Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill

Debate between Lord Beamish and Mark Harper

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—

--- Later in debate ---

[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.