Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill

Christopher Chope Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 18th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Pat Glass]

I looked at those figures last night. Effectively, the proposals will reduce this place not by 50, but by 75 MPs.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I am a lot more sympathetic than some of my colleagues to the hon. Lady’s Bill. How can she guarantee that the Boundary Commission will be able to implement its changes by October 2018, in time for the next general election? Is that practical?

[Pat Glass]

Politics is the art of the possible, is it not? If the Government want this to happen, it will happen. It is important that the Bill is in place by 2018, in time for the 2020 general election.

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[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

It is a great honour and a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn); I spent 13 years living in his constituency trying to get rid of him with absolutely no success whatsoever. While we hardly agree on anything, he is undoubtedly a leading parliamentarian, and I am pleased, in the best possible sense, that he is now back on the Back Benches and not constrained by being on the Labour Front Bench.

I congratulate the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) on choosing this most important subject to be debated on one of the 13 private Member’s Bill days we have in this House, and congratulate all the Members who have made the effort to attend today. I hope that we will get a Division on this Bill and the House will decide one way or the other.

I also congratulate the hon. Lady on the tone in which she introduced the Bill. I thought it was the right tone. There are party political issues, as the hon. Member for Newport West said, and I will touch on them, but the hon. Lady got to the heart of the matter: this is about Parliament and scrutiny. I did spend a brief moment in her constituency during the EU referendum campaign, and it was a really pleasant constituency. I met people from many different parties, and it is a great shame from her constituency point of view that she has decided not to stand again.

I am also following another parliamentarian of great skill, my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who I thought when he first came to this House was definitely destined to become a great parliamentarian, which he is. He has, unfortunately, been contaminated by becoming a Government Minister, but now he is back, although he has not quite lost that contamination. In a couple of years, he will be back supporting Parliament and not worrying about the Executive.

I thought I would look back to how this all started. This was part of a backroom deal done when the coalition came to power. The Liberal Democrats wanted a vote on changing the parliamentary system, and the Conservative party wanted to equalise the seats, not because it really believed that was fair—although it is fair and the right thing to do—but because it was thought it would give the Conservatives more seats. That is the truth of the matter. To put the other side of the coin, I should say that there are many sitting on the Opposition Benches who are interested in this for reasons of self-interest, too. But I bet most of the Members in the House today are here for the fundamental issue of Parliament versus Government.

Sadly, I cannot see a single Liberal Democrat in the House today, including the former Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg), who—I am sorry to have to correct my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean—was the Minister who introduced the Second Reading of the Bill that started all this. I thought it would be interesting to see how the hon. Member for North West Durham voted on Second Reading of that Bill, which took place on 6 September 2010. She voted against the proposals. I then thought I would check who else voted against the proposals. There was the then Member for Northampton South and my hon. Friends the Members for Stone (Sir William Cash), for Christchurch (Mr Chope), for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) and for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner). So the Division was not entirely along party lines. There were people who were prepared to vote against, including, to their great credit, many from the Democratic Unionist party.

This issue goes back, therefore, to something the hon. Member for Newport West touched upon: the balance between the Executive and Parliament. Since what we might loosely call the expenses scandal, Parliament has been getting more powers back. We have had a Speaker who has put Parliament first and championed it, we have had Select Committees, and we have had other movements in that direction, including the establishment of the Backbench Business Committee. All the moves have been to take power away from the Executive and give it to Parliament. This move, however, completely reverses that trend.

I am all in favour of broadly equal-sized seats. That is fair, within a threshold, and I would be happy for the Committee scrutinising this Bill to look at that issue. The hon. Member for Newport West made the point that there were exceptions for certain geographical areas. The previous proposals referred to the Isle of Wight and to what I call the Western Isles, which had two constituencies. I think that that makes sense, and we should consider whether that could be expanded for certain constituencies—but I want to get back to the Executive.

The Electoral Reform Society has said that if there were a general election under the proposed new arrangements and the same proportion of MPs were to be elected as there are now, 43% of Conservative MPs would be on the payroll. That cannot possibly be right. We should not all be here to be in government. There are two equal roles for an MP, one of which is to scrutinise Bills that go through this House. Ever since the Blair years, the Bills that have come to this House have been programmed. Sometimes we do not even debate certain clauses of a Bill, and it is actually the other place that does the proper scrutiny. The elected Members here should have the time to carry out that scrutiny.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend has reminded us of that previous debate. Does he agree that one of the reasons that some of us could not support the Government on that occasion was that they would not answer the straight question as to whether there would be a pro rata reduction in the size of the Executive if there were a reduction in the number of MPs. The Government would not answer that, saying that it was premature to ask the question.

[Mr Bone]

I remember my hon. Friend making that point, with which I entirely agreed.

Things have got worse. We now have more Government Departments, and rightly so, given that we are coming out of the European Union, but I guess that we are also going to have 60% more laws to look at. The argument for reducing the number of MPs seems to be false, especially as we are getting rid of 70-odd MEPs. Also, the Government cannot possibly claim that they are doing this on the basis of cost. We have only to look at how much more money is being spent on Spads. Even during the Blair years it was only a few million, but it is something like £9 million now.

