Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I certainly share the noble Lord’s hope that that will indeed be the case, and it is important that it should be, because it will be more difficult for the regime which this amendment envisages to operate if local authorities do not have registration officers in place doing their work energetically and with adequate resources. It is something on which we will need to keep a careful eye. I do not have quite the confidence that he does that that will necessarily be the case.

I should like to make just one observation on paragraph (b) in Amendment 54A, in which my noble friends have proposed that the Boundary Commission should submit reports every sixth year, rather than every fifth year, after 2013. That is wise for a number of reasons, but at this time of the evening I shall mention only one of the reasons. If constituencies are to be redrawn—and perhaps quite radically redrawn—at pretty frequent intervals, it creates problems for political parties. If political parties have to be re-formed election by election—and we know that they will all have to be re-formed in the period between 2013 and 2015, if the election is postponed for that long, and at quite frequent intervals thereafter—that creates a lot of difficulties for political parties.

We know the problem—I suspect that all political parties share this problem—of securing an adequate membership. We need a degree of stability to ensure that political parties can perform their role. Healthy, thriving political parties are a precondition for healthy, thriving local government and for healthy, thriving parliamentary democracy. So I do not think that we want to cause upheaval in political parties any more frequently than is really necessary. Of course the Boundary Commission reviews need to be of sufficient frequency and of a regularity to ensure that they adequately reflect the changing composition of the population of this country. That is essential and we all acknowledge that. It is a question of judgment and of striking a balance between that imperative and what I think is also very desirable, which is not to keep on throwing the system up in the air and destabilising political parties. For that reason, the modest change that my noble friends have proposed—having reviews every six years rather than every five years—makes good, practical sense.

[Lord Lipsey]

The nearest that any noble Lord comes to being economical with the truth is when they stand up and say they are going to be brief. Let me try, for once, to ignore that rule and be brief.

First, we all agree that we need a better electoral register—that is common ground. Secondly, and slightly less obviously, the accuracy of the electoral register matters far more under the system that the Government are proposing for constituency boundary drawing than it does at the moment. The Boundary Commission now has reasonably wide discretion. If there is an extra elector here, the commission can make an adjustment there. It cannot do that under the Bill. If there is one voter more than the 5 per cent threshold, all the boundaries of that seat, and in consequence the boundaries of all the surrounding seats, need to be redrawn. An upheaval can rest on whether a single voter is registered.

I have a third point, and given that we are at Committee stage, perhaps we are allowed to inject new ideas into the debate. I can see why the Government are reluctant to go along with the excellent amendment moved by my noble and learned friend, because they think that it will delay the process. However, there is an alternative. Instead of the Boundary Commission trying to equalise the actual number of registered electors, it should try to equalise something different: notional registered electors—that is, the electorate as it would be if there was 100 per cent registration everywhere. That is perfectly achievable.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

That is exactly what my Amendment 89C proposes. The easiest solution would be for the three wise men on the Front Bench opposite to agree now to accept that amendment later when I move it.

[Lord Lipsey]

The noble Lord has led me to be even briefer, because I was about to refer to his Amendment 89C and to a similar amendment that I myself proposed. It is quite easy statistically to equalise notional electorates. It depends on, for example, the proportion of rented tenure in the given constituency. Perfectly good equations can be developed that pretty accurately project the notional electorate from the actual electorate. Equalise those within whatever limit the House may decide and you have a much more sensible approach than that which is in the current draft of the Bill.

[Lord Tyler]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Will he accept, even if some of his colleagues would not, that one of the disincentives to registration is that people—perhaps particularly if they are transient through the area—think that if it is a very safe seat, their vote simply will not matter? It is the correlation between safe seats under the first past the post system and the disincentive not just to register but to bother to vote even if they do register. I think that at least he will accept that that is one other reason. How does he propose to tackle that problem if, as seems to be his colleagues’ wont, they want to resist any improvement to the electoral system?

[Lord Lipsey]

I am proposing to tackle it in the very same way as I hope he is proposing to tackle it—by voting yes to AV whenever we get round to the referendum, whether on 5 May or, as I hope, a later date.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I know that it is a shock to see somebody rise from this side but perhaps I, too, may make a speculative intervention following what the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, has said. I have not thought this through, but it seems to me that if it were possible to take the number of potential electors—let us call them that—as the governing yardstick for the size of constituencies, then Amendment 54A becomes unnecessary because one would then be in the position that all one needed to be satisfied about is that the local authorities had done their work properly in time for the election concerned. If, however, you take the system as it currently prevails, then the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, is the way to go. But, as I say, it would take away one of the time constraints if one was to go down the Lipsey-Foulkes line, if I can call it that.

The other thing that is worth not forgetting—because a lot has been said about the difficulty, or more than difficulty, of having everything sorted out by 1 October 2013; a number of noble Lords opposite have made that point—is that paragraph 37 of the report of the Select Committee on the Constitution, to which a number of noble Lords have referred, states:

“The Boundary Commissions have confirmed that this timetable is achievable”.

That is to say, things will be sorted out by 1 October 2013. It, after all, should know what it is talking about. With that assurance, and with a new method of calculating the mean, it seems to me that Amendment 54A may not be necessary.