Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Clive Efford Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bowie]

I will not because of the time.

I am fully aware that SNP Members do not view us as one nation, but we Conservative Members most certainly do. We believe that there should be equal representation for every seat in the United Kingdom. I shall not detain the House any longer. This is a good Bill and it should have our full-throated support this evening.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Everyone on the Opposition Benches accepts that this parliamentary boundary review is overdue. I think we all also accept that what we want to achieve is equality in the weight of each individual elector’s vote. However, we found from the evidence that we took and our deliberation in Committee that that is not possible.

There are local circumstances that require flexibility in how we construct our parliamentary constituencies, and I very much favour flexibility for the Boundary Commission to be able to get on with its job. We heard from Mr Bellringer from the Boundary Commission, who said that greater flexibility allowed the commission the opportunity to facilitate local concerns and make the best of representations from local communities, and it allowed him to do his job more efficiently. We do not represent individuals alone. We represent communities. I firmly believe that if we create flexibility, we can protect the communities that the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson) referred to earlier. That is why the 5% rigid limitation that the Government want to impose is wrong.

The Boundary Commission wrote to the Committee with some additional evidence, in which it said that

“a ward is a unit of electoral administration”.

Breaking up wards therefore needs to be avoided because it creates difficulty in administering elections. But if that is true, it must also be true that to go across a local government boundary is even more disruptive. What we have to create for the Boundary Commission is the flexibility to avoid circumstances that force it to decide that a parliamentary constituency must take orphan wards from a neighbouring local authority area or bits of communities from a neighbouring area that do not really match up to the communities in the main body of the constituency. We must accept the need to minimise disruption of that kind, so we need to ensure that the people making the recommendations on parliamentary boundaries have the maximum flexibility to do their job.

[Andrew Rosindell]

I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but does he agree that sometimes a ward is completely artificial, so to break up a ward can actually unite a community, rather than divide it? Therefore, the Boundary Commission should be more flexible about using smaller building blocks, such as polling districts, or even an individual road that it makes sense to transfer into a constituency?

[Clive Efford]

I agree, provided it is within a recognisable local government area and a recognisable community, and there is support from the local community. In additional evidence the Boundary Commission sent, it talked about the administrative problems of going down to polling district level. The commission referred to getting Ordnance Survey to map all the polling districts in the whole country, but it seems to me that all it has to do is ring up the electoral registration offices, which can tell it how many people live in every road in every polling district. Why go to a separate organisation to find out information that is already recorded on a given date when we start the parliamentary boundary review? If that is already recorded and kept, all the Boundary Commission has to do is refer to it; then, it could go down to sub-ward level where that makes sense locally. I think the commission is creating problems for itself.

Why 7.5%? We had evidence from Dr Rossiter, who has researched this issue. He explained that as we go up from 5% to 6 % to 7% to 8%, although each percentage point seems a small amount, it improves the quality of the outcome, and that there are benefits from moving from 5% to 6 % to 7% or 8% because it improves the decision-making process. He then said that, beyond 8%, that benefit diminishes. The amendment therefore proposes 7.5%, and the experts who gave evidence favour a figure close to 7.5%. I ask the Government to reconsider their position, as they no doubt will in the other place, to look at the evidence and to accept that 7.5% is a much more sensible figure than the rigid 5% which we know has created problems in the past.

[Alun Cairns]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Clive Efford]

No, because I heard Madam Deputy Speaker cough, which is telling me, “Efford, shut up.” I will conclude by making one point about parliamentary oversight.

If we had not had parliamentary oversight, we would now have 600 MPs, and I do not think anyone in this Chamber thinks we should have 600 MPs. Parliamentary oversight saved us from that gerrymander attempt, which I will not dwell on because I do not have time. It is Parliament that sets the rules, and in any process where someone sets the rules and sends someone else off to perform a function, at the end of it there must be oversight to ensure that the function was performed efficiently and according to the rules that were set out. That is what Parliament does. That is Parliament’s role in this area. Why do we not trust ourselves to perform the function that Parliament is put here to perform? If we set the Boundary Commission a task to perform, we should have oversight of the outcome. If we had not had oversight of the previous two reviews, we would have made the mistake of cutting our number to 600, with all the consequent chaos.

[Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

This Bill is all about creating fair and proper representation in this House for everyone in the United Kingdom. Although there are many local challenges, we should be proud that the Bill aims to achieve just that, and for that reason I very much welcome it.

The Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 put in place processes to reduce the number of MPs in this House from 650 to 600. In Cornwall, the number of MPs would have been reduced from six to five and a bit. Reducing the number of MPs in that way meant that it was highly unlikely that the boundary of Cornwall would be respected, but that a cross-border constituency formed of towns and parishes in both Devon and Cornwall could and would be created. When the Boundary Commission for England published its proposals for the new constituency boundaries, it produced a parliamentary seat that quickly acquired the nickname of “Devonwall”, which naturally caused considerable upset in Cornwall and a bit of damage to Cornish pride. I tried at the time to argue that it was the start of a takeover, but the commission was not buying it.

Cornwall is a historic nation with its own traditions, its own heritage and its own language, and in 2014 the Cornish people became protected through the Council of Europe’s framework convention for the protection of national minorities. I am happy to say that because of this Bill, the cross-border issue appears to have been rectified for now, and I am grateful to the Bill Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Clive Efford]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Cherilyn Mackrory]

I will press on, because we need to get other hon. Members this afternoon.

Constituency boundaries should coincide, where possible, with local administrative boundaries, which should help my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie). I am pleased that the Bill, by reviewing the number of MPs needed for fair and effective representation, ensures that the United Kingdom will continue to have 650 Members to serve in this House and six whole, passionate, hard-working Cornish MPs.

It is worth remembering that, as well as protecting the culture and identity of national minorities, the framework convention seeks to protect the political integrity of territories. I am of the opinion that the Bill will help to protect the Cornish people as a national minority by affording us fair representation for effective government, and our boundaries will stay intact. Once the Bill has passed, it will be for the Cornish MPs, the local authority in Cornwall and local residents to work with the Boundary Commission to ensure that the identity of Cornwall is protected, with its six constituencies within its boundaries, to offer the equal and fair representation that the people deserve.

There is an appetite in Cornwall to look further at greater autonomy, and I am sure that the Government will be more than happy to work with Cornwall towards that goal. It is through that mechanism that I call for more permanent protection of Cornwall’s historic boundary, and I look forward to future conversations with Ministers to that end. If the local authority in Cornwall is serious about greater autonomy, I invite it to be part of those conversations with the Government at that time to achieve that. However, for now, I will continue to do what I can to ensure that my constituents in Truro and Falmouth get the fair representation that they deserve, as well as continued support through the current crisis and beyond, and I thank the Government for their part in that.

To that end, I support the Bill, and I support the Government’s attempts to safeguard and encourage democracy throughout the whole country.