Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Lords Chamber

It is not beyond possibility that the boundary changes detailed in Clause 10 are delayed or altered in some way. What then for the alternative vote? What then if, for example, a large majority has voted for AV? Is that result of that referendum simply to be ignored? As the Bill stands, it seems to say yes to that question. Why did the Minister’s party accept this? Why did it not insist at the very least in writing a reverse bind into the Bill? We support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Lipsey.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My noble friends Lord Bach and Lord Lipsey have made me think about one slightly wider aspect that really troubles me and which should trouble Conservative Members opposite. My noble friend Lord Bach has just outlined how we face a major change in the electoral system for the House of Commons and a major boundary revision being rushed through without appeal. In addition, we are to get a Bill for a fixed-term Parliament, which we still have to discuss, which again is a major change for the United Kingdom and is totally different from anything that we have had previously in the UK Parliament. We will also soon get a Bill—it has not yet been published—to reform this second Chamber. The proposal is for all these major constitutional changes to be rushed through in one Parliament. It really is quite a frightening prospect. It is bad enough for Labour Peers, given all our radical—

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

Instincts.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Instincts. I thank my former boss—the former Secretary of State for Scotland—who always chooses the right word for me. However, it seems astonishing that Conservative Members can face this situation with equanimity.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My noble friend has only just begun to touch on the scale of the changes that are impetuously and dangerously being rushed through Parliament. We also have the European Union Bill, which will lead to a proliferation of referendums every time there is a possibility of some shift of power between Brussels and London. We have the Localism Bill, which will turn local government absolutely upside down and will, in many ways, eviscerate it. This Government are extraordinarily reckless.

[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.

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[Lord McAvoy]

My Lords, I shall be even more brief than my noble friend who has just spoken. I shall not be bullied or harassed by the tetchiness shown by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness. I specifically put on the record a refutation of the view put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Deben. I remember very clearly the noble Lord when he and I were Members in another place. My summary of the situation was that, when the Conservative Opposition wished to delay or prolong debate, he seemed to be wheeled on to speak at great length. To give him credit for consistency, he has always managed to speak with self-assurance and self-confidence and with an air of always being right. That is very impressive.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Perhaps I may inform my noble friend that, having heard the son of the noble Lord, Lord Deben, in the House of Commons, it is clear that there is an hereditary factor there.

[Lord McAvoy]

Surely not. That could not possibly be the case on the other side of the Chamber. I shall get to my point. One evening last week, I spoke on this very important Bill for two periods of about two minutes each and then for a third time for about five or six minutes, making 10 minutes in total, so I do not think that I can be accused of filibustering and so on. I was involved as much as anybody and the only House of Commons attitude that I see in this House is a capacity of Governments of both kinds, Labour and Conservative—because it is an elected House and that is fair enough—to ram Bills through with strict timetables and so on. Here, the Government are trying to ram through an important constitutional change without any regard to the views that are put forward, and they are getting very annoyed because people want to make and answer points. If they do not answer them, they will be on record as never having answered. I genuinely do not believe that there is any filibustering going on here. If the noble Lord had been here more often, he would have heard the wide range of different views on this side of the Chamber on these very matters. Therefore, he should be a bit fairer about this.

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

My Lords, following that welcome note from the unforgettable noble Lord, Lord Rooker—and I will be returning to what he said a moment ago about the fairness of equality of votes—I first apologise to the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, who thought in some way I was irritated. Far from it—I just did not realise that he was getting up and I got up to speak at the same time, but I deferred to him because he wanted to interest us in what he had to contribute to this part of our discussions.

I am tempted to speculate, as my noble friend Lord Deben invited me, on the mindset of noble Lords opposite. However, on this occasion I will try and resist temptation because it might take us down further highways and byways. I pause to observe that it might be difficult to do so because while on the one hand some noble Lords from the Labour Benches have indicated that the coalition agreement was to the disadvantage of the Liberal Democrats, on the other hand the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, indicated that was a threat to the Conservative Party and its view of constitutional reform.

