Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Reckless is the word for it. As my noble friend Lord Bach was talking, I was sitting here and considering what the common factor was behind all this. It is the Deputy Prime Minister. I must choose my words carefully, but I do not think that he thinks in British terms. He thinks in terms of continental European constitutions and is moving our constitution inexorably towards some kind of continental European constitution, with fixed-term Parliaments, a different electoral system, and changing the composition of the second Chamber—all of this. Okay, that is the agenda, but is it a Conservative agenda? Is it one that all my friends on the Conservative Benches really feel in their guts, in their blood, their water or their instincts? Some of them are my friends—there are only three on the Back Benches at the moment but there were quite a few earlier. I am sorry, there are more; there are five of them. I missed the two distinguished Members perching in the corner. Do they really want this country to go that way?

Someone is shaking his head almost imperceptibly, but I can see it. I know that I am going well beyond the terms of the amendment. If someone with the powers of a Speaker of the House of Commons was in the chair, they would be drawing my attention to it. However, this is relevant, because we are going down a road which is really troubling me and should be troubling Members opposite even more.

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, I wonder whether it is possible for us to imagine the state of mind of those on the other side who, having suggested AV, now consider this to be evidence of a plot. They themselves recognised that we should have a system whereby constituencies should be at least more or less the same size, which was why they stopped—it was they who did it—keeping a special factor to enable people in dispersed constituencies to have fewer Members of Parliament. It was a Labour decision to stop that. They now come to the House and argue that both things are unacceptable. Surely being fair is a Conservative concept. Should we not have constituencies of the same size? That seems to be a very Conservative principle.

Is it not also a Conservative principle to suggest that the public might make their own choices in these circumstances? It happens to be a Conservative principle with which I disagree. I do not believe in referenda and I never have believed in them. However, it is very curious that noble Lords opposite suggest there is something intrinsically un-Conservative in having a referendum. I do not understand that at all. There is something deeply wrong in referenda, but that does not mean that people who believe in them could not be Conservative.

Why are Labour Members making such a fuss about this matter? Could it possibly be that they are seeking with some real difficulty to find reasons why they should spend as much time as possible discussing these matters? I do not want to help them in that, so I will finish by saying one simple thing. I came to this House expecting and finding that there was, in many cases, a degree of quality in debate unfound in my 35 years in the House of Commons. I am very sad to find that during these recent Bills, those who have experience of the House of Commons and those who have been press-ganged into the little battle have used all the techniques which brought and bring the other House into such disrepute. I am very sorry that yet again on this Bill we have lowered ourselves to doing the kinds of things which are done elsewhere. It is a pity that we cannot look back on our traditions, even for someone as newly hatched as myself, and raise the standards again.

[Lord Bach]

Perhaps the noble Lord can help me. It is really just information that I seek. He says that it was the Labour Government who changed the rules to make it not possible for more rural seats to have a smaller electorate. I should be grateful if he could give us chapter and verse on that. As I understand them, the rules we work under now were passed under a Conservative Government in 1986 of which I think he was almost certainly a distinguished and leading member. We actually believe that those rules are well worth preserving.

[Lord Deben]

Perhaps I may reply to that. The change to the sparsity rules, continued in the 1986 arrangements, was brought in by the Labour Government, who argued that it was unfair that some constituents, because there was a smaller number of them in a constituency, would have a bigger vote than other constituents. All that is happening in this Bill is that we are repeating to the Labour Party something which it has long forgotten.

[Lord Bach]

The noble Lord must have been very upset in the mid-1980s, when he played a prominent role in the then Conservative Government, who just followed what Labour had done.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Deben]

I do not believe that I get upset as easily as the noble Lord thinks. All that I believe is true is that we tried for a consensus. What is happening now is the correction of a deeply offensive fact that some constituents have a much smaller vote than others, because of the retention of very small constituencies which ought not to be there.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, I am very surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Deben, is suggesting that the debates so far on the Bill have not been appropriate. If he reads Hansard, he will see that contributions from all around the House have been thoughtful, succinct and related to entirely appropriate matters that Parliament ought to be thinking about. I put it to him that the cynicism of the motivation of the coalition in yoking, as they have, the two main components of the Bill together is a sore provocation to us and might have tempted some of us to engage in wrecking tactics. The fact that we have not done so reflects very well on us.