Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Gareth Johnson 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

[Cat Smith]

The Opposition recognise the need for constituencies to be broadly as equal as possible, but anyone who stands up in this House and says that they truly believe that all constituencies should be equal should look at the data from December 2019. If we were to take that data on how the electorate looked and say that every constituency had to be exactly equal, every constituency would have to have an electorate of 72,613. Not 72,614 or 72,612—those figures would be outside the quota. There will always need to be a variance, and it is a question of striking a balance between having constituencies that are broadly equal and constituencies that represent their community ties.

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

The amendment does not mention 7.5%. If that is Labour party policy, would it not lead to a situation where there could be two constituencies side by side with a 15% difference in their numbers, thereby totally undermining the argument that every vote should have equal weight?

[Cat Smith]

The 7.5% I drew attention to is in the private Member’s Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), so if the hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) wants to know where the figure comes from, I suggest he speaks to his hon. Friend.

I am conscious that you want to get all Back Benchers into this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. There are many aspects of the Bill that make sense and that we welcome—for example, giving the boundary commissioners more flexibility to use local government and ward boundaries that are yet to come into force. We also welcome the move to hold reviews every eight years. The longer cycle will limit the disruption caused to parliamentary constituencies, potentially resulting in savings, but ensuring that MPs remain accountable to their constituents, so that we are not elected to this place and our constituents are never given a chance to hold us to account in a further election.

I look forward to hearing the contributions from all Members to this important debate. It is time for a democratic boundary review, and the Labour party will not stand in the way of that. However, the Bill must not strengthen the power of the Executive at the expense of Parliament. I hope the Minister will consider changing the numeration date, given the extraordinary circumstances of covid-19.

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[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

We all know that boundary changes are long overdue. We have all heard about the anomalies around the country, with some seats knocking on 80,000 to 90,000 electors, and others having only 40,000 to 50,000 electors. That cannot be right. The debate should be about what will happen later, when we are rowing with the boundary commission about its recommendations for our particular area, rather than the principle of changing the boundaries. This is all about fairness. It is about ensuring that, when you go to a polling station on election day, your vote is as worthy as that of somebody else in a neighbouring constituency. That seems to be the basic principle behind this.

I very much agree with what the shadow Minister said about the principle of changing from 600 seats to 650 seats. It is a welcome measure, because since that policy was introduced by the coalition Government, we have had the Brexit referendum, when it was decided that we were going to be leaving the European Union. As a consequence, more laws will be dealt with here, requiring more scrutiny in this House, as opposed to the European Parliament. It would seem odd to have fewer MPs here trying to scrutinise more legislation.

[Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)]

Surely keeping 650 seats will make it easier to keep communities together, rather than split them up. One of the problems with the proposal of 600 seats was that communities were split up, and communities are the basis of our constituencies.

[Gareth Johnson]

My right hon. Friend makes an interesting point, because having 650 Members of Parliament means that we represent fewer constituents.

The Labour party manifesto had only one clear commitment about boundary changes, and that was to have 650 seats. They have got that, and yet still they want to refuse to give the Bill a Second Reading, even when they have been successful on the main policy in their manifesto on boundary changes.

I agree with the Labour party that, had we stuck with the original policy and gone back to 600 MPs, we would have seen a decrease in the size of the legislature, but the Executive would have stayed the same size. That is a valid argument for saying that there would be a disproportionate impact on the House if we went back to 600 seats. But that is not happening, and I therefore find it slightly odd that we are not seeing some support from the Labour party.

We have been accused of not paying enough interest in local communities by not having an electoral quota of plus or minus 7.5% or 10%—I am not quite sure what the Labour party policy is on that. If that were the case, we could have simply taken the electorate of the whole country and divided it by 650, and that is what the boundary commissions would have had to implement. That is far from what we are doing. What we are doing is recognising that in three separate areas of the country, there are particular circumstances which mean that they do not have to comply with that leeway, but around the rest of the country, there is the ability to have plus or minus 5%.

