Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lipsey]

55: Clause 10, page 8, line 14, leave out “2013” and insert “2015”

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, with this amendment, we pick up some of the debates that we were having on Monday night—I fear that we must have done something on Monday night that made noble Lords feel that they did not wish to remain in the Chamber for the whole of the subsequent debate.

In that debate, we were discussing the timetable for the re-warding of constituencies. The word that was used for the Government’s timetable, which means that this will be done by 2013, was “achievable”. I agree with that; that timetable is achievable. I have checked with experts in the matter and there is no doubt that, if the right resources are applied to the Boundary Commission, it can be achieved. However, I understand from reading the newspapers that a man recently achieved the feat of rolling a marble up a 12,000-foot mountain with his nose, so that feat is achievable too, but it does not make it sensible or a very good way to climb mountains. In the same way, I am going to argue that 2013 is not a sensible date by which to seek to conclude the first boundary review.

We have to understand that there is a toxic blend of two elements in this first review. The first is well understood—the reduction in the number of MPs from 650 to 600. We will come back to whether that is a good or bad move later, but that is the Government’s policy and it is part of what has to be dealt with in the boundary review. The second element in the toxic blend going forward is the five-yearly review, which means that reviews are going to happen every five years and cause upheaval.

However, what has to be understood is that this first re-warding is going to create greater upheaval than any review before because it will have the whole of the 50-seat reduction as well as having to adhere to the 5 per cent margin. It is hard to exaggerate how radical this review is going to be and how much upheaval it is going to cause. Just to take one example from the many that I could go into, Democratic Audit, an independent think tank, calculates that if these provisions on 600 seats and 5 per cent tolerance go through, there will be only nine counties out of the 46 in England where county boundaries are still respected in the drawing of constituencies. If my arithmetic is right, that means that there are 37 counties where county boundaries will cease to exist. That applies again for local authority ward boundaries. This is a complete redrawing of the electoral map, yet it has to be done not in five years, which will be the timetable for subsequent reviews, but in just over two years. This extraordinary upheaval has to be crammed into two years.

This decision has not been made out of a desire to get the task done well or anything like that; it has been made, quite frankly, because the Tories believe that they will win more seats under this disposition. The really peculiar thing, which I find almost impossible to believe, is that no independent person who has looked at it thinks that this is likely to be true. For example, Democratic Audit, which has done the most detailed analysis, says that of the 50 seats lost under the Bill, 17 will be Tory and 18 will be Labour. There will not be much difference and that is well within the margin of error. On seeing the 300 pages of legislation before the House, I think that that is an awful lot of trouble to go to to win one extra seat. Still, politicians will be politicians.

One has to think also of the side effects. For example, in order to get this job done in just over two years, public inquiries are to be abolished. We will come to the case for and against public inquiries later in our debate, but this seems a curious reason to abolish public inquiries—not because they are good or bad things, or because they contribute or do not contribute, or whatever, but in order to get to an arbitrary, politically imposed timetable for the new boundaries to be placed. When you take into account the fact that the political advantage is illusory, the proposal beggars belief.

Therefore, I propose the year 2015 for the completion of the first review under this Bill. It would allow a less hurried approach and, should the House decide so to rule later, would mean that public inquiries could be restored and that we would get more sensible boundaries at the end of the process. My amendment would not change what will happen; it would just change the time at which it will happen. I believe that I am proposing a more sensible pace for what is a fundamental reform.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, I think that this clause is deeply suspect. I support the amendment of my noble friend and I should happily vote for other amendments giving slightly more time for a Boundary Commission to undertake its task. It is quite extraordinary that it is now felt responsible to compress the time available for a Boundary Commission to undertake its work into about the half the time that it traditionally takes, while imposing on it quite unprecedented constraints—the need at the same time to achieve the maximum 5 per cent limit and to reduce the total number of MPs by the arbitrary figure of 50.

If you have a contractor or several contractors bidding for your business and one says that he can build your house, motorway, piece of machinery, factory or whatever in half the time that it has always taken in the past, and in half the time that the competitors say that they need, you would be sensible to be alert at least to the possibility that serious corners are being cut. It is clear that serious corners, including any sense of public inquiries or appeals, are being cut.

