Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 10th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the erudition of my noble friend, in every sense of the word, Lord Lipsey, whose amendment I support. He gave us a very good analysis of the Minister’s obsession with equal votes, pointing out that in safe seats, it does not have much of an influence. He also referred to turnouts. There is also the scandal of non-registration of many people who ought to be on the voters’ roll. There is a whole range of issues there and no one knows them better than my noble friend Lord Lipsey.

I did not want to intervene after the speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, but I was a wee bit disappointed by her response to the last debate. I am afraid that she did not seem to understand some of the issues. I hope she will do some homework before we get to Report, because this is a very important matter. As I gather from the conversations that took place while we were adjourned, everyone agrees that this is an important issue.

We will come again to the general issue of flexibility at the next session of the Committee when we deal with my amendment in relation to local ties versus arithmetic, and the constant obsession with getting each constituency arithmetically as near as possible to the others rather than taking account of local ties. This matter and others that we have already debated are all part of the issue of getting some flexibility.

The Government seem to be obsessed with 5%. The Minister needs to explain why 5%. Why have they come across this? Why is 5% particularly the figure that they have arrived upon? I look forward to hearing the explanation. My noble friend Lord Lennie in his introduction argued the case convincingly, using some very powerful arguments, for much greater flexibility.

I look forward with even greater fascination to an explanation by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, of why 2.5%. I cannot think of any rational explanation whatever, except that, for once, the noble Lord may want to make the Government appear reasonable by making 5% a good balance between 2.5% and 10% It would be an interesting occasion to see the noble Lord take this opportunity to make the Government seem reasonable. Usually, he is—effectively and correctly—undermining, challenging and questioning of what this awful Government are up to.

I support my noble friend Lord Lipsey’s amendment. I want more flexibility so that council boundaries can be taken account of in Scotland, as well as Scottish Parliament boundaries, natural boundaries such as rivers, estuaries, lakes and mountains, and community ties as well.

When I was thinking about arbitrary lines, I remembered how the British imperialists in Africa drew straight lines and said, “This side is Uganda and this side is Kenya”, or whatever it was, not taking any account of community or historical connections whatever. It was just appropriate so that the British masters went in and ran their parts of the Empire, and they were arbitrarily drawn. Maybe this is not quite as arbitrary as that situation, but it reminded me of it. We must take account of local interests and community, of where people shop and where their schools are; all these kinds of ties need to be taken account of.

That is why I think 10% is the right figure. It does not mean that there has to be a variation of 10%; it just gives the Boundary Commissions flexibility. The commissions need to look at the constituencies carefully, and if they do not think there needs to be a big variation then they will take account of that.

I strongly support my noble friend Lord Lipsey’s amendment, and I am looking forward with real excitement to the following speaker, my “noble friend”—I use inverted commas because he is not my noble friend politically but he is in other senses of the word—Lord Forsyth explaining how 2.5% can be in any way be sensible.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con) [V]]

I am very happy to follow the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes. I am not sure he is right about me not being supportive of the Government. I am very supportive of the Government, but it is our role in this House to hold the Government to account.

I did not speak at Second Reading. I thought it was a perfectly sensible Bill implementing a pledge from a manifesto on which the Government obtained a substantial majority, and that pledge was to update and create equal parliamentary boundaries. The Bill has been supported by the House of Commons, whose main concern this is, so I am very surprised that so many colleagues in the House of Lords want to second-guess the electorate and indeed the Commons by seeking to amend it in the way that I have listened to today and that I have read in previous debates. I am delighted that the Government have abandoned the coalition idea of reducing the number of constituencies from 650 to 600, and I very much support the Bill.

I have to say that I was hugely amused by the speeches from the noble Lords, Lord Lennie and Lord McNicol, on an earlier set of amendments, passionately arguing against what is intended here, which is to create equal constituencies. This is a measure that people have argued for since the last century; indeed, it was a central plank of the Chartist movement that they wanted 300 electoral districts consisting of equal numbers of inhabitants. I take the point that we have not yet got to the stage where the electoral roll includes all the inhabitants, but we can and should work towards that as part of a good democracy. However, for people whose heritage in the Labour Party is the Chartist movement to argue that we need something different from that when the Bill seeks to achieve it, and when the voters in the general election endorsed it so strongly, was, shall we say, interesting. The Bill seeks to introduce those equivalent constituencies.

The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, said that he thought 10% was the right figure. I have to tell him that plus or minus 5% is a 10% variation, and plus or minus 10% is a 20% variation. These numbers that appear small are actually very large if they are plus or minus. My amendment would simply recognise that when people talk about 5% they are really talking about plus or minus 5%, and therefore it suggests that the figure should be plus or minus 2.5% to allow for a 5% variation between constituencies. The noble Lord, Lord Lennie, just dismissed that out of hand and said it would not happen. I have news for the noble Lord, Lord Lennie: I do not think any of these amendments are going to happen because this measure is what the Government won an election on proposing.

What has been central to the debate this afternoon, at Second Reading and elsewhere is that you have to choose. Either you have identifiable communities or you have equivalent votes. This Bill is about equality of seats.