Member in this room who wants to give up part of their constituency. As the hon. Member for City of Chester says, we do care. We are in it for the right reasons. We want to represent our communities. Many of us—like myself—have lived in our communities throughout our adult life, and it is a matter of pride and honour that we represent them.

I get great joy—not for any narcissistic reasons—from the fact that when I am shopping in my local town, about 5 miles from where I live in my constituency, people come up to me all the time and ask me things. That is not narcissism; it is the fact that I am their representative, and I always wanted to be somebody who they could come up to and speak to.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Spellar]

I must repeat what I just said: everybody accepts that population change, growth and reduction, urban clearances and so on have an impact. That has changed somewhat, because the traditional pattern was that slum clearances in the inner cities meant that people moved to the suburbs and, subsequently, to the fringe towns. I expect that is what is happening in the constituency of the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell. Everyone accepts that that takes place.

It was the actions of the former Prime Minister—first, in attempting to reduce the number to 600 and secondly, proposing to change the margin of variation to 5%—that created an unacceptable framework, which then created completely unrecognisable constituencies that completely lacked community. The borough of Sandwell would probably have gone down to three seats.

The other problem is that the rigid mathematical formula, along with no imagination from the boundary commission, creates a huge number of orphan wards. Those are areas that are parts of someone’s constituency but have no connection with the rest of it. Inevitably, the Member then focuses on the bulk of their constituency. That is not good for democracy.

[Christian Matheson]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way. He is right about the orphan wards. Does he share my concern that the right hon. Member for Basingstoke, in her intervention, accidentally conflated two interpretations of the phrase “current situation”? One is the current situation regarding the current introducing of boundaries and the other is the current situation regarding the process we follow to get there and, at the moment, the current situation includes a parliamentary approval. She mentioned in her intervention the different sizes of constituencies. We are not suggesting that we object to that, but there is a conflation here that might confuse the Committee.

[John Spellar]

I very much take my hon. Friend’s point. Fundamentally, the parliamentary approval finally acts as the constraint on the Executive, but also on the bureaucracy. I do not believe in this, as in so many other areas, we should just hand over decision making to the great and the good. Academics and lawyers have a proper role: they should advise. Quite apart from their role in a judicial capacity in trying cases, their views should not be unchallengeable. As I said earlier, I thought that view was quite fashionable in the Conservative party, but that may have changed.

One could do away with the whole problem. One could have a national list and, just as in Israel, whatever the percentage of votes are achieved, that is the number of seats given. I happen to believe very strongly in the constituency link. I happen to believe in individual constituencies and the Member’s link to those constituencies, representing their local interests and views. In the last election, we saw very different patterns across the country. Those regions and towns were represented. That is why it is important we try and keep those together.

Finally, one of the experts referring to the question of local links rather disparagingly said that very often they were political points dressed up as constituency links. There was some truth in that, although I think he was far too disparaging of constituency links and relationships. Equally, we are seeing that in the debate we are having. There are some political elements in this, as we are seeing with the 5%. Also, as in clause 1, there is a slight anomaly here. In 2031, the report will have to be in by 1 October and every eighth year after that it is 1 October, except in 2023 when it is 1 July. One therefore has to question whether there is an interest—I give way to the vice chair of the Conservative party.

[John Spellar]

The cat is out of the bag.

[Christian Matheson]

Meow!

[John Spellar]

Not one denial that this is a change that is designed after, presumably, not a two-thirds majority but a simple majority of the House to do away with the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. I think it is part of their programme to put through that legislation and then call a snap election in October, rather than in the following May, which is scheduled in all the other legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)]

It is great to see you back in the Chair, Mr Paisley. As a relatively new Member of the House, I am quite nervous about following some of the right hon. Members who have spoken. I do not know whether I will quite be able to hit the bar, but I will give it a go.

Given that six months ago I probably did not anticipate being here, potentially putting myself out of a job is an interesting proposition. I wish to touch on some of the points made by my right hon Friends the Members for Elmet and Rothwell and for Basingstoke. I must apologise to the latter—I have been referring to her as my hon. Friend, and have not paid tribute to her membership of the Privy Council. They made some interesting points on self-interest. As my right hon Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell said in the first evidence session, we all have a self-interest because we all want to represent the communities that have put us here.

That notion of community is interesting. My neighbour, the right hon. Member for Warley, made the point in the first evidence session that Government Members might not understand communities quite as much because of our sprawling rural seats. If he can find some sprawling rural parts of Sandwell that he wants to take me to, I would be more than happy to meet him there.

[Christian Matheson]

What about the country park?

[Shaun Bailey]

That is not in my patch.

--- Later in debate ---

[Shaun Bailey]

I say to the hon. Gentleman that I am in the process of considering how my support will go; I will not pin my colours to the mast right now.

[Christian Matheson]

Pin them! [Laughter.]

[Shaun Bailey]

First, I will listen to the arguments that the hon. Member for Glasgow East makes, because I do not want to deprive him of the opportunity to articulate his points in the way that only he can. So, we will see what happens when we come to that amendment.

I will simply say that we come to this issue with a degree of self-interest—we all do. Historically, this place has not been the best at balancing the boundaries and making sure that there is equal and fair representation. The parameters that we are setting are flexible enough to ensure that the boundary commission can show some imagination, and we cannot do down the inputs from communities if we are to be sure that these new constituencies are accurately representative of the areas that people live in. Also, we must give credit to the independence of this process. We have yet to hear a really strong argument as to how the independence of these judicially-led bodies can be compromised.

I will round off my comments there.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill (Sixth sitting)

Christian Matheson Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 25th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Chloe Smith]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, because she allows me to move on to the matters in clause 2. They are very important, and she presages what I am going to say.

Clause 2 changes the way in which the recommendations of the boundary commissions are brought into effect. This is the meat of the debate. The purpose of the change is to bring certainty to the boundary review process and give confidence that recommendations of the independent boundary commissions are brought into effect without interference or delay. The boundary commissions develop their proposals through a robust process involving extensive public consultation over a two to three-year period.

The right hon. Member for Warley made a very thoughtful point about checks and balances, and what he called a new set of priesthoods. Aside from the fact that this is not new—this commission has been in existence for many decades, and rightly so—the point that I want to make is this: the public are the check and balance on that body. By way of example, more than half the recommendations made by the Boundary Commission for England in the previous cycle were changed. This morning, examples were exchanged of where change was desirable or not desirable, and where it was proposed or rejected, but the fact is that that level of responsiveness to the public has been shown to be there in what boundary commissions do, so the need for check and balance is met by what the boundary commissions do in their public consultation. That is very important. My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West eloquently touched on that.

It is important that the boundary commissions’ impartial recommendations are brought into effect promptly and with certainty in order to avoid wasting public money and time and to underline the independence of the process. Clause 2 provides for proposed constituencies to be brought into effect automatically. It does that by amending the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986, which provides for the recommendations to be brought into effect through an Order in Council made by Her Majesty following approval of the draft order by both Houses of Parliament.

As happens now, the Secretary of State would be required to give effect to the recommendations of the boundary commissions. Let me say a little about the wording that hon. Members will see in the Bill. Professor Sir John Curtice also noted this in evidence. The wording has been updated over time. In the current legislation, a Minister must submit the draft order

“as soon as may be”.

The new wording used in the clause is:

“as soon as reasonably practicable”.

I do not think that is of great interest to the Committee, but I just want to make the point that that is more up-to-date wording. There is nothing more to be read into that change of words.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

Is there any practical difference between the two forms of worfing, or is it simply using more up-to-date language?

[Chloe Smith]

The hon. Gentleman—my friend, if I may return his compliments of this morning—has it exactly right. I thank him for aiding the Committee’s understanding on that point. I could give examples of where that kind of wording has been updated in other Acts, but I think I do not need to do so if it is as simply put as that.

As happens now, an Order in Council will be used to give effect to the recommendations, but Parliament will not play a role in approving that order, and the Secretary of State will no longer be able to amend the draft Order in Council that implements the boundary commissions’ recommendations in the event that it is rejected by Parliament.

We heard in the witnesses sessions that a number of respected academics support this change. Countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand use a similar approach. It is the right one to use. We heard from Dr Renwick and Professors Hazell, Curtice and McLean, and there are many more who stand on that side of the argument. One of the most eloquent whom we heard in our sessions was Professor Wyn Jones from the Welsh Governance Centre, who said:

“It is probably better that MPs set the terms of the exercise for the Boundary Commission behind a veil of ignorance, if you like, without knowing exactly what the particular outcomes would be for them as individual MPs.”––[Official Report, Parliamentary Constituencies Public Bill Committee, 18 June 2020; c. 57, Q117.]

I considered trying to get a joke on the record about Immanuel Kant and the ways that that surname could be used, but I thought it would be better not to test the boundaries of that at this stage of the Committee.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke went on to say, witnesses were clear that the independence of the process should not be violated—a strong word, as she pointed out. Whether Professor Curtice was also right to call Committee members and Members of the House turkeys, I could not possibly comment, but it is self-evident that MPs have an interest in the outcome. That is simply a fact.

I now turn to amendments 2 to 4 and the opposition to the clause that I assume goes with them. I disagree fundamentally with the amendments and I urge hon. Members to withdraw them. I recognise the passion with which hon. Members put their arguments. The hon. Member for City of Chester spoke about parliamentary approval being a “safety valve”, but those arguments are wrong-headed. Essentially, they say that a process should be regarded as independent if someone agrees with it, and not if they do not, which is a poor way to approach the question. The changes are important to ensure that the recommendations of the independent boundary commissions are brought into effect promptly, without interference from any political quarter, without waste of public time and money, and without delay.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chloe Smith]

And in that will reside the views of the majority of Members of the House of Commons, who know what the right argument here is in this case, which is to deliver equal and updated boundaries. I am only sorry that some of the arguments we have heard this morning seem to express almost a lack of confidence in Parliament’s right and ability to set a framework at the outset and then have confidence that it can be delivered by what is a very high-quality public body, judge-led and acknowledged by witnesses to be among the best in the world in how we run our boundary commissions. Perhaps the hon. Member for City of Chester disagrees.