Such inquiries are essential in the democratic process. I have given evidence in a public inquiry on a Boundary Commission report. We did not carry the day, but I and those who supported the same point of view all felt at the end of the process that we had had a thorough and fair hearing and that it was an essential part of democracy that such a debate should take place in public about proposed new constituency boundaries. That is the only way in which the public can be reassured that nothing surreptitious is going on and that there is no hanky-panky on the part of the Government covertly trying to influence the result of what should be obviously an entirely objective non-party-political process. Those things are terribly important. All those safeguards are going out of the window.

If I was a member of the Boundary Commission, I should like to have the mechanism of the public inquiry and the appeal process preserved. I would feel it much more likely that I did a good and proper job if there was that check and balance in the system. I should welcome the opportunity to listen openly and frankly to the expression of other views on a particular determination that I might make and to think again in the light of that. I should feel that I was doing a much better job having had that opportunity and that there was much less of a possibility that there might be some angle or consideration that had been neglected.

I do not think that it is a matter of dispute that a corner is being cut in this case and I do not think that it can really be a matter of dispute that this is a very serious corner that is being cut. It is more than a corner because it is something quite fundamental to the process and to public confidence in it. What is being cut out is, if you like, the dialogue between the bureaucracy, or the agency in the form of the Boundary Commission, on the one side and the general public on the other. It is a serious matter.

I have listened to a lot of the debates, although I have not contributed before, but I have yet to hear from the government side a cogent reason as to why this has to take place. The only answer that we get is that it has to happen by the time of the next election. That takes us back to the gerrymandering issue that has been raised on many occasions. Why does it have to happen by the next election? We are trying to get the electoral process right, so if we are going to make substantial changes let us go through the process carefully and thoroughly so as to make sure that we take the public with us. We should make sure that we have something that is valid not just for the next election but for generations to come. We cannot keep coming back to this matter.

Frankly, the haste is unworthy of the democratic process and unworthy of the way that constitutional changes should be carefully deliberated in this place. I intend to support amendments along the lines of those put forward by my noble friends that would extend the time available to the Boundary Commissions to complete the deeply delicate task with which they are now going to be confronted if this Bill gets on to the statute book.

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[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his full answer to the amendment, but I am puzzled. It is wonderful that here is an attempted partisan redrawing of boundaries, which alas has been botched, so it will not have the effect that the party dealing with the changes in the boundaries intends. The noble and learned Lord says that that shows it was never intending the partisan effect in the first place. Others will no doubt decide whether that is an objectively sustainable claim.

More seriously, the problem is not really with getting up-to-date electorates. We would all be in favour of that, but the trouble is that it is being brought forward not only for that reason but for the others I have mentioned, including a believed partisan effect. It is the combined effect of trying to get a more recent database with a 5 per cent tolerance that is being introduced that my noble friends have been pointing out. Some of these changes are very delicate and they will be particularly so if they are happening everywhere. The 5 per cent means that nearly every constituency in the land has to be redrawn and nearly every ward will have its boundaries crossed, involving all the problems with the names of constituencies. That is why it will not prove a successful, speedy attempt.

I shall not seek the opinion of the House. It will be easier to take a view on this amendment, as on the others before it, when we have seen the whole picture in this Committee stage on the whole of this part of the Bill. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 55 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Lord Lipsey]

57: Clause 10, page 8, line 15, leave out “fifth” and insert “seventh”

[Lord Lipsey]

Goodness, you hardly get to sit down before you have to stand up again.

I am not sure that this amendment is right. It suggests a seven-year periodicity of reviews instead of five years. I am not sure whether seven years is the right answer. At the moment we have reviews broadly every 10 years, which is broadly every two elections. Seven years would not sustain that, although there is a case that it should be sustained. I am sure, however, that five years is daft. It is strange coming from a coalition Government led by a Conservative Party, but five years is a recipe for permanent revolution. It will mean much upheaval; you will hardly have finished with one review of boundaries before settling into another. It means that there will be no stability in the system and many people will only just have discovered who their MP is when it changes, not as a result of their decision at a general election but a Boundary Commission decision. That is the result of a combination, which I believe is toxic, of the 5 per cent variance in the size of constituencies and the five-yearly reviews of constituency boundaries.

Stability matters tremendously to MPs. Under this system, they will hardly get back into the other end before they will be wondering which seat to look to represent next time. Will your present seat continue to exist or, if its population is growing, is it about to be dismembered and replaced by another constituency? Every Member of another place will, under this system, be carrying a permanent carpet bag, ready to find himself or herself a new seat.

