Parliamentary Constituencies bill (Second sitting)

David Linden Excerpts

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

[Cat Smith]

My final question. We have the representative of the Conservative and Unionist party before us, and you have acknowledged that Wales looks set to take a hit. It looks to be the most badly affected of all the nations of the United Kingdom in the review. What assessment do you make about the integrity of the Union in terms of the consequences of this boundary review and Welsh voices in this place?

Roger Pratt: I think the Union is intact. The whole of the Union will have the same quota. It is absolutely right that everywhere in the United Kingdom has a quota and so every person in the United Kingdom has the same representation. The difference in Scotland and Wales is that they have a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Parliament. They still have equal representation in the UK Parliament, which I think is absolutely right, but clearly the Members for Glasgow East and Ceredigion do not have responsibility in this place for health and education, whereas all the other Members on the Committee do.

Scotland has a slight advantage over the rest of the United Kingdom, quite rightly in terms of the Western Isles and Orkney and Shetland. I fully support that. However, it means that—slightly—Scotland has an advantage over the rest of the United Kingdom because those are very small seats. I do not object to that in any way. The Union is intact because everybody’s vote counts equally whatever part of the United Kingdom they come from.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

Q I want to follow on from the last question. On the issue of equality within the United Kingdom, it was the view of the Conservative party for quite some time that the number of seats should be reduced to 600. Am I right in thinking that your view is now in line with the Government’s—that it should be 650?

Roger Pratt: Correct, yes. I am fully supportive of 650.

[David Linden]

Q You are very honest about the fact that, in your words, “Wales will take a hit” as a result of the legislation—I think that is on the record. Are you also willing to place on the record that Scotland, too, will lose seats as a result of that? If so, can you say how many seats Scotland will lose?

Roger Pratt: I cannot say how many seats Scotland will lose because we do not yet have the figures from 2 March. When we have those figures, we will know, but on certain calculations they lose two and on others they lose three. I expect it to be either two or three seats. Wales is likely to lose eight, but we will have to see.

I think it is right that Scotland and Wales do that. Scotland’s electorate has not gone up as fast as England’s. It had to use the English quota previously and now that has not caught up because England’s electorate has gone up more. In terms of Scotland, your own seat is one of the larger seats in Glasgow, but there are four smaller seats in Glasgow, one of which is 57,000. I do not believe it is right that a seat in Glasgow should have only 57,000 and two other members of this Committee in the south-east of England both have well over 80,000. It is right there is an equal quota throughout the United Kingdom.

[David Linden]

Q Of course, your research will show that my seat is spread over two local authorities as well. I am the only MP in Glasgow whose constituency is not coterminous with the city of Glasgow.

I want to ask you specifically about the idea of the size of constituencies. You have hit the nail on the head in terms of some island communities, which are protected; Na h-Eileanan an Iar is a good example of that. There is also what was proposed as the Highland North constituency, which is probably the size of a country like Belgium or Luxembourg. Do you have a view on the limit of 12,000 to 13,000 sq km being the provision for a constituency? Is it the Conservative party’s view that that is a manageable size of constituency for a Member to deal with?

Roger Pratt: Of course, your parliamentary leader represents a constituency that currently is the largest in the United Kingdom, and that is 12,000 sq km. I could not find a more accurate figure than 12,000, but it is 12,000, so I think that was why that figure was brought into the Bill as the constituency that was of that size. That is right in terms of 12,000. It cannot go beyond 13,000, but above 12,000 gives the Boundary Commission in Scotland discretion if it so wishes between 12,000 and 13,000.

There is discretion if the commission wishes to use it if a constituency is over 12,000. It is up to the Scottish commission, but that is the right balance. It is currently the largest constituency in the UK Parliament, and the Boundary Commission has discretion up to 13,000.

[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!

--- Later in debate ---

[Cat Smith]

Q Finally, with regard to the register that is used to draw up the boundaries, the Government have tabled an amendment to the Bill to use the March 2020 register. What are your thoughts on that, and do you have any concerns about the accuracy of that register?

Tom Adams: I very much welcome the move from December 2020 to March 2020. Obviously, the Minister will be aware that we have raised significant concerns about this, in the earlier engagement with political parties. We still have some concerns about the impact of people dropping off the register even between 12 December 2019 and March. Obviously that will be less significant compared with December 2020, but just in our rough estimations looking at it now, it does look likely that a few hundred thousand people will have dropped off the register in that time, because obviously there are areas where people move a lot and there is high turnover of population.

On 12 December there was a general election, so that register will be the most complete a register is going to be. To my mind, it makes sense to use that one, although obviously I strongly welcome the use of 2 March as compared with December 2020, when I think the impact on the annual canvass of coronavirus will have been quite significant. I think the 12 December one would be better: it will be more complete and a better representation of the actual electorates in these places. But 2 March is certainly preferred to December 2020.

