Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

David Linden Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Tuesday 10th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Yes; my hon. Friend has momentarily pre-empted me, because that is exactly what I was about to do. The whole House has noted our hon. Friend’s positive approach to the challenge that prevents her from being here today. She is a wonderfully popular and singularly effective Minister, and I know that Members across the House wish her the speediest of recoveries. None the less, she is continuing to work very hard, and I have therefore had the opportunity to discuss the Bill with her. I am pleased to report to the House that she is delighted, as am I, that the principle of updated and equal constituencies is shared by both Houses and across parties. That is in no small part down to the efforts of my noble Friends Lord True and Baroness Scott of Bybrook, and I extend our thanks for their sterling efforts in taking the Bill through the other place.

It is of course right that this short but important Bill has enjoyed extensive debate and scrutiny in both Houses, and we will always welcome the thoughts of their lordships, but it is important to remember that this is a Commons Bill about the composition of the House of Commons based on the mandate of the elected Government. This is an area in which I have taken a great interest during my years as a Member of Parliament, so it is with a spirit of gusto that I now roll up my sleeves and prepare to delve into the detail of their lordships’ amendments. I will speak to each amendment in turn.

Lords amendments 1 and 2 provide that a boundary review would be carried out every 10 years. This is a significant change from the current legal requirement for a review every five years. The Government’s approach, as in the Bill before it was amended, is to mandate a boundary review every eight years. The Government’s aim, as set out in our manifesto, is to ensure that parliamentary constituencies are updated regularly, but without the disruption to local communities and their representatives that might occur with the current five-year reviews.

While developing this Bill, my hon. Friend the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution discussed the Government’s proposal for an eight-year cycle with parliamentary parties and electoral administrators and shared with them our broad plans for the Bill. Concerns were expressed about the importance of up-to-date data—particularly local government boundary data, hence clause 8—but the Labour, Liberal Democrat, Plaid Cymru and Scottish National party representatives from the parliamentary parties panel were among those content with our approach.

If reviews were to happen only every 10 years, as these amendments propose, the data used in boundary reviews would be older and less reflective of current local government boundaries and demographic change. That would also create an unfair situation for electors, because where boundaries were not regularly updated to ensure that they more accurately represented changing demographics, there is a risk that some would feel that their vote was not of equal value to the votes cast in a neighbouring constituency. We believe that the middle ground of eight-year cycles, as proposed in the unamended Bill, is the right way forward. It removes the disruption of a review happening roughly each time an election occurs, but as not too much time will pass between reviews, it also delivers boundaries that are up to date and fair. I therefore trust that the House will disagree with these Lords amendments.

Under Lords amendment 6, members of the Boundary Commission would be chosen using a bespoke appointments procedure that would sit entirely outside the existing public appointments process. The Bill as originally drafted did not make changes to the current processes, and there has been no dispute or controversy to date with the manner in which the commissioners have been appointed. The automatic implementation of the boundary commissioners’ final recommendations is crucial to achieving regular and effective boundary reviews.

Automatic implementation also shines a light on the boundary commissioners themselves. As parliamentary scrutiny is not involved in the process, we must be able to trust that the commissions are effective and independent. We need to be able to satisfy ourselves that the process of appointing all Boundary Commission members is thorough, independent and fair and that there is no room for any undue influence of any kind. I can reassure the House that our current processes fulfil all those criteria. Let me first outline how the deputy chairman and the ordinary members of the commission are appointed at present and then look at how the amendment would change the status quo.

The deputy chairman position in each Boundary Commission must be filled by a High Court judge. The amendment is unnecessary for two reasons. First, the judges appointed to the Boundary Commission have already undergone a rigorous recruitment procedure that gives reassurance that they are able to act independently and impartially. Secondly, the Lord Chancellor consults the Lord Chief Justice over these appointments in any case. This provides the views of the head of the English and Welsh judiciary. The appointment of ordinary members of the Boundary Commissions are public appointments. The four commissions are listed alongside many other public bodies and independent offices in the Public Appointments Order in Council 2019. The order is the legal basis for the governance code on public appointments and the independent Commissioner for Public Appointments, who regulates appointments processes.