I do not think that that is a good recipe for anything, including the good governance of this country. If you are thinking the whole time about where your seat is going to be, you are not going to be thinking the whole time about what policy should be. Some of us believe that there has been a dangerous development in our politics, whereby the sheer degree of constituency issues which every MP must consider—I defer to those who have been Members of another place; I may be quite wrong about this—and the sheer weight of constituency work which they face, make it extremely hard to give attention to the wider national issues for which, in a sense, they are elected.

That has been a substantial change over the years. If you read the biography of Gladstone by Roy Jenkins, you will find that he hopped constituencies every few years and had no constituency work or contact at all. Nowadays, any MP has to be deeply embedded in their constituency—a bit like bishops. The ones who are doing a good job really know their areas, their patch, and their people. They will not get embedded in that way if, at the next general election, they know that their patch and their people may be completely changed and that they may be starting again on fresh turf, as Gladstone did. Gladstone ran the Midlothian campaign, but I did not hear of him running many campaigns for the repair of drains in the constituencies that he represented.

That instability for MPs is not the main problem. Anyone who seeks a sympathy vote for MPs is on a losing wicket these days. The main point is the effect that it can have on constituents. Constituents come in all shapes and sizes. I am sure that every Member of this House who has been a Member of another place had many constituents that they would have been delighted never to see again at their surgery doors, but they built up a relationship with their people and people built up a relationship with their Member.

When I was working as a political journalist, I found, when I had conversations with a Member of another place about the great issues of politics, that I was often not wholly overwhelmed by the breadth of knowledge and vision that they had on world problems, and so on. Where I always learnt from any conversation that I had with a Member of another place was when they turned to the issues in their constituency. That is how I understood the reality of the decline of manufacturing industry. It is there where you understand the dilemmas involved in what services you improve and what services you have to hold back on. That was the whole basis of what they brought to our national government and governance.

We had a wonderful example from the noble Lord, Lord Dixon, this afternoon. Could that knowledge be picked up by anyone who happened to be passing through Jarrow on a Sunday afternoon? Would that knowledge be held by the civil servants sitting in Whitehall, or even in the north-east? No, it was detailed constituency knowledge based, as the noble Lord said, on 50 years of living there and representing people there. That is a terrible thing to throw lightly aside, and it is the constituents who will lose. They will not know who to write to; they will not know whether to trust who they write to; they will not know what they are hoping to achieve when they do; and they will not have that intimate relationship that both they and MPs value so much.

It is very noticeable from opinion polling that if you ask people what they think of MPs in general, it is unspeakable. They think that they are nasty, self-seeking men and women on the take. I think they are wrong, mostly, but that is what they think. However, if you ask people what they think about their MP, you get a very different picture of affection and respect that is, in most cases, earned by hard work based on the knowledge that the MP wishes to retain the relationship between him and the constituency he represents for many years ahead. That will go under this Bill, and part of the mechanism by which it will go is the demand that the constituency boundaries be revised every five years.

Whatever we decide on the right variance between constituencies, and we may well make a decision, and whatever we decide about the number of MPs, and we may well make a decision, I hope that between now and the final passage of the Bill, it will not be totally impossible for the Government to think again on this issue and to space the reviews more widely so that this relationship can survive. Not much rope now attaches the people to our politics. It has grown thinner and thinner. The people’s confidence in politics has diminished, as, I fear, has their confidence in Parliament, but it is the constituency relationship and a consistent constituency relationship—

[Lord Tyler]

Before he completes his speech, will the noble Lord explain the rationale behind the selection of seven years for the review? By definition, that would mean that more constituencies would be subject to change than if it was five years. If he went for a longer period, presumably even more constituencies would be subject to change, so all the arguments that he has been advancing, which I entirely endorse as someone who was very proud to represent an interesting part of the country, would fall by the wayside if more constituencies were changed as a result of his proposal.

[Lord Lipsey]

I am most grateful to the noble Lord. I have been on my feet in successive speeches, and he must have missed the beginning of my speech when I said that I was not sure that seven years was right. I was simply sure that five years was not right. That is why we have a Committee stage in this place: so that we can explore these things and come to a correct decision when we get to Report. If the decision was made for 10 years, I certainly would see no reason to suppose that it was wrong. I think that five years has a particular defect that seven years avoids, which is that in five years you know exactly the time. If we have fixed-term Parliaments, the chicken run starts two years before each general election, so there are only three years in which it does not start. Seven years would avoid that, so at least you would get another election after you were first elected, and then you would have a period of uncertainty. However, if the noble Lord wished to move an amendment that proposed 10 years, I should be an enthusiastic supporter of it, and it would be good to see him doing it. All I am saying to the House this afternoon, and I am not sure whether he disagrees, is that a five-year permanent revolution under the Conservatives is too short a period.