[David Linden]

Q Mr Adams, you are director of data and targeting. I think we all know that a lot of what you do is probably running numbers through spreadsheets. Have you run a number through your spreadsheet as to how many seats Scotland and Wales would lose under these proposals?

Tom Adams: Obviously, the commissions did publish the numbers on this, but broadly, there is likely to be a loss of three seats for Scotland and a loss of eight seats for Wales. Obviously, that might change slightly, depending on exactly which register you use, but it is going to be in that region of change.

[David Linden]

That is very helpful; thank you.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Cat Smith]

Q Thank you so much for joining us, Mr McCobb. Given that we do not have a Liberal Democrat member of the Committee, could you outline any concerns about the content of the Bill?

Dave McCobb: Thanks very much. Our primary concern is about the restrictiveness of the 5% threshold in terms of equalising the electorates in constituencies. There have been widespread reports of the degree of under-registration of electors in many parts of the country and of the number of people who are not correctly registered. Setting a very restrictive threshold at 5% reduces the commission’s flexibility to recognise that significant under-registration is likely in some parts of the country.

It also means that constituencies could be constructed incredibly arbitrarily. In the previous round of the review —the proposals that were ultimately never implemented— many constituencies were constructed that really bore no reference to identifiable communities with which people who lived there would identify. That impacted cities in England particularly, where, due to the size of local government wards, the number of wards that needed to be added together could not be done within local authority boundaries. So very arbitrary constituencies were constructed including chunks of some local authorities, and they really bore no reference to communities that people would identify with. That could be eliminated by having a higher threshold of 10%, for example. That would be the No. 1 concern about the proposals as they are currently outlined.

[David Linden]

Q Thank you very much for coming before the Committee, Mr McCobb. As I have asked other representatives, because you guys tend to be the kind of folk who run numbers through spreadsheets, have you run these numbers through the spreadsheet and found the seats per nation? The reason I ask is that Scotland, for example, currently has 59 seats in the UK Parliament. Have you run the numbers to see how many seats Scotland would have under these proposals?

Dave McCobb: I have not personally, no. That would be done by a colleague who is not currently in work. In terms of the overall distribution of seats between the four nations, that is something that I would not want to comment on until we actually see the registered totals that will be published for the electoral register that will be used for this.

I would like to bring it back to the 5% threshold. When I have been involved in cross-party talks on this, colleagues from the SNP have rightly raised concerns that the 5% threshold would require the creation of some geographically enormous constituencies in the highlands of Scotland and potentially in other parts of rural England and Wales.

Anyone who knows otherwise may correct me if I am wrong, but someone once told me that the constituency of Brecon and Radnorshire is larger than Luxembourg. It would require a constituency that is already that geographically large—the same applies to parts of the highlands of Scotland, too—to be 25-30% bigger to meet the 5% threshold. That is likely to make it very difficult to represent or campaign in a constituency on that scale.

[David Linden]

Q In the evidence we have heard so far, colleagues from the Labour party and the Conservative party have broadly agreed that we could be looking at losing two or three seats in Scotland. Do the Liberal Democrats have a view on whether Scotland should remain at 59 seats?

Dave McCobb: As I say, I reserve judgment on the balance of seats between the four nations until we have seen the exact numbers on the proposed electoral rolls.

[David Linden]

Okay, thank you.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

Q Thank you so much for giving evidence. I want to probe further on the issue of automaticity in the Bill. We are currently working on boundaries that are decades out of date. Much of the reason for that and for problems in the past has been the way in which political parties in Parliament have blocked changes to boundaries. As a party, do you support automaticity, because of the ability to have automatic changes?

Dave McCobb: We support the principle that the proposals that come from the Boundary Commission should be subject to minimal potential political interference, or a majority party could use its majority to impose boundaries on other people. The critical issue is how far the whole process is as divorced from partisan political control as possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Cat Smith]

Q On a slightly different issue, are there circumstances where the electoral quota could be relaxed to avoid ward splitting? The Committee has been exploring that throughout the day. For example, could you imagine it making more sense for a constituency to have a 5.5% variance than to split wards? Would that be preferable?

Scott Martin: I certainly think that work could be done on changing the variance, which is effectively half the gains I talked about as a permissible departure in relation to the Venice Commission “Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters”. The question of wards is rather different in Scotland than in England. Parliamentary constituencies in Scotland are based on wards, with no ward splitting. Of course, before the 2007 Scottish Parliament and local government elections in Scotland, we moved to three or four-member wards. The consequence is that you cannot get sensible constituencies without splitting wards, particularly with the hard limit put in place as a result of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. It is a rather different situation in Scotland, for practical reasons, as a consequence of the size of wards we have.

