Parliamentary Constituencies bill (Third sitting)

David Linden Excerpts

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

[The Chair]

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

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

Q I would like to ask a question about the situation in New Zealand. I was struck by the fact that you said the whole process takes no longer than six months and by what the hon. Member for City of Chester said about safeguards. Clearly, we did not get this right in the legislation to move from 650 to 600. Can you outline any concerns you have about the associated speed, in terms of automaticity and the fact that we are trying to wrap this up within six months? Surely, if we try and ram this through very quickly it is not going to result in good proposals.

[The Chair]

Before that is answered, can we finally have Jane Hunt’s question as well, please?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Miller]

Q Thank you very much, Sir David. I thank Mr Williams for coming to give evidence today; it is incredibly helpful to hear from a wide range of political parties. I note that in your introduction, you said you would cover issues in England and Wales, and I thought I detected a slight accent—I do not know whether you come from Wales. I wanted to press you a little further on that, because there are four protected constituencies in the Bill: two constituencies that will be the Isle of Wight, a single constituency in Orkney and the Shetland Islands, and the constituency formerly known as the Western Isles. Do you feel there is an argument to be made for protected constituencies in Wales? Other than Northern Ireland, which I think has its own set of issues, it is the only part of the United Kingdom that does not have protected constituencies.

Chris Williams: There is an argument to be made, particularly around Ynys Môn. I am worried about how all this is going to be perceived in Wales, with a drop of about 20% in the number of MPs, and I think it would be a softener if they see they have been treated equally with England and Scotland, with Ynys Môn seen as a protected constituency. There is an argument about taking into account other geographical features when protecting constituencies, but if you start to look at mountains or rivers, you then start to look at the height or width of mountain ranges, and you get in a complete mess. Certainly, there is a sea in the way between Ynys Môn and the mainland, which is exactly the same criterion that is being used for the Isle of Wight, the Western Isles and Orkney and Shetland. I think it should be applied in Wales as well; otherwise there would be a rightful feeling of wrongdoing to Wales.

[David Linden]

Q Can I ask you specifically what the Green party’s view is on the distribution of seats that will result from this Bill? It is my understanding—the Committee has been told this previously—that Scotland stands to lose seats, and you have spoken about the 20% drop in Wales. Does the Green party of England and Wales have a view on whether or not that is appropriate, and what that does for the integrity of the Union?

Chris Williams: Our Scottish Green colleagues will have a similar position to you on the Union. I guess we come from a perspective of wanting every vote to have the same weight and potentially the same impact on an election, in terms of determining the future Government. The difficulty we have is that whatever we do with the process and with first past the post, there is always going to be some inequity between the constituencies, even if we have no tolerance or variance limit at all. By the time they come in, the numbers will still be different, because the data is always historical and never accurate enough. If we are going to go down the line of every vote being pretty much equal, and trying to make that as equal as possible within the system, it is very hard to argue for a great deal of difference between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I would say that a vote in Hartlepool is as equal as one in Ogmore but, at the same time, I can see that this might well bring greater arguments for further devolution.

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

Q On the same theme, Wales has roughly the same sized electorate as Greater Manchester, where I am an MP, but we have 27 MPs and Wales has 40, which means that their average electoral quota is 64,546, to 71,780 in Greater Manchester. Why do you think that 30% fewer electors are required to elect an MP in Wales?

Chris Williams: I guess I argue that there should not be that inequity, except for protected constituencies. Every vote should be as equal as possible in terms of being able to influence the future make-up of the Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Order. I am slightly embarrassed, but I have to share with the Committee that the Bill available in the room is the wrong Bill. Quite how that has happened, I do not know. The Clerks will make sure that the right Bill is available for the next sitting. I was completely unaware of that, and unfortunately there is nothing I can do about it, I am afraid. It is a pity. Professor McLean, one of the Committee members will get the right Bill; it is on its way, and everyone will have the copies.

[David Linden]

On a point of order, the Bill that I am working from is the one we used for the Second Reading debate. That is not the Bill in the Committee Room. I do not know if I am the only person in the Committee using the Bill from Second Reading. Will you clarify that, Sir David?

[The Chair]

The ones that were on the table at the side of the room were wrong, but Bills from elsewhere are accurate. I am very sorry about that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Miller]

Q We have had some powerful evidence that parliamentary boundaries are to a greater or lesser extent an artificial construct, although rules are put in place to try to acknowledge issues, which should be taken into account. I want to probe further something that Sir John talked about earlier. Because we are dealing with boundaries that are 20 years out of date, this will be a disruptive redistribution.