[Christian Matheson]

I am enjoying the Minister’s exposition of the constitution. The proof of the particular pudding she is talking about is in the fact that the last two boundary revisions did not have the support of Parliament. There was no formal mechanism in the way that she describes for hon. Members to express that disapproval and lack of support. It had to be done informally through the usual channels, until the Government realised that if they did push either of those to a vote, they would not have succeeded. There was no formal constitutional mechanism of the type the Minister is trying to outline.

[Chloe Smith]

I will say two things to that. First, we should be focusing on what we now need to do. Secondly, I am pleased to be here proposing a better way forward that demonstrates that we have listened to the opinions expressed by, among others, the Select Committee on Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs. We should therefore deliver what we have been asked to do by people in this country through the means of the Bill.

I will draw my remarks to a close. I need detain the Committee no longer. I think I have dealt with all the points put to me this morning. I recommend that the Committee reject the amendment and support clauses 1 and 2 standing part of the Bill.

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[Cat Smith]

Speaking to amendment 10, the hon. Member for Glasgow East made a very good point about the way in which the Bill must be able to be applied effectively in every part of the United Kingdom. In some of the regions where the commissioners will be doing their work, the geography and landscape are very different from those of other regions. In that sense, I am minded to support the amendment if chooses to push it to a vote. It would give the commissioners more flexibility to be able to respond to the needs of communities, and if we are to have communities that are confident in the boundaries that the commissioners draw, they must have had an adequate say in how the constituencies are formed.

[Christian Matheson]

First, I welcome the Minister’s explanation of the clause. I have been through a few of these boundary reviews now. I remember attending one in the mid-1990s for Cheshire, which was held in Winsford, in the geographical centre of Cheshire, along with my old mentor Lord Hoyle—as he is now is—and Mike Hall, another former MP, and the late and much-missed Andrew Miller, another former MP.

More recently, the Cheshire review was held in my own constituency in Chester, in The Queen hotel, and in that circumstance I found myself speaking against my own party’s recommendations, because the numbers had forced the party to exclude a part of the constituency from Chester that I felt rightfully belonged to it. It was a strange and uncomfortable situation, but I did what I did because it was right.

Having heard the hon. Member for Glasgow East speak to his amendment, I think there is a principle that flows throughout the Bill, which is the importance of taking into account geography, in terms of the overall impact of the Bill and its overall implications. I could easily get from Chester to Winsford and from Chester to Warrington; that would not be a problem. Speaking from my own experience, I think that Cheshire could get away with having one public inquiry.

If I think about parts of rural northern England, the far south-west, or large parts of Scotland and Wales, the sparsity of population makes it less easy to hold public inquiries than in Cheshire or in large boroughs. It is the same principle and the same argument that we will discuss later in the Bill—I do not want to wander too far off the subject of this clause—where we have numbers overriding geographical considerations. There are parts of the country that need to be treated differently because sparsity of population and geographical features make it more difficult for individuals to take part

The hon. Member for Ceredigion asked the Minister a question that had also occurred to me, about whether, in principle, she may consider a slightly different amendment, if she accepts that some areas need more attention because of their geography and sparsity of population. Obviously, the Minister cannot speak to a hypothetical amendment, but I would support that suggestion. The principle that flows through the Bill is that we cannot simply go on bare numbers. Geography, population density and the ease of people getting to, and taking part in, consultations need to be considered. I have a lot of sympathy with the amendment moved by the hon. Member for Glasgow East.

[Clive Efford]

I am sorry that I did not call you “Sir David” earlier. I was not trying to de-noble you and I apologise.

I support the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Glasgow East. We are in a curious situation with this clause. On the one hand, the Government are saying, “Step back, set the parameters and let the boundary commission get on with it,” but when we get to this clause they become prescriptive. The clause limits the scope of the boundary commission to consult and to set up consultations with an area in a way that meets the reaction they are getting from a local community. It says that there can only be five consultations in an area. That does not seem to me to be stepping back, allowing the boundary commission to get on with its job, and reacting according to representations from the community.

The Bill sets a rigid timetable, which is acceptable, but subsection (12) says that we will have only six weeks for the second stage and four weeks for the third, because we have a rushed timetable. In the evidence, we were told time and again that this will be a major upheaval because the boundaries are 20 years out of date. Rather than truncating the consultation period in the coming boundary review, we should at least stick to the length of time we are setting for subsequent boundary reviews. Apparently we are not doing that and we can rush at this one, like a bull at a gate.

This is a substantial review that will bring about major changes because of the age of the boundaries we have, which is quite right. I am not arguing about the fact that these changes have to be made and that we have to achieve some sort of equilibrium, which at the same time recognises communities, but it will be a difficult exercise that the Government are making even more difficult because of the timescale they are setting.

Saying that the second stage of the review will have only six weeks and the final stage only four does not seem to be consistent with the idea that we set parameters and let the boundary commission get on with its job. All of a sudden we are starting to put difficulties in its way. I would support the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Glasgow East if it were put to a vote. It is important that we give flexibility to the boundary commission so that the public have confidence in what the commission is doing and that their views can be heard. Even if the outcome is not the boundaries that the public support, at least they will have had the right to have their voices heard in a way that is convenient and in a location that enables them to participate. Putting restrictions on the boundary commission is a step in the wrong direction. I fundamentally disagree with the bit in subsection (12). On a boundary review that is well overdue and is going to be difficult, the Government have set a tougher timescale. The game is up. This really does expose the political considerations. This is all about the timing and choice of a general election date from 2023 onwards. It has nothing whatever to do with doing an efficient job in reviewing parliamentary boundaries.

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[Clive Efford]

The Bill gets more and more curious. The Minister argued consistently on previous clauses for a position that would have prevented us from getting to the clause, had we been in that position of automaticity and the previous boundary reviews had gone through. If it were not for Parliament’s ability to have a second look at what had been set in train, we would not have the clause to have 650 MPs.

It is curious for the Minister to stand up and say that is the right decision and what we should do when she has also argued for something that would have prevented us from getting to this position. That is the argument in favour of Parliament giving the final approval on whatever the boundary commission proposes. It is clear that going down to 600 MPs was a schism imposed on us by two ambitious young politicians who got together in a rose garden and completely fell in love. It was the wrong decision, and when Parliament got the chance to take a second look, it came to a conclusion that both sides of the House support. With the situation we are in, which we have been in for a long time—MPs represent greater numbers of constituents than ever before, and in some of our inner-city areas that involves many people who cannot go on the electoral register—it has been obvious that we should not cut the number of MPs. We are where we are, but that highlights how the Government are arguing for a position that would have resulted in us making a huge error, had it been in place at the time of the last boundary review.

[Christian Matheson]

I will speak only briefly. In fact, I only sought to catch your eye, Sir David, after my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley gave advice to the Minister, based on his years of experience, that she was entitled to criticise previous leaders who may no longer be with us. I thought I would therefore take the opportunity to do what I promised earlier and compliment the Minister on changing her position. I said how she would prove to be flexible, and this is what I was talking about. As my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood said, the reversion to 650 is the right decision, and I very much welcome it. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham just said, is it not great that we are in a position to do that, because automaticity was not in the Bill? I will leave it at that.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 5 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 6

Taking account of local government boundaries

[David Linden]

I beg to move amendment 8, in clause 6, page 4, line 35, before “for” insert “(a)”

This is linked to amendment 9.

--- Later in debate ---

I will not support the amendment. I hope the hon. Member for Glasgow East will withdraw it and see it as a probing amendment, but it has made possible a very important discussion in this Committee.

[Christian Matheson]

I will briefly make two observations and pose a question that the Minister might be able to answer. On the amendment tabled my the hon. Member for Glasgow East, I think we heard in evidence that the Scottish building blocks reflect the reorganisation of local government in Scotland. As such, they are slightly different from those in England and Wales—perhaps in terms of size, although the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell has talked about wards of 17,000 people in Leeds, which are extremely large. I hope that we do not take our own experiences of wards in our areas—although I might do just that in a moment—and impose them on other parts of the United Kingdom where they are not appropriate.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Just to quickly address the hon. Gentleman’s point—it is something that I did not say—he is quite right to say that there are 17,000, 18,000 or 19,000 people in a ward in Leeds. We have similar issues in Kirklees, and I think Birmingham has been mentioned. I am thinking about specific areas where there are huge wards, created from a bunch of wards—in order to reach the right number—that contain totally disparate communities. That is the area we need to look at. In the metropolitan constituencies and councils, that is really important. That might help the hon. Gentleman.

[Christian Matheson]

I am grateful for that clarity. I am less keen on formally using polling districts as building blocks—we will come to this issue when we debate a different amendment—on the basis that they lack the formality of a consulted-on review by an independent body.

I have a question for the Committee that might be within the expertise of an hon. Member or the Minister. In my constituency, I already have split wards. I share one ward with my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) and another with the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson). Split wards already exist, and it is not clear why there needs to be consideration of introducing them into the legislation now, if they are already possible.

[Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)]

Just to answer the hon. Gentleman’s question, I believe it is more to do with the fact that his constituency is currently aligned with a set of boundaries that predate the Cheshire West and Chester authority. Should the boundary commission conduct the review, it will probably try to use the current boundaries for Cheshire West and Chester. I am sure he would agree that that would possibly lead to quite an unwieldly seat that does not contain the entire city and might go into rural areas that do not necessarily accord with the more urban parts of his constituency.

