Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

That intervention by my noble friend is extremely significant. That matter has not been taken into account by the Government. I know that there were problems in Glasgow, because I have been reading about them. There was a huge campaign that was referred to a few weeks ago by my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock to deal with the whole issue of registration, which threw up the particular problem to which my noble friend referred. Indeed, the Democratic Audit paper on further findings on equalisation, which no doubt most Members of the House will either have read or will want to read prior to our debates in the future, deals precisely with this issue of population. Mr Lewis Baston says:

“Approximately half of the countries that delimit districts use ‘total population’ as the population base for determining equality across electoral districts. Another third of the countries employ registered voters as the population base”.

Several European countries use citizen population as the relevant base for determining population equality. Lesotho uses the voting age population as the base and Belarus uses the number of voters in the previous election, although that would not be particularly helpful here, would it?

The facts are that countries can use census material and population statistics as against registered electors, particularly when we know that the registered electorate, as far as the purposes of this Bill are concerned, are based on a register that is effectively out of date and which excludes, as my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton was saying only a few weeks ago, some 3.5 million people. Some 3.5 million people are excluded from the register. Why cannot the great proportion of those be included on a register by changing the basis on which the register is drawn by moving it over to a more population-based system?

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

Has my noble friend seen the Electoral Commission’s excellent report published in March this year entitled The Completeness and Accuracy of Electoral Registers in Great Britain? Not only are there that number missing from the electoral register, they are not missing in a proportionate way. There are areas where there are numbers missing disproportionately and Glasgow particularly comes to mind. With an average in Scotland of 92.1 per cent completeness, Glasgow is only 67.8 per cent complete.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I have not read that report although it is on my reading list. There are a number of reports I have to read next weekend in preparation for the debates that will take place next week.

The point is that this is not the peg on which to argue the basis on which people register. My noble friend’s amendment simply says, “Let us have an inquiry that does precisely that”. He is saying, “Let someone, somewhere, do some homework on this whole area before Parliament is required to carry any particular piece of legislation”. That is my case.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Touhig]

I endorse the point made by the noble Lord. As part of the structure of our unwritten constitution—thank God we do not have a written constitution—it is important that we recognise that elements of the Union have to be taken into account. I made the point at Second Reading that in California, tens of millions of people send two senators to the United States’ Senate as does a state like Wyoming which has fewer than half a million people. That needs to be taken into account. If my noble friend’s proposals were accepted, the Government would then have a chance to reflect more sensibly on how we should proceed with these major reforms.

Welsh representation in Parliament goes back to the 16th century, although there is evidence that in 1322 and 1327—700 years ago—Wales was invited to send 24 Members of Parliament to the House of Commons. The Bill as proposed would give Wales just 30 MPs. The regular reviews of parliamentary constituencies have their origins in the House of Commons (Redistribution of Seats) Act 1944. The Act instructed the Boundary Commission for Wales to look initially at abnormally large constituencies but also to conduct a review of all seats with a view to keeping them under constant review. The rules for redistribution for the initial review stated that Wales should have not fewer than 35 seats and that rule remained in place for the first periodical review published in 1954. The second periodical review in 1958 stated that Wales should have not fewer than 35 seats. The fourth and fifth periodical reviews did much the same.

We shall perhaps get into this wider debate as we progress this Bill through Committee. I believe strongly that to treat Wales in this way is a threat to the Union. We will have a referendum in the spring on more powers for the Welsh Assembly. Whatever people’s views—they are entitled to them and I am sure they will express them—it is putting the cart before the horse to say that Wales will have fewer seats whether or not the people of Wales decide to transfer more powers to the Assembly in Cardiff. It is also offensive to people in Wales whose first language is Welsh to say that it does not matter if the Welsh language is well represented in the House of Commons. The point was made in evidence given to the Welsh Affairs Committee in the other place that this would adversely impact upon Welsh-speaking areas.

I urge the Government to take great consideration of my noble friend’s amendment. It would give us a chance to reflect and gain some consensus. I say to the Government that I think that the people of Wales will take offence at being treated in a way in which no other part of the union is being treated. If the Bill is enacted in its present form, one in four Members of Parliament from Wales would cease to go to the other place. That is disgraceful and, I believe, would be injurious to the Union.

Both the Conservative and Unionist Party, which once prided itself on being the party of the union, and the Liberal Democrats, which is the party of Lloyd George—Lloyd George would be turning in his grave at what is being proposed—need time to reflect on the issue. If they would take on board those points in the way that my noble friend’s amendment would allow, we could perhaps reach some consensus. I say to the Government: “Do not be so offensive to the Welsh people”.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

I support Amendment 54ZA, in the name of my noble friend Lord Wills, because it would give us an opportunity to put together the bigger picture of constitutional reform, in the absence of such a picture from the Government. The amendment would help the Government greatly if it offered us an insight into their thinking across the range of constitutional reform proposals and how all the measures that we are debating might fit together. Indeed, the amendment would allow that picture to be put together in such a way that no one would even voice a suspicion that the measures were being put together in any kind of partisan political interest.

For such significant constitutional reforms, I believe that it would be in the interests of the country for us to start by setting out the roles and responsibilities—as mentioned in subsection (2)(b) of the new clause that Amendment 54ZA would insert—of all our representative bodies, starting with Parliament. Starting with the relationship between the legislative and executive functions in both Chambers and taking into account the representative function of the other place, we could then go on to examine, in the language of subsection (2)(b) of the proposed new clause,

“the proper role of MPs in their constituencies and in Parliament”.

