Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Snape. Counties are the starting point of any boundary review. They are not the building blocks; wards are the building blocks. Those of us who have been involved in boundary reviews in various capacities will know that. I would include among that group myself, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, and many noble Lords on all sides of the House who have served in the other place. They will know that counties are the starting point. Outside London, you always start with a county—it can be a shire county or a metropolitan county. You are advised of the number of seats in that county and the initial recommendations of the Boundary Commissions are published.

I recall my time working in the east Midlands, when Derbyshire received an extra seat. That came into force at the last general election and the constituency was called Mid Derbyshire. This was because the electorate had increased and the county qualified for a new seat. I was always clear that that would be a Conservative seat and in May last year it returned a Conservative MP. There were knock-on effects. The review resulted in High Peak becoming coterminous with the district council boundary. That was positive and sensible. A seat called Derbyshire Dales was created close to the boundaries of Derbyshire Dales District Council. The South Derbyshire constituency became coterminous with the boundary of the district council; previously, it had contained a couple of wards in the City of Derby.

There are of course seats all across the county that cross different district boundaries, but all are contained within the county. The county is compact; it provides historic identity and people understand it. Take away those county boundaries and what do we risk? In Derbyshire, bits of High Peak would go into Greater Manchester. North East Derbyshire would be put together with Sheffield, while seats that are largely based on the towns and districts of Erewash and Amber Valley would be ripped up. The historic A52, which was recently named Brian Clough Way, in recognition of what Brian Clough brought to Nottingham and Derby, was put in a Leicestershire seat. It is wrong to ignore these boundaries. Greater London is a county and is allocated a number of seats. It is true that in Greater London seats cross borough boundaries, but account is taken of that. That recognition would go under these proposals.

Seats and communities of course change and movements in boundaries should take account of those changes. However, the Government’s proposals are deeply flawed, as nothing else matters but the number of people, who are thereby denied their right to proper input. They will have the right to send in a letter but not to appeal to an inquiry. That is not right. It is most regrettable that the Government have not moved on these proposals, but I live in hope, given what we have heard from the Leader of the House this afternoon.

The names of seats are also important. This is sometimes forgotten, but boundary inquiries are a good forum for looking at them. The inquiries do not always get it right, but they can improve the situation. I grew up in Walworth in the London Borough of Southwark. When I joined the Labour Party in 1979, I found that I was in the Southwark Peckham CLP. I went to secondary school in Peckham, but calling the seat Southwark Peckham did not reflect the community. The proper name should have been Camberwell, Peckham and Walworth, which would have identified the three distinct communities in that constituency. I am pleased that in a subsequent review the seat was renamed Camberwell and Peckham, which better reflects the constituency, because most of Walworth has been included in Bermondsey and Old Southwark, although that name could be improved.

I bring my remarks to a close in the spirit that has been expressed on both Front Benches. I hope that a deal can be sorted out shortly.

[Lord Dubs]

My Lords, I support these amendments. Perhaps I may give an example of where even the Boundary Commission does not always get it right. The point is that there are, at present, ways of getting it right subsequently.

I had the privilege of representing the Battersea constituency. We had an anomalous situation on the Wandsworth/Lambeth border. My constituency was within Wandsworth. As noble Lords know, Wandsworth had a Conservative council and Lambeth, which adjoined it, had a Labour council. One council estate that belonged to Wandsworth was partly in Wandsworth and partly in Lambeth. That might not have been so bad in itself, except that Wandsworth’s policy was to have a low council tax and to charge pretty heavy rents to council tenants. Lambeth’s policy was to have a high council tax and to charge low rents to council tenants.

Think of the position of a block of flats in Lambeth in a Wandsworth-run council estate. The poor people living in the Lambeth bit of the estate had pulled two short straws. They had to pay the high council tax in Lambeth and the high rents charged by Wandsworth Council. They were caught both ways. Fortunately that situation was adjusted, but the anomaly of splitting a council estate in two by a constituency and, as it then was, a borough boundary is clearly nonsense. I only hope that such things will not happen again, which is why many of us are concerned that, if anomalies of this sort are built into the system, it will damage local communities, local people and the politics of the area.

Perhaps I may widen the argument away from that example. We have discussed representing a constituency that was in more than one local authority area. I would have found that pretty difficult. Many noble Lords have represented areas, either as local councillors or in Parliament. It is difficult to represent an area and deal with another local authority. It is possible under the present system that one might have to deal with another health authority. That is also difficult and I do not know what the future will be for the health service in that regard. For a Member of Parliament to be effective, it is surely important that the constituency should reflect the community, the local authority area and the way in which the health service operates. In that way, a Member of Parliament can be most effective.