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[Christian Matheson]

I am most grateful for that. That might well be the case, although the boundary review area was Cheshire as a whole. I suspect the boundary commission would not want to go over the boundary review area, but that might well be a possibility.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

The hon. Gentleman is being most generous in giving way. There is a split polling district between me and the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon). I have about 26 houses from one of his large polling districts in my constituency; there is also the M1 motorway between my constituency and his. It makes no sense at all and creates some issues. It is noticeable that, in constituencies where there has been a local boundary change afterwards and there is a split across constituencies, the public are not really affected by that. That point was made in relation to what happens when we split wards and look at polling districts. The public are interested in who their MP, councillor and local authority are. I do not think they particularly mind if a different part of the constituency uses a different local authority.

[Christian Matheson]

With the greatest of respect to the right hon. Gentleman, he is now talking about split polling districts—he is doing my head in. My head is fried. I might just jump out the window.

On the contribution of the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton, it might be, as the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell said, that previous local government boundaries were superimposed on pre-existing parliamentary boundaries. That is entirely possible. If there is some clarification, that is fine. If split wards are permissible, that may go some way towards achieving our aims. I am grateful for that contribution.

[Chris Clarkson]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I largely agree with my right hon. Friends the Members for Basingstoke and for Elmet and Rothwell, and thank the hon. Member for Glasgow East for his amendment. I will treat it as a probing amendment, and I shall not support it as it stands because we are still awaiting a letter from the boundary commission. My concern is that if we start prescribing units, it becomes dogma. We have seen that three of the boundary commissions are perfectly happy to start looking at innovative ways of splitting wards and treating postcode areas and community council areas as building blocks.

As Mr Bellringer suggested—I am not saying that this is the attitude across the piece, but it appears to be—the boundary commissions will go for the path of least resistance, which at the moment is wards. If we give them something smaller to work with, they will just work to that particular unit. We will get concomitances of polling districts snatched from area A and area B, and it becomes a more microscopic version of what we currently have. I am also concerned about using polling districts. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell said, there is the danger of reintroducing a political element into something when we are trying to take it out by introducing the process of automaticity.

I shall not support the amendment. I greatly appreciate the option of being able to split wards. I am glad that we have had this debate. The Committee has heard from Government-supporting Members that it is something that we are happy to look at, but I consider that being prescriptive is not the most helpful way to approach it.

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[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am not a historian, but there was no war between Berkshire and Hampshire—no wars of the roses.

[Christian Matheson]

I am listening to the points being made by the right hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Member for Basingstoke, but I am not quite clear where the consensus lies. There is an administrative issue that I would ask him to consider when making his argument. He might not want parliamentary boundaries to reflect local government boundaries—no, to be fair, he does not want that to be a primary concern—but there has to be administration of elections, and the fewer local authorities that a constituency is spread across the better.

Once those elections have taken place, there is also less of a workload for a Member of Parliament when he or she represents one local authority, or in some cases two. It becomes difficult to represent more than two local authorities, and the level of service given to constituents is less. Will the right hon. Gentleman take that into account?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making those points, because I have done some research into that. My constituency is covered only by Leeds City Council, and only five wards of it, because we have such big wards—I have 15 councillors in my constituency. In fact, in most of the Leeds constituencies, there are only four wards, which might give him some idea of where we are. In the Morley and Outwood constituency, the Outwood wards are under the Wakefield authority. The Selby and Ainsty constituency, which is in North Yorkshire, has North Yorkshire County Council, Selby District Council and parts of Harrogate Borough Council and Craven District Council. Many seats are spread over more than one local authority.

I have spoken to my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams)—he is my neighbour—and asked him about the specifics, such as whether it creates problems. He says that, overall, he is able to deal with those areas. There is a distinction between spreading across authorities in rural areas and in joint metropolitan areas, or things like that. Perhaps that is what the hon. Member for City of Chester refers to.

[Christian Matheson]

The right hon. Gentleman is being generous in giving way. I am concerned about constituencies spread across more than two council areas. Two is manageable, but I do not believe that three would be, which is why I disagree with his view that we should ignore local authority boundaries.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

As I said, my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty has four local authorities in his constituency, but I seriously take on board what the hon. Gentleman says about more than two authorities. That still comes back to the point that I am making—a constituency does not have to stay within one local authority. We can keep like communities together and make that work—people want the communities that they understand—especially when a region has a situation: North Yorkshire is half a seat short and West Yorkshire is half a seat short, so there will have to be that crossover. It should not just be an arbitrary line drawn on a map; it is about having regard to like communities.

The only point that I am trying to bring out through this probing amendment—I hope the Boundary Commission for England will look at a way to do it—is that, although some of these things seem obvious, actually in communities they are not so obvious. That is why I used the example of the people of Sherburn in Elmet, who are in North Yorkshire and are covered by Selby District Council and North Yorkshire County Council. They are in a different constituency from me in West Yorkshire and the Leeds City Council area, but they think I am their MP because my constituency has the word “Elmet” in it.

There are local considerations that cannot be defined by the local boundaries. I hope that this probing amendment is able to bring out the need for guidance and advice, which we can give to the Boundary Commission and say, “These things are not as vital.” I am sure that it will have heard the hon. Member for City of Chester, who said that two authorities do not seem to be a problem, but it is stretching it when we start to move beyond that.

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[Chris Clarkson]

My right hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. Every Monday morning, my office sends a load of casework to the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd), because 30% of my seat is Rochdale and people do not automatically think that I am their MP. The reality is that if we are too prescriptive about local government boundaries, we will go back to having these odd Frankenstein seats where we are trying to conform with electoral boundaries. I do not think that being too prescriptive is the right approach.

[Christian Matheson]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman about not being too prescriptive, but he cannot have it both ways. As he said previously, he also supports the 5% absolute tolerance on the numbers. I am pleased to hear him talking about not being too prescriptive, so will he bear that in mind as we proceed through our consideration of the Bill?

[Chris Clarkson]

I can tell the hon. Gentleman that it is foremost in my mind, which is why I was very glad to have the debate that was sparked by the hon. Member for Glasgow East. We need to be less prescriptive about the units that we use to build things, but there is a common-sense approach that does not involve taking ridiculous leaps by keeping whole units together, just because they have arbitrarily been drawn one way by the Local Government Boundary Commission.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill (Eighth sitting)

Christian Matheson Excerpts

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

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

Sir David, it is a wonderful pleasure to return to the Committee under your chairmanship. I wanted to clarify a point that was raised by the right hon. Member for Warley. He is not in his place now, but I hope it will be helpful to the Committee if I proceed.

The right hon. Gentleman asked how the protected status of Ynys Môn, on which we had an excellent debate this morning, would relate to the allocation of seats between the nations in the calculation of the electoral quota. I can make that clear now. At the start of the boundary review, before any allocations are made, the protected constituencies and their electorate are set to one side, as it were. That happens at the beginning before the national consideration. They are then not included in any consideration of either seat allocations or the calculation of the electoral quota. To illustrate that, with Ynys Môn added to the existing four protected constituencies there will be five in total. Those five will be removed from the overall total number, leaving 645. Their electorates would then be subtracted from the UK total electorate. The remaining UK electorate would be divided by 645, and that would give the electoral quota—the average on which each proposed constituency will be based. That figure is likely to fall somewhere between 70,000 and 80,000. The number of constituencies per home nation—the allocation—is then calculated by the usual method set out under rule 8 of schedule 2 to the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986, which also uses the total electorate of each part of the UK, minus the electorate of any protected constituencies in that part. I will talk more about the method for that when we discuss new clause 3, but I hope that in the first instance that addresses the right hon. Gentleman’s query, even in his absence.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is also a member of the Defence Committee, and the Secretary of State is giving evidence there this afternoon, so his not being here is certainly no discourtesy.

[Chloe Smith]

That is extremely helpful to know. As I said once before in this Committee, it is of great benefit that we have such experienced Committee members, including no fewer than two former Secretaries of State, who naturally have other calls on their time.

The final clause of the Bill, clause 12, makes provision with respect to the extent of the Bill, its commencement and the short title. As it relates to the UK Parliament and its constituencies, the Bill extends to England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The subject matter is reserved to the UK Parliament, so legislative consent motions from any of the devolved legislatures are not required. The Bill comes into force on the day when it is passed. It is important that it should commence on that day in order to allow the boundary commissions to have legal certainty on the rules, such as the number of constituencies, for the next reviews, which begin formally on 1 December 2020—the review date—and in practice will get going in earnest in early 2021.

As I noted during discussion on clauses 8 and 9, the Bill applies retrospectively in two clauses in relation to Government obligations on implementing the 2018 boundary review and the review of the reduction of seats. The provisions in those clauses are treated as having come into force from 24 March and 31 May 2020 respectively. The short title of the Bill, once it receives Royal Assent, is set out as the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 12 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

New Clause 1

“Registers used to determine the “electorate” in relation to the 2023 reports

‘(1) In rule 9(2) of Schedule 2 to the 1986 Act (definition of the “electorate”), for “The” substitute “Subject to sub-paragraph (2A), the”.

(2) After rule 9(2) of that Schedule insert—

“(2A) In relation to a report under section 3(1) that a Boundary Commission is required (by section 3(2)) to submit before 1 July 2023, the “electorate” of the United Kingdom, or of a part of the United Kingdom or a constituency, is the total number of persons whose names appear on a register of parliamentary electors (maintained under section 9 of the Representation of the People Act 1983) in respect of addresses in the United Kingdom, or in that part or that constituency, as that register has effect on 2 March 2020.””—(Chloe Smith.)

This new clause inserts a new clause (to be added after clause 6) which provides for the meaning of the “electorate” in Schedule 2 to the 1986 Act, in the case of the 2023 reports of the Boundary Commissions, to be determined by reference to the registers of parliamentary electors as they have effect on 2 March 2020 rather than by reference to the versions of those registers which are published under section 13(1) of the Representation of the People Act 1983 on or before 1 December 2020 (which is the “review date” provided for under clause 7), a prescribed later date, or 1 February 2021 (where section 13(1A) of that Act applies).

