Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

There are many ways in which one can be an active citizen, and I enumerated some of them when introducing a debate on that very subject in this House shortly before Christmas.

I do not wish to detain the House, and I am conscious that the hour is late and that many will wish to reach a decision on this. However, I want to say that I am distressed by the fact that so many noble Lords for whom I have a high regard should imply that this deliberative process would bring about a better end point than the deliberations of our Parliament, which the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, referred to as the mother of Parliaments. It is so highly regarded largely because it is thought to act, usually, in a deliberate and wise way. On this occasion, the silence on these Benches indicates consent to what the Bill is putting forward, and an awareness that those opposing it are seeking to stop it from making progress and to stymie the efforts to achieve the constitutional reform that is long overdue.

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, in the 27 years that I was in another place I represented all that time the good people of Dudley. The extraordinary thing is that I represented no fewer than three distinct and different constituencies, and was chosen to stand as a candidate for a fourth constituency, within the boundaries of Dudley. That was not so much an inconvenience to me, but an infuriating irritant to the good people of Dudley.

I have also seen the consequences—as, no doubt, many other noble Lords have—of constituencies that cross local authority boundaries. That is not only an inconvenience to the Member of Parliament but an enormous inconvenience to elected councillors and paid officials of the different local authorities. It is beyond an irritant; it drives ordinary citizens berserk because they do not know who to go to. It is not a question of parliamentary convenience.

Long ago I came to the view that this manic idea that we have to have precise mathematical equivalence in constituency numbers is a hobgoblin of very small minds indeed. We should be big enough to accept certain anomalies in our constitutional system without recoiling with shrieks of “unfair, unfair”. There is no such thing as a fair system, because what is unfair to the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, whose speech I largely agreed with, is fair to me; and vice versa. There is no such thing as an ideal fair system which is just to be grasped and which ordinary reasonable people would sit down and agree with. Ça n’existe pas, it never will, and we should accept anomalies.

Earlier in this debate, one noble Lord talked about his difficulties in visiting a part of his constituency which was an island. When I first represented Dudley, it was an island.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Gilbert]

Oh yes it was. The centre of Dudley was a part of Worcestershire that was wholly surrounded by Staffordshire. I represented a constituency called Dudley, but which was actually and simultaneously Dudley and Stourbridge. The country got by quite well with that, except rather inconveniently at electioneering time when my wife and I swapped ends. In the mornings, I was in Dudley while she was in Stourbridge, and vice versa in the afternoons and evenings. However, the principle was exactly the same as that adumbrated by my noble friend. Surely to god this country is big enough to accept a few minor anomalies and have something like the Isle of Wight with a much bigger electorate, if it wants that. The idea that we should try to produce equivalence in numbers of constituents—with all the consequences that it produces—is quite absurd.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

My Lords, this is a very important amendment and is the inevitable consequence of doing what the constitutional committees in both Houses of this Parliament have complained about.

The chairman of the Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee in the Commons issued a report on 2 August which stated:

“Your legislative timetable has put me and my committee in an extremely difficult position. When the House agreed to establish the committee, it did so, in the words of the Deputy Leader of the House, ‘to ensure that the House is able to scrutinise the work of the Deputy Prime Minister’. In the case of these two bills”—

one of them is this Bill—

“you have denied us any adequate opportunity to”,

scrutinise. Our own Constitution Committee said:

“In general we regard it as a matter of principle that proposals for major constitutional reform should be subject to prior public consultation and pre-legislative scrutiny. We recognise that there may exceptionally be good reasons for departing from this principle, but the perils of doing so are well illustrated in the present Bill. The case for proceeding rapidly with one Part of this Bill is far stronger than for the other”.

It is possible that the effect of Part 1 of the Bill as drafted will have no effect on our constitution. There is no doubt that if Part 2 in its current form goes through, it will have a substantial effect on our constitution. I very strongly empathise with the very powerful speech by my noble friend Lord Boateng. What would we say to a country that said, “We are going to reduce the number of Members of Parliament in our country by 50 by using our majority to do so”? We would say, “It may well be sensible to reduce or increase the number of Members of Parliament in your country, but presumably there is some sort of independent process by which the number is to be assessed”.

The number of Members of Parliament in this country has fluctuated over a period of 60 or 70 years. That fluctuation has always been as a result of recommendations of the Boundary Commission. It is a very dangerous precedent for a majority in the House of Commons, and then a practical political majority in this House, to push forward a change in the number of Members of the House of Commons.

Even if there was not some independent justification for the reduction from 650 to 600, is there some intellectual justification for the reduction from 650 to 600? How many of your Lordships were present when the Leader of this House, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, gave as the justification that it was a nice, round number? There is no intellectual justification and no independent justification of any sort whatsoever. The noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, whom I respect for the work he did in pioneering the way for constitutional change, says sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and go for it; it is leadership that matters. We have never done that in this country since 1944 in relation to how our democracy is based.

In 1944 a Speaker’s Conference set up the current method for determining constituencies and the number of Members of Parliament. That was given effect in an Act of 1949. There was a further Act in 1954 which gave effect to a consensus that there should not be too radical changes in the number of Members of Parliament. There were further changes in 1986 by a Government led by Mrs Thatcher—the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher—which we, the Labour Party, broadly supported. Further changes were introduced in 1992 by a Government led by Mr John Major, which we broadly supported. There was one occasion in which jiggery-pokery was attempted by a Government and that was in 1969 by a Government led by Harold Wilson and the Labour Party. What happened was that this House rejected the Bill that sought to tamper with a boundary revision.

So do not tell us that Parliament has not proceeded by way of consensus; Parliament has behaved exceptionally well. I think that it is a disgrace that there is absolute silence from the other side, as without independent justification and without intellectual justification a Leader of this House treats this House and the parliamentary system with contempt by saying it is a nice, round number. I see Back-Benchers nodding that it is a perfectly respectable argument, but it is not; it is a disgraceful argument.