Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Falconer of Thoroton Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)]

My Lords, from time to time I keep the House informed about progress on this Bill, and this is one of those occasions. As we start this, the 15th, day in Committee on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, I am delighted to be able to inform the Committee that there is now agreement among the usual channels on a timetable for completing Committee. As a result of a series of productive discussions, the usual channels agree that Committee should be completed by the end of business on Wednesday this week. This is within the time that has already been scheduled and indicated on the Order Paper. I am sure that all noble Lords who have followed proceedings on the Bill, and perhaps a few who have not, will welcome a return to the effective functioning of the usual channels on the Bill, and I sincerely hope that this means that there is no longer any need for me to ask the Committee collectively to come to a resolution on how proceedings on the Bill should be regulated.

During Committee so far, the Government have held meaningful discussions with the Opposition and with a number of other Members of the House, in addition to debate on the Bill in the Chamber. As a result, the Government will bring forward a package of concessions on Report, and I am sure that the whole House will welcome that. Therefore, we are in the welcome position of having agreement to complete Committee by the end of Wednesday this week. Equally, I am sure I have no need to remind the Committee that we need to return this Bill to the other place by the end of Monday, 14 February—that is, two weeks today—if the referendum is to be held on 5 May. From the soundings that I have taken, I feel confident that the majority of Members from all parts of the Chamber share this aim.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

My Lords, I am obliged to the Leader of the House. As he has said, we have agreed through the usual channels that Committee on the Bill should be completed at the close of business this Wednesday. This is the product of good discussions on the substance of the Bill over the weekend and today. Focusing only on the key issues on Report and employing the economy and focus which your Lordships will expect on Report and at Third Reading, the timetable will depend on further agreement between the parties on substantive issues. The Cross-Benchers have played a critical part in getting us to the good point that we have reached, and we now commit ourselves to work hard to try to reach the necessary further agreement.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, on behalf of a number of us who have been here for long hours into the night, I congratulate and thank those who have been involved in these discussions, not least the Convenor of the Cross-Benchers. I hope that this spirit of compromise will extend into the planning of Report, on which we might otherwise find ourselves in a repetition. I remind the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, that he and his colleagues endorsed the working group of Labour Peers, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, which recommended that a reasonable time limit be set for all Bills to complete their passage in the Lords. I also remind the noble and learned Lord that in endorsing that recommendation, in a speech to the Labour Party conference on 29 September 2004, he said very wisely:

“The Second Chamber should have the powers to revise, to amend, to scrutinise, but not finally to frustrate the programme of a legitimately-elected government”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Pannick]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 94A. I agree with everything that has been said by the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf. I thank the Minister and Mr Mark Harper in the other place for the courtesy they have shown in spending time with me discussing possible amendments to crucial aspects of the Bill. I take the view—I know that I am not the only noble Lord who does so—that the Government are certainly entitled to get their business through this House. However, the Bill would benefit considerably from improvements to Part 2. I am delighted to hear from the Leader of the House that concessions will be brought forward. The Clause 11 formula of a 5 per cent band either way for an electoral quota is simply too rigid to allow for proper consideration of geographical considerations and local ties. It is wrong in principle for Clause 12(2), which we are now debating, to abolish the power of the Boundary Commission to hold a public inquiry.

The Boundary Commission process, including public inquiries, has served this country very well. It has maintained public confidence by a transparent process which has avoided even the suspicion of gerrymandering which blights so many other democratic countries. The Boundary Commission needs to retain some form of discretion to call for an inquiry, at least in those cases where it considers that it is necessary, with appropriate safeguards. I am sure that improvements can be made to the statutory scheme to promote efficiency and reduce delays but there really is no case for abolition. I very much hope, and expect, that the Minister will tell the Committee that this is one of those matters on which the Government intend to bring forward concessions.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

My Lords, we welcome the amendment spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. The amendment to reinstate public inquiries into Boundary Commission proposals provides your Lordships’ House with an opportunity to start edging back from the precipice. It builds on an amendment moved by the opposition Front Bench which your Lordships debated last Wednesday. Although the Cross-Bench amendment that we are debating is more restrictive than ours, we willingly support it in the interests of breaking the deadlock on Part 2. It is a sensible and practical proposal for which we are grateful.

