Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill: Committee Stage

Debate between Ivan Lewis and Mark Harper

Tuesday 19th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I took a lengthy intervention from the hon. Gentleman, so I will make a little progress.

The issue of the so-called missing voters was raised by the hon. Member for Walsall South and in a couple of interventions, including from the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith). Matt Singh from Number Cruncher Politics has done a significant piece of work on this, which was also validated by the Library. There would be an issue if the distribution of new voters who are not on the register used for the current boundary review was significantly different across the country. However, analysis shows that the distribution of new voters on the electoral roll is broadly consistent with the distribution of those on the existing registers. In other words, although the absolute number of voters is different, those voters are not significantly differently distributed across the country, which means that they will not make a material difference to the distribution of constituencies.

It is worth pointing out that we have to carry out a review and draw a line somewhere, and that as soon as we start a review, it will effectively be out of date. The Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton refers to the register for the 2017 general election. That is already out of date because there has been another one. If we take his logic, we will never have a boundary review, because every time we start, a new register arrives and is out of date.

[Mr Ivan Lewis (Bury South) (Ind)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that the new legislation to which he referred made it far more difficult for young people to register? That legislation was passed under a coalition Government. One party in that coalition supported an increase in tuition fees having promised that there would be no fees, and the other party knew that its support among young people was minimal to say the least.

[Mr Harper]

I do not agree with that at all. I would argue that the individual electoral registration system that we introduced, which addressed the accuracy and completeness of the register, as well as the fact that we enabled online registration made it much easier for people to register to vote. The vast majority of people who register now do so online, using a very straightforward piece of software that is particularly attractive to younger people. Before each of the last significant electoral events—the European Union referendum and the 2017 general election—significant numbers of people, particularly young people, seemed to have no trouble registering to vote.

I am mindful of your injunction, Madam Deputy Speaker. Given that I have taken a number of interventions, let me make my final argument for why the House should reject the motion and what we should do instead. The right way to proceed would be to allow the boundary commissioners to report. The Leader of the House could then consider those reports, bring forward Orders in Council and allow the House to take a decision. If the House decides to accept the Orders in Council, we are done. The boundary review will have been accepted, we will have new boundaries and the problem will be sorted out.

If, for some reason, the House chooses not to do that, there will be a debate about those Orders in Council and the Leader of the House will be able to reflect on that debate. If the Government decide to table a money resolution, we can then consider the Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton in the light of that debate, but with one significant change. This is a constitutional measure. When the original legislation was taken through Parliament, it was considered in Committee on the Floor of the House, rather than by a Bill Committee upstairs, meaning that every Member from every part of the United Kingdom could take part.

We should allow such a debate to take place. If the House does not support the boundary reviews and decides that it wants a money resolution and to proceed with the Bill, it should be considered on the Floor of the House so that every Member can contribute, rather than in Public Bill Committee. That is why we should wait. We should look at the results of the boundary review and allow the Government to reflect on the debate that will take place, and if the House chooses not to adopt the proposals, we can then proceed on a more sensible basis. That is why it makes sense to follow the Leader of the House’s arguments, to reject the motion, and to allow the House to consider the boundary commissions’ reports in the usual way.