Draft Warrington (Electoral Changes) Order 2016

Helen Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2016 General Committees

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I do not wish to detain the Committee long. The hon. Member for Warrington South made the case, as is quite right, about what has happened in Warrington South, but I gently want to point out that there are two constituencies in Warrington. In Warrington North, although we did not get everything that we wanted from the Boundary Commission, we are reasonably happy about going ahead with this. The hon. Gentleman’s case seems to be based on what is happening in the parishes, rather than in the borough wards.

In my constituency, parish boundaries have crossed borough ward boundaries for a considerable period, and villages have been put together in one ward. That is inevitable in a growing town. I live in the village of Culcheth, but the ward is Culcheth, Glazebury and Croft—all distinct communities. The Burtonwood and Westbrook Parish Council crosses two distinct borough wards. There is a Westbrook ward, a Burtonwood and Winwick ward, and a separate Winwick parish council. They do not align with the boundaries. The ancient community of Risley is now part of the Birchwood ward in Warrington. The north of the town has been in that position for some time. There has been no meltdown and we have managed to live with it quite easily.

I looked at some of the comments made in my local paper about the new boundaries. The leader of the Liberal Democrats basically said that he did not quite understand that the Boundary Commission meant what it said when it told him that there was only a 10% tolerance either way. The Conservative leader in the area does not like his ward of Hatton, Stretton and Walton being abolished. That is a fair point. None of us would like that, but it does not mean that the boundaries are not right. Equally, there have been complaints about Lymm being separated into two wards, but it is a growing area and my understanding is that if its boundaries are not dealt with this time, it will shortly exceed the level of tolerance again and there will have to be yet another boundary review.

Most of the submissions to the Boundary Commission’s draft proposal came from that one area of Warrington—south of the ship canal. I understand that people are aggrieved but it is not a problem for the whole borough. In fact, 100 of the 144 submissions made came from that area alone. It is arguable that the change does not reflect communities. I agree with the hon. Gentleman about that and that is precisely what the Government will achieve when they rejig parliamentary boundaries; numbers will trump everything else.

Although the hon. Gentleman has a fair point about the parish wards and the number of people who will be on the ballot paper, by itself that point is not sufficient to postpone borough elections. It is, as he rightly said, fixable—not in the next few months, but over time. Yet, if the proposals are withdrawn today, we are faced with two options: either councillors will be elected on the old wards for a year and then we will have another all-out election, which seems to be a costly and expensive way of dealing with the problem; or, we postpone the elections this year, people do not get a chance to vote, and we have all-out elections the following year, which seems to be an overreaction to the problem we face.

Although the hon. Gentleman has rightly made a case for his area, there is a whole other area of Warrington that has new boundaries and is happy to live with them, even if bits of the proposals are not what we would have wanted. We would not necessarily have wanted the changes between wards in my constituency but our general view is that we need to go ahead and get these elections done. The problems with the parishes can be dealt with afterwards but they should not postpone new boundaries for borough elections.