What comments can be made about trying to future-proof any proposals, to take into account any proposed developments and house building, while noting that those cannot be taken into any analysis of the quota? Do our experts have any views on whether that should be taken into account with regards to the geographical boundaries, so as to avoid unnecessary disruption in the future?

Professor Sir John Curtice: There is a difference between the rules of the Local Government Boundary Commission for England and the parliamentary boundary commissions. The local government boundary commissions are permitted to take into account anticipated housing developments. I have had the occasional private conversation with people about this. You may want to quiz the Local Government Boundary Commission for England. The question that arises is how accurate the forecasts of house building and demolition activity are and the extent to which that ensure that the local government ward boundaries do not get out of date.

The answer to you is that it is certainly possible—see the rules of the Local Government Boundary Commission for England—but regarding the extent to which it is effective, you should ask the Local Government Boundary Commission for England, because I am not certain. There is a difference and you could anticipate doing a degree of that.

Professor McLean: May I add to that? It is rather unfortunate that there are two sets of boundary commissions with different operating rules. Although it is not in the Bill, I do not understand why there needs to be a separate local government boundary commission, in particular one that operates under different rules, as John has just highlighted, from those used by the parliamentary boundary commission.

If one had to choose between these sets of rules—the Local Government Boundary Commission for England permitting evidence about future housing developments and the rules currently before you not permitting them —I would go with the rules that are in front of you, for the same reason that I gave in an earlier answer. One person’s likely housing development, which may just happen to favour that political party could be countered by another person’s likely future housing development, which may favour another party. I feel for the poor inspector, who is, by construction, not a specialist in the area, and is faced with claims that are very hard to adjudicate. You can adjudicate numbers, but future housing development is much more difficult.

[David Linden]

Q Thank you to our witnesses for their evidence thus far. Professor Curtice was probably right to say that we should focus on things in the Bill. The two major things are going from 600 seats to 650, and parliamentary approval. To take the first issue in a question to both witnesses, why do you think that the Government changed their position, going from 600 seats to 650?

Professor Sir John Curtice: That is not difficult. Turkeys were persuaded to put Christmas in the calendar in 2011 but, when Christmas eve came along, they decided to abandon it. There was always going to be a question mark about the willingness of MPs to vote for their own demise.

The reason why we were to have the cuts in the first place is that in 2010 both parties in the coalition proposed reductions in the size of the House of Commons. That was a populist response to the MPs’ expenses scandal. In the end, the cut to 600 that they introduced was less than those in the two parties’ manifestos. Then, of course, implementing it became a victim in 2013 of the spat within the coalition over the failure to reform the House of Lords, and in 2018 of the anticipated inability of the then Conservative Administration to get the provisions through—because they were asking turkeys to vote for Christmas. I am indicating that that is a classic case of how, at the end of the day, it is difficult to persuade Members of the House of Commons to engage in a radical reform that will make their lives difficult.

By the way, given that you have asked this question, let me expand its scope slightly. This is an aspect of the Bill that matters, and this is the question of the attempt at automaticity. To make it clear, there is an issue about automaticity—that is, the ability of Parliament to intervene. Parliament intervened in 2013 and stopped the boundary commissioners working—that was the work of Labour and the Liberal Democrats together—and in 2018 the Conservative Government failed to push the provisions through. Back in the late 1960s, the then Labour Government got their MPs to vote down the provisions. To that extent, there is clearly an issue. Although we have a process of neutral boundary proposals operating under rules set by the House of Commons, in effect the Commons has on three occasions, under different Administrations, ended up not implementing the rule, so there is an automaticity question.

My concern, however, is that although the Bill might make it more difficult for that to happen again, it will not stop it happening again. Given that in clause 8 the Bill stops implementation of the 2018 review, going on to have provisions that supposedly make it impossible for Parliament to overturn things in future, the truth is that the same is perfectly possible for a future House of Commons—a boundary review comes along, the current Administration does not like it, saying, “Actually, we should delay it”, and all they need to do is to introduce a quick piece of primary legislation to overturn it.