Brought up, and read the First time.

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

I will speak to both new clause 4, which stands in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester, and Government new clause 1.

I welcome new clause 1, which corrects what I feel would be the error of using December of this year as the basis for the register for our boundary review. Clearly, the covid-19 situation has put huge strain on all our councils and local authorities, which at present are working to support some of the most vulnerable people in our communities. It would be ludicrous to ask them to undertake an annual canvass at a time of such stretched capacity in local government. However, after 20 years of delay, the boundaries must reflect the electorate, with the best possible accuracy, and that means selecting the register that best reflects the reality of the general population of our country.

I would like to use this opportunity to probe the Minister on her choice of the March 2020 register. We are in a unique position, in that just six months ago we had a general election, and before that election we saw a huge spike in voter registration. Indeed, we can see that, since the introduction of individual electoral registration, there tends to be a spike in electoral registrations before major electoral events—the most notable recently being referendums and general elections, of which we seem to have had an awful lot. The Office for National Statistics data for the period between 1 and 12 December 2019 showed that approximately half a million people registered to vote, and electoral registrations increased in 94% of our constituencies. The number of electoral registrations was at its highest level, surpassing the previous peak in December 2012.

I have some concern about the drop-off in registrations between 12 December 2019 and 2 March 2020. We heard evidence that potentially hundreds of thousands of people have fallen off the electoral register during that period. Indeed, in the current context, in which the Government have been very clear that we will not be having by-elections or scheduled elections this year because of the coronavirus, there is not the same impetus for individuals to register to vote.

This is part of a much wider problem around electoral registration, with the Electoral Commission recently—actually, it was almost a year ago—making recommendations to the Government to plug the huge gaps in our electoral rolls. I look forward to hearing the Government’s response when that is forthcoming, but we know that about 9 million people in this country are missing from the electoral registers. My concern is to find the most accurate and most complete register possible in order to ensure that every one of our citizens is included within the boundaries that we have at the next general election. New clause 4, in my name, suggests that that register would be the one from the general election, for the reason that I have set out, which is the spike in electoral registrations that we see before major electoral events, in order to ensure that every single citizen in this country who should be counted in the review is counted.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has covered most of the points, so I will be very brief. In a sense, I will be asking the Minister only a couple of questions.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that we hit the high water mark at the general election. The Minister has corrected me when I have perhaps claimed too high an increase for the 2017 general election. Nevertheless, there is a surge in registrations that makes a general election register, as I have said, the high water mark and, if we are asking for a snapshot, the most accurate snapshot within, perhaps, a period of nine months or a year either side. In that respect, it is the most accurate register on which to base a set of boundaries.

I wonder whether the Minister can answer a couple of questions—I am not trying to catch her out. First, can she say, given that there is that rush at a general election, what measures a Government might put in place to maintain that high water mark level of registrations? For example, in the past year there was a proposal to downgrade the annual canvass. That proposal actually went through, which I was not happy with at the time, but the Minister was confident it was achievable. We are not going to see that this year, rightly, but what measures could be put in place to maintain that high water mark around a general election? Can the Minister also explain—I think this was touched upon during the evidence sessions—whether any assessment has been made of the numerical difference between the general election register and the register in March that we are going to base this on, and why that difference exists?

Using the March register, as opposed to waiting for more people to drop off the register at the end of this year—potentially 200,000 people—is a very sensible move. I have praised the Minister in the past when she has earned it; this was the right thing to do, and I echo my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood in welcoming the change to maintain as high a water mark as possible in the number of people registered. As she has said, there is a broader debate about automatic registration, but I do not think that is covered in this new clause.

[Chloe Smith]

I am happy to offer a few further arguments as to why it is misguided to seek to use general election data. Going back to the facts of the matter in December 2019, there are two points I want to make. The first is that the December 2019 general election was an unexpected event, for a number of reasons. That may be a matter of ins and outs for politicians, but for administrators, that is quite a proposition: they have to be able to run an election as requested.

At that time, electoral officers had broadly three options for when to publish their electoral registers—three different options at three different times. Some published in October 2019, just after the election was called, for very valid reasons: they might have seen the benefit of trying to simplify the process of giving each elector their identification number and arranging the printing and postage of poll cards. A second group published on 1 December 2019, the traditional deadline for publication of the revised registers following the canvass. And some published on 1 February 2020, which is the deadline for those who had an election other than the general election in their area during that period—that is, a by-election between 1 January and December 2019. My point is that there are three different times when election officers would have published the registers, so there is no such thing as a single register that provides the silver bullet the Opposition are looking for. I am afraid it is deeply misguided to think there is.

My second point, based on the facts in December last year, is that some registers were swollen, but some were not. The hon. Member for City of Chester will recall the evidence given by Roger Pratt to this Committee:

“Three hundred and eighty-eight seats were actually larger at the general election than on 1 December, but 261…were smaller at the general election”.––[Official Report, Parliamentary Constituencies Public Bill Committee, 18 June 2020; c. 30.]

Not only is there not a silver bullet, the bullet does not even go in the direction in which the Opposition would like to fire the gun.

[Christian Matheson]

My understanding, however, is that the overall number of electors always swells to a high-water mark during a general election, albeit there will be some constituencies in which that is not the case, as Mr Pratt advised us.

[Chloe Smith]

As a matter of common sense, that swelling is likely, and I agree with the hon. Gentleman that people have an incentive to register before an election. It is evidently the case that the demands of an election, where people have the chance to cast their vote and have their say, are an encouragement to registration. I do not argue against that at all; I welcome that. As I said in my earlier remarks, we want to encourage people to register year round, but there is that particular incentive with an election. These facts remain, however, and they drive holes through the Opposition’s argument right now.

I am afraid that there is one further point that I need to drive home hard: the hon. Member for the City of Chester should know better than to rehearse the really poor arguments he made about canvass reform when this time last year we discussed the statutory instrument that he mentioned. It was not a downgrade of the annual canvass. He had not done his homework at the time. It was an upgrade of the annual canvass, whereby resources can be focused on the hardest to identify, who, from Labour Members’ discourse, we might think they wished to go after. The upgrade also involved looking at where resources should be focused, rather than taxpayers’ money being put to poorer use where those resources are not needed. In other words, canvass reform allows registration officers to do a more targeted job of the canvass. That is a good thing. It allows citizens to have a better experience of canvassing, because they are being asked to fill out fewer forms. It allows taxpayers to save money. As the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood rightly pointed out, every pound in local government is sorely needed at the moment. There should never be an argument for wasting money in local government on an exercise that could be better targeted than it has been in the past. Those are the facts about canvass reform. Furthermore, I am afraid the hon. Member for the City of Chester is incorrect to say that we will not see that this year. We will. If he were in touch with his Welsh Labour colleagues in Cardiff, for example, he would know that it is going ahead this year, and that they rightly support it. Indeed, so do the devolved Government in Scotland, because it is the right thing to do. But enough on the annual canvass; that is not our subject matter here.

The Government strongly believe that the use of the electoral register in the way for which the Bill provides is the right thing to do. I have given comprehensive reasons why the idea of doing it from a general election register is not strong. I urge the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood not to press new clause 4 to a vote.

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[Cat Smith]

It was. Obviously, the proposals that come out of this boundary review will look different because of the 650 figure. The tight 5% quota, however, still gives the commissioners a great deal of trouble in trying to keep those communities together, to ensure that people can believe that the constituency they are in represents a community.

[Christian Matheson]

My hon. Friend will recall that two academics in the evidence sessions suggested that the problems in drawing up the constituencies—linking the constituency to reflect its communities—were as much, if not more, because of the tight 5% limit as because of the reduction by 50 seats.

[Cat Smith]

My hon. Friend must have read ahead in my speech, because this is a point that I will get to—

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[Christian Matheson]

Sorry about that.

[Cat Smith]

His apology is very much accepted, but my hon. Friend draws me back to the point that I was hoping to make. From the evidence that we heard, experts such as David Rossiter and Charles Pattie agreed that the 5% rule caused significant disruption to community boundaries. Indeed, they concluded that the substantial disruption on the back of the constituencies to be brought in by the sixth review is not entirely due to the reduction in the number of MPs. Their report shows in detail that disruption was caused by the introduction of this new form of national quota with a 5% tolerance.

In addition, many members of the Committee have referred to the Council of Europe Venice Commission “Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters”, which states that good practice is to allow a standard permissible tolerance from the electoral quota of 10%. Internationally, a larger quota is viewed as promoting best practice to secure fair representation. This code also recommends that boundaries are drawn without detriment to national minorities, but the Government’s restrictive quota could have serious consequences for national minorities in this country. Councillor Dick Cole from Cornwall stated in his written evidence:

“The UK Government has recognised the Cornish as a national minority. This alone should lead MPs to ensure that the new legislation includes a clause…to protect Cornish territoriality.”

We do not have an amendment tabled to do that, but a larger quota allows flexibility for English commissioners to ensure that their proposals respect Cornish identity. Places such as Cornwall might then be able to identify with their seat, instead of the ludicrous Devonwall seat proposal of the previous review, which was met with much ridicule in the Cornish community and, I suspect, in Devon.

That is not just an issue for the Cornish. The UK Government recognise the Scottish, Welsh and Irish alongside the Cornish people as national minorities under the Council of Europe framework convention for the protection of national minorities, which the UK signed in 1985. The act of respecting those minorities will be made all the more difficult by a restrictive 5% quota, which could prevent the boundary commission from being able to keep those communities together. My Welsh colleagues feel very strongly that Welsh-speaking communities ought to be held together, and this would be made easier by having the larger flexibility for the commissioners.

We recognise the need for constituencies to be as broadly equal as possible, but anyone who claims that they truly believe that all constituencies should be equal means that every single constituency must be exactly the same size. I do not believe that anyone in Committee believes that, not least because this morning we had unanimous support for the protection of Ynys Môn, which will come in with a much smaller population than many other constituencies.