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[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. friend is absolutely right about that and he brings me to my next point.

Let us consider the example of London, a global city with a growing population that is expected to rise by more than 1.5 million in the next decade. Strangely, the same city is expected to lose a dozen MPs from its contingent of 73 if the current proposals go through unchecked. As my hon. Friend has said, to compound that, research from the House of Commons shows that over the six-month period from December 2015 to June 2016 the London electorate grew by 6%. That did not occur in isolation; during the same period, the south-west saw a rise of 4.7%, Yorkshire and the Humber’s rise was 4.2%, Wales’s rise was 4.1% and the increase in the west midlands was 3.2%. Those citizens are eager to play their part in the process, but for this purpose they are citizens whose voice no longer counts.

As we have heard, many of the proposed constituencies make very little geographical sense, homogenising vast swathes of rural Britain and tearing up historic counties. For example, dramatically cutting the number of Welsh MPs will do little to address the democratic deficit felt by some within rural Wales. Any constitutional changes, including in the very make-up of the constituencies we stand here to represent, should be done fairly, and everyone’s voice should be heard.

The truth about the plan to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600 is that no real reason has been given for it. As my hon. Friend said, when the original Bill was being discussed, no Minister could give a real reason for picking the 600 figure. New boundaries, a smaller House of Commons and the shift to individual electoral registration all tilt the electoral battlefield further not just towards the Conservative party, but towards the Executive. There are no plans to cut the size of the ministerial payroll, and having fewer MPs to hold Ministers to account is not good for democracy. It cannot be democratic, fair or even competent to advance this review at the same time as we are stuffing the other place with unelected and often unprepared peers. Put all this together and we face a boundary review being conducted on the basis of a completely lopsided electoral register. If we proceed as planned, we will see a huge transfer of parliamentary representation from areas that are growing to areas that have not seen the same growth.

The Opposition are confident that this Bill will significantly improve the process of drawing up new parliamentary seats on a fair and equal basis. We believe that 650 is the right number of MPs to hold the Government to account. We give our full support to this Bill in the hope that the Government pause—

[Mr Chope]

rose—

[Andrew Gwynne]

I am coming to the end of my speech. We give our full support in the hope that the Government pause, look again and proceed with changes that are agreed consensually with Members in all parts of this House and with all nations of the UK.

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[Sir Oliver Letwin]

My right hon. Friend is clearly right about that. It is a matter of fact, not of opinion. There would be less approximation to an equal distribution of population per seat and of registered voters per seat if we do not proceed with the current proposals than if we do. The Bill would therefore diminish the chances of there being an election based on roughly equivalent numbers of electors in each seat.

[Mr Chope]

On the question of whether the Bill is implementable in the timescale set out by its proponents, does my right hon. Friend recall that the Boundary Commission gave evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the previous Parliament to the effect that it would not be possible to make the changes unless the commission started, as it did this time, in February 2016? That was the latest point at which it could start if it was to produce changes in time for October 2018.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Yes, my hon. Friend is right. That is the evidence that the Boundary Commission gave, but I was always, as I know he was when he was a Minister, suspicious of claims by agencies of the state that things could not be done on certain timescales, so I went to the trouble for some while to interrogate that set of propositions and to look specifically at all the things that could be done to diminish the elapsed time by doing things in parallel rather than in series, by constricting various forms of consultation, and by accelerating the responses to the consultations. I am satisfied that the Boundary Commission genuinely in this case could do not this with any semblance of propriety. It is not a matter of being able to overcome those problems by giving it more money or more resources. It simply could not do the job. I think the spokesman for the Opposition is perfectly aware of these facts and that it is his intention to ensure that we do not proceed with equalisation.

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[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be able to make a small contribution to this debate.

In the last Parliament, I was a member of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. As the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) said, the Committee produced a report towards the end of the Parliament drawing attention to many of the issues reflected in the Bill before us today. Unfortunately, one aspect of the recommendations has not been incorporated: that a Bill or any proposals to this effect should be brought forward at the beginning of this Parliament because it is going to take time to implement them if they are to be brought into effect by the time of the next general election in 2020. The Bill of the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) comes, I fear, too late to enable those changes, many of which I support, to be implemented in time.

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

Which is more important to the hon. Gentleman: a time limit that has been set for us, or the fact that 2 million people are missing off the register?

[Mr Chope]

The hon. Gentleman should address that question to his hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham, because her Bill proposes that all these proposals must be brought forward by the four boundary commissions before October 2018, which is a very tall order. We took evidence from the boundary commissions in our inquiry and it was clear they would not be able to make major changes in the light of changes to the terms of reference unless they had a sufficient lead-in period. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) made that point earlier, and it has not been contradicted. When he challenged the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman, saying, “You don’t really have it in your heart to ensure we get these changes through by the time of the next general election in 2020,” the Opposition spokesman did not seem to demur from that.

The most important thing is to establish equality of constituencies. In paragraph 31 of our report, the Committee said:

“We believe that, all other things being equal, constituency electorates should be broadly equal.”