As we saw with the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, it is very difficult to introduce provisions that discipline the House of Commons to keep to a set of constitutional rules, given that we do not have an entrenched constitution. Although all of us would laud the fact that the provisions of the Bill are an improvement, reducing the ability of Parliament to stop things, we should not fool ourselves into thinking that it will necessarily stop Parliament, not least because even within the terms of the Bill an order has to be laid—instead of

“as soon as is reasonably practicable”

at the moment—under the new provisions,

“as soon as may be reasonably practicable”.

I am not a lawyer, but the distinction between those two things still strikes me as rather fine on whether or not we could still be left in the situation that we had in the last Parliament, when the provisions were simply were not put before the House of Commons in a timely fashion. That could be repeated.

Professor McLean: I have very little to add. The automaticity may look worrying to some, because it removes the rule from Parliament, but parliamentary supremacy is mentioned in the explanatory notes and of course the Bill could be enacted and then repealed by a future Parliament. That is the nature of parliamentary supremacy. It would be very embarrassing—the mother of Parliaments, one of the oldest parliamentary democracies and so on: it is already very embarrassing that it is operating on the basis of 20-year-old boundaries and therefore we did not have equal suffrage in the 2019 general election, to put it at its most blunt. I would concur with John that Parliament could do it again. It would be embarrassing, and I rather hope it does not.

[The Chair]

We have just 15 minutes left, but you wanted to come back, Mr Linden.

[David Linden]

Q Of all the things that are embarrassing about the mother of Parliaments I do not think that is the one that would come top of my list. Can I ask specifically about the distribution of seats, and the idea that based on what is before us there would be a reduction in the number of seats for Scotland and Wales? Professor Curtice mentioned that it was a destructive process. Would you go so far as to say that that would impact on the harmony of the Union?

Professor McLean: It was bound to be disruptive once a uniform electoral quota was introduced for the four nations of the UK. John, the Minister, or others can correct me, but I think that that was done by the 2011 Act. The fact that, as has already been mentioned, the two instances of review that should have happened under the 2011 Act have not yet happened, means that that bomb, as it seems to some in Scotland and in Wales, was primed in 2011. It has not yet exploded, but it will with the implementation of this Bill; but that is a necessary consequence, as all Members know, of a uniform electoral quota for the United Kingdom. I cannot say any more than that.

Professor Sir John Curtice: Can we go back a bit on the history of this? The truth, as Iain will explain much more eloquently than me, is that he original over-representation of Scotland and Wales was entirely the product of accident rather than design. When the Scottish Parliament was introduced in 1999 by the Labour Administration one of the things that was done as a result was indeed to reduce the size of Scotland’s representation in the House of Commons—although it was done in a manner that was arguably technically deficient, and did not necessarily deal with the possibility that there would be future disparities between the growth in population in Scotland and that in England.

The principle of basically saying that Scotland’s representation should be proportionate to England’s representation was already embodied by the Labour party and Labour Administration at the beginning of the century. The same thing was not done for Wales because of course when the then Welsh Assembly was first created it had only secondary legislative powers, and it was therefore felt that the devolution was not on a scale that justified the reduction in the number of Welsh MPs. Given that we now have a Welsh Senedd that has primary legislative powers that are not commensurate with, but not that dissimilar from, those of the Scottish Parliament, as it were, what has already been done for Scotland seems to be relevant for Wales.

As to the actual effect, now we are talking about a 650 Parliament: by my calculation, which is based on the electorates as of the election—but, given we are now going to do the electorate on 1 March it will be slightly different, but will not be very different—Scotland is probably going to lose three seats. It is the last seat, I think, at the moment, that is tight between Scotland and England. At worst Scotland loses three seats. Effectively, Scotland is affected at the edges but not fundamentally, and the fact that Scotland’s political system and political representation is now very different from that in England and Wales is still likely to be heavily reflected in any new House.

This is essentially a redistribution from Wales to England, and then within England it is a redistribution really from a line from East Anglia southwards—as opposed to the northern parts of England. Of course one of the ironies of the situation we are now in is that because the Conservative party gained so many seats—they had the so-called red wall seats in the north of England and so on—actually the disparity in the size of the electorate between constituencies that are represented by the Labour party and those represented by the Conservatives is smaller than it has been at any point during these current set of constituencies. In other words, changes in electoral geography are changing the politics of redistribution.  London is one of the places that will benefit; it is now a Labour city. The north-east of England, which now has a non-trivial number of Conservative MPs, will lose out heavily. Therefore, actually the redistributive consequences politically are perhaps not quite as toxic as we might have imagined 10 or 15 years ago.