Take the situation where one wants to achieve better co-operation between a health authority and the social services department of the local authority—co-operation that occasionally does not work too well. If a Member of Parliament is to be effective, he or she needs to be able to understand these relationships and, it is to be hoped, to have these bodies covering the same area. We used to call them coterminous boundaries.

The other important area is not just the community but the way in which a Member of Parliament relates to local voluntary groups in the community. These groups tend to relate to natural community boundaries. It is difficult to achieve an effective relationship with one’s constituents if the community groups do not cover an area similar to that of the constituency. I had another difficulty in Battersea, because part of the constituency was in Balham and the people of Balham did not like to be called residents of Battersea. We had to deal with that one, but it was all done within the local authority boundary, and it was a matter of just recognising that the community in Balham was different from the community in the northern part of Battersea.

I would like to feel that the Boundary Commission will be empowered by amendments to the Bill that take these matters into account. I honestly believe that the ideal situation is when a Member of Parliament represents one community within one local authority area, not two. That would make for the most effective relationship and the most effective work of the political parties and it would enhance democracy.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness)]

My Lords, Amendments 68 to 71 specify more explicitly the way in which the Boundary Commissions are to draw up new constituency boundaries and take some discretion away from the Boundary Commissions. They provide that constituency boundaries must be contained within existing county boundaries and must not split local government wards and propose limits on the number of local authority areas that constituencies can cross. With the exception of Amendment 69 on wards, they appear to be directed at English local government structure only. I am not sure whether that was the intention or whether they were intended to apply to other parts of the United Kingdom as well, but I am not going to nitpick over that because in moving the amendment the noble Lord, Lord Snape, indicated that they were important and that has been reflected in the debate that we have had.

The Bill provides for the Boundary Commission to take into account local government boundaries within the range of flexibility provided by the Bill. Projections indicate that with that flexibility it would be possible to have constituencies varying from 72,000 to 79,000 electors. The Bill’s provisions represent a rebalancing of the rules in existing legislation; namely, the equality in the weight of a vote and the flexibility to recognise local factors. We believe that the existing legislation results in unclear and potentially contradictory sets of rules. Indeed, the Boundary Commission for England has said that each rule taken on its own is quite clear but it is required to apply all the rules and its experience, and that of its predecessors, is that there is often conflict between them.

What is proposed in the Bill with regard to Rules 2 and 4 is to have a hierarchy, as was said in one of the exchanges. It is because of this rebalancing that we have given precedence to the size of electorate and the geographical area of each constituency over other factors in Rule 5, such as local government boundaries. I believe these other factors are important, and that is why we have provided the Boundary Commissions with the flexibility to consider them. I emphasise to the noble Lord, Lord Haworth, that it is possible for the Boundary Commission to have regard to local ties. The Boundary Commissions have regard within a 10 per cent band of the UK electorate quota between the largest and smallest constituency. We believe that the provisions of the Bill represent a reasonable balance between these factors and ensure a system where votes have equal value throughout the United Kingdom.

In response to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, there is nothing in the Bill or in the Boundary Commission rules at the moment to move individual electors from one local authority area to another. But as is the case at the moment, some constituencies cross London borough boundaries. In fact, 19 out of 32 London borough boundaries are crossed by a constituency boundary. That does not transfer the individual elector within that local authority area.

[Lord Dubs]

I may not have been clear. I was referring to a situation where a council estate was owned by one local authority and part of that council estate was in a different parliamentary constituency and borough. It was an anomaly in terms of both borough and parliamentary boundaries.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I am grateful for that clarification. As I indicated, under the existing rules, 19 out of 32 London borough boundaries are crossed by a constituency boundary. My noble friend Lord Eccles also reflected on the fact that boundaries are crossed under the existing rules. My information is that 16 out of 35 shire counties are crossed by a constituency boundary and 31 out of 40 unitary boundaries. In its fifth report the Boundary Commission noted that in the fourth review, 13 constituencies crossed metropolitan district boundaries whereas in the review which took effect in 2010, 22 constituencies did so. And whereas in the previous review 170 constituencies had crossed non-metropolitan district boundaries, the recommendations for the fifth review included 165 which did so.

In Scotland, where I accept there are other issues with regard to wards because of the multi-Member nature of the local authority wards, there is one constituency—that of my honourable friend Mr Mundell, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Scotland Office—which covers parts of three council areas. His constituency of Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale covers the council areas of Dumfries and Galloway, Scottish Borders and South Lanarkshire. This is an important point. My noble friend Lord Naseby mentioned the fact that he had at one stage represented three local authority areas.