Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I will just make a little more headway.

Equally problematic is the cumbersome process by which boundaries are drawn. The review process is lengthy and time-consuming. The last review in England took more than six years. The constituencies in place for the 2010 general election were based on data that were a decade old. At the root of this is the law governing how the boundary commissions carry out their work: the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986. The rules laid down in that Act are supposed to require each commission both to draw seats of equal size in its part of the United Kingdom and to have regard to considerations such as geography and community, which matter to many people. However, the scheme in that Act is flawed. The rules are in tension with each other, and the overall effect is that dozens of seats are far smaller or larger than others.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman could enlighten us. Is Mrs Clegg aware that under the current proposed legislation, her status as an EU citizen will mean that she is a non-person when it comes to counting the size of Sheffield, Hallam?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

She is aware of that, and I will remind her today.

Finally, the legislation underpinning reviews means that the number of MPs has crept up. We do not have a 650-seat House by design; it is simply a result of the flawed rules, which have a ratchet effect on the number of MPs. As a result, this House of Commons is now the largest directly elected Chamber in the European Union.

The Bill seeks to address each of those problems. New rules will demand that every constituency is within 5% of either side of a single size. Using the electoral register from last December, we estimate that this will be around 76,000 voters, as I have said. Subject to that strict requirement, the independent boundary commissions will then be able to continue to take into account the same factors as now: local geography, local authority boundaries and local ties. To guard against future misalignment of voter numbers in constituencies, boundary reviews will take place on a five-yearly basis.

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[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

So this Bill will apparently be the biggest shake-up of democracy since 1832; well, in Islington we know a few things about radicalism. We elected Tom Duncombe as our Finsbury MP in the 1830s. He wanted a universal franchise, so he presented the Chartist petition, which was signed by 3,315,752 people. That is radicalism, and that is what I call a real shake-up. This Bill is simply wrong, and it is not radical. Given how little time I have, I wish to focus on just a couple of matters. The first is the fact that it ignores a whole swathe of the residents of my constituency, and the second is the issue of AV.

It is estimated that more than 77,000 adults live in my constituency, but under the Bill only 66,400 will count. The others will be non-people. Far more of my constituents will become non-people under the Bill than, for example, in Witney, where there are approximately 82,000 adults, 78,000 of whom will count. I see the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), looking confused, so I shall explain why there is a difference.

First, there is the group of people who do not register to vote. According to the Electoral Commission, they are exactly the people of whom we have large numbers in my constituency. Half of young people do not register to vote, along with half of private tenants and a third of the black and minority ethnic community. There are not many young, black private sector tenants living in Witney, or in Maidenhead or Sheffield Hallam. It is no wonder the rate of non-registration for inner London is 18%. In Islington, our low registration was notorious. We reached the lowest point before the 2006 local elections, when the Liberal Democrat council achieved a measly response rate of 67%. When we challenged it to have a BME registration drive, the deputy leader of the council shouted across the council chamber, “That’s how we win elections.” As one can imagine, there was a huge row. To cut a long story short, as a result, in the 2010 election there were 9,000 more voters in Islington than there had been in 2005. Some 60% of them voted, and guess what? Six thousand more people voted Labour in Islington.

The second group of non-people that will be created in my constituency is those who come from outside the EU or the Commonwealth, many of whom are very political. In fact, they come from countries where the Governments believe they are far too political, which was why they had to come to this country in the first place. Many of them would love to vote, but they are not allowed to do so because they are not yet British citizens. Under the Bill, they will not exist. They will be non-people.

The third group is very important as well. They can vote and are on the electoral roll, but they do not vote in the right type of elections. In my constituency, I have 6,500 EU voters who, like Mrs Clegg, will not count under the Bill. That is 8% of the adult population there. As an MEP, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg) used to care about those people, but now he seems to have simply forgotten them, and they are to become non-people. According to the Library, more than half the countries in the world count entire populations when deciding on the size of constituencies, including France, Italy and Portugal. That is what we should be doing, rather than making 11,000 of my constituents non-people.

