Parliamentary Constituencies bill (Second sitting)

John Spellar Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 18th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

We still have nine minutes with you, Roger, so I will call John Spellar.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Q Thank you, Chair. First, Roger, you were very robust in your declaration of support for 650 seats. Were you as robust in your support for 600 when it was Conservative policy?

Roger Pratt: I always support whatever is the Conservative party line. I am a Conservative party employee.

[John Spellar]

Q You talked about the Isle of Wight as if this issue were somehow absolutely insuperable, but you also talked about the constituency that includes Skye. Until the Skye bridge was built, people had to get across by ferry, so why is it so utterly impossible to have linkage between part of the Isle of Wight—a much bigger constituency, as you have agreed—and part of the mainland, if we have achieved it in Skye?

Roger Pratt: I think I am right in saying that the decision about the Isle of Wight followed discussion in the House of Lords about the previous Bill. The Lords decided that it was wrong for the Isle of Wight to link with part of the mainland. There is quite a large chunk of water. Those two constituencies would be made up of about 55,000 people, as you rightly say, but it is difficult: you have to get a ferry and so on. I appreciate that there is a Skye bridge, but you could not do Skye on its own. I cannot remember what the Skye electorate is, but it is not very large.

[John Spellar]

There are lots of ferries between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight, though. I was recently on a Defence Committee visit there, prior to covid-19, and the ferries are quite regular and quite quick.

Roger Pratt: There are ferries, but if we are talking about communities, I think the Isle of Wight would feel very let down if it were linked with part of the mainland. I remember a boundary commission where it was suggested that there should be a seat crossing the Mersey between Liverpool and the Wirral, and that suggestion was very unpopular and rightly changed as a result of the consultation. With the 12,000 people from Skye, the current electorate of Ross, Skye and Lochaber is almost exactly the same as the seats in the Isle of Wight would be. The Isle of Wight seats would be very slightly larger.

[John Spellar]

Q You conflated the situation in Scotland and Wales, did you not? Was not the reason why Wales retained a degree of what we accept is over-representation precisely so that the Welsh voice was heard in Westminster, because much more legislation regarding Wales was dealt with in Westminster than legislation regarding Scotland? Surely the underlying point is about the integrity of the Union and maintaining a strong voice for Wales, which is still much more directly linked with England than is Scotland.

Roger Pratt: You are right that Wales was not required to use the English Parliament. At that time, there was a Welsh Assembly; it is now called the Welsh Parliament. That Parliament has a lot of responsibility, particularly for health and education, but for a lot of other matters as well. Members of Parliament from England have to deal with health and education, whereas those from Wales do not, so I think it is right that Wales should be on a fair and equal basis with England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

[John Spellar]

Q I agree with you about using the electoral register as the basis for drawing this up. You mention both accuracy and completeness. Would it be right to give greater powers and direction to electoral registration officers to use their access to public data to improve the completeness of the register and, as with registrars of death removing those who have died, the accuracy as well?

Roger Pratt: Certainly it needs to be as accurate and complete as it possibly can be. Some of those matters are beyond the scope of the Bill, but I would support all the measures that the Government are taking, as are the Scottish Government and the Welsh Government, and all the local authorities, to ensure the most accurate and complete register we can possibly get.

[John Spellar]

Q Finally, you mentioned that something like 50% of the initial recommendations were altered. Is that not partly because if they followed an argument in one constituency, because of the 5% margin, there were inevitable knock-on effects on many other constituencies, which could have been perfectly easily accommodated had there been a wider margin of difference? You had a domino effect rather than dealing with a perfectly proper and legitimate cause of local complaint.

Roger Pratt: There were some perfectly legitimate causes of local complaint, but one of the things they had to do was make sure that the knock-on effects were affected. Certainly, the Labour party and ourselves and others always put in an overall plan, so you could look at the overall plan. That is what you must do to try to get it right sometimes.

The Labour party and ourselves and other parties agreed in Dorset. All three of us came up independently with the same alternative plan for the Boundary Commission, so I do believe that it is right. I do not believe that a 7.5% quota is right.

It is a question of balance, isn’t it? It is a question of the balance you strike between getting a quota right and community ties. I think the quota at a 10% variance, rather than at 15%, which you would have under seven and a half, is the right balance to strike.

In the past, the Boundary Commission, in the rules under which you were all elected, stated quite clearly that it needs to get as near as possible to the electoral quota—that is in the Act—but it has been conflicted as to how it uses those rules. Under the new rules, it is not; it knows it has to get everything within 10%, that is 5% either side, but, in addition to that, it uses the rules to make sure that it uses the other factors. It does not need to get as near the quota as possible. Mr Bellringer made that clear this morning.

If I may, Mr Chairman, I have one other point on the 10%. The right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell referred to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights publishes an election observation handbook, which says that,

“all votes should carry the same weight to ensure equal representation. This means that each elected representative represents a similar number of registered electors. For example, in a majority voting system, the size of the electorate should not vary by more than approximately ten percent from constituency to constituency.”

I think that is the right balance to strike.

[Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)]

Q I have a couple of questions about reviews. First, on the proposal for an eight-year review cycle, could you tell me what you think of that, and why?

Roger Pratt: Yes. I think that is absolutely right. When there was an original five-year term, it was linked to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. Since then, we have had two general elections not based on the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, and I think it is the Government’s intention to change that Act. So I think eight years is the right balance to strike, so that normally you would have two Parliaments between each review.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jane Hunt]

Q Okay, so you do not think it would make any difference if the Boundary Commission made the recommendations and they went straight to the Speaker.

Tom Adams: Well, the fact that they would go straight to the Speaker is welcome, because that would mean that the Secretary of State could no longer make amendments to them, but I still think they should be subject to parliamentary approval, as I said earlier.

[John Spellar]

Q Do you find it interesting that a Government with a majority of 80 are so concerned about their inability to get through a boundary review? Might that indicate that the underlying reason for the previous review not going through was because it caused so much discontent in their own ranks—in other words, because it did not respect local community interests and local boundaries?

Tom Adams: That gets at one reason why Parliament should ultimately have to approve boundary reviews: if you cannot even get half the House to agree to them, clearly there is not sufficient MP backing for them—not enough MPs agree that it is a sensible process. Last time, the proposed reduction to 600 seats clearly had a big impact on that backing. Keeping the number at 650 will mitigate that somewhat. I agree that that is one reason why it is important that Parliament has that oversight. If it struggles to get half of MPs to vote in favour of the proposal, that implies that people do not broadly think it would be a good outcome.

[John Spellar]

Q In your work, do you find that there is an underlying problem, in that while many Conservatives can understand the issue of local identity for rural areas and small towns, they have a complete incapacity to understand the effect of identity on neighbourhoods and communities in conurbations, which they see as sprawling, shapeless continuous masses?

[The Chair]

John, I do not think you are entitled to have fun with the witness.

Tom Adams: I would not want to comment too much on that, but clearly there are still community ties in large urban wards, yes.