Constitution: Gracious Speech

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, two constitutional dogs did not bark in the Queen’s Speech, although they should have done—parliamentary boundaries and the voting system. I shall say a word or two on each.

On parliamentary boundaries, under the Bill passed in the last Parliament, constituencies will have to have electorates within 5% of the average. An associated proposal would reduce the size of the House of Commons from 650 MPs to 600. In the last Parliament, noble Lords on this side of the House fought hard to stop the Bill. I am shocked to see that I spoke 166 times, according to Hansard. Noble Lords opposite accused of us of partisanship. Partisanship—moi? In fact, we had a case of great substance on two points, which got lost. One was that the 5% tolerance was too low; a 10% tolerance would mean far less disruptive change to constituency boundaries without ruining the effect of making every vote of roughly equal weight.

The second was that the reduction in the number of MPs was not justified, given that the number of electors per seat will, if that change goes through, have increased by 22% since 1950—and the workload of an MP is now many times what it used to be. I was very pleased that in March this year the now late constitutional affairs Select Committee produced a report which endorsed both these points.

The Government could just ignore the committee and plough on, but it would be a mistake—and this is the crucial point—from their own partisan point of view. The bias in the electoral system has gone. Before the 2015 election, it favoured Labour. Now it favours the Tories. Had the general election vote nationally been tied, the Tories would have won 301 seats to Labour’s 254, according to the electoral geographers Ron Johnston and Charles Pattie. However, if the changes to the rules go through, the Tories will be torn apart by internal conflict. There will be fewer seats for their MPs to represent. Even in the seats that remain, there will be fundamental changes in boundaries. These measures combined will mean a plethora of deadly duels, mostly in Tory seats, often between sitting Tory MPs, regularly involving clashes between new, young Members—winner takes all. It is a recipe for dissent.

Less obviously, it will have a terrific effect on the Prime Minister’s European goal, which I assume is to recommend to the country that we stay in. Tory grass roots are fundamentally Eurosceptic—I do not think anybody would deny that—so any MP who thinks, suspects or is worried that their seat may change or disappear will have every incentive to adopt a very Eurosceptic position. The prospect of Tory civil war—which in some ways I welcome—over Europe will be magnified several times over by these proposals. It is unusual that I appeal to the Government to exercise their self-interest, but they should have another look at the combined effect of these proposals.

I am not surprised that electoral reform was not in the Queen’s Speech. In my experience, parties rarely question a system that has delivered them an overall majority. I sat on the Jenkins commission—the result of a pledge by Labour in opposition to look at the electoral system—which somehow seemed a lot less attractive after we had just won an overwhelming majority under Tony Blair. Yet this election has again shown the unfairness in modern conditions of Britain’s electoral system. The Government’s overall majority is based on the votes of less than a quarter of the electorate. We now have a set of completely new injustices on top of the old ones. Lib Dem underrepresentation, which used to be the big concern, is now as nothing compared with UKIP underrepresentation: it got 14% of the vote and one seat. Then there is SNP over- representation: with just over 50% of the Scots vote, it got 95% of Scots MPs—so, because of the voting system, Scotland, which just last year rejected independence, now has MPs nearly all of whom favour it. This is very odd.

There was, of course, a referendum on electoral reform in 2011 which came down against change, but Nicola Sturgeon’s threats of a new Scottish referendum on independence show that in our febrile age referendum results do not last for ever. The previous European referendum has lasted for more than 40 years. Would anyone like to have a bet with me that we will have another referendum on Scotland within 20 years? You cannot say that electoral reform can never be subject to another referendum and that it will not happen but is permanent.

In the mean time, I hope that attitudes in my party will change. It gives me no pleasure to say this, but the prospect of an overall Labour majority under the present system is now, and for the foreseeable future, near to nil. This is for three reasons. First, the bias of the electoral system is now against it, and will be even more against it if the boundary changes go ahead. Secondly, the 2015 general election showed a sharp decline in the number of marginal seats; again using the evidence of Professor Johnston. Whereas at the last election 75 seats would have fallen on a 5% swing to us, now it is only 49. Thirdly, Scotland is and may well remain a virtually Labour-free zone.

Given that the Government will not do anything, I wonder whether my party ought not to take an initiative on this, get together with the other parties that have been so badly affected by the electoral system and see whether there are any outline proposals that might come about that would improve it. We will not have an overall Labour majority in the foreseeable future but there could still be a hung Parliament—we only just avoided one this time—in which case it would again be possible to change the electoral system. At any rate, this is a matter that deserves to be debated.