[David Linden]

Q I think I put on record on Second Reading that my preference was for either a minimum of 59 seats in Scotland, or zero with independence. Certainly the latter would be my preference, but I appreciate that we are not quite at that moment, though I am sure it is coming soon.

I want to ask about parliamentary approval. You will note that in the Bill, Parliament’s approval role is being removed. Can you share your view on that?

Scott Martin: That is, in a sense, a highly political question. Do you want politicised districting—everyone has difficulty with that word—or independent districting? Do you want the model they have in the United States, where the word “gerrymander” comes from? The logic is that if you have an independent commission model, which we have had here since the commissions were put on a permanent footing, the ability for political interference is minimised. Automaticity, as it has been described, is a sensible approach to take on that—although clearly, as we have seen from a variety of reviews, including the last two, ultimately, if Parliament wants to stop a review, or wants to proceed or another basis, that can happen, but unless we move to having a written constitution, which I would obviously support, that is not something that we can legislate for.

[David Linden]

Q Debate has sprung up today on the idea of building constituencies not on wards, but on polling districts. That issue is of interest to other members of the Committee too. Could you elaborate on that?

Scott Martin: Yes. In Scotland, there is the Improvement Service, and if you go to www.spatialhub.scot, you will find a polling district map of Scotland. Not all of it is up to date—some of it was updated just before the general election, and some of it is a little bit older—but there is now a complete polling district map of Scotland. Where that data is available, polling districts are a sensible way of drawing boundaries.

The reason why the Boundary Commission for Scotland has had to take a postcode approach is because it cannot use wards, and it did not have the polling districts. I appreciate that there is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation here, in that polling districts are supposed to be divisions of parliamentary constituencies, rather than being used the other way round, but thinking back to the first Scottish Parliament boundary review, I recall that the Boundary Commission, after its first review, was prepared to take representations from Edinburgh on realigning everything with existing polling districts. Electoral administrators and campaigners in Scotland have practical issues as a result of there being non-coterminous boundaries—it means they have some very strange polling districts—but those issues would certainly be removed if everything was built from one set of polling districts.

[David Linden]

Q If I could presume on Mr Paisley’s indulgence ever so slightly, I have a final question. You touched on the much-discussed proposal for a Highland North constituency, which raised a few eyebrows after the last review. You touched on the fact that it would be almost impossible for a Member to conduct parliamentary business in that constituency without a helicopter. Do you have any ideas or proposals for ensuring slightly more manageable and sensible constituencies that do not take up a space that, in certain parts of England, would be represented by 73 Members?

Scott Martin: There is obviously the 12,000 and 13,000 number there, and certainly some thought could be given to reducing it. My understanding was that that number was effectively taken from the size of Ross, Skye and Lochaber. Clearly we could look at reducing that.

[David Linden]

Thank you, Mr Martin.

--- Later in debate ---

[Cat Smith]

Q Finally, this question might stray beyond what you have considered, but what challenges do you foresee for the Welsh boundary commissioners in delivering a boundary review?

Professor Wyn Jones: I think we all recognise that commissioners always have a terribly difficult job to do, because there will be particular communities that feel a sense of association with some communities and less so with others.

Assuming this legislation reaches the statute book, the challenge for the Welsh commissioners is particularly daunting, because Wales would see the biggest level of change. That will be an enormous challenge, and there will be communities in Wales that feel that the changes being imposed are unwelcome; there is no doubt about that. I am an Anglesey boy, an Ynys Môn boy—I can well foresee that people at home will be extremely unhappy. I am sure that there will be different valleys and different communities thinking, “Well, we don’t really have much in common with the people over the other side of the ridge”, and so on and so forth.

So the challenge will be substantial. I think that my predecessor on this call, Geraint Day, pointed to a recent example around Ceredigion, where people felt that the commissioners had got it wrong, and fair play to the commissioners—they went back and changed things in a way that was regarded as being more acceptable. And I have no doubt that there will be lots of that.

[David Linden]

Q Thank you, Professor, for appearing before the Committee. Before the election, which obviously conjured up a very good result for the Conservative party, the Government were absolutely resolute in their view that they wanted to have 600 seats, and then they made quite a sudden change after the election to go for 650 seats. Why do you think that was?

Professor Wyn Jones: I do not really have that level of insight into the minds of the people involved. All I would say is that I spoke to Conservative MPs in Wales about this—I spoke to many of them because, as you probably have guessed, my views about this issue are not always particularly popular among Welsh MPs, and several of them were very keen to put me right. But it was very clear from a very early point that the reduction from 650 was not politically viable and that the Conservatives would have real issues, in terms of whipping their own MPs to support it.