I also want to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, who thought that perhaps the pace of constitutional reform was too much. He was, of course, a member of a Government—and I pay huge tribute to them—who by this equivalent stage in their first term had had a referendum on their programme for devolution for Scotland and Wales, and then introduced legislation on freedom of information and some reform to this House, and passed the Human Rights Act which put forward proportional representation for the European elections. I just regret that they ran out of steam when it came to implementing their election manifesto promise on a referendum on the electoral system, or we might have been able to avoid some of these discussions.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Will the noble and learned Lord confirm that, in relation to the referendum and the legislation establishing the Scottish Parliament, there was not just pre-legislative debate; there was a whole constitutional convention which he and I were part of, which discussed the whole set-up, including the electoral system? It was discussed almost ad nauseam to get a consensus, not rushed and pushed through in this way.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

As my noble friend, Lord Strathclyde, said earlier, people have been talking about electoral reform for years and years. Indeed, it is less than 12 months since the Government which he supported brought forward their own proposals for a referendum on the alternative vote, so it has had plenty of exposure.

It is important that we address the amendment which the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, proposed some time ago and which was supported by the noble Lord, Lord Bach. As the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, indicated, this was part of the coalition agreement, and it is worth recalling that back in those days in May this year, it was very clear that no party had won the election. Indeed, given the instability in world markets at the time and the potential political instability which could be fed by that, my own party, the Liberal Democrats, came to an agreement with the Conservative Party to form a coalition Government to bring, I believe, much needed stability at a very crucial time.

There were several issues in that agreement with regard to constitutional reform and the coalition’s programme for government made a clear commitment to both the issues involved in this Bill—a referendum on the alternative vote and a boundary review to ensure a reduction of the House of Commons and equality of value of votes in constituencies. It was the Government’s view that both issues should be tackled and implemented together, and we have never made any secret of that particular fact.

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

For good reasons, which the Bill addresses, there are exceptions. There are only two, and I do not want to take up the time of the House, although we will, no doubt, have plenty of opportunity at a later stage to explain why in these two limited cases, which by any stretch of anyone’s imagination are different from any other part of the United Kingdom, an exception has to be made. Two out of 600 does not really depart from the principle of fairness that I illustrated.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I would not want the Minister to mislead the House. It is not just two constituencies. The area provision also excludes the constituency presently represented by Mr Charles Kennedy. Is that not correct?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

That is not correct. The relationship between the area provision and the constituency represented by my right honourable friend Charles Kennedy is that he currently represents the largest area in the United Kingdom. The area referred to in Part 2 is just slightly larger. It is not to preserve a particular constituency. Indeed, if one thinks about it logically, if you start at the top and come down, it would eat into his present constituency anyway. It is not an automatic read-across. The noble Lord has just got it wrong on that point.

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

The noble Lord is right to identify the ones he has. The others were, I think, incorporated into an amendment that was moved in the other place and that related to some of the highlands seats and Argyll and Bute. I hear what he says. I can assure him that I have already met elected Members from Cornwall as well as elected Members from the highlands and islands of Scotland on these issues. We are certainly alive to the issues that he has raised, and I have no doubt that we will have plenty of opportunity to debate them in due course when we return in the new year.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

The Minister said that I am just plain wrong. Can he therefore explain the purpose of new paragraph 4(2) in substitute Schedule 2 to the 1986 Act:

“A constituency does not have to comply with rule 2(1)(a) if … it has an area of more than 12,000 square kilometres”.

Paragraph 2(1)(a) provides, of course, that it need be,

“no less than 95% of the United Kingdom electoral quota”.

My understanding of that is that in the highlands at least one constituency, if not the existing constituency of his right honourable friend, would be exempt from that rule, and on previous voting patterns it is likely that it would be a Liberal Democrat constituency.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I think the noble Lord specifically said that it would be the constituency of my right honourable friend, but in fact that is wrong. Obviously parts of the Highlands and Islands, and perhaps even parts of mid-Wales, raise the potential for large areas to be covered. It would be wrong for us to second guess how the Boundary Commission will apply that. I can certainly assure him that although as a party we have had a consistency good record in the Highlands and Islands, we never take that for granted, and I would certainly not presume from this Dispatch Box that any resulting seat would be a Liberal Democrat seat. However, we would work hard to win it.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

The point I was making was that the noble Lord said that he agreed with his noble friend Lord Deben that the prime consideration should be the number of electors: that that was supreme. The Bill exempts Orkney and Shetland and the Western Isles. Now there is another exemption, is there not?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

Yes, but as I indicated earlier, I do not think that that detracts from the fundamental principle because it reflects common sense on the areas. I am sure that the noble Lord would be the first to complain if we had not done something similar. Let us hear from a fresh voice.