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[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords, I am interested in the arguments that the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, put forward in support of his amendment. But there has been an unspoken premise throughout this short debate that the Boundary Commission will inevitably shake the kaleidoscope and the picture that emerges from it will be quite different from before. That will not necessarily be the case. Certainly, as a consequence of the reduction in the number of parliamentary seats that is proposed in the Bill, on the first occasion there will be a considerable change in the shape of constituencies. But once that position has become settled—and I do not imagine that even the most ardent constitutional reformer would anticipate that altering the size of the House of Commons would become a matter of custom—the stability of the total numbers is highly predictable.

[Lord Lipsey]

I am most grateful to the noble Lord, whom I hugely respect on constitutional matters, for giving way. The reason that there will be permanent upheaval is the 5 per cent limit. The reduction of MPs is indeed a one-off effect, but as soon as you go one voter over the 5 per cent, that constituency has to change, which has a knock-on effect on the next constituency, which has a knock-on effect on the next and the next. I know that the noble Lord is an avid reader on the subject and I recommend the work of Democratic Audit, which would explain to him very clearly that what I say may be desirable or undesirable, but it is the factual situation that will result from the Government’s Bill.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

I accept that some changes will flow from that. In another place, I went through nine different elections and each time the Boundary Commission reported there were some marginal changes. It is marginal changes that are likely to take effect. These were, in the cases I recall that affected me, changes to enlarge the electorate because I had both the second largest constituency in geography and the second smallest in numbers of electors to begin with. Naturally enough, there was an attempt to increase them.

The thought that the Boundary Commission would be likely to upset the prospects for a sitting Member seems nothing compared to the probability that if we had a fairer electoral system, it would more adequately represent the electors by ensuring that their votes and the numbers of their votes were reflected—

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

The contributions that we have heard from a number of former Members of Parliament indicate that, notwithstanding what was happening, they continued to apply themselves with considerable and utmost diligence to the task in hand representing the constituents who elected them in the constituency for which they were elected at the previous election. As my noble friend Lord Maclennan said, his constituency was increased by some 25 per cent and he accommodated that. I recall the effort that he made to address the needs of those new constituents. Even under the present system, new boundaries are drawn and come into effect at a general election. Anyone who wishes to see their current MP can readily find out who he or she is if they do not know, and indeed they do so. At an election they will know who the candidates are and will choose how to cast their votes. The two matters are separate for electors. As I indicated, the important principle here is fairness to electors. On that basis, I encourage the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, referred to the length of time that has been devoted to scrutinising the Bill. However, the quality of scrutiny does not depend primarily on the amount of time that it takes but on the willingness of the Government to listen and respond to the arguments that are put to them and, where necessary, to facilitate discussions designed to narrow differences between Members of all parties and none, so that, wherever possible—I accept that in many cases this will not be possible—differences are resolved and the Bill that goes forward is improved. Therefore, I do not suggest that the quality of scrutiny depends primarily on the amount of time involved.

[Lord Soley]

The point that my noble friend makes is important but it is profoundly important when you are looking at a constitutional Bill.

[Lord Lipsey]

I totally agree with that point, particularly in relation to a constitutional Bill that, for the reasons given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace—we may or may not accept those reasons—did not receive proper scrutiny before it came into this House or proper analysis by Select Committees and Joint Committees such as a Bill should have.

That brings me directly to the central point that I want to make. The real issue is that five-yearly reviews, although they have advantages, as they constitute a more recent reflection of the electorate, will lead to mighty upheavals. That is a matter of fact. As we do not have the opinion of Joint Committees or Select Committees on this issue, we have to go outside. I have in front of me the excellent report produced by the British Academy, which has been often cited in this debate, as it provides facts on this subject. It states:

“With a quota of just under 70,000, more than one-third of constituencies would almost immediately have been outside any +/-5% constraint”.