The governance code and oversight of the commissioner ensure that appointments are made openly, fairly and on merit to the Boundary Commission and many hundreds of other public bodies. The governance code includes robust safeguards to ensure the political impartiality of the two ordinary members of the Boundary Commissions. These members are appointed by Ministers, having been assessed by an advisory assessment panel that includes a representative of the organisation in question. For Boundary Commissions, the representative is the deputy chairman or an ordinary member if the deputy chairman cannot attend. It is the job of the panel to assess which candidates are appointable, so that Ministers may make an informed and appropriate decision. At the application stage, all candidates are asked to declare political activity over the previous five years. Future advisory assessment panel decisions should not be prejudged, but it would seem likely that recent significant political activity would present a degree of conflict that would be incompatible with the panel finding a candidate appointable as a boundary commissioner.

The Bill, as amended, creates a bespoke system for Boundary Commission appointments in primary legislation. There are three main reasons to oppose that amendment. First, the existing public appointments system has secured dedicated and expert members for the Boundary Commission for decades; in simple terms, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Secondly, a separate appointments regime could cast doubt on those appointed to public office under the current system. That doubt would be unjustified, as the current system is independently regulated and ensures that talented individuals with the right skills and experience are appointed to many hundreds of bodies across government to carry out vital public work. We should use it wherever possible and resist the urge to create new, niche systems.

Thirdly, I have already mentioned that the deputy chairman’s previous appointment as a High Court judge will have been sufficiently robust to ensure their ability to act impartially. The Government are also unconvinced by the argument that the Lord Chancellor cannot be trusted to act impartially when making such appointments. The role of the Lord Chancellor—the Lord High Chancellor—occupies a unique and significant position in our constitutional firmament, defending the judiciary and its independence through a duty to rise above party politics where required.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

rose—

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

rose—

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[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am spoilt for choice. I will give way to the hon. Gentleman because I heard him marginally earlier, probably because of the distance factor.

[David Linden]

The right hon. Gentleman speaks about how independent the Lord Chancellor has been of late. Given the attacks on the judiciary by this Government and the attempts to break international law, does he really think that stands up to scrutiny?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I think it is of fundamental importance; the Lord Chancellor is there to say to Ministers that they should not criticise judges. That is one of his roles, to ensure that proper application of the separation of powers. The current Lord Chancellor, my right hon. and learned Friend, carries out his job with absolute aplomb, but he is not alone in this; Labour Lord Chancellors have done exactly the same.

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There has been much deliberation of the Bill in the other place because it is an important set of changes. Hon. Members will find it particularly interesting to see members of the House of Lords paying such close attention to how democratic elections work. Of course, many of them have expertise in standing for election and I hope that that is something about which they will think more in the future. Let us be clear. This debate relates to a manifesto pledge of the Government. Less than 12 months ago, we on the Government Benches stood on a platform to update our constitutional legislation to ensure that we have equal boundaries so that every vote counts the same in each constituency, with some important exceptions.

[David Linden]

The right hon. Lady talks about manifesto commitments. It was not that long ago that there was a manifesto commitment to have 600 seats in the House of Commons. What changed for the Government? [Interruption]

[Mrs Miller]

As one of my hon. Friends says from a sedentary position, it was a different manifesto. Even more importantly, one fundamental change that the hon. Gentleman will know more about is that we are choosing to leave the EU and, as a result, Members will have more work to do.

[David Linden]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs Miller]

If the hon. Gentleman will allow me not to give way, this is not a debate between the two of us. The Leader of the House has set out important responses to these amendments which deserve a great deal of consideration. He has given a comprehensive analysis of these Lords amendments. Taking into account the fact that the Government have accepted amendments 3, 4 and 5 already, I would like to confine my comments to amendment 7 but also join him in agreeing that all the other amendments are manifestly unnecessary. Indeed, the Committee considered those issues in detail and found that the Bill should remain as it is.