The Labour party should be following us through the Lobby—after an hour or so—and supporting us in this. We should be together on this, because I think we can all support the general principle that each person’s vote has equal weight. I accept that MPs are naturally nervous when it comes to boundary changes. Nobody likes them, and we should not have them too often. We work very hard to try to get to know towns, villages and individuals, to build the important bond that exists between a Member of Parliament and his or her constituents. That is a fundamental principle of British politics. Every time that we have a boundary change, we can lose whole communities with the stroke of a pen. It is therefore only natural that we should be very nervous about the whole process. But those arguments come later down the road, when the recommendations come from the Boundary Commission. The commission is, by the way, an independent organisation that is chaired by Mr Speaker, whose deputies are judges who will scrutinise the whole process. It is a non-political process that is entirely independent and free from this House. We should be proud of the system that we have in this country, as it cannot be gerrymandered easily.

I ask the Labour party to reconsider its position. It has got what it said it wanted in its manifesto; that is now the policy of the Government. There is nothing in the Labour manifesto or its official policy about plus or minus 7.5%. The only thing that the amendment specifies is the number 650, and we have got that. The rest of it is platitudes and generalisations that we can argue about in Committee and so on. The basic principle—that we need boundary changes in this country because we are 20 years and counting behind—remains. That is a general principle that the Labour party should be able to get behind.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Gareth Johnson Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns). I have to say, I found it quite strange hearing a man whose job in the last Government was to stand up for Wales in the Cabinet give such full-throated support to a Bill that will see Wales lose eight seats. Someone whose job in Cabinet was to be the voice of Wales has just stood up and said that he is quite content to see Wales lose seats, but that is a matter for him.

I rise to speak to new clause 2, which is in my name and those of my hon. and right hon. Friends. I want to start by thanking again all Members with whom I served on the Bill Committee, which I admit I probably took an unhealthy amount of joy and pleasure from. I suspect that I was not the only one—the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson) had a “Rain Man” effect on some of us quite a few times. It was a meeting of minds for parliamentary geeks and psephologists, and in my view, it did not last long enough. All members of the Committee were thoughtful, engaging and good-natured. In particular, I enjoyed my exchanges with the Minister and the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith), who led for the Opposition. Remarkably, this is the first time that all three of us have managed to get out of a boundaries Bill Committee without gaining extra offspring—that said, the Bill has not had Royal Assent yet, so we will not count our chickens.

On Second Reading, I made it clear that the Scottish National party will not oppose the Bill, not because it was in any way perfect—far from it. However, we genuinely welcomed the Government’s U-turn on cutting the number of constituencies from 650 to 600. I was delighted to see clause 5 in the Bill, and I was probably the only Member who spoke to it with such enthusiasm in Committee. I think that some Conservative Members found it quite difficult to speak in support of clause 5, which reversed what they had enshrined in law through the 2011 Act.

I wholeheartedly agree with the Minister that our exit from the European Union means that there will be more legislative work for hon. Members to undertake, and therefore, cutting the number of MPs would be a very silly move, but I will return to that point later.

Before I turn to my concerns about the Bill, I want to welcome the amendment that we passed in Committee in respect of Ynys Môn, which will finally be a protected constituency, joining the Isle of Wight, Orkney and Shetland, and Na h-Eileanan an Iar. Anglesey, on which I have certainly enjoyed a holiday, was first established as a constituency in 1536—probably around the point when the current Leader of the House was colouring in “Erskine May” as an enthusiastic toddler. In all seriousness, there was unanimous support in Committee for the proposal to protect Ynys Môn and I am glad that we achieved at least one change in our deliberations on the Committee Corridor. However, I bitterly regret the fact that the Government did not compromise on more issues because, as I said on Second Reading, the Government might have a majority in this House, but they certainly have no monopoly on wisdom. There are still aspects of this Bill, even as amended, that trouble me deeply, and I will outline them now.

First, there has rightly been much discussion about the controversial issue of automaticity. I was remarking to my friend the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood earlier this week that we do not actually know whether automaticity is a word, but it was certainly coined and used over and over again in Committee. We heard lots of evidence on both sides of the argument concerning Parliament’s role in having oversight of the Boundary Commission’s recommendations. While many of the points made by witnesses and Government members of the Committee were thoughtful and sincere, I am still not persuaded of the merits of this provision. We were repeatedly told during the Brexit process that Parliament is taking back control and that Parliament is sovereign. In my view, this move does exactly the opposite, with Parliament ceding its role of parliamentary oversight. Clause 2 of the Bill would enshrine this blatant power grab in statute, and therefore my party will support amendment 1 if my friend the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood chooses to divide the House.

