Parliamentary Constituencies Bill (Eighth sitting)

Debate between John Spellar and Bim Afolami

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 30th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[John Spellar]

That is rather my point—exactly. With a wider area of appreciation, it is possible to take account of that. It becomes much more difficult the narrower it is. It also comes down to the size of the building blocks. I think the right hon. Gentleman mentioned that some of his wards are in Leeds and some are in the country. For those MPs who represent rural areas or small towns the wards are quite often 1,000, 1,500 or 2,000. In most of the metropolitan areas they are in the 8,000 to 10,000 mark. In certain areas—not Birmingham, any more, since the change in the boundaries and all-up elections—including in Leeds, for example, my under- standing is that the number is somewhere around 16,000 to 19,000. That makes, again, for a sizeable building block.

There is, frankly—and with all due respect to our colleague the hon. Member for Glasgow East—no point talking about Scottish wards, because they are much larger, being based on a single transferable vote system, If, heaven forbid, Conservative Members now seek to move towards STV in the United Kingdom, that will be another issue entirely. However, there is not the same identity of ward members as we have when we must have much wider wards. The idea is to keep, as far as possible, structural organisation for a ward, although there may need to be some minor exceptions. The boundary commission initially crossed borough boundaries as an exception, to deal with problems in London, as I recall. Now, it seems to almost totally disregard such boundaries. That is one reason why the Labour party, unsuccessfully, still wanted to allow Parliament to act as a constraint on the self-fulfilling activities of the boundary commission.

It is enormously important to maintain some sort of coherence and identity. It is not just constituencies that should have geographic and community coherence, but wards as well. There should not be gerrymander-style wards, similar to some American constituencies, which get close to having exact mathematic equivalence but end up being utterly extraordinary shapes and sizes. That is why we should not take note of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe recommendation to look at size of population, as the United States does, rather than electoral registers. The United States bases its wards on census figures, not electoral registration. In some areas, authorities might be encouraged if they had to focus on electoral registration rather than registration suppression, as happens in a number of states, whipped on by Donald Trump.

For that reason, one probably has to have slight, and probably unjustified and unworthy, suspicions, about the vehemence with which the argument for 5% is being mounted by Government Members. We have been told, both by the Conservative party witness and by Members, that the OSCE report firmly says that the total variation should be 10%—in other words, 5% on either side. They prayed that in aid as justification for their case, but that is not what the OSCE says in its recommendation. It clearly states:

“The maximum admissible departure from the distribution criterion…should seldom exceed 10% and never 15%, except”—

it even says this—

“in really exceptional circumstances”.

There are practical reasons in favour of the proposal. We need to ensure the maintenance of communities and prevent considerable inconvenience similar to that experienced as a result of the previous boundary changes. We have heard evidence that 650 seats may or may not make it easier, but these very tight margins make it more difficult for the boundary commission, parliamentarians and, most importantly, the electorate.

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

I listened with interest to the right hon. Member for Warley and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell. I want to make a couple of points.

Bearing in mind that my party is keen on approving of Democratic Presidents in the US these days, one of my political heroes has always been Lyndon Baines Johnson. When asked about Gerald Ford, who later became President after Nixon’s resignation, LBJ said that he was “so dumb he can’t even pee and chew gum at the same time.” The intention of keeping the 5%, while maintaining relationships between communities within a constituency, is an example of how this Bill and this boundary commission, which I trust and respect, can and will be able to pee and chew gum at the same time.

I found the speech by the right hon. Member for Warley strange as he was, in effect, making the argument for what we have now, which is a wide appreciation of the number, so as to make it easier, so he says, for communities to stay together. I understand that argument. It is not a wholly illegitimate one, but if we take that view and do not trust the boundary commission to get this right, over time—probably quite quickly, bearing in mind the speed of population movements these days—we will get to the same position we are in now. I think there is broad agreement across the House and this Committee that we should take this opportunity to make a change to this system, given that these boundaries have been out of date for 20 years or so. If we are to do so, it is very important that we have a tight margin of appreciation so we can set the dial to make sure every vote counts as equally as possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Spellar]

Would the hon. Gentleman consider the possibility that it is because we have been through a couple of boundary commission recommendations, and found how inadequate and badly based many of them are, that we distrust them?

[Bim Afolami]

I was about to agree with the right hon. Gentleman. However, the point of our system is that in response to arguments, the boundary commission changes what it has proposed. Members can correct me if I am wrong, but I think that during either the 2013 review or the 2018 one—as we all know, those reviews were abandoned because the House failed to approve them—almost 50% of the changes that were made were changed in response to submissions, both from Members who were in the House at the time and from other interested parties, including members of the public.

I have no doubt that the boundary commission will make mistakes, but I trust the ingenuity of those people who will be able to challenge it: not just Members, but political parties, members of the public and random geeks who do this sort of thing for fun. I trust that the boundary commission will listen to reasonable representations—particularly those regarding local ties and linguistic points, which the hon. Member for Ceredigion spoke about earlier—and that we can get this right. We need to get the margin of appreciation as tight as possible so that the votes of all members of the public in this country can count equally. That is a very important principle, and one that I support.