The evidence is strong: having wider electoral tolerance will create constituencies that are more representative of the communities that they seek to represent. A move from a 5% variance to about a 7.5% variance is a difference worth about 2,000 electors per constituency. That is a reasonable compromise to ensure that communities are kept together and that constituencies are as broadly equal as possible.

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[Chris Clarkson]

In which case, I invite the hon. Gentleman to look at the 75 seats in the north-west and see how many of them are close to quota, even when originally drawn. Very few is the answer. As a thought experiment I decided to see what would happen if we applied the 2019 electoral figures, which are the most up- to-date ones we have, to the 5%, 7.5% and 10% quotas. As a sample, I took all the seats represented by Conservative Members. Only one seat falls within the 5% quota, which is the seat represented by my hon. Friend for Hitchin and Harpenden. If we extend to 7.5%, we still have only one within quota—again, the seat represented by my hon. Friend for Hitchin and Harpenden. If we get to 10%, two of us—my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke and me—are still over quota.

Looking at the population drift from these seats, it is not that large over a number of years. It is simply that the more the quota is extended simply to try to reduce the extent of change, the more the seats end up disproportionately large. When starting with a 5% quota variant, the maximum difference between the smallest and largest seats is 7,260. That rises to 10,912 on 10%; then 14,551 on 10%; then 21,826 voters based on the OCSE of a maximum of 15%. It is never more than 15%. The reality is that we will see population change in the seats that will be drawn, which is a natural consequence of some areas depopulating and other areas increasing in population. Drawing the quotas as closely as possible to the mean is a way of ensuring that when we review the situation in eight years’ time, the variation will not be so severe that radical change will be needed. Obviously, radical change will be required in this review because the information is 20 years out of date. We should aim to get the electorate as close as possible to that mean now, so that in the future we are not having to radically redraw the map every time we come to this exercise.

[Christian Matheson]

I speak in support of new clause 2, which I tabled with my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood. I have really enjoyed listening to the contributions to the debate, but I am concerned about the lack of consistency expressed by Government Members. That is partly in relation to the clause, but also in relation to the clause as it reflects other parts of the Bill. I will try not to stray too far from the clause, and I am sure, Sir David, that you will pull me back if I do.

The right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell—who, as always, makes me stop and think—talked about the boundary commission getting it right first time. I suspect that he meant in the first set of proposals as opposed to the former ones. One of the problems is that we cannot always trust the boundary commission to get it right first time. Frankly, there are occasions when it does not get it right the second time. That is why we opposed automaticity in another part of the Bill.

I understand what the right hon. Gentleman is saying, but the lack of absolute confidence—we do have confidence in the boundary commission—might have been expressed in another part of the considerations. The hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton discussed disparities in our own region, and about his seat and that of the right hon. Member for Basingstoke who, I think, has described her seat as being a small market town that has grown and grown over the years. She might wish to correct me. These changes do happen, and it is not simply that the boundary commission chooses to draw much bigger seats. Growth does happen, and for that reason it is projected that south-east England is likely to get extra seats as a result of population shifts.

The hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden—I must get it correct—said that the situation was not what we have now, but the new clause does not propose the situation we have now—it is not proposing 10% either way. I listened to my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham suggesting that we have 10%, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley suggesting that it is perfectly legitimate to propose that within the OSCE guidelines. However, the new clause proposes a balance between that very tight adherence to the variance of 5% and the need for community interest.

I listened to the debate at Second Reading, and the right hon. Member for Basingstoke, and the hon. Members for Newbury and for West Bromwich West might have mentioned the importance of reflecting community interests. We have all spoken on that subject, and the hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden discussed that in a question on first past the post, and spoke about maintaining the importance of community. Many Committee members have mentioned the importance of community, but the lack of consistency comes up when we reject all those arguments in favour of tight adherence. Somewhere, we have to strike a balance.

On this side of the Committee, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood said, we have accepted the Government’s arguments that we must have much more equally sized constituencies. We are asking Government Members to accept, as we strive to achieve that, that the guidance to boundary commissions should say that those community ties—which all other hon. Members have said are important—should be taken into account, so that they get it right first or second time. In this Bill, we do not have the opportunity to call them back if they do not get it right.

This new clause provides balance and a safety valve, as we have discussed regarding automaticity, to ensure that community interests and ties are taken into account. It achieves a tighter tolerance around the average, so that it achieves something of the Government’s aim—which is also our aim—to secure more equalised seats, but not going so far that it completely wipes out the community interest. Across the Committee, hon. Members have talked about that. I will therefore support my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood in the vote.

[Chloe Smith]

What a good debate we have had on this part of the Bill. I think we all knew this would be one of the main dividing lines in the Committee. I am pleased we have been able to air these arguments and discuss what they mean for the Bill and, crucially, for real people—to whom we should anchor our discussion.

As we all know, we are looking at the electoral quota followed by what is stipulated in the existing legislation, namely, that constituencies subject to a small number of exceptions must be between 95% and 105% of that electoral quota. That is the 10% point range. As we know, because we have looked at it comprehensively in Committee, the boundary commissions may then take other factors into account, which are subject to the overriding principle of equality in constituency size.

I do not want to detain the Committee on things we have gone over, but I will underline how far adrift the UK’s current constituencies are from that principle of equality. There are some very clear examples in England. Milton Keynes South clocks in at 97,000; Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Central clocks in at 54,000. That is not fair. In Wales, Cardiff South and Penarth comes in at 80,000 constituents, whereas only 43,000 electors get to have their say in Arfon. That is not fair. The Government are committed to ensuring greater fairness by updating parliamentary constituencies to ensure that across the UK votes have the same weight. That is what we care about. That is what we are delivering. That is the right thing to do.

I do not agree with the new clause tabled by the hon. Members for Lancaster and Fleetwood and for City of Chester. I want to make a point about the difference between theory and practice. It is easy for us to bandy about figures such as 5% and 7.5%, which seem theoretical. I pay tribute to the mathematical minds that we have in this Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton is one of the finest, but there are others in the Committee who have a great facility with numbers and have really helped us in these deliberations by looking at what those figures mean when we run them under different scenarios.

Let us remember what those numbers are for. We are talking about people. Those numbers relate to the number of voters. Even the word “electors” might seem a step away from normal people, whom we ought to think of here. These people want a chance of fairness in their democracy and for their voice to be heard as equally as the next person in the next seat or nation in the country. That is the core principle at stake. It is unfair to go far off that average point. It is undesirable and it is unworthy of the people we are trying to do this for. We want to get this right for people who have asked for a change to their parliamentary constituencies. They voted for this as a manifesto commitment of this Government; indeed, it was in all parties’ manifestos, as I understand it. That is an important commitment to deliver. We should take that very seriously.

Ultimately, we must take that step away from numbers towards a judgment. The Committee heard evidence from Professor Charles Pattie of the University of Sheffield, who has been studying elections and boundary reviews for more than 30 years, about which we joked with him at the time—he has spent a very long time doing that. His conclusion was that he would certainly endorse the notion of an equalisation rule as the top priority. Dr Alan Renwick took us further in that argument. On the exact percentage that is appropriate, he said that

“numbers around 5% to 10% seem to be fairly standard. There is no answer that an academic can give you as to what is the correct number, but something in that region is appropriate.”––[Official Report, Parliamentary Constituencies Public Bill Committee, 23 June 2020; c. 74, Q141.]

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Brought up, and read the First time.

[Christian Matheson]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment (a) to new clause 3, in line 8 leave out “35” and insert “40”.

[Christian Matheson]

I briefly seek the opinion of the Committee in discussion of the new clause. I hope that its aim is self-evident.

Most of us in Committee—my friends, the hon. Members for Glasgow East and for Ceredigion excluded—would consider themselves to be Unionists and proud to be British. I certainly would. My concern is that, as the Bill stands, the Union will be placed under unnecessary and increased strain, because the three smaller nations will take the larger hit to representation here at Westminster, in the House of Commons.

Historically, we heard in evidence that Wales and Scotland were over-represented in terms of population, but that there were historical reasons why that was the case. As devolution has progressed, we have had a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Assembly, which on the passage of recent legislation became the Senedd—I look to the hon. Member for Ceredigion for approval of the pronunciation. Powers have passed to the Parliament and the Senedd so that more decisions are taken in Holyrood and on Cardiff Bay. Plenty of decisions, including large national decisions, however, still need to be taken at Westminster, on behalf not just of England but of the United Kingdom.

The important thing now—perhaps more than ever in the 20 or so years since we have had that level of devolution —is to maintain the strength of the Union and of the voices within that Union, in number as well as volume. The hon. Gentleman needs no support in terms of volume, but with number that importance is greater than ever.

I ask Members in the Conservative party—which, I think, is back to calling itself the Conservative and Unionist party—to share my concerns about all the hit being taken by the three non-English nations. We do not know the numbers yet, but we have a good idea and could make an assessment. Potentially, by transferring Welsh voices and Scottish voices to England—theoretically, Northern Irish voices too, although under the current numbers that does not look likely—we could destabilise not just the level of representation but the level of life experience from the nations.

What about areas that are more remote from Westminster? For example, and I have said this to the hon. Member for Ceredigion before, some areas of north Wales feel a little disconnected even from the Senedd on Cardiff Bay, and some areas of northern England and perhaps some in the far west, because of geographical distance, feel a little disconnected from Westminster. The more we disconnect from the national Parliament, the less legitimacy it has, and the less legitimacy it has, the less legitimacy the Union has, I fear. The unintended consequence—I genuinely believe that it is unintended—of the proposal in the Bill to transfer strength and numbers in this place from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to England is that it will damage the Union, and damage the voices within the Union, and damage the experience that all the nations bring to this Parliament.