Secondly, I am in favour of Labour’s new clause 1, which deals with the electoral quota. The Scottish National party supports a wider tolerance and we feel that moving to 7.5% is a reasonable compromise that would give boundary commissioners more flexibility in drawing up more manageable constituencies, which would be welcome. Certainly, the evidence we heard in Committee is that they are looking for as much flexibility as possible, and I think that it is incumbent upon us to respond to that. If my pal from Lancaster and Fleetwood puts new clause 1 to the vote, we will support Labour on that as well.

Thirdly—this is the nub of the matter for me—the Bill is absolutely rotten for the devolved nations, which is why I and my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake) have tabled new clause 2, which we will seek to divide the House on. I want to outline to hon. Members precisely why we have chosen to focus on new clause 2 on Report and why I feel so passionately about this, but, more importantly, why I believe that others should too.

As I made clear on Second Reading and in Committee, bluntly, I do not want to see any Scottish seats in this House. Constitutionally, I do not want Scotland to be a part of the United Kingdom at all, because Scotland is a nation, and nations are best served when they govern themselves. However, I am a democrat and I accept that until the people of Scotland vote by a majority for independence in a referendum, we must continue to participate with diligence in the proceedings of this House and give Scotland a strong voice in accordance with the mandate delivered by our constituents, regardless of which party we represent.

As I have said repeatedly, Scotland’s current representation in this House, and indeed that of Wales, must not be diminished or reduced in any boundary reform. However, the reality of the Bill is that Scotland will lose three seats and Wales will lose eight. That is far from the Westminster respect agenda that people in Scotland were promised in the wake of our 2014 referendum result. Indeed, it is a democratic outrage and it is not one that we will stand for.

It is not just nationalists in this House who should be concerned about diminished representation in the House of Commons for the devolved nations. Surely every Union flag-waving, “Rule Britannia” singing Member in the Scottish Conservatives should be able to see that Scotland’s voice being diminished in Westminster is bad for the harmony and integrity of their precious, precious Union. What we see in the Bill is a blatant power grab of seats from the devolved nations, with them being given directly to England—[Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan seems to suggest that he is unhappy about that. He can challenge it if he wants to, but that is the reality in the Bill. It is a power grab of seats from the devolved nations—the devolved nations that he was meant to stand up for in Cabinet. They are being taken away from countries such as Wales and given to England. That is a fact, and if he cannot stand up and refute that, I am afraid that it is on the record.

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the primary purpose of this legislation is to ensure that votes have equal weight, and if he does accept that will he therefore also accept that his amendment would drive a coach and horses through that basic principle, because votes will count for far more in Wales and Scotland than in rest of the United Kingdom?

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[John Spellar]

Why did it come up with that in the first place when it was clearly such a dumb proposal? Parliament was the necessary corrective to this. It said: “This doesn’t work”, and by the way Conservative Members were still in a majority at the time. What’s even more extraordinary, in this Parliament, where the Government have a clear majority, they still do not believe they could carry the day with their own Members. There is a danger of that. There is a danger that the bureaucracy of the Boundary Commission will not pay regard to local sensitivities or communities and we will end up once again with boundaries of which Governor Gerry of Massachusetts, the founder of the gerrymander, would have been proud.

At the same time, it would be much better to go back to many of the basic principles, such as the principle, where possible, of not crossing borough or ward boundaries. In urban areas as well, these places form communities. The hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) is right about the size of some of the building blocks. That is why, within boroughs and other areas, people might have to accept some temporary disparity, but that might be a better than having one MP representing part of a particular ward and another representing the rest. Equally, there is the problem of orphan wards, which we have in many areas of the boundary review, whereby one ward is in a constituency in another borough. Inevitably, the focus of the Member of Parliament will be on the main borough. It is unnecessary and gratuitous.

It all depends on whether people believe, as I certainly do, and many Conservative Members do as well, in the fundamental principle of individual constituencies with individual Members of Parliament, not proportional list Members. If people think that Members of Parliaments’ connection to their constituencies does not matter, that is fine—just have a national list. I fundamentally do not believe that—and by the way nor did the British public when they voted it down in a referendum.

Let us be clear: we want to ensure that parliamentarians represent their constituencies and their constituency interests, and that is why we need a parliamentary override and a slightly wider area of discretion, so that anomalies can be properly dealt with and responded to, rather than the artificial constructs the Boundary Commission is forced into—maybe sometimes it goes into them a little too willingly—instead of looking at the interests of localities, particularly in urban areas.