If that were not enough reason to oppose the Bill, I have another: I am against AV. My reasoning is simple: our current system builds a direct relationship between the community and its MP. Residents come together to decide whom they most want as their national representative; no one has more than one vote, which has to be cast responsibly; we are all equal and the first past the post gets elected. It is simplicity itself and it does not exclude anyone through being a complicated system or because people do not speak English as their first language. Some people scoff at the argument about complexity, but we can see from the London mayoral elections, in which five times as many ballot papers were spoiled as in the general election, that simplicity is important when trying to include everyone.

Of course, there are criticisms to be made of the current system, but AV will not resolve them. If AV brought us honest politicians, I would be a proud Finsbury MP, bringing another huge petition to Parliament, but it does not do such things and that is why the public are supremely uninterested in it. We should not spend our time on it.

The Bill is party political—a measure simply to prop up the coalition. I ask myself what Duncombe would make of it—of a measure that allows 11,000 adults in my constituency not to count in national policy. I am sure that he would be appalled at the use of the cloak of radicalism and the great cause of electoral reform to wrap around a sectarian measure. The Bill is designed merely to serve the interests of the ruling parties and to help prop up the wretched coalition. It will not improve people’s lives, and I will vote against it. I would use my second, third, fourth and fifth preferences to vote against it, too.

Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Winnick]

I would like to make some progress as I know that a number of colleagues wish to speak. IPSA’s justification is that the system works. I do not claim to be an expert in computer technology. My secretary makes the claims. I am not sure that when she was appointed, many years ago, that was one of her jobs. Be that as it may, it could be argued that whether or not we are acknowledged computer experts, that is the system.

Let me, however, give some illustrations in order to challenge what IPSA has said. One new MP—not of my party—told me that since he was elected, 80% of his time has been spent being an administrator. He did not consider that to be the reason he stood for election. If my party had won that constituency, it is likely that the Labour Member would be in precisely the same position.

Another colleague—not a new Member—said that he had spent four hours trying to submit a claim for the cost of petrol to and from his constituency. Four hours, and then the system crashed. On “Newsnight”, which some colleagues will have watched, a newly elected Conservative MP was shown using a computer. She said that trying to deal with the computer system set up by IPSA was far more complex than working as a GP in the national health service. Why should that be the case? Why should MPs, be they Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat, have to do that? We should not be spending hours and hours on such matters; we should be getting involved in the things that we were elected to deal with in the first place. It is indefensible that IPSA should have set up a system that is so difficult and complex, and which, particularly for new Members, has made life a nightmare.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend aware that 20 central London MPs have, on a cross-party basis, signed a letter to Sir Ian and held meetings with IPSA to highlight the historical problems that we have had in balancing our budgets—a difficulty greatly exacerbated by the changes in the rules? The penultimate sentence of our letter states that

“no thought has been given to the needs of central London MPs when designing this scheme of allowances.”

[Mr Winnick]

I am sure that that is an important and interesting intervention.

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[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

I promise to be extremely brief. I appreciate that many Members do not have a great deal of sympathy for us London MPs because we have the huge advantage of being able to go home every night and see our families, but we do have particular difficulties. Historically, we have had problems balancing our budgets. The current rules mean that the office limit of £12,761 is simply far too low for London MPs. The amount of money allowed for staff is too low for central London. IPSA suggests that we spend 20% more on our staff, but not a penny more is given to us to be able to employ them. The requirement for staff pensions creates new pressures on that tight budget, and the money allowed for staff bears no relation to the needs of the constituency.

It is the opinion of central London MPs that there should be an objective test, perhaps based on the index of multiple deprivation, on the basis of which we should be allowed additional case work. We have confessed to each other that, over the years, we have been putting large amounts of our own salaries into our staffing budgets. Frankly, this is the last straw. We are quite sure that IPSA intends to support Members of Parliament in their work, but it has got a number of the issues completely wrong, and that needs to change. We are pleased that IPSA has agreed to an early review, but we ask it to

“develop an objective method of assessing constituency need. Assess how many staff would be needed to meet that need. Fund that number of staff. Commit to funding increments for staff with long service. Commit to funding London weighting for London-based staff. Develop an objective method of assessing local rent levels. Fund a constituency office large enough to hold the assessed number of staff plus volunteers.”