Amendment 7 would undermine the essence of the Bill because it increases, not reduces, the opportunity for differences between constituencies. I referred to Basingstoke during my intervention on the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood. Currently we have almost 83,000 voters in Basingstoke, whereas a constituency such as Rhondda has just over 50,000. That shows starkly the necessity for change and for us to take this opportunity to make that change work as well as it can. It is as much to do with the way the current system works, in terms of Parliament being able to intervene in these measures. The difference between those constituencies is stark. But it is incumbent on us to ensure that any changes we put in place do not build another raft of problems for the future.

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[Mrs Miller]

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman would not want to be the person from the Labour Benches to tell the people of Ynys Môn that Labour does not believe that theirs should be a unique constituency.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to contribute to the debate, Madam Deputy Speaker and I hope the Leader of the House can answer my questions.

[David Linden]

It is a pleasure, as always, to follow the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller).

I start by sending my best wishes to the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), who has been a formidable but good-natured opponent on the Bill. Naturally, there is much for me to disagree about when it comes to my dealings with Britain’s Constitution Minister, but personal health always transcends politics, and I know I speak for us all when I wish her all the very best for her treatment in the coming weeks and months. I look forward to seeing her back at the Dispatch Box.

I also welcome the Leader of the House to our proceedings on the Bill. He is always incredibly entertaining and I have certainly enjoyed watching his transition from a robust and consistent Back Bencher to a member of the Cabinet having to participate in the parliamentary gymnastics of Government U-turns that have become a hallmark of this Government.

The particular U-turn that this Bill legislates for is in reference to clause 5. That undoes the 2011 legislation, which I think the right hon. Gentleman voted for and which would have reduced the number of constituencies in the House from 650 to 600. With new legislative powers coming back from Brussels post Brexit, it would surely have been bonkers to reduce the number of MPs while increasing the legislative power of the Executive. Let me respond to the point of the right hon. Member for Basingstoke. I know that she did not want to have a debate about it, but her point was that the Government changed their position as a result of Britain’s exit from the European Union. In actual fact, as someone who served on the Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill Committee, a Bill brought forward by the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan), I know that, until December last year, the Government opposed that Bill every single way by withholding the money resolution. By that point, Britain was already leaving the European Union, so I am afraid that the right hon. Lady’s argument does not stand up to scrutiny on that part.

The fact that, under new calculations, Scotland will lose out on two to three constituency seats is making a mockery of the promises made after the 2014 independence referendum. In fact, it seems that all the devolved nations will now stand to lose out on constituency seats under the new calculations. The nation, of course, that is due to lose the most seats under these proposals is Wales, with all witnesses in Committee, including the CCHQ representative, Mr Pratt, saying that Wales would, in his own words, “take a hit”. I am sure that Welsh Conservative MPs were delighted about that being placed in Hansard. Again, it has been widely acknowledged that, under the current formula, Wales would lose seats to the benefit of the south-east of England. But this is not the only UK nation that stands to have diminished representation in the House of Commons.

Scotland is currently represented by 59 MPs and although I continue to work every single day of the week to ensure that Scotland is no longer governed by Westminster, until that day comes, I will fight to ensure that Scotland’s voice is fairly heard in this Chamber. Based on the proposed electoral quotas, we would see Scotland losing two or three seats to the advantage of England, which strikes me as being wholly unfair and flies in the face of the rallying calls that Scotland should lead the United Kingdom, rather than leave it. After the 2014 referendum, Scotland was promised that it would be considered an equal partner in this Union. However, the fact that Scotland is now set to lose three constituency seats should continue to highlight the promises made post 2014 that have been proven to be empty again.

I welcome all the amendments made in the House of Lords and commit my party to voting for them when the Division bells ring tonight, but there were some real missed opportunities for their lordships to dramatically improve the Bill. First, I am bitterly disappointed that their lordships did not remove the provisions of clause 2, which deals with the issue of automaticity or parliamentary approval of commission recommendations. Too often in earlier debates, the Government got away with suggesting that MPs should not be marking their own homework when it came to the approval of new boundaries, but I am genuinely surprised that the other House, which has a role in approving recommendations as well, has also relinquished that right. When it comes to Scottish peers—most if not all of them have never been elected—there was a hugely missed opportunity to try to protect the voices of devolved nations in future Parliaments. It should have been a priority for Members of the House of Lords to protect Scotland’s 59 seats in this Parliament and to protect our ability to represent our constituents and not to diminish Scotland’s voice. I see that some Conservative Members look quite perplexed at this idea of protecting seats, but of course it was 1980s legislation under Margaret Thatcher that protected Scotland initially at 73 seats and then they were reduced to 59 under devolution. Therefore, for those who look a bit perplexed about this, it was actually something that was advocated by a Conservative Government.