That is, as soon as the constituencies were in place, they were immediately, as soon as the new numbers came along, outside the constraint. The report goes on to say that,

“by the time the first election was held using the constituencies … as many as one-half may have been”,

outside the constraint. That refers just to those directly outside the constraint. It does not deal with all the other constituencies that, where you make the appropriate changes, are also outside the constraint.

Therefore, the facts as we know them suggest that there will be a considerable upheaval. If the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, and his officials can produce evidence that this is a greatly exaggerated case, fine—we will accept it. If it does not cause all the difficulties that I suggested, I would be delighted. However, on the facts as we know them, it looks as if the combination—it is the combination that is toxic—of 5 per cent tolerance and five-yearly reviews is a recipe for permanent revolution. I therefore invite the Minister, who has been most patient and considerate in his approach to the Bill, to try to establish the facts before we get to Report stage and to give them to all Members of the House, who can then make a considered judgment as to whether this element of the Bill should remain as it is. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 57 withdrawn.

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I have two fundamental questions. First, what work have the Government done on calculating how many constituencies might change hands? Obviously the noble and learned Lord cannot answer that with certainty but the Government must have done some work on it. What is the estimate? Secondly, am I right in my construction of the rule, which appears to be inconsistent with the noble and learned Lord's interpretation of the Bill? Thirdly, I invite the Government, if they are serious about the recurring 18 months, to table an amendment to the Bill to allow for a recalibration if there is an election outside whatever the fixed term is under the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Lipsey]

I rise briefly to support my noble and learned friend. His amendment calls attention to something that is implicit in the whole structure of the Bill. It is simply too rigid to be fit for purpose. There is the rigid 5 per cent tolerance, with only two exceptions. However, the real problem is the rigid five-year review timetable. If something gets knocked out of place in this timetable, the whole thing does not work and, as the noble and learned Lord said, one will get boundary reviews with no time for new candidates to be selected for seats. This is not a matter that should be difficult to rectify, and nor should there be much controversy about rectifying it. One simply has to allow the existing Government, when the situation arises, to relax the five-year rule. There is no problem in doing that if the will is there. If it is not, the Government will find that a great many people are cursing, because if there is an early election, as the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill will allow, the whole overrigid structure of the Bill will crumble.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, for tabling this amendment. At the outset, I will clarify that I agree with his interpretation of the rules. Perhaps I may put in the caveat that the rule with regard to taking into account inconvenience does not apply to the first review in 2013, but would apply thereafter. I thought that I had indicated that it was subject to the 5 per cent rule when I responded to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. That is indeed the case. I was responding initially to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, who talked about uprooting the whole system every time and starting again, which is not consistent with the discretion given to the Boundary Commission.

As the noble and learned Lord—echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey—indicated, the intention is that there should be fixed-term Parliaments of five years with boundary reviews in sync. The intention of the amendment is to retain the relationship between the cycle of general elections and the boundary review reporting timetable if the cycle of fixed-term Parliaments shifted away from the pattern starting in May 2015. That would happen if the terms of the fixed-term Parliament were changed to something other than five years. I thought that that may have been the point of the noble and learned Lord’s amendment, but he made it clear that that is not the case. However, he indicated the possibility that there could be an extraordinary general election. We do not believe that it is possible to provide for every reason why an election might not occur at the exact five-year interval. Instead of such complexity, the Bill seeks to address the matter in a way that would not necessarily waste resources. At the same time, future Parliaments would be able to consider how best to address the issue of the reviews getting seriously out of sync. The commission's annual progress reports that are required by the Bill will increase Parliament's knowledge of each review and assist it in deciding how to act.

As the Bill stands, there would still be a broad alignment of boundary review and general election cycles. I will give an example. If the boundary review reporting cycles were realigned to be exactly 18 months before any general election, it is possible that the Boundary Commission would be forced to abandon a review midway and start again from scratch. For example, if there was an extraordinary general election in 2018, before the 2018 report was due out, the Boundary Commission would have been reviewing boundaries for three years on the basis of electorate figures for 2015, and that work would have to be scrapped and a new review cycle started on the basis of 2018 electorate figures. This would be a waste of resources.

I accept the constructive intent of the noble and learned Lord's amendment. It is not necessary, but I am willing to reflect on whether we have done the best we can to maintain sync. However, if issues became such that there was a serious mismatch, it would be open to a future Parliament to redress that. The amendment does not achieve the outcome it intends and could lead to an unnecessary waste of resources. With these comments, I hope that the noble and learned Lord will withdraw it.