[Mrs Miller]

I follow the hon. Member’s argument, but surely he should reflect on the fact that Wales did not undergo the changes that it was due to undergo at the time of the creation of the Assembly, which has since become a Parliament. Those changes now have to take place, so that we can deliver the fairness that I know he and I want.

[Christian Matheson]

I absolutely agree, which is why, to develop my argument and to answer the right hon. Lady directly, the new clause in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood does not seek to maintain the current number of constituencies in Wales. We accept—as we accepted, incidentally, with regard to the previous new clause that we talked about—that there has to be some level of equalisation of constituencies.

That means that Wales and Scotland will lose seats, but in order to manage the different pressures between getting equalisation and maintaining the integrity and strength of the Union and the diverse voices within it, the new clause seeks to maintain a balance by specifying a number of constituencies that is fewer, for example, than Wales has now, but more than it would have if absolute equalisation took place. We are therefore addressing some of the points that the right hon. Lady mentioned, and trying to strike a balance that puts the interests of the Union at the heart of the Bill.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

I am listening to the hon. Member very carefully. It will come as no surprise to the Committee that for me, as a Scottish nationalist, the strength and harmony of the Union is not something that generally keeps me awake at night; it often helps me to get to sleep. However, there is a point here. I do not want to conduct a debate with the right hon. Member for Basingstoke and the hon. Member for City of Chester, but it is very important for members of the Committee to reflect on the fact that this is not the first chipping away of the strength and harmony of the Union in this place.

The right hon. Lady talked about powers being devolved to Scotland and to Cardiff Bay, but let us not forget that this Conservative Government has introduced such things as English votes for English laws. That in itself has been a way of ensuring that Members of Parliament representing constituencies in England can have their say and has, in many respects, already opened up a second-class or second-tier Member of Parliament. I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that the issue the Committee is considering at the moment is not the first time that we have seen the integrity and harmony of the Union being chipped away, albeit inadvertently, by this Government.

[Christian Matheson]

The hon. Gentleman makes a salient point. I would suggest that we have English devolution, and if we were logical in these arguments, we would reduce the number of constituencies available in those parts of England where there has been devolution but not in the parts where there has not been. In my own area, for example, we do not have an elected mayor, whereas Greater Manchester—I see the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton is present—does have an elected mayor.

[Chris Clarkson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Christian Matheson]

Of course I will. I mentioned the hon. Gentleman, so I could hardly not give way to him.

[Chris Clarkson]

Following that logical stride, the devolution settlement across the UK has been entirely piecemeal. It is uneven across the United Kingdom and part of the current problem is a result of that. For example, there was a Welsh Assembly, so there was no reduction in the number of Welsh seats in 2005, whereas there was a reduction in the number of seats from 72 to 59 in Scotland. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that this situation is a natural consequence of the poorly executed devolution plan across the United Kingdom, and that now, in the interests of wider fairness, there should probably be a wider discussion about the devolution settlement for England, and each constituency in the United Kingdom should carry the same weight?

Also, does the hon. Gentleman accept as a cautionary tale that when Canada began setting quotas for certain provinces to have a set number of seats, it led to a massive expansion of the Parliament? They added 30 seats two elections ago, simply to try to keep pace with the fact that Quebec had to have a minimum number of seats.

[Christian Matheson]

To be clear, I was not proposing different sized quotas in different areas. I was just suggesting that that would be the logic of following devolution to the letter, and to the max, in terms of representation at this place. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we have inconsistency in devolution in the UK. He should take it up, perhaps, with the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, or his successor. [Interruption.] I am not going to go there. The hon. Member for Glasgow East is naughty, Sir David, and knows he should not tempt me to go down that route.

There is another issue. Wales and Scotland in particular have different geography and different population levels from much of England, but not all of it. I am thinking of rural Wales and rural Northumbria, for example. Wales in particular is affected by geography—the sparsity of west Wales and areas such as Brecon and Radnor or Montgomeryshire, the geographic barriers represented by the Welsh valleys, the beautiful area of Snowdonia, where, again, I spent much of my childhood, coming over the border. There is also Ynys Môn. The Committee decided this morning that it should be protected, and I supported that and we have been calling for it for a long time. However, that has a knock-on effect for other constituencies, which must themselves deal with issues other than population, such as sparsity and geography, which need to be taken into account. Because the Committee has decided on a tight 5% tolerance, it is even harder to take into account those areas, and the issues are amplified because Wales is losing so many constituencies. The problems mount one on the other. Every decision that the Committee makes puts further strain on the Welsh area in particular and therefore on the integrity of the constituencies and their viability—and therefore on the Union, because of the way they are represented here.

The hon. Member for Ceredigion spoke this morning about a constituency measuring 97 miles from one side to the other. Whoever the Member for that constituency would be—I think that it would have happened under the 600 boundaries; if 50 constituencies were lost with a tight tolerance there might have to be a 97-mile constituency —they could not possibly do justice to such a huge expanse. It would not be fair to them or their constituents. We want equalisation as much as possible and we have had an argument today about constituents being properly served by having the same number of constituents, voters, electors or—the Minister was right—people living in the constituency. Similarly, they will also not be properly served if their Member of Parliament has to cover a constituency that is hundreds of miles wide.

It is the same for Scotland. I remind the Committee that it was previously proposed, as I believe I mentioned on Second Reading, that there should be a constituency that, if it were superimposed on England with one end at the Palace of Westminster, would have its top end at Nottingham. It would be impossible to serve that constituency or to give its residents any kind of service.

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)]

On the point about the proposed constituency I referred to, over lunchtime I looked to see how it would fare under the new proposed quotas and the 5%. Taking the quota as around 72% we would save about 2 miles.

[Christian Matheson]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman—or in a sense I am not, because I should have liked an answer that put my mind at rest, which his did not. It shows the severity of the problems.

I shall deal with the new clause and then the amendment to it, which is a bit of a cheeky one, if the hon. Member for Ceredigion does not mind my saying so. The new clause tries to seek a balance between the point that the hon. Member for Ceredigion made about equalising constituencies, but at the same time not making the three other nations, other than England, take all of the hit, which in turn will damage the standing of this Parliament and the integrity of the Union. It will also recognise the unique geographical circumstances that Scotland and Wales have in terms of sparsity and geography, and will therefore support whoever is elected in these new constituencies to be able to do a decent job, and will support the residents to be properly represented. A constituency that is hundreds of miles wide is just as bad as a constituency with 100,000 residents. There has to be a balance. I suspect we will not be able to support the amendment tabled by the hon. Members for Glasgow East and for Ceredigion, which seeks to maintain the status quo.

We recognise that we cannot justify maintaining the status quo and therefore upsetting the apple cart of getting that equalisation of seats, but there has to be a balance somewhere to defend the Union, to make viable constituencies, and to be fair to the people who live in those extremely large constituencies. We have achieved that by meeting midway between the current situation and the situation that would happen with the Bill unamended.

[Ben Lake]

I thank the hon. Member for City of Chester for such a thought-provoking speech. I have thoroughly enjoyed our debate and I am perfectly willing to accept the charge of being a constitutional geek. We have debated a range of issues that really get to the heart of democracy and the questions of representation and what that entails. What the hon. Gentleman touched upon just now is something that we have not had an opportunity to discuss too much in Committee: the different challenges that an urban Member of Parliament might face compared with a Member of Parliament in a more rural constituency. I do not downplay the challenges of either; I simply say that there are different considerations and challenges. Although we might not be able to address some of those challenges in this Bill, I am sure the House authorities will have to do so in future. In the same way that it is unfair for a Member to try to represent a constituency of 100,000 electors, it is quite a behemoth task for a Member to do justice to a constituency that is more than 90 miles wide with a continuous population throughout it.

My point in relation to amendment (a) to new clause 3 —I am also willing to admit the charge of being a cheeky chappie in proposing the amendment—is purely to spark a bit of a debate around how we go about allocating seats between the four nations of the United Kingdom, and more specifically the appropriateness or otherwise of a single UK-wide electoral quota. I am here for the debate. I have my own set of views, which Members have probably already guessed, but the amendment is worth probing and it is worth having a discussion about some of the reasoning behind the single UK quota and, as my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester also illustrated in some detail, the possible unintended consequences.

There has been a common theme in not only the evidence sessions but in Committee discussions about the question of Wales: the elephant in the room. We cannot deny the fact that Wales, in terms of registered electors, is over-represented in this place. If we take a single UK-wide electoral quota, there is no argument. What I am trying to probe is whether we should apply a single UK electoral quota across the four nations. Points have already been made about the differential nature of devolution across the UK. The hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton correctly pointed out the fact that it has been piecemeal. To quote a famous Labour colleague in Wales, devolution has very much been,

“a process, not an event”.

I am glad to get that on the record.

Something that was raised in the first evidence session stuck with me; it was presented by the representative of the Liberal Democrats. He used the line of “no reduction, no further devolution.” It made me think about the rationale behind approaching a single UK electoral quota. If I were a Unionist, I would be quite concerned and would stay up at night worrying about the potential consequences of the provisions in the Bill for future boundary reviews, given that they are based on registered electors, when demographics and population change.

The differences in population between England and Wales are illustrative of how things might transpire or are likely to transpire. Between 2001—not quite the precise time of the last register—and the mid-year estimate of 2018, the population of Wales grew by 200,000. That is not a great deal in the broader scheme of things, but it is still an increase in the electorate. I know the point is that population growth in Wales is slower than in other parts of the UK, and it is likely to remain the case that Wales will not grow as quickly as other areas. The consequence of that, should the measures in the Bill be implemented, is that we will be talking about yet a further reduction in the number of Welsh seats at the next boundary review. That is based on the projections provided by the Office for National Statistics—it is a very real likelihood. I hope things will change, but unless we see some drastic changes in demographic trends and migration within the UK, Wales is unlikely to catch up with the pace of population growth.