Having set out our position in the Bill, I will confine my remarks to the amendments for consideration from the other place. I turn to amendments 1 and 2. My party supports the amendments to review the boundaries every 10 years, as opposed to the shorter timeframe of eight years, mainly due to the increased certainty that it gives to constituents and representatives alike. Moving from eight to 10 years does not strike me as being an unreasonable compromise and I am therefore content to offer my party’s support for the amendment being made permanent to the Bill.

On amendment 6, I also support the change to have an independent appointment process. Earlier in my remarks, I made reference to authenticity and the Government’s argument that MPs should not have a role in approving the commissioner’s recommendations. If we follow the logic of the argument about removing perceived self-interest, then the same is surely true for Ministers—in this case, the Lord Chancellor appointing boundary commissioners. Amendment 6 would see the power to appoint commissioners transferred from a politician to the Lord Chief Justice. That would, in effect, stop future Tory Ministers from appointing their chums to the Boundary Commission. By keeping clause 2(2) in the Bill but voting against Lords amendment 6, the Government would, in effect, be having their cake and eating it, and be charged with rank hypocrisy. I know the Leader of the House is a good man, and I am sure he would not want to be portrayed as a hypocrite by voting for such a fundamentally contradictory proposition.

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[Andrew Bowie]

rose—

[David Linden]

I am happy to give way to my hon. Friend.

[Andrew Bowie]

I thank my hon. Friend—and he is a friend. Does he not agree that what we are trying to achieve is ensuring that each vote in this country is, as far as possible, equal to the next one? The more that we increase the tolerance, the less equal everybody’s vote becomes, and so we move further and further away from what we are trying to achieve by going through this process in the first place.

[David Linden]

What I am trying to make sure is that I and my hon. Friend are made unemployed fairly soon—but that is a separate matter. The point is that it was previously enshrined in legislation that Scotland would have 73 seats and then it would rightly be reduced to 59 in the light of devolution. Government Members cannot have their cake and eat it; in one respect they are enshrining in legislation a certain number of seats, but locking that down in legislation means that there will be a degree of difference. However, I have a huge amount of respect for my hon. Friend, and he has put his point on the record.

I return to the point made by Mr Bellringer in the evidence session that there is a need to move towards a tolerance rate of, say, 7.5%. That is why I urge the Government to increase it to give commissioners the wider discretion that they asked for when they gave us that evidence. I know that the Government are not particularly fond of listening to experts these days, but I am very hopeful that this afternoon they could just make a wee exception for the Boundary Commission for England.

Finally, I want to make reference to Lords amendment 8. Before doing so, I offer my sincere condolences, on behalf of my party, to the family of Lord Shutt, who, as we have heard, passed away only in the past couple of weeks, but was responsible for securing this amendment in the other place. By using the electoral registers as the data source to draw parliamentary constituencies, the Bill also seeks to disadvantage young people, as the data is less likely to include the names of young people than it is older people, since young people are often not registered to vote. Registration rates for eligible 16 and 17-year-olds were estimated to be 25% in 2018—a drop from 45% in 2015. In contrast, 94% of those aged 65-plus were estimated to be registered. The SNP therefore supports this amendment, which requires the Government to bring forward proposals to improve the completeness of the electoral register in relation to attainers. Only then can we ensure that we are not disadvantaging young people in the electoral process.

The Leader of the House has spent the majority of his time in this House on the Back Benches advocating Brexit and talking about Parliament taking back control from an all-powerful Executive—something this Bill makes worse. I therefore want to finish by paraphrasing something a wise man once said in this House many years ago about standing up for democracy:

 “’Stiffen your sinews, summon up the blood and imitate the action of a tiger, for that is how you should behave towards our European partners, not like Bagpuss.’” —[Official Report, 24 October 2011; Vol. 534, c. 109.]

