Parliamentary Constituencies bill (Second sitting)

Laura Farris Excerpts

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

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I just add that the last time, we were able to form much bigger constituency numbers.

Tom Adams: Yes, that change will have an impact.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

Q I want to pick up on the point about wards and to explore your answer. Is there any particular reason why you do not think that wards should be split? An ordinary member of the public in a city often does not know what ward they live in. Prior to becoming involved in politics, I was not really aware of where I lived. What is the democratic principle?

Tom Adams: It certainly creates challenges from the perspective of political parties and others who are reliant on electoral geography boundaries. Given that wards are created by local Boundary Commissions to have some sense of community ties, and they are created for a reason, if you split them you are further cutting community ties, and potentially creating more challenges, in the sense that people are cut off from people who they would see as firmly part of their community by cutting across a ward. Obviously, you cannot always come up with a perfect arrangement.

[Laura Farris]

Q To pick up on that, thinking particularly of cities, would that not vary from city to city? There is no real reason why one ward would have a distinct identity compared with the ward next door necessarily.

Tom Adams: Local Boundary Commissions will certainly try to make that the case. They will come up with those wards for a reason, which is why I think they are sensible building blocks for the whole process. If you abandon that principle and say, “Does it really matter?”, we might as well just ignore them entirely. I do not think that is practical for the purposes of political parties or electoral administrators, who certainly find it much easier to think of wards as sensible building blocks for constituencies, rather than having entirely separate arrangements that do not bear any relation to the existing wards. Using those wards and keeping them as far as possible is sensible.

Clearly the Government recognise that to an extent, because there is the very sensible provision in the Bill of allowing the provisional wards to be taken into account. That is a fantastic reform that will help to keep some of that, so wards will continue to be in line with parliamentary constituencies. We had the problem in the past, even where we were using whole wards, that if those wards were then amended or changed only a year later, the new wards would bear no relation to the constituencies. The new provision enables you to make sure that you have wards and constituencies that are coterminous as far as possible. That does improve people’s experience of the democratic process.

[Laura Farris]

Q Are you aware of the extent of the dispute between, for example, the Labour and Conservative parties over the last boundary change exercise? Do you know what proportion of constituencies were broadly agreed or not agreed?

Tom Adams: In terms of which ones we particularly—

[Laura Farris]

In the 2018 exercise—sorry, I am not familiar with it myself—do you know what proportion there was broad agreement over and what proportion there was not?

Tom Adams: Not off the top of my head. I do not know exactly; I have not studied that in detail recently. As I said, that was carried out by someone else at Labour head office, so I do not know exactly on which constituencies we agreed and which we did not.

[Laura Farris]

Q I will ask a follow-up question and if you cannot answer, that is fine. Do you know how the Boundary Commission resolves a dispute of fact between the Labour party and the Conservative party? I mention those parties because I am talking about the seats in England, but do you know how it would approach that, if the two main political parties had a different view? What would the sequencing of its thinking be?

Tom Adams: Presumably, they are not the only two submissions that will have been put in. The Labour and Tory submissions are not the only ones that will be put in.

[Laura Farris]

Q But in the event that there was a dispute between them in a seat that the two parties contested—it is a process question—do you know how the Boundary Commission would approach that?

Tom Adams: I am not completely sure off the top of my head, but I am not entirely sure that that is within the scope of the Bill either, to be honest. That is a matter for the commissions really, rather than a matter of law.

[The Chair]

I don’t think he could answer that, Laura. I think that is more for the Boundary Commissions.

[Laura Farris]

Okay, that is my last question then. Thank you.