It was certainly made clear to me very early on that, in all likelihood, the last attempt at reform would fail and that we would be coming back to this issue, and that we would be coming back to it with 650 MPs as the aim. And the people who I spoke to at that time were correct.

[David Linden]

Q Do you think it is particularly courageous on the part of the Government and the Conservative party, having gone from having six Conservative Welsh MPs in the 2017-19 Parliament to now having 14, to propose to remove eight seats from Wales?

Professor Wyn Jones: I would not describe it as “particularly courageous”. The issue is that we have boundaries that are terribly out of date; I do not think that there is any argument about that. And we have a real issue, in terms of some constituencies being, by orders of magnitude, larger than others. Wales is a particularly egregious example of that, because we are over-represented to an extent that no other constituent nation is.

So the issue is that if you are going to try and redo the boundaries, on what basis do you do that? As I have said, and I apologise for repeating myself, I have never heard a good in-principle argument for Wales having, for example, 6% of MPs when it has 5% of the electorate. I have never heard an argument that makes any sense of that.

Equality seems to be a reasonable principle, and that means that the biggest impact of any change is felt in Wales. What precisely it means for continuing Conservative representation in Wales in four-and-a-half years’ time, if that is when the next election is held—you are a better man than I am if you can guess that, not least because we do not know what the new boundaries will look like—I do not know. However, that will have an impact on all the political parties; which one it impacts worst, I genuinely do not know.

[David Linden]

Q Thank you. I have one final question. You are fairly clearly on record as saying that you think that the level of representation that exists at the moment in respect of Welsh MPs is too high. Would you accept, however, that, regardless of that point, constitutionally, the relationship at the moment between Cardiff, Edinburgh, London and to a certain extent Belfast, is in quite a fractured state? What do you think these proposals would do in terms of the integrity and harmony of the Union?

Professor Wyn Jones: I agree that there are very serious tensions across the states, but I genuinely doubt that the relative numbers of MPs from the different constituent units will make much of a difference there. I would concentrate on trying to improve intergovernmental relations between Edinburgh, Cardiff, London and Belfast. That is much more likely to make a difference than having 31 Welsh MPs as opposed to 40. I am afraid that there are fundamental issues around constitutional design and the attitude of the UK Government to the devolved Governments. That is where the action needs to be. Whether we have 31 Welsh MPs or 32 as opposed to the current 40 will not make any difference in terms of dealing with the big issues.

[Ben Lake]

Q Diolch i chi, Athro Wyn Jones, am ymuno gyda ni y prynhawn yma. [Translation: Thank you, Professor Wyn Jones, for joining us this afternoon.]

This is a very interesting debate about representation and what we actually mean by it. You asked, Professor, what sort of logic could be applied and I suppose, if I were a Conservative and Unionist MP, I would have a particular logic of maintaining the voice of the constituent parts of the United Kingdom.

If you will indulge me for a moment, on that line of logic, Wales’s population is set to peak in 2023 and in the next 20 years, England’s population alone is estimated to increase by about 8 million. If we are to continue with the logic about seats, in 20 years’ time, Wales might have even fewer seats and the relative voice at Westminster would be significantly diminished. In the light of the fact that we are no longer members of the European Union, and so more decisions are now taken at Westminster that have a direct effect on Wales, do you think that we might be embarking here on a set of developments that could—down the line, if not immediately—cause quite considerable tension for the Union?

Professor Wyn Jones: Diolch yn fawr iawn am y cwestiwn. Diddorol iawn. [Translation: Thank you very much for the question. Very interesting.]

You make an interesting point. The difficulty with thinking through the logic is what is the pay-off, in terms of an alternative arrangement? In many multinational internally differentiated states, the second Chamber is often used as a way of trying to balance territorial representation and, as I know you are very well aware, there are proposals for changing the House of Lords and making it more territorially representative in terms of its membership and in enhancing that role of its activities too. That would potentially be one way forward. There, you could follow an American Senate-style logic of giving each of the constituent territories equal representation—an idea that was promoted by Carwyn Jones, the former First Minister in Wales. That was an idea that he put forward.

However, in terms of the House of Commons, I really struggle to see the logic of how that plays out in terms of the relative numbers of MPs for each territory. Equality at the UK level—dealing with those issues that are reserved or that are not captured by English votes for English laws—seems to be a relatively straightforward way of proceeding, if you are going to maintain the Union, but then, of course, you would have potentially differentiated devolution settlements for different territories, reflecting the differences of those devolved territories, and perhaps doing something with a second Chamber. Those are probably better ways of dealing with the problem you highlight than coming up with arbitrary numbers for the different representation of the different constituent units of the UK in the House of Commons. Sorry, that was a slightly long-winded response.