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I would like to start by commenting on Lords amendment 7 and the flexibility. We keep hearing this mathematical argument, but we seem to be getting away from the overarching principle. Already this afternoon, we have heard that it is difficult to keep local communities together unless we move to a tolerance of 7.5%, which strikes me as odd when it would mean going from a difference of roughly 7,500 voters to one of 11,000. Many electoral wards in this country have fewer than 7,500 voters, so are we now making the argument that wards themselves split communities and that they are wrong as well? There is a fundamental principle: if we went to 7.5%, one vote could be worth one 67,000th and another could be worth one 77,000th. That is quite a significant difference.

I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden). I very much enjoyed working with him in Committee and having the debates that we had, and I have a huge amount of respect for him. He made a very important point about equal representation. He said that by losing seats, Scotland will not have equal representation. I would argue that the exact opposite is true: it is equal representation—and of course there are two protected seats in Scotland; recognition has been made of the geographical reasons why the Outer Hebrides and Orkney and Shetland are separate. It is not fair to say that Scotland is getting less representation and that it needs to be equally represented, because there will be equal United Kingdom representation. That is what this is about: the United Kingdom’s Government.

The hon. Gentleman and I are never going to agree on his nationalistic views and my Union views—that is why I sit on the Conservative Benches and he sits on the SNP Benches—but we just seem to be plucking figures out of the air for the 7.5% and the 5%. Again, I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) and I have a huge deal of respect for her. She made an argument about the 600 seats and how that changed the number of voters when dealing with the 5%. However, away from the numbers, the fundamental principle must be to get as close as possible.

I made the point in intervening on my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House about trying to get as close to the quota as possible. It should be possible to do that if the Boundary Commission for England, especially, takes the approach that the Boundary Commission for Scotland takes and decides that it does not have to draw some very strange shapes and lines using ward boundaries, but that it can work with smaller electoral segments.

We heard the argument in Committee that polling districts can be changed by local authorities and can lose that representation—that they could be gerrymandered —but of course there will come a point when the Electoral Commission looks at where they are today. It has already said that it will go on where they are today; it is using the March 2020 register and those units as they exist today. If, in eight years’ time, there have been changes to those polling districts, for whatever reason, that can be taken into account at that time, and the Electoral Commission is an independent body.

I will happily support the Government in disagreeing with Lords amendment 7. Fundamentally, we cannot lose sight of the fact that we are trying to give equality of vote. In my mind, the tolerance is there not to try to draw the most convenient shape using wards, but purely to allow the flexibility for which a need will inevitably build up over the eight years, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said, with new housing developments and so on. My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) has made the point many times that development, especially in certain parts of the country, is huge, and it leads to such housing developments. That is what the tolerance should be about; it should not be about trying to draw the shapes to have one just creeping in at the bottom end and one just meeting the higher end. The flexibility should allow a 5% tolerance of the share of that vote over the eight years; it should not get there straight away. If a constituency is made at the higher end, within eight years, it will almost certainly be above that number and we will be back in the same situation.

My constituency of Elmet and Rothwell has 79,316 electors. The neighbouring constituency of Leeds East has 65,693. The neighbouring constituency to that of Leeds Central has 82,211. It simply cannot be right to have such variation within less than 10 miles as the crow flies.

My hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) is in his place and cannot speak in the debate. [Interruption.] I can still smell and taste; it’s all right. He and I have represented Leeds electors since the early 2000s. We have seen great differences in the city and how it is set up. His constituency is on the higher side of the number of electors in Leeds. My voters are getting almost one 80,000th of a vote, whereas in the neighbouring seat they are getting one 65,000th of a vote. It is right to reject Lords amendment 7 simply because we should see it not as a way to fill the gap and make constituencies work, but purely as a way to give people a vote that will change plus or minus 5% over the eight-year period to try to keep things roughly similar.