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

I was actually enjoying the speech from the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar), and I agreed with some of his points, but it is worth pointing out that the purpose of the original decision by David Cameron and Nick Clegg to reduce the number of constituencies was to reduce the cost of politics at the time. [Interruption.] That was the argument put forward. Then we had Brexit and so on, but I actually agree with the principle of 650 constituencies in the UK, because if we are not going to reduce the size of the Executive, it would create some disparity, so I welcome the changes.

I congratulate the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), and all the members of the Bill Committee on their work. It can be a complicated matter on occasions. We must not lose sight of the basic principle behind the Bill, which is to ensure that each vote in the UK carries the same weight—that there is an equal suffrage. When someone casts their vote in the polling station at any election, they should be confident that their vote is just as valuable as anybody else’s. We therefore need boundary changes to take place, because there is an unacceptable disparity now.

I agree again with the right hon. Member for Warley that we as parliamentarians and constituency MPs do not like boundary changes, because we put a lot of investment, time and commitment into building up a relationship with our constituents, communities, villages and towns, and at a stroke of a pen the Boundary Commission can remove that connection that we have worked so hard on. In some ways, these changes are welcome, but in some ways they can be very difficult.

The main reason I wanted to speak in this debate is that, as sad as it may sound, I was looking through the Hansard reports of the Public Bill Committee and an awful lot was said about the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe and its attitude towards the electoral quota and how much tolerance there should be between the size of different constituencies. I am the UK lead on the OSCE, and I have looked into what it actually said. For Members who are unaware of its work, the organisation sends election monitors to various countries around the world to ensure they are carried out in a fair, impartial and democratic way.

The OSCE does not have a view on whether there should be a 5% or a 7.5% tolerance in the electoral quota, but it is worth noting what it states in its “Guidelines for Reviewing a Legal Framework for Elections”. It states:

“Electoral constituencies should be drawn in a manner that preserves equality among voters. Thus, the law should require that constituencies be drawn in such a way that each constituency has approximately the same population size…The manner in which constituencies are drawn should not circumvent the principle of equal suffrage, which is a cornerstone of democratic elections.”

[Emma Hardy]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Since his hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson) was unable to get to the point in his speech where he was going to answer my question, I will instead ask him. In this keenness to involve every person and make every vote count, what is his opinion on automatic voter registration?

[Gareth Johnson]

People have the option, if they want, to register to vote. That was made a very easy process by the previous Government, particularly through the actions of my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), who was at pains to ensure that people found it very easy to register to vote. Of course, people have the right not to vote if they wish. I would argue that automatically assuming that somebody wants to vote is incorrect.

[John Spellar]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman read the Committee reports, but I am not sure he read my comments. I read out the OSCE’s recommendation that

“the maximum admissible departure from the distribution criterion…should seldom exceed 10 per cent”—

departure from the criterion would mean in either direction—

“and never 15 per cent, except in really exceptional circumstances”.

We were being quite modest; we were only asking for a 7.5% departure.

[Gareth Johnson]

I did read the right hon. Gentleman’s quote, and I have looked into exactly what that was. It was not the OSCE that said that, but the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission. It is clear from the quote I gave and from what the Council of Europe has said that the further we move away from the median, and the greater tolerance we give to departures from it, the less weight there is to each individual vote and the more disparity there will be between constituencies.

If the House allows for 7.5% to be the maximum departure from the electoral quota, we would be saying that the size of an electorate can differ by 15 percentage points between individual constituencies. We would then be going down a road where people’s votes would not count the same, so I think new clause 1 should be rejected for that reason. The main reason we are having boundary changes is to ensure we do not have constituencies that are too large, and we have got constituencies that are too large. We also have constituencies that are too small, where people have a greater weight to their individual votes. I argue that we should reject the 7.5% proposal.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, I do apologise for attending the Chamber late—it takes me a little time to get here.

The hon. Member refers to avoiding making constituencies too large. The present constituency that I represent, if it had been enlarged under the David Cameron proposals, would have included Shieldaig, and the driving time from Shieldaig to Wick, which is also in the constituency—148 miles—is three hours and 15 minutes. What I want to put to the hon. Member and the Chamber is that this is not just about the number of votes, but about the right of access to an MP that the voters have. When an MP has to cover an area that big, surely there is a democratic deficit.

