Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill

Lord Beamish Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 18th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

That is very thoughtful of you, Mr Speaker, although I am surprised, knowing of your enormous powers of recall, that you do not have a verbatim account of my maiden speech in your head, but then, sadly, we were not blessed in 2005 with having you in the Chair; otherwise, I am sure that you would remember it.

As I said, I only wanted to spend a short time on the preamble to my speech, although I was probably a little indulgent in taking interventions. I will deal specifically now with the points that the hon. Member for North West Durham made in her speech. First, she talked about gerrymandering, which the Leader of the Opposition has also talked about and which comes from the United States of America. Of course, there is a massive difference between us and the US. In most states of the US, boundaries are not drawn by independent boundary commissions, as they are here; they are drawn by the elected representatives, who are obviously partisan. Here, we are fortunate to have boundary commissions, all four of which, Mr Speaker, you chair in an ex officio capacity, although you do not take part in their deliberations. The four deputy chairs, effectively the operational heads, are judges, so they are, of course, beyond question in their political independence. In the United States, however, gerrymandering is a problem.

Taking your advice, Mr Speaker, I will not go on at length, but, for those who are interested and want to follow this issue at length, I refer to an interesting article in the Washington Post on 15 May 2014. Obviously, in the House we are not allowed to introduce written material or pictures, but the article referred to three districts, and the descriptions of them gave a sense of the interesting boundaries in America. Maryland’s 3rd is called the “Praying Mantis”; Pennsylvania’s 7th is called “Goofy kicking Donald Duck”; and Texas’s 35th is called the “UpsideDown Elephant”. The point is that we do not have gerrymandering in this country; we have independent boundary commissions following clear rules set out by Parliament, and they are specifically not allowed to take into account the partisan or party political effect of their decisions. I wanted to knock that argument on its head straightaway.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I am pleased that the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned the United States, because the kernel of this idea of the Cameron Government came from an organisation called the American Legislative Exchange Council, which has talked about making it harder for voters in the US to register to vote and been at the forefront of things such as re-districting. It does not take a genius to see that a lot of the things that the Cameron Government proposed came right from its playbook.

[Mr Harper]

As the Minister who took the legislation through the House, I completely reject that suggestion. The proposals brought forward by the previous Government were drawn up by Ministers with support from their officials.

[Mr Jones]

No, they weren’t.

[Mr Harper]

I was the Minister who drew up the proposals and brought them before the House, and I do not recognise the provenance that the hon. Gentleman maintains.

[Mr Jones]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman once more, but I am keen to make some progress.

[Mr Jones]

I am not sure what role the right hon. Gentleman played in drawing up the 2010 Conservative manifesto, but the boundaries legislation, as well as the attacks on trade unions and some of the other right-wing policies that came forward, such as stopping charities lobbying, came right from that playbook. I am sure he was not involved in that; he was just the poor Minister who had to implement it.

[Mr Harper]

I certainly was not “the poor Minister”. I hugely enjoyed my role as Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform. I got to spend an enormous amount of time in the Chamber, with Mr Speaker frequently in the Chair, although I am not sure he enjoyed listening to the debates as much as I enjoyed speaking in them. I do not, however, recognise the origins that the hon. Gentleman mentions.

The hon. Member for North West Durham made a serious point about the accusations made about people who registered ahead of the EU referendum. A thorough piece of work has been done by a gentleman called Matt Singh, who works for an organisation called Number Cruncher Politics, an independent organisation that has looked at this issue very carefully. For this to be an issue, the 2 million extra voters would have to be unevenly distributed across the UK. If in some areas there had been a much bigger rise in the number of electors than in others, that would of course affect the distribution of the 600 seats set out in the legislation.

Interestingly, Mr Singh, in his very thorough analysis of the 2 million increase, wrote:

“The data does not support the suggestion that using the later version of the register”,

as the hon. Lady proposes doing,

“would materially alter the distribution of seats. Instead it points to a very even distribution of the 2 million newly-registered voters between”

currently held Labour and Conservative seats. If we added all the 2 million, of course we would increase the size of the register, but because the extra voters are evenly distributed across the country, we would not significantly change the distribution of constituencies. So I think that is a bit of a red herring.

