Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill

James Cartlidge Excerpts

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

[Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in this very important debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) on being the promoter of a Bill on such an important issue, and on his excellent and passionate speech setting out some of the arguments that need a light shone upon them. There is much to be commended in the Bill, which highlights some of the weaknesses in the process being undertaken by the Boundary Commission. I believe that process is flawed.

All hon. Members are clear that this is about communities, people and, in essence, democracy. I suspect we all agree on the democratic principle of equal representation and that every vote should be worth the same. I care very much about this principle; it is why I am here today. The objective should be for all constituencies to be an equal size. The second objective from both the Government and the Boundary Commission is to cut costs. Understandably, people would like to see fewer Members and far fewer Members of the other place. Parliament can be seen as an inefficient bureaucracy. The machinery can be hugely impenetrable. Not including MPs and our staff, some 2,000 people are employed by the House of Commons. It sometimes looks like a very expensive way to do democracy.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

We have a responsibility to reduce the cost of politics. If it is not in our powers to control the costs of the other place, we should still seek to reduce the cost of this place.

[Lucy Allan]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I think we all agree that the cost of politics should be reduced, and there are ways in which we can do that, but as Members of this place democracy is the first principle we are duty-bound to uphold.

The proposals do not achieve the objectives that both the Government and the Boundary Commission intended to achieve through the original legislation. The hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton made a very interesting point about Crawley and I would like to speak to the Bill from the perspective of representing a new town with a rapidly growing population. What is happening in my constituency shows up the flaws in the proposals. Populations across the country will grow and shrink at very different rates, and we have to take into account of demographics and geography. Telford is an ex-mining town with a rural hinterland. Set in the heart of rural Shropshire, it is an excellent example of a new town. Its rapid growth is very easily predicted, because we are building new homes and people are moving to Telford all the time.

One key point that I know other Members will be raising is voter exclusion. In addition to people coming to new towns with a growing population, there have been two very significant events in our recent electoral history: the EU referendum in 2016 and, although I regret to say it, young people going wild for the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) in 2017. Young people signed up to vote for the first time and people in my constituency, who had never voted and never been registered before, signed up to vote for Brexit in 2016. We cannot ignore those new voters.

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[Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) for presenting a Bill that deals with a very important issue. I also commend the hon. Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) for the points that she made: it is a privilege to follow her.

I stand here as the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Perry Barr. I want to iterate that because my constituency is being torn asunder by those who deem the boundary changes to be right. The constituency was created in 1950, and its first Member of Parliament was Cecil Poole, a member of the Labour party. Since then it has had only two Conservative MPs, for a maximum of six years. My immediate predecessor was Lord Rooker, who had served for 27 years, and who is now in another place not too far from here.

I say all this because the Boundary Commission has paid no attention whatsoever to the issues raised by the hon. Member for Telford and my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton about communities and the people who live in them. As the hon. Member for Telford said, it has not taken into account the number of people who are not on the electoral register. As a result of the electoral registration process initiated by the Government, I have effectively lost more than 10% of my constituency. The senior member of the household used to be responsible for registering all the other members, but that is no longer the case. What that does, quite maliciously, is take the vote away from young people who are not necessarily living at home, and who may be in education or trying to get on to the work ladder. The Government know that young people tend not to want to stuff letters into the post to register their vote. This has been done deliberately. We have organised a number of drives in an attempt to return those young people to the register, because it is very important for that to happen.

If these boundary changes are to take place in the period that we are discussing, what we need is not a census but a proper system of registration that makes people responsible for registering properly. The Government—not just on this occasion, but on consecutive occasions whenever they have been in office—have engaged in a deliberate ploy to cut the franchise and prevent people from electing the MPs they want. The Bill would raise the ceiling from 5% to 10%, which would prevent those changes from happening.

Most of the bottom half of my constituency—mainly in the Lozells and East Handsworth and Handsworth Wood wards—contains some of the most deprived communities, and in some areas more than 40% of people are not registered to vote. New and younger residents do not understand the registration system in the same way as the older ones. Not only are those people blocked from voting, but, more importantly, they cannot secure finance, or anything else of that sort. Non-registration has a huge effect on those communities.

I said at the start of my speech that the Boundary Commission had torn my constituency asunder. In Birmingham we have huge wards—or had huge wards; the commission will change that in February. So far, the wards have contained 20,000 people. The commission has torn the constituency apart. It has aligned the top half, which consists of Oscott ward, with the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), who is not here at the moment.

It is necessary to understand Oscott and the circumstances of the people who live there. The main dual carriageway crosses Walsall South into Oscott, and those people do not cross the carriageway. There is a combined community, which is served by Birmingham City Council rather than by Walsall Council. It will be difficult enough for an MP to represent two district councils, let alone how difficult people will find it to understand where they should go to receive the service that they used to receive. The commission is ignoring the needs of the community by carelessly trying to lump it in with another district.