Having established that point and having had some consultation and agreement on those very basic issues around how Parliament and our democracy should work, we could then work through the issue of Parliament’s relationship with other Parliaments and Assemblies, including the European Parliament, as mentioned by my noble friend Lady Hayter, and the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament, as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Touhig and others. The role of local authorities could also be considered, as my noble friend Lord Beecham set out.

Once we had established those sorts of relationships, we could then discuss what a sensible fixed term for Parliament might be. Instead, we are to consider in due course the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill in isolation. Such a piecemeal approach to legislation does not enable us to see the bigger picture.

Once we had established all those matters, we might then be able to think about what the appropriate size of each Chamber in Parliament should be. Having established the appropriate size of each Chamber, as referred to in subsection (2)(c) of the new clause proposed by Amendment 54ZA—indeed, we will discuss later tonight if we are lucky, or on Wednesday otherwise, my Amendment 63YA that also deals with the relationship between the size of the membership of this place and that of the other place—we could then discuss, in the context of the committee of inquiry that my noble friend Lord Wills proposes, the size and composition of each House and how each House would get there. Unfortunately, Part 1 of the Bill, which we have already debated, anticipates the need to ask the question about the alternative vote through a referendum, but that is a piecemeal approach. We should be doing this as part of a much wider picture that we could all understand, so that we can all make judgments accordingly.

Of course, in thinking about the composition of both Chambers, we could then get into some of the more interesting and thorny issues, such as that which came up in Questions today on whether a reformed Second Chamber should include a place for the Lords spiritual and what value is provided by having the voice of independent expertise of the Cross-Benchers, whom we all know and respect. In a radio programme that was broadcast last night, I was fortunate enough to be able to discuss these matters with the noble Lord, Lord Norton, and the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, and all three of us agreed that there is an absence of that bigger picture at the moment. We are having to discuss and debate—at great length, I am afraid—these issues in isolation. If we had a more coherent vision of where things are going on constitutional reform, perhaps that would save time. The phrase “more haste, less speed” comes to mind in the context of the Government’s approach to these matters.

I have one or two things to say about the phrase,

“the proper role of MPs in their constituencies”,

in subsection (2)(b) of the proposed new clause, because there has been some debate from some on this side—they would be on this side, as there has not been much debate from anywhere else, except for an important pair of contributions from the Cross Benches—about the characteristics of different constituencies for Members of Parliament. For two Parliaments, I was fortunate enough to represent the constituency of South Dorset, which has both very urban areas, some of which were quite deprived, and very rural areas. It was notable to me that the characteristics of the caseload that I had in the different parts of my constituency were profoundly different.

When I was holding surgeries in the borough of Weymouth and Portland, I predominantly had housing cases. I also had a fair amount of immigration cases and a fair amount relating to problems with the tax credit system and the child support system. I had far fewer of those sorts of cases over in the Purbeck end of my constituency, where things such as planning would come up much more regularly along with fundamental issues about the rurality and isolation of that part of the country, including the islands that I represented. Brownsea and one or two others were a real struggle for me to get to because I had to go through several constituencies to catch the ferry to visit my constituents.

That leads me to make some final comments about subsection (2)(g) of this proposed new clause, on examining,

“the arguments surrounding the statistical basis on which electoral areas are … constructed”.

I could seek to detain the Committee by talking through some of the excellent arguments in the Electoral Commission document that I referred to earlier when I intervened on my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, but I will save that. Suffice it to say that in my own experience, having represented that seat of South Dorset for two Parliaments, drawing boundaries in such a way that they do not take account of such basic things as the ability of people to get around creates problems.

For me to visit Brownsea, which I was able to do on only a few occasions during the time I represented that constituency given that it had only about six electors on it, I had to travel about an hour and a half from my home at one end of the constituency to get a ferry. The ferry would go every now and then and ultimately I would get there. It took all day to meet one or two constituents who might have issues that they wanted me to address. Thank goodness for the telephone, and in this case for e-mail, although some of the comments that we have had about the amount of correspondence that Members of Parliament have show how much is generated by e-mail now. It is quite astonishing.

Equally, the main industrial estate where the vast majority of my constituents in Weymouth worked was not in my constituency but in the neighbouring constituency of West Dorset, because it sat just the wrong side of the local authority boundary. I certainly welcome some of the freedom that the Bill might offer the Boundary Commission to cut across local authority boundaries. Brownsea Island is in Dorset and Poole is in Poole. That is why Brownsea Island was lumped into South Dorset. Making some sense of all of that would certainly be welcome, but to have some kind of very crude system that is based only on numbers and not on constituencies of interest would be very retrograde.

That is why the Government are being offered a fantastic opportunity to accept this amendment from my noble friend Lord Wills, which has clearly been thought through in some detail, as demonstrated by its length. It gives them the opportunity to allow us, as a country, to think about these constitutional reforms in their entirety and not to see individual measures rushed through which I am sure we would all live to regret.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Wills has done the Committee an enormous service by presenting this amendment today, because it has enabled those of us who have engaged with the debate at least to consider the conspiracy not to talk about certain matters that really needed to be resolved in advance of taking final decisions on this legislation. I know there has been a lot of comment about an apparent conspiracy among Labour Members of the Committee to spin the discussion out. I have to say to your Lordships that I am not part of that conspiracy. I have not previously intervened in Committee on the Bill to speak on any of the amendments.