What does that leave us with? It leaves us with a situation in which the number of representatives who are sent from Wales to this place will initially reduce by about eight—that is the figure that is commonly agreed on for this review. A further one or two seats will then be lost at each subsequent review every eight years or so, such is the disparity in the population growth figures. I am suggesting that, in maintaining 40 Members of Parliament, we focus on what we do about the nations. How do we tackle this constitutional problem? We are a Union of four nations. Although I completely empathise with and understand the arguments made for maintaining electoral quality as far as possible, I am very conscious of the fact that, to all intents and purposes, we have a unicameral system of elected representation. Yes, the House of Lords could be a vehicle to try to top up the territorial representation side of things, but that is not an issue that is being discussed at the moment in any great detail.

--- Later in debate ---

Finally, there has been a common theme in the Committee, which we ought to return to. It is not for us to make this kind of statement. If we believe in the independence of the boundary commissions and that they ought to be led where the evidence takes them—we expect that of them, as they are judge-led, independent and have population data—we should not seek to prejudge that decision in the Committee. That is the wrong thing to do. For that reason, I argue against this new clause. It is the wrong approach. It seeks, however, to address a topic, which is so important that it is bigger than the Bill before us. For those reasons I urge both sets of proposers to withdraw the new clause and the amendment.

[Christian Matheson]

I am grateful to the Minister and all hon. Members for taking part in an illuminating and positive debate. I was particularly taken by the intervention the hon. Member for Glasgow East made on the hon. Member for West Bromwich West, whose response was honest and positive. I welcome that. The idea of the legislative load being passed back from the European Union yet not having the legislative representation to manage that was a serious and salient point. I hoped the hon. Member for Glasgow East might have made a contribution to further develop that point, but he chose not to.

[Chloe Smith]

To make a brief correction, which should not detain us further, that is untrue. Those powers are returning to Stormont, Holyrood and Cardiff Bay—quite rightly. If we are referring to common frameworks, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Glasgow East will be intimately familiar with the detail. That is an incorrect representation.

[Christian Matheson]

I am intimately aware of that. I will take the Minister’s advice, because I do not think all of the responsibilities are coming back. Some will go back to the various different Parliaments; others will stay here in Westminster.

[Ben Lake]

One example would be agricultural policy. While the responsibility for domestic policy will reside in Cardiff, debates about funding—let us be honest, that is an important debate—will be held here.

[Christian Matheson]

I do not want to take too long, but both interventions were correct. The point is that some powers will go straight to the devolved Assemblies and Parliaments, but others will remain here. We are where we are.

Let me deal with the Unionist point of view first. When England play football, rugby or cricket, I support England, but I am also British and I am proud to be so. I have a sense of identity that tells me I am British. I do worry that the Union will be weakened under the Bill, because people will feel, in the nations other than England, that their voices are being diminished. That bothers me.

The Minister is right: there is a broader constitutional issue here. We are not trying to fix the constitutional issue, but we are trying not to damage it further. I do not want this to become an English Parliament. The hon. Member for Glasgow East talks about English votes for English laws, which, let’s face it, is a hotch-potch even now. There is a danger that this becomes an English Parliament and is seen as an English Parliament in the nations that are not England. That is my concern.

[David Linden]

I am immensely grateful to the hon. Member for City of Chester for giving way. It is just interesting to note that the issue of English votes for English laws might have passed hon. Members by. That particular Standing Order has been suspended during the proceedings of the virtual Parliament. I will leave it to the Committee to ponder whether it might be a good idea to bring that back when virtual proceedings end. A lot of people, regardless of whether they are Unionists or nationalists, would think that English votes for English laws is a pretty silly policy in this place.

[Christian Matheson]

I had not noticed that. You learn something new every day in this Committee. I think the Minister was unfair to characterise this idea as we think we know better. It is not that; it is simply that we are proposing to do the process differently to bring in balance. That is something that I have talked about on this clause and other clauses, and that my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood has talked about. We are trying to find a balance between community and numbers and geography and numbers. It is difficult and we have different opinions on it, but it is a genuine attempt to create a balance between the different areas.

It is right that this House and Parliament give instructions to the boundary commissions to go away and do their jobs, and the new clause is about trying to make sure that those instructions are balanced. It was a helpful debate with positive contributions, for which I am grateful. In the light of that, it is not my intention or that of my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood to press the new clause to a vote, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 4

Definition of “electorate”

‘(1) The 1986 Act is amended as follows.

(2) In rule 9(2) of Schedule 2 to the 1986 Act, omit the words from “the version that is required” to the end and insert “the electoral register as on the date of the last General Election before the review date.”’—(Cat Smith.)

For the purposes of future reviews, this new clause would define the electorate as being those on the electoral register at the last General Election prior to the review.

Brought up, and read the First time.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill (Seventh sitting)

Christian Matheson Excerpts

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

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Paisley. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ceredigion on having tabled this probing amendment, because our whole debate about clause 6 has emphasised the point about local ties and local communities. We must use this Committee to emphasise to the boundary commissions that although we do not necessarily need to legislate—the hon. Member for Ceredigion presented this amendment as a probing amendment, to spark that debate—we are discussing a very important section of this Bill, as I said last week, and it is incumbent on the boundary commissions to take notice of what has been said.

Rule 5 in the 1986 Act is exceptionally important. One can only draw on one’s local experience, so I come back to Leeds, because that is my area; it is where I live in Yorkshire, but there is a world of difference between inner Leeds and outer Leeds. The communities are very different. I have made reference to the long-serving previous Member for Leeds East, George Mudie, who was horrified at the thought of such different communities coming into an area that he had represented for so long. I hope that when the boundary commissions do the reviews, they take real notice of the debates about clause 6. Intelligent and sensible points have been made by Committee members on both sides of the Committee during this debate, which should act as the key guidance. Rather than us putting things on the face of the Bill, the commissions should consider the over-driving will and well-thought-out arguments in all the areas we have debated.

Again, I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on having tabled a thought-provoking and important probing amendment to this Bill, because it is important that we probe all of its aspects. Everything that has been said during this debate—even on the comical side, such as the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood, on the other side of the Pennines, and I joshing last week about the wars of the roses—shows the importance of local identities and how they are put together. That is a very important aspect, and I hope the boundary commissions will take notice of it when they are drawing up their first draft.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

rose—

[Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Christian Matheson]

It is a great pleasure to see you in the chair again, Mr Paisley. I will speak very briefly, reflecting on the contributions made by right hon. and hon. Members.

I agree with the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell: this is a thoughtful and thought-provoking amendment. Somebody with my own experience would not necessarily have thought of it, but I am now giving it great consideration. However, having listened to hon. Members from both sides of the Committee, my concern is that although we can discuss what is important and what we want the boundary commissions to regard as important factors when deciding boundaries, none of them is relevant as long as we have such a tight variance—5%—around the quota that trumps everything else. The Committee has already considered this. Something as important as language and identity, which the hon. Member for Ceredigion has spoken about, simply will not get a look in because nothing else matters. I ask the Committee to bear that in mind.

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman intends to press his amendment to a vote—we will wait and see what his decision is on that—but I ask hon. Members to think about that as we progress through consideration both of the amendment and of the rest of the Bill. Members on both sides of the Committee talk about the importance of community, of identity and of keeping together communities that share common interests, but unfortunately none of that will make a difference when the commissioners come to do their work, because of the very tight variance that we are asking them to use, which is the only consideration in the Bill.

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[Mrs Miller]

There is an old adage in the business world about doing the right thing right. Yes, the commission should do the right thing right first time, and not create re-work. I note from the letter that the Boundary Commission for England wrote to the Committee that it recommends that it should give priority to mapping metropolitan areas, given the late stage we are at, and the concerns it might have about being able to map the whole country at this stage. I think that that is part of the answer, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton said, there is also room for it to look at other datasets, so that it will not be quite so focused on just one solution. I note from the submission that one member of staff was given the matter as a project. Perhaps if a little more resource was put into it, it could be turned around a little more quickly.

I am not quite sure how the Committee can put further pressure on to the boundary commission, but my ask to it would be why it is not looking at other datasets and why it cannot resource the matter more. Surely the Government, for whom the project is important, would want to look at any suggestion of additional resources that are needed to complete the work in a reasonable timeframe so that such data could be available, whether that is only for metropolitan areas or for a broader cross-section of the country.

The second issue that I wanted to turn to, briefly, is protected constituencies. Clause 6 touches on the rules in schedule 2 and I think we can be more ambitious for the Bill, in relation to using the concept of protected constituencies not just in England and Scotland but Wales. We will discuss two amendments on that later in our proceedings, when we can pick up on some of the issues raised by the hon. Member for Ceredigion and show our understanding of the importance of community. As a kingdom of islands, sometimes we need rules in place to respect that unique nature of the United Kingdom. We will come on to that shortly.

My final point is on taking into account future growth, which I raised with a couple of our evidence givers. I suppose I am thinking about constituencies like my own, Basingstoke, which has grown significantly in the past three decades, from being a sleepy market town predominantly surrounded by the most amazing and beautiful Hampshire countryside, when it was the constituency of David Mitchell, the father of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), to what it is today, which is one of the top 10 centres of employment in the south-east—still surrounded by the most amazing and beautiful Hampshire countryside.

To the west of the town is a major development area by the name of Manydown, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse). No houses have yet been built, but they will be, and to stop unnecessary change in the future it will be important for that in some way to be taken into account geographically in the setting of the boundaries.

Please do not get me wrong: I am not asking for that to be taken into account in the quotas, but surely with such major areas, which have already had many hundreds of thousands if not millions of pounds-worth of development put into planning for the future, it would be an unnecessary change pending in the future for it not to be taken into account. I am sure every single Committee member can think of somewhere in or near their own constituency where that would be the case.