Lords amendment 1 is about moving from eight to 10 years. The reality is that that means we would probably go through three general elections on those boundaries. We have heard a lot in these debates about how big the boundary changes are probably going to be when they come through, but that is because nothing has happened for a quarter of a century. The changes will be of that size; they will be disruptive.

It is better to go in a cycle of two general elections so that, hopefully, from this point on, with the Government amendments to try to make the whole system more robust and far less open to political shenanigans in the House, we will not see such major changes in future. It is better that the system can be, for want of a better word, tinkered with to make sure that we get back to roughly within those tolerances. We all accept that there will be demographic change and housing change. Big things are happening, including the ambition to build so many houses, which will cause change.

What seems like a small amendment would have a huge impact. Very large changes would have to be made simply by adding those two years and getting into a three-general-election cycle.

Lords amendment 8 is about registrations. It is a fundamental right of people in this country to choose whether they want to register for a vote or not.

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[Tom Randall]

May I add my good wishes to my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith)?

In life, theory and practice can often be two separate things, and in my relatively short time in Parliament I have found that to be the case. In theory, all Members of Parliament are equal and have the same basic duties, and while I accept that some Members of the House are perhaps more equal than others, it is a reasonable assumption that we ought to have some of the same basic responsibilities, including the number of constituents we represent. I appreciate that there will be certain geographical challenges to that, such as with island constituencies, but I believe that general principle should hold firm. I suggest that the existing system does not do that. To give an extreme example, Milton Keynes South has 97,000 electors, compared with Newcastle upon Tyne Central’s 54,000.

As originally drafted, the Bill would ensure a broad equality, subject to some tolerance, in the number of electors in each constituency, so that they are more or less of equal weight. Equality and fairness ought to be an overriding principle on a matter such as this.

[David Linden]

I agree that we need equality. On that basis, and given that all Members should be equal in this House, the hon. Gentleman will be aware that the system of English votes for English laws is currently suspended. Will he call on the Government to ensure that that system does not come back, so that his hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) can cast his vote in exact same way as him in a Division?

[Andrew Bowie]

Well said!

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[Stephen Doughty]

Absolutely. My right hon. Friend has made strong points on that issue. I suggest that people look at the excellent House of Commons Library briefing on this issue that sets out all the information clearly.

[David Linden]

Just to clarify, the Conservatives are saying that it is okay to break that law in a very “specific and limited” way.

[Stephen Doughty]

I am not going to put assertions in the mouth of the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell—that would not be right for me to do—but the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) has made his point.

Let me turn briefly to Wales, which will lose out in terms of the number of constituencies. We all support the principle of bringing greater equality among constituencies, but the point about Wales is really important. I think the Leader of the House misinterprets the guidance from the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe. I have read it and it is clear that departure from the specified point should seldom be 10% and definitely should not be over 15%. We are talking about 7.5%.

Evidence has been heard not only in respect of this Bill—I looked at that—but in previous Committee hearings in the House. For example, in 2014-15 the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee was clear on this issue, as was the evidence from the Boundary Commission for England itself about the difficulties for the boundary commissioners. I put on the record my thanks to all the staff who are involved in what is a very difficult process. They do an excellent job that is not easy—it is extremely complex and complicated—and I praise them for the work that they do.

There are specific issues in relation to Wales and geography, as indeed there are in certain other parts of the UK. It is absolutely right that distinct geographical exemptions are made for Ynys Môn, the Isle of Wight and Na h-Eileanan an Iar—I do not know whether I have pronounced that correctly; my Welsh pronunciation is a lot better than my Gaelic—because of water boundaries and islands, but distinctions also need to be made in relation to, for example, valley boundaries and mountains, which really do split constituencies.

We can end up with some very odd circumstances. We are not saying that the tolerances should be used as a matter course, just that the allowance should be there when it is a common-sense decision for the benefit and integrity of communities. I think of the circumstance in my own constituency in respect of the boundary review that was not put into place: the Cardiff bay barrage was split between three constituencies, thereby splitting apart the docks communities of Cardiff bay that sit together. A person would literally have passed through three communities as they walked along the barrage, which is only about 1 km long. It was absurd. We have to allow the boundary commissioners to take such things into account.