The Perry Barr ward—the constituency is named after it—is partly in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). The ward is long rather than compact, which means that it will belong to my hon. Friend. Most of the inhabitants live near the end furthest from Erdington; the small community at the other end is cut off, because there is no direct bus route connecting the two. The representation of a huge number of people is being imperilled by the fact that a community in the middle of my constituency is being attached to another part of Birmingham.

The Handsworth Wood ward has a mixed community. It is linked to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Tom Watson), which, again, presents a barrier to the community and prevents the necessary synergy. Both Handsworth Wood and Lozells East and Handsworth have experienced problems with knife crime, drugs and shootings. These two wards have been held together by the work we have done to unite them. We have managed to cut the crime rate because we have been able to work together as a unit.

[James Cartlidge]

Is the hon. Gentleman seriously suggesting that the crime rate relates in some way to how we allocate constituency boundaries?

[Mr Mahmood]

Yes, it does. [Interruption.] Conservative Members might find this funny, but it is not funny for those who live in the communities. We have been able to work together and the crime rates in that area of Birmingham have fallen. When I was elected in 2001 there was huge concern about that area, particularly in relation to gun crime. We lost two young women, Charlene and Letisha, in a gun fight over the Christmas and new year period. Since then we have managed to put together community policing, but the Conservatives have cut that so we cannot now have such policing in that area.

[James Cartlidge]

rose—

[Mr Mahmood]

I have taken the hon. Gentleman’s intervention; he must now sit down.

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[Andrew Gwynne]

I will not give way again, because many Members want to speak.

Cutting 50 MPs also presents a crisis of scrutiny, a concern raised by the Electoral Reform Society. Under the current proposals, the reduction would be made entirely from the Back Benches—the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), can shake her head, but there are no proposals to reduce the number of Ministers. That would only increase the Executive dominance of Parliament and undermine the influence of scrutiny from the Back Benches.

[James Cartlidge]

rose—

[Andrew Gwynne]

I will not give way.

As our great nation prepares to leave the European Union, the need for parliamentary scrutiny—I know that it is unfashionable on the Government Benches, where Members will not even take part in Opposition day votes—has never been greater. We are also, as we have heard, losing 73 Members of the European Parliament. That is cutting the cost of politics, for a start, but we in this House will be taking on more powers, more responsibilities and more legislative work. It is right that we should have the ability to do that unhindered. That is another reason why we oppose the reduction in the number of MPs.

I am aware that our Northern Ireland colleagues have raised concerns about the Government’s proposals and about their potential to undermine political stability in the Province. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton has clearly listened and responded accordingly. The Opposition welcome measures in the Bill to have a fixed allocation of 18 Members of this House and to keep the protected areas already legislated for in 2011.

Our opposition is shared by many. The Hansard Society found no rationale for the Government’s decision. noting that there was a “real concern” that the number had been

“plucked from thin air—600 simply being a neat number.”

The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee called on the Government to reverse their decision, stating that there had been a complete absence of consultation or research into the impact on Member’s roles and functions.

On the electoral roll, constituencies must represent the communities they serve. This Government may try to stack the deck in their favour by drawing the boundaries based on the December 2015 electoral register, but since then more than 2 million more people have been added to the electoral roll following the increase in registration at the EU referendum and the 2017 general election.

It is easy for the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean to say that the first review would result in major changes and subsequent reviews in minor changes, but that depends on where the additional registration has taken place. In Bristol West in the run-up to the general election, there was a 12% increase in registration. Similar large increases were seen in Leeds Central, Leeds North West, Bethnal Green and Bow, Poplar and Limehouse and Wolverhampton South East. In this year alone, 1.1 million additional voters were added to the register, and a third of those were in London and the south-east. If we have concentrations of increases, we will have the domino effect that we have all been subject to in the first major review, so subsequent reviews will also be pretty extensive.

Any constitutional changes should be done fairly, with everyone given a voice. That is not what the Government and the boundary review have done. We welcome the Bill, which addresses these failings and sets electorate calculations using the 2017 electoral roll. It has been clear from the start that the Government have been interested only in their own political advantage rather than what is in the best interests of the country. We therefore welcome the Bill, which will address the failings of this Government and ensure that a fresh boundary review can go ahead in a way that benefits our democracy, and not just the narrow interests of the Conservative party.

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[Victoria Prentis]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I sincerely hope we will not be having an election next year; I think we have had enough for now.

[James Cartlidge]

Surely the key point my hon. Friend is making is that, whereas the Labour party is seeking to defend the status quo, Conservative Members are the radicals and the reformers.

[Victoria Prentis]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and he makes the point I was going on to make: while we do not, of course, agree with everything in the people’s charter—for example, it provides only for votes for men, and Conservative Members are passionately in favour of votes for women—we do adopt the more far-reaching ideas in it, and we believe very firmly that votes must count equally.