Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Drew Hendry Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 2nd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

I am glad to see that the Lord President of the Council is back in his place, because I want to put this on the record in relation to this afternoon’s conduct. We were told we were coming back to the House so that we would have more time for parliamentary and legislative scrutiny, but rather ironically the time we have for this debate has been curtailed by chewing up the best part of two hours to vote. I want to let the Leader of the House reflect on that.

Coming into the Chamber today gave me a sense of déjà vu. That is not because it is the first time I have been back in Parliament since lockdown started, but because I feel that we have been debating boundaries for many years now.

It is genuinely a delight to be Front-Benching today alongside the Minister and the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith), because in the last Parliament the three of us spent what felt like a huge portion of our lives on the Public Bill Committee that considered the Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill, which was brought forward by the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan). I would be willing to wager that it is the only Bill in parliamentary history where all three Front Benchers went away and had children during the consideration of the Bill. However, little Rosamund, Eli and Jessica now have the dubious title of being children of the Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill.

While the Bill of the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton fell during not one, but two Prorogations—one of which was deemed unlawful—it was certainly helpful in setting down a marker for where we are at today. His Bill sought valiantly to fight off plans from the Government to reduce the number of seats in this House from 650 to 600. As many of us argued back then, reducing the number of MPs, particularly with new legislative powers coming back from Brussels, would have been a bonkers proposal and flies in the face of the argument about cutting the cost of politics, particularly given the ever-expanding House of peers along the corridor.

I genuinely welcome the U-turn made by the Government to stick to 650 seats, although I say again to the Government that if they are genuinely interested in constitutional reform and want to slim down the size of the UK legislature, some of us would be very glad to see 59 fewer seats in the House when Scotland becomes independent.

I am glad that the Government have seen sense and abandoned the proposal to cut the number of MPs with the implementation of new boundaries. The boundaries do need reviewing and on that the Minister will find cross-party support. Indeed, my current constituency boundaries have been in place since I was 15 years old, and the constituency has seen significant house building since then. One street in my constituency—Sword Street—has three Members of Parliament. Like the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood, I disagree profusely with elements of the Bill, and for that reason the SNP will support the reasoned amendment in the name of the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer).

My first and immediate concern with the Bill relates to Scottish representation in the House. As I alluded to earlier, Scotland currently is entitled to 59 seats in Parliament. Although many of us would not wish to see Scotland being governed from London at all, that is the current constitutional reality for now. Based on the proposed electoral quotas, we would probably see Scotland going down by two or three seats to the advantage of England, which strikes me as being wholly unfair.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the electoral quotas proposed in the Bill risk reducing representation in rural Scotland even further, particularly in the highlands? I already face a 110-mile round trip to conduct my advice surgeries. My colleagues have to travel on small boats and go to overnight stays to conduct their duties in their constituencies. The quota proposals are a real risk for the representation of people in Scotland, particularly in rural areas.

[David Linden]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. He has put that on record, and it rather serves to reinforce the view that when legislation is drafted up in the Cabinet Office by Ministers, they take no cognizance at all of the situation in rural Scotland, from where Members of Parliament, such as him and my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), have had to travel for probably the best part of a day to get here—some of that just within their own constituencies. It is a point well made and something that the Government would do well to reflect upon.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Linden]

The one flaw in that argument is that in the last Parliament the Government started with a majority, and the majority disappeared. I do not think it happens to be a bad thing that we put things in front of Parliament, and if Parliament does not want them, it rejects them. I think all of us who served in the last Parliament remember the inconvenience of that and the stress that it caused the Government. I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman, who I understand is a Brexiteer, cannot have his cake and eat it. He cannot say that Parliament is sovereign and Parliament should be taking back control, and then bring forward legislation that removes the role of Parliament. That, I am afraid, is a massive contradiction.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way once again. Under these proposals, the reviews will only be carried out every eight years. That would take no account of cities such as Inverness, which I represent, where we have had exponential growth in the estimated total of population. It is now sitting at 64,000, and only today it has been highlighted in The Inverness Courier as the fastest growing city in Scotland. If that is given away, there is no ability to adjust those things.

[David Linden]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Again, the Government must go back and look at this matter.

I want to come back to that point about the size of constituencies, because the Bill does not address the fact that it still allows for constituencies of up to 12,000 square kilometres. That is about eight times the size of Greater London, which has 73 MPs, with much more challenging transport links. We will seek to amend that in Committee. I hope the Government will not just use their majority to ram the Bill through, because a majority in Parliament does not mean a monopoly on wisdom.

This Second Reading debate provides an opportunity to comment on the principles of the Bill, which I have now dealt with, but, while we are on this topic, I want to speak more broadly about electoral reform. We have the opportunity now to look again at some of the injustices within our political and electoral system—perhaps we could even call it levelling things up. A new Parliament means another opportunity to test the will of the House on votes at 16, leaving behind the broken first-past-the-post voting system, which, although it has benefited me, is morally wrong and something that we need to look at again. We also need to look at abolishing the tainted House of Lords. These are issues that fall within the remit of the Minister at the Dispatch Box, for whom I have great personal respect. Although we have had disagreements about the merits of reducing the number of seats from 650 to 600, I genuinely believe that she is someone who listens and considers an argument on merit. When she had clearly done that, she came back to the House with a revised number of 650 seats.

Although I accept that the Bill will probably pass Second Reading, I very much hope that, when it goes upstairs to Committee, we can make the necessary changes to ensure that Scotland has proper representation and sensible, up-to-date boundaries that are fit for purpose for so long as we need to be here.