I have made the points that I wanted to make on the Lords amendments, so let me return to what President-elect Biden said:

“Democracy is the root of our society, the wellspring of our power, and the source of our renewal. It strengthens and amplifies our leadership to keep us safe in the world. It is the engine of our ingenuity that drives our economic prosperity.”

Those are words that I completely endorse and that we should have in our minds as we consider these important matters relating to our democracy. I support the position that we are taking on the Lords amendments.

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Lords amendment 7 is an example of that other species of amendment—the partisan. We rejected a similar Opposition amendment in Committee, and we articulated quite properly the reason that 5% variance from the mean was appropriate, fair and practical. I reiterate the belief among Government Members that splitting wards in England, as the commission in Scotland does there, will address the challenges around the larger ward sizes in metropolitan boroughs—what I have called the martini paradox. I encourage the English commission to prepare postcode-level data to enable this as a matter of priority.

[David Linden]

Does the hon. Gentleman therefore regret that the amendment that I tabled in Committee to that very effect was not supported by his own Government?

[Chris Clarkson]

I will stand to be corrected by the hon. Gentleman, but was that not a probing amendment, which he withdrew?

[David Linden]

The hon. Gentleman is right, but the Minister said that it was not something that the Government were willing to entertain. The fundamental point is that the Conservative Government do not support that principle.

[Chris Clarkson]

The hon. Gentleman can find out my views over a glass of wine once the Smoking Room reopens.

I am afraid that the argument that a wider variance will minimise disruption is entirely specious. We know that regions will differ in the number of seats necessitating significant change across the piece, and I demonstrated in Committee that even if there had been a 15% variance—the maximum allowed under the Venice Commission—my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) and I would still have been representing seats outwith the permitted tolerance. Such is the outdated nature of the current constituencies that I was not eligible to vote when the boundaries of my seat were last approved.

That brings me neatly to Lords amendment 8. There is a marvellous American expression: “Decisions are made by the people who show up.” However well-intentioned this amendment might be, I fear that it misses the point. We would all like to see greater participation in our democracy, but the right way to do that is not simply to add everyone’s name to the register. Individual electoral registration was brought in to combat electoral fraud, and I fully support that. I appreciate Opposition Members say that there have only been nine instances of fraud, but that is nine too many.

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[Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)]

Like many hon. Members I send my best wishes to my right hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith). She has been a friend for many years and I know that the thoughts of the whole House are with her and wishing for her swift recovery.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) and my hon Friends the Members for Gedling (Tom Randall), Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke), Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson), and West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) have all made excellent points, echoing many of the points that I wish to make. On Lords amendment 1, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton. I cannot understand, when we are seeing huge population growth and massive development in some constituencies, why one would want to have 10 years rather than eight. When I stood for the council in Tower Hamlets in 2008, I remember looking at the huge differences in population growth in east London that had occurred as a result of massive regeneration. That threw out not only council wards but some parliamentary constituencies by tens of thousands.

Most of my comments today relate to Lords amendment 7—or, for reasons that will become self-evident, what I call the Borat amendment. As the Venice Commission outlines in its core principle, the equality of voting power is a crucial standard of the concept of electoral integrity. That is important. There has been much talk about tolerance today, but it is a tolerance around a mean. Seven and a half per cent on either side makes a difference of 15% and that is a significant change from 10%. Page 21 of the Venice Commission’s 2017 report highlights two nations. One is Malta, whose constitution allows no more than 5% departure on either side of the average in order to take account of geographical vicinity. However, Kazakhstan allows 15% tolerance. Britain is in exactly the right place when it is more aligned to Maltese rules on different constituency sizes than it is to Kazakhstan’s rules.

What we all want is simple: equal representation as far as possible, but taking into account reasonable geographical changes.

[David Linden]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Holden]

I am speaking only briefly, so I am afraid not. Finally, I am glad that the Government have accepted Lords amendment 3, because we all know what happened in the late 1960s when Harold Wilson delayed and delayed in an attempt to deny democracy and hold Britain back in the 1950s—it did not serve him well. I am glad the Government are moving forwards and I urge all hon. Members to support the Government tonight.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne), and I join Members from all around the House in sending my best wishes to the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith). She is not only a fantastic Minister, but an exceptionally kind Member of the House, and she has been very kind to lots of new Members in particular.