We are asking for that not for ourselves but for our constituents. Our constituents would not believe it if we told them that MPs’ expenses meant that we could not do a proper job for them.

Saville Inquiry

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I hope that the report will not be used as a springboard for further inquiries or action. It is supposed to help by delivering the truth and helping to achieve closure—that is what it should be about. The hon. Gentleman asked about the Historical Enquiries Team, the funding of which, as he knows, is about £34 million—much less than the cost of the Saville inquiry. However, I think that everyone accepts that the cost of that inquiry was huge—£100 million was spent on lawyers alone. While acknowledging, as I have done, that it is a full, clear and unequivocal—and, in that respect, a good—report, I am sure that even the former Government would have recognised that lessons needed to be learned about cost control. That is why there was the Inquiries Act 2005 to replace the 1921 arrangements. The issue of the HET is now a devolved issue, and I would add that in opposition we supported the generous funding settlement for the devolved Administration to cover such areas.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

Speaking as someone of Northern Irish heritage and representing a constituency with large numbers of the Irish diaspora, I welcome the publication—finally—and clarity of the Saville report. I also thank the hon. Members for Foyle (Mark Durkan) and for South Antrim (Dr McCrea) for the moving way in which they addressed the House today. However, although the report has clarity, does the Prime Minister agree that there are times when truth and justice do not necessarily go together?

[The Prime Minister]

I echo what the hon. Lady said about the Members who have spoken today. On truth and justice going together, without wanting to write a whole essay, it seems to me that a very important part of the justice that people in Northern Ireland seek is having the truth about what happened out in the open. People in the city of Londonderry want that transparency and accountability, and many Democratic Unionist Members want the same for their constituents who have suffered in the same way. Having the truth out about what happened does not bring back relatives and loved-ones, but it at least enables people to understand what happened; and it enables prosecutions to be brought forward, if that is the right thing to do. However, I repeat that it must be for independent prosecuting authorities to take those decisions—we must not get into a situation where politicians nudge the prosecuting authorities in one direction or another in that sort of way.

Constitution and Home Affairs

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Yes; I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for, once again, really picking out the important things in the debate today.

We are also committed to strengthening Parliament by introducing the Wright Committee’s proposals, starting with the proposed committee for the management of Back-Bench business before the subsequent introduction of a House business committee to consider Government business.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I should like to make a bit of progress if I may.

We also plan to strengthen the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, too, by implementing recommendations from the Calman commission’s final report. Equally, Wales will get a referendum on further devolution—a decision that will be taken by the Welsh people.

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[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The answer is no. The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) was right. That was not offered by the Labour party in those discussions. The hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) is right—I should know whether it was offered or not.

[Emily Thornberry]

Does the right hon. Gentleman intend to address the issue of low voter registration? He may well know that on 23 February 2006 in Islington town hall there was an attempt to increase voter registration by the Labour group, which was voted down by the Liberals. After the proposal was voted down, the leader of the Liberal council shouted across the chamber, “That’s how we win elections.”

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

We believe, as did the previous Government, that we need to introduce individual voter registration. I agree with the right hon. Member for Blackburn that that should be pursued, particularly if it is accelerated, with great care. It is a resource-intensive thing to do. We need to get it right.

The current legislation, which the right hon. Gentleman and others introduced, allows for voluntary individual voter registration to start now, with a view to moving towards a compulsory system by 2015, if I am correct. There is now an issue about whether we want to accelerate that process, but we can all agree that if we do so it must be properly resourced and organised.

I should now like to address the issue that the right hon. Gentleman raised at quite some length: the redrawing of Britain’s unfair electoral boundaries. I completely agree with the right hon. Gentleman that that must be done with care, but he must agree with me that the need for care is not a reason not to act at all. The most recent boundary review in England began in 2000 and took six years to report. By the time the new constituencies were used in the general election last month, the population of one in five constituencies in England was more than 10% above or below that review’s target figure of 69,900. In the most extreme case, we have one constituency that is five times the size of another. That is simply not right. It is the ultimate postcode lottery, whereby the weight of one’s vote depends on where one lives, so I ask the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues to engage fully with the process as, over the coming months, Parliament has its say on an overall but modest reduction in the number of House of Commons seats.