Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill

Huw Merriman Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 1st December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin). It was also interesting to hear the contribution from my neighbour the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper)—we wave at one another across the River Severn. It is interesting and somewhat ironic that both the colleagues of the right hon. Gentleman who have spoken did not seem to agree with him as much as I am going to disagree with him. Perhaps that is because he was a member of the Executive and some of us have not had that opportunity.

I will keep my remarks much briefer than the right hon. Gentleman did, but I want to make a contribution because, quite simply, I support my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan). It is right and proper that we keep the size of this House as it is. It is somewhat ludicrous that, with an ever-increasing population, for whatever reason, we seem to be reducing the number of representatives in this House. Important though it is that we look at how to save money, there are other and better ways we can do that, not the least of which, some of us would argue, includes scrapping the House of Lords. However, that would be for another day and another debate.

My arguments start with the contrary point to that of my neighbour, the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean. Yesterday I was stopped in the street by someone from Minchinhampton—which is, as he may remember, now in The Cotswolds constituency—begging me to take up a case on their behalf, saying, “Why don’t you come back and become our representative again?” In that boundary review, I argued the case for keeping Minchinhampton as part of Stroud. Those who know my area would hardly describe Minchinhampton as a bastion of socialism. It is probably as strong a Conservative ward as I have in the Stroud district, within the constituency and without. Locational representation matters in this place. It matters to the people outside more than we think it does. They like to know who their MP is. They may not always agree with them or always be of the same party, but when they come to us with their problems, they know enough about who we are, what we can do, and what we should do.

The relationship with our local authority matters. If these proposals go through as constituted, the Stroud district, which has only 100,000 people, will be represented by three different MPs. I think that is wrong. It leads to confusion and to bitterness because people want to know who their Member of Parliament is and want to know that they have a relationship with the local authority.

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

rose—

[Dr Drew]

I will give way briefly; we have lots of people waiting to speak.

[Huw Merriman]

The hon. Gentleman seems to be making the case for having no elections at all. I find that somewhat bizarre in a place such as this.

[Dr Drew]

As someone who has stood in seven parliamentary elections and knows his area rather better than the hon. Gentleman, I will take that as a slight rather than a positive intervention.

Location matters. It matters because geography matters, ties to an area matter, local authority representation matters, and the relationship with other constituencies matters. I could not represent any other area. No other area would have me! I am quite simply the MP for Stroud, the area I have always stood for. I would never stand for anywhere else because I believe that that is what I am best at, and I think I have done a reasonable job. I have been elected four times and lost three times, so, hey, I am ahead at the moment. It did not help my predecessor that in preparation for the boundary changes he moved his constituency office. That went down rather badly in the constituency and may not have helped his cause when we stood against each other again, as we have done on a number of occasions, for election earlier this year. Geographical representation has always had a stronger hold on the way in which we decide on the electoral relationships than purely the numbers. If we want to do that, we might as well go to the Soviet system, where the constituencies are not even named—there is just a number and a way in which certain people are put in place. I believe in local representation and I will always argue that case.

As we have heard, in 2015 the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee savaged the Government’s approach to reducing the number of MPs. It argued very strongly that we should not just look at the numbers and proposed a 10% variance. I would still adhere to that, because I do not mind representing more people. I would rather that the people I represent—

--- Later in debate ---

[Oliver Dowden]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Councils up and down the country, including Hertsmere Borough Council which I represent, did a fantastic job of living within their means and cutting excessive expenditure.

[Huw Merriman]

As my hon. Friend was at the centre of power then—I am sure he will be again soon—I would be very interested to know why there was no proposal to cut the number of Ministers by 10%. I was struck by the arguments advanced by my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin).

[Oliver Dowden]

I must correct my hon. Friend before I move on to his substantive point. I am quite confident that as a Member of this place my role in national life has increased, not decreased. It is a great privilege to represent the people of Hertsmere in this place.

On my hon. Friend’s specific point, my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex makes an important point, which should be considered by the Prime Minister of the day should the legislation ever be put into effect—I very much hope it will. The Prime Minister will have some discretion. The legislation sets out a maximum number of Ministers, but it is my understanding that the Prime Minister does not have to take up the entire allocation. The Prime Minister of the day may wish to choose not to take up that allocation. I do not think that that is an argument of such strength that it means we should revisit the entire legislation at this point, because the benefits of proceeding with the existing legislation as it stands outweigh that.

It is worth noting that the speech I mentioned earlier also made the case, as part of cutting the cost of politics and restoring trust, for reducing the number of Members of Parliament. An interesting question, which was raised by the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), is how we actually came by the 600 figure, which some Members have suggested is somewhat arbitrary. I think that, in a sense, one number is as arbitrary as another, but the rationale at the time was a 10% cut in the number of Members of Parliament. Those who are good at maths will note that that takes us not from 650 to 600, but down to 585. However, as Members may recall, the then Leader of the Opposition did not succeed entirely in winning in the 2010 election, and was forced to enter into a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. As part of the negotiations on the proposals, the Liberal Democrats consistently argued for more Members of Parliament, while the Conservatives made the case for cutting the cost of politics and having fewer Members of Parliament. We met somewhere in the middle with 600, which at least had the benefit of being a round number.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Prentis]

I think I had better make progress for a minute.

The independent Committee on Standards in Public Life also endorsed the idea of fairness of votes for our constituents in 2007. One vote, one value must be a vital democratic principle. To make that happen, boundary reform was a key pledge in the manifesto on which I stood in 2015 and again in 2017. The Boundary Commission is already well on its way to making that a reality. It has been working hard on drawing up proposals, consulting, analysing responses and revising its plans. My own association, like that of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak), has taken considerable time and effort to engage with the Boundary Commission’s recommendations, to gauge the thoughts of constituents and to draw up responses.

While my constituency, under the new proposals, will remain one of the largest in the country—I think it will still be the fourth largest—I will lose a chunk of my electorate as it drops to 78,250. Just as a parent loves all their children equally, I of course love all the areas I represent equally—I would be sad to lose any of them. I could no more choose between Hook Norton and Finmere than I could between my daughters, but my belief in democracy is stronger. Ensuring fair representation and that a vote in north Oxfordshire counts the same as it does anywhere else is extremely important to me.

[Huw Merriman]

I would choose Hook Norton over Finmere as Hook Norton has a fantastic brewery, although Finmere is nearer to my family home.

[Mr Speaker]

I am most interested in the autobiographical details of the hon. Gentleman, with which I was personally familiar, not least on account of the whereabouts of members of his family—my illustrious constituents—but other Members are not so fortunate.