As I draw towards the conclusion of my remarks, as you wanted me to, Mr Speaker, let me deal with the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Kevan Jones]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Mr Speaker made very clear that the right hon. Gentleman had asked to be called early because, as we have just heard from the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), he was suffering from a bad cold. Either that was not the case, or the right hon. Gentleman has discovered some miracle cure. If he has, could he share it with us?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Again, that was not a point of order, but I thank the hon. Gentleman for what he has said.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) on her success in securing this private Member’s Bill. Although I do not agree with all the objectives she has proposed in the Bill, private Members’ Bills are an essential parliamentary device that enable Back Benchers to address issues that concern us and our constituents and, in some cases, to secure good, sustainable changes in public policy and legislation. I have successfully piloted two private Member’s Bills on to the statute book, the Marine Navigation Act 2013 and the Deep Sea Mining Act 2014, and I am very proud to have done so.

I do not agree with the provisions in the Bill that reverse the decision to reduce the number of Members of this House from 650 to 600. I stood on a manifesto in 2015 that said that we would

“reduce the number of MPs to 600 to cut the cost of politics”

and I stand by that pledge.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Is the hon. Lady not an example of that very rare thing, a turkey voting for Christmas? When these changes were first mooted in 2010, the main losers in Cornwall would have been the Liberal Democrats. If the changes go forward, some of her Tory colleagues will surely lose their seats. Why would she want to support that?

[Mrs Murray]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his view, but I happen to disagree. I am hopeful that, at the next election, Cornwall will still be represented by Conservative MPs, and I stand by that election pledge. My constituents voted me to this place to represent them, knowing that that was my pledge.

I have a lot of respect for the hon. Member for North West Durham, but I have to tell you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I was going to raise a point of order during her speech this morning. In the interest of the smooth transition of the debate, however, and having asked to make a speech, I have chosen instead to raise the matter now. The hon. Lady said that she had received more representations on her Bill from Cornish people than from anyone else. I am sure she respects the unwritten protocol in this House that if representations are made to us from another MP’s constituents, we inform the MP and usually pass on the representations. I am quite happy to take an intervention, so that she can confirm that none of those representations came from South East Cornwall because nothing has been passed on to me.

[Mrs Murray]

I just felt that I ought to put it on the record that I, a Member for a Cornish constituency, have not been informed of any emails sent to another MP. I am quite disappointed about that.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I am not quite sure what the hon. Lady’s point is. From what she is saying, she would not change her mind anyway, so it would be a complete waste of time her constituents lobbying her on the Bill.

[Mrs Murray]

It is a case of treating other Members, no matter what their political affiliation, with some respect.

[Mrs Murray]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend.

I would like to quote the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg). I know that he has already been quoted today and it is not something that I do often in this place, but he outlined well how we compare around the world. He said:

“Reducing the number of MPs allows us to bring our oversized House of Commons into line with legislatures across the world. The House of Commons is the largest directly elected chamber in the European Union, and it’s half as big again as the US House of Representatives.”

My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) mentioned that last point earlier. The Government have estimated that the reduction in the number of MPs will save £66 million over the course of the Parliament. I am quite disappointed with Opposition Members who seem to have made light of that figure. That money could be focused on looking after and benefiting our constituents.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The hon. Lady, using the larger figure spun by Cameron, talks about £66 million, but the figure is £12 million a year. She was part of a Government who spent £9 million on a leaflet arguing their case for the EU. Where is her perspective?

[Mrs Murray]

If the hon. Gentleman refers back, he will see that I did not agree with that.

I am sure that these savings would be welcomed by taxpayers across the country. We often have to take difficult decisions to try and balance the country’s books, so should this place not do what it can to contribute? Should we not have to face a fair share of any cuts? We are always being criticised for cutting expenditure on education, putting pressure on teachers, putting pressure on NHS workers and putting pressure on our armed forces. Should we not share some of that burden and try to make some savings ourselves?

[Mr Jones]

If the proposals go through, the hon. Lady’s seat disappears and she is not one of the successful Tory candidates, would she then refuse a peerage?

[Mrs Murray]

To refuse something, one has to be offered it. I think that the hon. Gentleman should pay attention to the Prime Minister’s response to a question from an Scottish National party Member on Wednesday: things like that are not normally discussed in this place.

Why are Opposition Members supporting the Bill? Is it to change the number of seats? That will lead to the redrawing of a map and the need for sitting Labour Members to be selected for new areas. Are those who did not champion the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) as Leader of the Opposition now nervous of the membership that gave him its support? Some 80% of Labour Members gave a vote of no confidence in their leader less than six months ago. Are they now nervous?