Given that one of the factors in the rules—I think I have this right—is that we can look at such things for the future, I hope that the boundary commissions will be able to think about the geographical nature of what they do, not just the numerical population-based nature of it. However, I did not get a sense from their response, or from others, that that was something they were focused on yet. I hope that we can register that with them at this early stage, to stop what my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell said in his intervention on planning for the future and instead to get things right first time.

[Christian Matheson]

I find the right hon. Lady’s contributions thought-provoking and very helpful. Mr Speaker—

[The Chair]

Thank you!

[Christian Matheson]

Mr Paisley! Not yet—maybe next year.

May I express a sense of frustration at what I am hearing in Committee, including from the right hon. Member for Basingstoke, who has just spoken? She was absolutely right to talk about the importance of geographical nature as a consideration for the commissions, not just numerical nature.

As with the previous section of the debate, however, I worry that we are making heavy weather of the whole process. We have been talking about splitting wards and how the Boundary Commission for England—in particular, with Mr Bellringer’s note to us from last night about splitting wards—might somehow obtain data to help it split wards more accurately, or split streets, and perhaps we can even use postcode data. The hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton talked about using postal districts—I think I am roughly quoting him correctly.



We are making extremely heavy weather of something that we need not make heavy weather of, because the answers are already there. The only reason we have these difficulties, these problems and this debate is that the one consideration that the Bill gives to the boundary commissions is the tight 5% tolerance. Everything else flows from that. The right hon. Member for Basingstoke rightly talked about the importance of geography, not just numbers. Unfortunately, everything else that the Bill does denies that hope. We cannot have it both ways. We are making it difficult for ourselves, and for the boundary commission, by making everything else subservient to that one numerical fact.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alec Shelbrooke]

We are almost straying into new clause 2, which I think we will debate this afternoon. The hon. Gentleman is talking about how much easier it is with the 7.5%, and I hope that we can explore that further. In Leeds and in Kirklees, two West Yorkshire constituencies, 7.5% does not do it; we still have to split wards. Perhaps he can challenge my argument this afternoon.

[Christian Matheson]

I would not challenge the right hon. Gentleman. I take the advice that his local knowledge makes him an expert to give. We listen to each other and say, “Actually, in those circumstances it wouldn’t work.” However, the number of areas where we would not need to do that would be far fewer. I think that the Leeds issue, with wards of 17,000, is quite an extreme one. I suspect that some of those will have to be split anyway, but we make heavy weather by making the number of those instances, and their frequency, much greater as a result.

[Mrs Miller]

I am intervening only because the hon. Member referred to what I said. To be clear, what I am calling for is more rigour in the process. I do not hold with his assertion that by giving people more leeway we will get a better answer. We need more rigour in what is being done, and more detail from the boundary commission, to ensure that the commission comes up with the right answer and we get equal constituency sizes. There will always be special cases—that was the point that I was making—and they have to be recognised, but I was not calling for a more lackadaisical approach; I was calling for more rigour and detail in the system.

[Christian Matheson]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for that clarification. The point that I was making in response to her speech and other contributions was that as long as we insist on 5%, none of the other considerations that hon. Members across the Committee are calling for will be possible or indeed relevant. I believe that it is important, for example, to have community ties. Language ties had not occurred to me until they were raised by the hon. Member for Ceredigion in relation to the previous clause. I found that very thought provoking, but there has to be a balance between the aim of achieving equal-sized constituencies and achieving the community ties for which hon. Members are calling. Unfortunately, at the moment we are not hitting that balance.

[Chloe Smith]

I will keep this fairly brief, but I wish to take a moment to acknowledge the arguments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke and other members of the Committee regarding the evidence that the Boundary Commission for England has now provided to us. I confirm that I will look at this matter in the Department to see whether there are any ways that the non-legislative side of it could be taken forward. I am not in a position to say anything more about that at this point, but I wanted to acknowledge it now as part of the stand part debate on clause 6.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 6 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 7

Alteration of the “review date” in relation to the 2023 reports

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chloe Smith]

Exactly; the audience awaits—or, as my three-year-old managed to learn to say the other day, “And the crowd goes wild!”. That surprised me coming out of the mouth of a three-year-old, but perhaps the same will be true of the Parliamentary Constituencies Bill Committee.

[Christian Matheson]

Just wait and see.

[Chloe Smith]

What does clause 8 do? It removes the legal obligation to implement the 2018 boundary review. As hon. Members will recall from when we discussed clause 5, the Bill will amend the existing legislation to ensure that we continue to have 650 parliamentary constituencies, as we do now. In order to achieve that, clause 5 set the number of constituencies at 650 for future reviews. That in itself does not resolve the current legal obligation on the Government to implement the 2018 boundary review, which was based on 600.

The boundary commissions have submitted their final reports for that review, but the recommendations have yet to be brought into legal effect. Clause 8 therefore brings the 2018 boundary review to a close without implementation. It removes the Government’s obligation to bring the recommendations of the 2018 review into effect, because those proposals would take us down to 600 constituencies at the next election, which this Committee has already agreed is undesirable.

Under this clause, that obligation would be removed retrospectively, with effect from 24 March of this year. I can explain that specific date to the Committee: it is the date on which the Government announced their intention to retain 650 constituencies in the written ministerial statement that I laid before the House. Without this clause, there would be a very irregular situation. We would be legally required to implement the 2018 review and implement the reduction to 600 constituencies at the next general election. I think that this Committee would agree, having already taken the decision to move from 600 back to 650, that that situation would be confusing and undesirable. Therefore this clause, although technical, is important and I urge that it stand part of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ben Lake]

I referred to the hon. Member for Ynys Môn earlier on, and I am confident that she would agree with us if she were able to contribute. Ynys Môn has had continuous representation in this place, apart from the notable exception of the Barebones Parliament. Further to the points that have been made, if one needs to think about how Ynys Môn is considered within Wales, Môn man Cymru is probably the best way of putting it, as the right hon. Member for Basingstoke said. In her remarks on an earlier amendment, the Minister mentioned that the Boundary Commission for Wales agreed to the Welsh language convention of place names that run north to south and west to east. If that logic is applied, Wales starts in the north-west. What is the north-west? It is Ynys Môn. I do not have anything further to add. If the hon. Lady wishes to push the amendment to a vote I will support her.

[Christian Matheson]

It is a pleasure to take part in the debate. I think an amendment that I have tabled is similar in effect to those tabled by Conservative Members. Anglesey, which I knew as a child, is a great place. I remember we used to go there on holiday every year, staying at Red Wharf Bay at Benllech and visiting Llangefni market and Llanfair PG. I will not go any further than that. We still go there, and not so long ago I visited Newborough Warren. It is a wonderful place, and is a fantastic place to visit. The hon. Member for Ceredigion talked about the history of the Romans and the druids, and I was aware of that. He might want to correct me, but I think I am right that eventually the Romans got round their problem by fording the Menai strait at low spring tide, resolving their difficulties with the druids in, unfortunately, the fashion in which Romans resolved such problems.

[Chloe Smith]

Will the hon. Gentleman explain what the Romans ever did for the druids?

[Christian Matheson]

I am looking at the clock.

[The Chair]

I will assist by saying: will you please move on?

[Christian Matheson]

I am sure, Mr Paisley, that you would not want me to start listing aqueducts, currency, safety in the streets, law and order and so on. The Opposition have tabled a similar amendment—I am not sure of the procedural mechanism for resolving the fact that there is more than one amendment on the same issue. I will take guidance from you on that, Mr Paisley.

I make two points in relation to the debate. First, I ask Committee members to bear in mind the knock-on effect on the rest of the Wales, if and when they agree the amendment. We will be discussing that matter later. Right hon. Members have made good, sound arguments as to why we should accept the amendment. However, that has an effect on the rest of Wales, and I ask hon. Members to park that.

Secondly—I have to make this point, unfortunately, from a political point of view—never since St Paul took a trip to Damascus has such a great conversion been seen as that of Conservative Members deciding that perhaps Ynys Môn does need to be a protected constituency. Other parties, our own included, have called for that change in several reviews. Something has obviously changed, if Conservatives are all of a sudden in favour of the proposal. I invite members of the Committee to decide, in their own time, what circumstances have changed such that the Conservatives are, all of a sudden, in favour of it. Let us be clear: we have called for it in several reviews. We are, therefore, pleased that Government Members have seen the light, whatever the motivation that drove them to that point.

May I be indulged briefly, Mr Paisley, to pay tribute to the former Member for Ynys Môn, my good friend Albert Owen, who like you was a member of the Panel of Chairs? I miss him greatly as a person and as a mentor and adviser, but I know he still maintains a full role.

[Chris Clarkson]

As a Romanophile, I thank the hon. Member for Deva Victrix. I very much enjoyed the talk of Rome. On the political considerations, Ynys Môn is one of only two constituencies in the United Kingdom to have been represented by all three major parties and the local nationalist party, so the hon. Gentleman’s argument does not stand. Talking about north Wales, possibly combining Ynys Môn with Bangor would be particularly unfair to some mainland parts of Wales, which have distinct identities. I support the amendment: Ynys Môn is a distinct part of Wales, with a unique culture and identity, and has a perfect case to be a protected constituency.

[Christian Matheson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. In fact, my argument stands because only now has the Conservative party changed its opinion—again, I leave him to come up with the reason why.

[Ben Lake]

I echo the hon. Gentleman’s sentiments and words about the former Member for Ynys Môn, Albert Owen. I do not think we could find a more doughty champion for the island than Mr Owen.

[Christian Matheson]

I am most grateful. I am sure that Albert will be following this debate and will be most grateful as well.

We support the amendment and welcome the conversion of Government Members. We will work with them to see this through. We await the Minister’s response.

[The Chair]

For clarity, this debate is about amendment 14, in the name of Maria Miller. I said at the commencement that it would also be convenient to consider amendment 11, new clause 6 and new clause 10. If amendment 14 is agreed to, the subsequent one, namely amendment 11, will not be called.