[Gareth Johnson]

This is perhaps one of the arguments behind keeping to 650 so the actual sizes of constituencies do not change. I have one of the few constituencies in the country that would actually have lost voters, even under the 600 formula, so there are a lot of differences between hon. Members’ constituencies.

I would ask that the Labour party supports this Bill as it goes through Parliament. The only thing in the Labour party’s manifesto about boundary changes was changing from 600 to 650. It has got what it asked for, and therefore should be supportive of the Government on this particular Bill.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

I shall speak to new clause 3, tabled in my name and those of my other Liberal Democrat colleagues, and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas).

The Government’s rationale for this Bill is that they want to make every vote count equally, and we have heard that. I pointed out on Second Reading that an electoral system in which a Government can win a majority of seats in this House without a majority of votes is one in which votes can never count equally. What the Government really mean is that they want to ensure that constituencies are more or less equally sized. I think there is broad agreement across the House that, within our current electoral system, there are good reasons to do this, although there is clearly disagreement about just how strict that equality should be.

While we have spent much time discussing how much equality there should be between constituencies, we have not really addressed what I believe is a fundamental question: equality of what? That is why I have tabled my amendment. The legislation, as it currently stands, says that there should be equality between the electorates of different constituencies, and that equality should be determined as a proportion of the electorate of the country.

That is not the only option available. New Zealand, for example, uses the census to determine constituency sizes, and I am sympathetic to this. We provide public services to everyone in our constituency, regardless of whether they are eligible to vote or indeed registered to vote. However, my new clause does something else: it redefines what “electorate” means for the purposes of this Bill. Currently, the electorate within the scope of the Bill means all those people on the electoral roll. I would expand this definition. My amendment would include all those who are eligible to vote, not just those who happen to be on the electoral roll at the time of the review.

According to the Electoral Commission, over 9 million people who are eligible to vote are not currently on the electoral roll. I would suggest to the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson) that these are not necessarily people who choose not to vote. Our electoral register is incomplete by a large amount. That is a huge problem for our democracy, and it is a problem for this Bill and for what the Government hope to achieve by it, for how can we say that this Bill makes constituencies equal sized when it is based on an incomplete register that misses out nearly 20% of eligible voters? It is easy to think up examples. Two parts of this country may well have an identical number of eligible voters, but one local register may be more complete than the other, and as a result one part of the country counts for more than the other when it comes to the boundary review. That will be the reality when this review takes place.

This also raises questions about the value some Members are placing on this 5%. We must also remember that, by the time of the 2024 election, voters who have lived overseas for more than 15 years will, according to this Government’s manifesto, also be eligible to vote. This is a move that I and my party welcome, but it is another reason why the boundaries that this review will create will never be truly equal. They are out of date before they are even used for the first time.

The most concerning thing, however, is that the 9 million who are eligible to vote but not on the register are not just a random collection of individuals. The groups who are disproportionately likely to be eligible to vote but not on the roll include young people, renters, those for whom English is not their first language, and black, Asian and minority ethnic communities. As far as I am concerned, this is a total failure of public policy. Since the murder of George Floyd back in May, we have collectively reflected across this House on the fact that the structures and institutions that make up our society too frequently produce inferior outcomes for those people who are not white. Every Member of this House should be incredibly concerned about the fact that if someone is black, they are disproportionately unlikely to appear on the electoral roll. We are about to carry out a boundary review that will disproportionately exclude BAME people from being counted. That surely is not right.

That is the problem my new clause seeks to address. It would mean that the fact that our register is incomplete does not make a difference because the Boundary Commission would consider these potential electors too. It is entirely possible to treat 100% enrolment as an achievable goal.

Within this country, in Northern Ireland, there is a far more concerted effort to ensure that those in sixth forms and colleges are put on to the electoral register just as they turn 18. I welcome such assisted registration measures, which should be considered throughout the UK. The Government should accept that the annual canvass fails to register a huge number of people. Automatic voter registration is used in many countries, and it is an issue that the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) raised in her ten-minute rule Bill recently. Just last week, the Lords Select Committee on the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 found the same thing. It said that completeness of the register had not improved, and it proposed automatic and assisted registration as well as ways to reduce duplicate applications. We have to be doing more on this issue, and I hope that the Minister will offer assurances during her winding-up speech that the Government are willing to engage with this issue.