What is the position at the moment? It was in the year 2000 that we had the basis for the current boundaries, and if this situation continues beyond 2020 we will still be using that basis. Office for National Statistics figures show that in 2010 only 254 out of 650 constituencies in the UK were within the 5% limit either side of the norm, and 187 were even outside the 10% parameters, which is what the hon. Lady proposes in her Bill. The evidence brought forward by the Boundary Commission for England is that in 2010 some 200 out of the 533 seats were within the 5% limit, but a large number were outside that. The latest figures, for 2013, are that 188 constituencies in England are more than 10% either side of the norm. That is thoroughly unreasonable and inequitable, and it needs to be rectified.

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

We can see this as a mathematical exercise, but the fact of the matter is that under the terms of this boundary review a line would be cut right through the heart of Port Talbot in the centre of my constituency, smashing communities apart that have existed for many years. What we need at this time is unified political representation for our communities. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that democracy is more important than mathematics? Do we really want to turn this place into an elective dictatorship?

[Mr Chope]

I am trying to address that point. If we are to have proper democracy rather than mathematics, we need a reasonable period within which the boundary commissions in Wales and England can look at the evidence and work out where it will be best for the boundaries to be situated. They could then consult and hold public inquiries on that basis. We have already heard, however, that if the Bill were to be put on to the statute book with a requirement for the new arrangements to be implemented no later than October 2018, it would not be possible for the boundary commissions—certainly those in England—to do the necessary spadework to ensure an equitable outcome, rather than one that would be subject to judicial review as a result of having been rushed and not taking into account the representations that had been made.

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. I want to get it clear in my mind what he is saying. Is he suggesting that we should equalise the seats and keep the same number of Members of Parliament, for reasons of democracy and scrutinising the Government, but that this cannot be achieved in the proposed timescale? Should we not simply allow the Bill to have its Second Reading and then amend it in Committee?

[Mr Chope]

I take my hon. Friend’s point. I am trying to plead with the hon. Member for North West Durham to come up with a proposal that would enable the boundary commissioners to come forward with their proposals before October 2018 and therefore enable her Bill to be implemented in time for the next general election. I am willing her to try to find a way of achieving that. From what we have heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset, however, that could be very difficult. Some rough and ready exercises might have to be carried out, possibly involving a reduction in the time for consultations. I challenge the hon. Lady to come forward with proposals that would enable someone looking at this Bill to decide that it was practical to require the boundary commissions to have their proposals in place by October 2018. I hope that she will be able to address that point when she responds to the debate. If she cannot do so today, and if the Bill gets its Second Reading, we will obviously be able to deal with this in Committee.

In its evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in September 2014, the Boundary Commission for England said that the approach that it had taken to the previous review had been well received, but that

“if the Commission is to continue that policy for the next Review, it does mean there is very little flexibility within the timetable outlined above.”

That timetable suggested that the commission was

“working towards a formal launch for that Review around the end of February 2016”,

and that it

“anticipates submitting its final report of the next Review in September 2018.”

The commission stated clearly that

“if changes are made to the governing legislation in the interim, that may have a consequential impact on the timetable for the next Review.”

I have not heard anything from the hon. Member for North West Durham about her conversations with the Boundary Commission on its evidence to the Committee, or about whether she thinks that that evidence could be modified in the light of the needs that she has expressed on behalf not only of Opposition Members but of many Conservative Members who have concerns about this.

It is of paramount importance that, by 2020, we have new boundaries that reflect more accurately the need for equality of electorates in each constituency. At the moment, the disparities are so great and are getting greater, so we cannot wait beyond 2020. If the hon. Lady is saying with the Bill, “I agree with that point, we must do something before 2020”, it is incumbent on her to explain—if not today, in Committee—how it can be achieved and how she has been able to work with the relevant boundary commissions to bring that about. It is only if she can demonstrate the practicality of the Bill that she will ultimately be able to get the House’s support. It is a paramount requirement that we equalise the constituencies before 2020.

I gave evidence earlier this week to the Boundary Commission inquiry into constituency changes in the south-west. I was surprised by how few people came along to give evidence. There were probably half a dozen people. It was a two-day hearing. I finished giving my evidence before lunch—my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms) gave evidence, too—and only one other person was due to give evidence between then and 8 o’clock in the evening. That was the first day of the inquiry; I do not know what happened on the second day.

There may well be means by which the prolonged procedure for examining these proposals can be foreshortened, but that is the kernel of the matter that the hon. Lady, in bringing forward this Bill, has to address if it is to progress and get on to the statute book.

This issue is very important. I am disappointed that the Government have not been prepared to say, “If we reduce the number of MPs to 600, we will have a pro rata reduction in the size of the Executive.” They could have done that. It would have been the right approach, but they have ducked it up to now. Perhaps the Minister will be able to assure us that there will indeed be that pro rata reduction. In a sense, that would mitigate some of the problems we have been discussing today.

I expect that the Bill will receive a Second Reading, because, unlike a lot of private Members’ legislation, it seems to have generated a lot of interest. It is great to see so many Members in the Chamber on a Friday. If the Bill does get a Second Reading, we need to look at its practicalities in Committee.