I cannot say that the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 is perfect. In 2010, I put forward my own amendment to the Bill as it passed through this place to recognise Cornwall as a distinct area, and it stipulated that no constituency should cross over to Devon. As far as I remember, that was supported by my Cornwall colleagues at the time. Unfortunately, we lost that argument, and the legislation was enacted, with priority given to providing each elector with an equal say in who runs the country. Our Cornwall population is not currently such that a cross-over seat with Devon was avoidable—no matter how undesirable it was.

Last month, I upset councillors when I made a comment about Cornwall Council. Since then, rather than focus on local government matters, the council has been spending money on a Queen’s counsel and has convened a full council meeting to discuss the very subject that we are debating today—parliamentary boundaries. I will not call the council what I called it in this place last month but leave my constituents to make up their own minds on whether that is good use of resources.

I am similarly concerned about the cost of the Bill. This provision would be an unnecessary disruption to the boundary commissions’ well advanced reviews and undoubtedly mean more unnecessary costs, but the Government want to make an estimated £66 million saving. Although the hon. Member for North West Durham is no longer in her place, I ask her where she would find this money if not from legislation—would it come from further cuts to our NHS, our schools or our armed forces? I say no.

[Mr Jones]

rose—

[Mrs Murray]

I am just coming to my conclusion.

Let us kick this expensive piece of legislation into the long grass where it belongs. Let us save some money, so that we can invest in our NHS, our schools and our armed forces, as a Conservative Government would, instead of spending money on politicians, which Labour seems to want to do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Double]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. I do not know how many people from my constituency signed the petition, but I have been out in my constituency, on the doorsteps, in the pub and at my surgeries, and what I do know is how many people have come directly to me to raise their strong feelings about this issue. That is what I have taken notice of. Leaving aside how many constituents have raised this issue with me, it is one that I, as a Cornishman, feel strongly about.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Will the hon. Gentleman inform the House as to when he felt strongly about this, because surely in 2015 he stood on a manifesto that contained these proposals? At that time, it would possibly have been Liberal Democrat seats going, rather than Tory seats. Was that the thing that has changed his mind?

[Steve Double]

I will address that point directly at the end of my speech. As I said, despite a lot of the rhetoric on Cornwall, there are no reasonable legal arguments against these proposals within the current legislation. I have grappled with this issue for some time, asking myself the question: why do I, like so many other people in my constituency, feel so strongly about it? As I said, this is a deeply emotional response, and there are many reasons for that. The Cornish geography has shaped our attitude for centuries. We are surrounded on three sides by the sea, and on our only land border a river cuts us off for all but a few miles. In many ways, the Cornish have an island mentality. We see ourselves as detached and separate from the rest of England. History has also shaped the way we think. For centuries, there has been a sense of detachment between this place and Cornwall. Indeed, about 520 years ago thousands of Cornishmen marched on this place to protest about the imposition of a tax on the Cornish to fund a fight with the Scottish—some of us feel that we have been paying for Scotland ever since, but there was a sense of injustice.

This Government have started to do a great deal to rebuild that bridge. We have seen this Government on the side of Cornwall more than any other Government have been for many years. We have seen greater investments in our roads, with the A30 through Cornwall being dualled, and in our railways, where we are getting new rolling stock, having had the same rolling stock for 40 years. Support and investment has also been given to our airport and for tourism. We have seen this Government grant a devolution deal for Cornwall—it is the first and, so far, only rural devolution deal in the country. That is a great sign of this Government’s support for and confidence in Cornwall. Indeed, the Prime Minister recently said that the Government recognised the unique challenges that Cornwall is facing. So I am proud to be part of this Government, who, in so many ways, are supporting Cornwall, the Cornish economy and the Cornish people far more than has ever been done before. Even so, this issue has provoked a very strong reaction in so many people in my constituency.

It is no surprise that people who do not share the way we feel find it difficult to comprehend how strongly we feel. The issue somehow stabs at the very core of the way we feel about our county. We feel that it is challenging our identity. That in-built deep sense of Cornish independence is provoked by the thought of our border being crossed. Even though it is only a line on a map that represents an area that an MP will represent, it symbolises something far deeper in the Cornish psyche.

Cornwall is unique, so how can we expect others to understand? We accept that others will not understand and will not agree with us, but we cannot accept our views not being respected. Sadly, under the current legislation I see no way to draw the boundaries that does not produce a cross-border seat with Devon. No matter how forcefully we make representations to the Boundary Commission, its hands are tied by the legislation.