Clause 12 will, if enacted, abolish completely—indeed, it would go further than that and ban—the right to hold a local public inquiry into the recommendation of a Boundary Commission. The Government have chosen to put in the place of a public inquiry an extended consultation period by written submission of eight weeks. It is our submission that this is not an adequate replacement. Part of the function of a local inquiry is to provide people with a fair hearing and an explanation of why a proposal has been turned down. That is essential to the legitimacy of the process and we believe that it improves the decision-making process as well. Perhaps one of the most telling facts is that in every single case where the Boundary Commission was proposing significant changes, such as an increase or a decrease in the number of constituencies in a particular locality, its initial proposals were in every case amended following a public inquiry, so public inquiries are at their most valuable when the recommendations under consideration are the most dramatic. That fact is particularly salient in the context of this Bill which provides for a boundary review based on a reduction of 50 constituencies and the new set of rules dominated by a rigid electoral parity rule.

As the heads of the four Boundary Commissions have made clear, those factors mean it is inevitable that the next review will result in considerable changes to the electoral landscape, so considerable in fact that the Bill states in Rule 9(2), in Clause 11, that the Boundary Commissions are not permitted to take into account Rule 5(1)(d),

“inconveniences attendant on such changes”,

when conducting the forthcoming review.

They can take account of inconvenience in future reviews, but not in this first one.

As we debated in your Lordships’ House last week—I recommend that your Lordships read Hansard to see the relevant quotes—even psephologists who are sceptical about the value of public inquiries have said that on this occasion, in this context, they should be retained. Indeed, they have made the point that, while political parties have tended to be the major participants in inquiries, the scale of change that will be brought about by the next review is likely to provoke a much greater level of involvement by individuals and groups of local people. That is one of the reasons why we on this side of the House have not been willing to drop this matter.

I accept that there is a case for amending the current provisions in the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 so that boundary commissions have some discretion about whether to go ahead with an inquiry, even where the basic threshold is met. However, the amendment proposed by the Cross Benches addresses that issue. The amendment that we moved last week provided that element of discretion. The variation on our amendment, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, the noble Lord, Lord Woolf, and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has tweaked the drafting on that point and made the position clear. We are grateful for that.

There is also the point about judicial review, made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, in the dead of night last week, which he makes again today. I will not repeat what he said, because he said it a lot better than I ever could. His intervention on Wednesday was a powerful one and I very much hope that the Government will listen to it.

The Cross-Bench amendment keeps our initial six-month limit on a local inquiry but states that no secondary inquiry should be allowed. Given that these are very rare in practice, we have no objection to that change in the proposal.

I hope that the Minister, in responding to this debate, will be able unequivocally to accept this amendment. It has nothing to do with partisan advantage. It is a practical proposal concerned with the legitimacy of the process for drawing constituency boundaries. Helpfully and constructively, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, confirmed last week:

“It is not a fundamental principle of the Bill that there should be no oral inquiries.”.—[Official Report, 26/1/11; col. 1070.]

We have high hopes that the noble and learned Lord will enable us to progress in this matter by broadly accepting the proposal in the Cross-Bench amendment. I support the amendment.

[Lord Mawhinney]

My Lords, in the spirit of the Chamber, I want to make two simple and quick points. I make a comment about the thought of a local inquiry not only from the experience of twice having my constituency rejigged through the process, but also from my experience as the chairman of our party a number of years ago.

Local inquiries can occasionally develop a life of their own. I wonder about the six-month limit because I can fairly easily foresee a legal argument arising out of a consultation that had not been satisfactorily concluded in this six-month period. I say to my noble friends on the Front Bench that I have some concern about the concept of a public inquiry in this context. Having said that, I add something that they may not welcome quite so much. I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, when he said that the Boundary Commission needed some “discretion”—I use his word. I hope—indeed, I think the whole House hopes—that the Government will find it possible to meet the spirit reflected in what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, has said and what I am saying in sympathy with what has already been said: that whether it is a local inquiry or not—and I have concerns about the concept of a local inquiry—there needs to be some element of discretion for the Boundary Commission.