Tragically, I was not on the Bill Committee, but the Whips have seen me right on the Order Paper tonight, as I will be on the Joint Committee on the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, in which I look forward to engaging with the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar), who is not in his place, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller). However, like the Bill Committee, I have spent the last few weeks studying maps with arbitrary boundaries, straight lines cutting through the middle of cities, districts drawn in extraordinary shapes and parts of marginal areas split up by huge lakes. At the end of all that, we do seem to have a clear result, so I warmly congratulate President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris on their triumph and achievement, and particularly Kamala Harris’s achievement as the first woman and first woman of colour to succeed to the vice-presidency.

I do not make this point just as a joke, but because the present US experience demonstrates some of the real concerns about legislating in this area and the politicisation of boundaries and electoral arrangements. Politicising these things undermines the independence of the process. It undermines its integrity, transparency and fairness and, as we have regrettably seen in the States, it also tends to undermine the acceptance of the result, which is absolutely fundamental to any democracy.

Here in the UK we have much to be proud of, but we should not be self-satisfied, because the boundaries on which I, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden) and many others were elected were set in 2006 for England, and that was based on data that was even older than that. When I was elected last December, the boundaries were already 13 years out of date. Two subsequent reviews have had to be abandoned. The first was abandoned, very clearly, on political grounds, I regret to say—not that it did the Liberal Democrats much good, but there we go.

I strongly welcome the Bill. I particularly welcome its automaticity and Lords amendments 3, 4 and 5, which strengthen that automaticity. I hope that this will be the last time that I need to debate these matters in the Chamber. Parliament is ultimately sovereign and it needs to lay out a framework for elections for parliamentary constituencies, but once we have a framework, I think that process should proceed by clockwork. There should be no parliamentary vote to stop the process that has been put in place.

I shall briefly speak to a couple of amendments with which I and the Government disagree. Amendments 1 and 2 are about the number of years. I think that eight years is a reasonable cycle length, for the reasons that many of my hon. Friends have given today, and it also means that there should be no need for interim reviews. They are a complication of the process that I do not think we need, but given the population growth that we are seeing, eight years allows us to get reviews on a reasonable cycle length.

So many Members have spoken to amendment 7, on tolerance. I am a tolerant man, but I think that 7,000 votes is more than enough tolerance between the smallest and largest constituencies in the country. An 11,000 difference when we have the opportunity to make it less than that seems over the top to me. I fundamentally believe in equal voting power for all Members in this place, as far as possible.

I will try to be brief—I also disagree with the other Lords amendments but I will not elaborate on the reasons why; they are basically the reasons that the Leader of the House set out in his excellent opening speech. Finally, just to reiterate my points on automaticity, let this Bill be the last time for a very long time that this House needs to legislate on these matters. The hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) said that this is our last chance and that once we pass the Bill, it is done. Well, I say: good, that is how it should be. Let the convention be re-established that boundary changes are a process that should not be interfered with by MPs.

[David Linden]

The hon. Gentleman talks about the House not interfering with the Boundary Commission’s process going forward. Why, then, did the Government not table the Orders in Council that allowed the last Parliament to have a vote on those boundary proposals?

[Aaron Bell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. There are two points. The one from my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke about the EU referendum was well made, and I regret to say that the Government—I was not a Member at the time—probably felt that there were not the votes in the House to get the proposals through. That is principally the same reason that the previous review was abandoned. I am trying to make the point that we should not rely on votes in the House to get a boundary review through. A boundary review will undoubtedly be bad news for certain Members and good news for others. The hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) might get a lovely SNP ward added to his seat, whereas I might lose a lovely rural ward, but it should not be for me to vote on that with my self-interest at heart. We need to create a fair, independent process, which is what the Bill does. I therefore commend it to the House and urge us to reject the Lords amendments, with the exception of the ones on automaticity.