Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Maples Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maples]

My Lords, if the noble Lord was speaking on medical matters, I would be very reluctant to tangle with him in argument, but I think that some of the doubts he expressed about the Bill are simply not right. The new boundaries will not be set by central diktat but by the Boundary Commission that has a long history of independence from political parties and will have to take account of what people make as local representations. I have been to several public inquiries over boundary changes, and everybody who has been to them knows that the only people who bother to turn up are political parties wrapping up self-interest in high principle and trying to get boundary changes that suit them. The Boundary Commission can receive representations, it has longer to consider them and geographical features are one of the things that it can expressly take into account.

The Bill corrects a fundamental unfairness in the discrepancies between the sizes of constituencies. It is that that I want to address. I realise that the first part of the Bill dealing with the alternative vote on the referendum is a price that is being paid for coalition government. It is very important to the Liberal Democrats. I am perfectly happy that there should be a referendum. I will vote no in it because I think that the present system is much better, and I am slightly surprised that the Liberal Democrats are satisfied with this because I do not think it will do much for them. I suspect that the big party—Labour or Conservative—that is doing well will do even better under AV.

I want to talk about the second part of the Bill. I have some form on this because almost exactly five years ago I introduced a Ten Minute Rule Bill in another place to achieve the objectives of this Bill. It was called:

“A Bill to equalise of the size of parliamentary constituencies”.

I wanted to call it “A Bill to abolish rotten boroughs”—but the Clerks would not let me—because that is what we have. The smallest constituency at that time had 21,169 voters and the MP was elected with 6,200 votes; the largest constituency had 107,000 voters, five times as many, and the MP had to get 32,700 votes to get elected. There are massive discrepancies that on the whole work to the advantage of the Labour Party, which is why there has been so much special pleading from it in this debate. Although it has managed, quite cleverly, to wrap it up as high principle, I am afraid that special pleading is what it is.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Maples]

The average size of a constituency at that time was 68,000 voters, but 440 of them were more than 5 per cent away from that average and 240 were more than 10 per cent away. This is massively unfair, and it is demonstrated in the majorities that the two main parties have to get to win an election. If Labour got 32 per cent of the vote and the Conservatives 29 per cent, there would be a Labour majority of 10 seats in the House of Commons; if the Conservatives got 32 per cent of the vote and Labour got 29 per cent, there would be 280 Labour MPs and 231 Conservatives. The Conservatives have to get 40 per cent of the vote to get an overall majority, but all Labour has to get is 32 per cent, and it is all a direct result of the 1986 Act under which boundaries have been drawn. If the 2010 election result were reversed and the Conservatives had got 29 per cent and Labour 36 per cent, Labour would have got 363 seats, and the Conservatives 171, whereas we know what happened: we got 306 and Labour got 258. A hung Parliament, as opposed to an overall Labour majority of somewhere in the region of 80, is the discrepancy that these constituency sizes produce.

Let us look at some of the causes of that discrepancy. The biggest is Wales, and that is where the most eloquent special pleading has come from as, I suppose, one would expect from former Welsh MPs, but why should a Welsh seat be so much smaller than an English one? The Welsh quota is 55,000, but in England it is 70,000. Why should there be 40 seats in Wales when what it would get if it had the same quota as England is 32 seats? The Act under which the Boundary Commission draws boundaries does not require there to be 40 seats; it requires there to be 35, but for some reason Wales has 40. If there are parts of the United Kingdom that are not justified in being overrepresented, they are surely those with their own elected Assembly. The worst case in that respect is Scotland, although the discrepancy there was corrected in the Scotland Act, but there is still a discrepancy of two seats in Scotland, eight in Wales and a couple in Northern Ireland.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

As the noble Lord knows, we support the idea of equalisation. He is blithely saying that all these discrepancies are caused by different sizes of constituencies. To what extent does he believe it is caused by different sizes of constituencies and to what extent does he believe it is caused by differential turnout in constituencies? I think the House would like to know where the split between the two comes.

[Lord Maples]

I prefer to make my own speech, and that is not a subject that I want to deal with. This Bill is about boundaries, not about increasing turnouts. A large part of the cause is the difference in the size of constituencies. It is not, I agree, the only cause. Differential turnout and the stacking up of votes in safe seats is certainly part of it, but the differential size of constituencies is part of it, and it is demonstrated by some of the figures I have just given.

[Lord Wills]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. He has been very generous with his time. To what extent does he think these differences are attributable to underregistration?

[Lord Maples]

I think that it is undoubtedly a problem, and it is particularly so with young people, but it is much easier now to register than it has been for a very long time. When I first got involved in elected politics, the registers were changed, I think, only once a year in the spring before local government elections. They are now updated every month, so it is perhaps up to all elected politicians of all political parties to encourage people to register. There is no bar to them doing so, and it has never been easier.

As I have said, Wales is over-represented. We have had quite a lot of former Members of Parliament in their speeches saying how some constituencies are much more difficult to work with than others. But in my experience—having represented two constituencies, one of which I represented not at the same time but in common with the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and the other was Lewisham West in London—they could not be more different. One was three square miles of concrete and the other was, I think, 600 square miles of south Warwickshire farmland with the town of Stratford-on-Avon in the middle. Each presented its own problems and difficulties. There were certainly more people with social problems and more immigration and housing cases in Lewisham. But a constituency such as Stratford-on-Avon has a very articulate electorate who write lengthy letters to their Member of Parliament demanding their opinions about this and that. When they decide to get a local campaign going about something, they are incredibly well organised.

Lewisham did not have an identity with Lewisham: it was just three square miles of south-east London. I do not think that many people knew which borough they lived in. As the noble Lord will know, in south Warwickshire, the historic town of Stratford-on-Avon represents about one-quarter of the electorate. There are 132 villages and parishes. A big issue in one part of the constituency can be absolutely irrelevant in another part. If, as has recently happened, the eastern part of our old constituency is hived off into a new one, I do not think that those people will feel that a great historical link has been broken.

In Scotland, the discrepancy was largely represented in the Scotland Act, but there are still two extra seats. There are 59 seats when there should be 57. In Northern Ireland, the quota is 16 to 18 seats, and it has got 18. As a result the average constituency size in Northern Ireland is 10 per cent less than it would be in England.

What gives rise to the discrepancies between English seats? The first is population shift. People are moving on the whole out of old inner city areas to new suburban areas. That is happening the whole time, but because of the nature of the way in which the Boundary Commission works, it uses old registers. The recent election was fought on, I think, the 2000 or 2001 registers. At the time when I moved my Ten Minute Rule Bill, Banbury was 19,000 voters over the average and Sheffield Brightside was 19,000 under. At the last election, on the new boundaries on which the election was fought, that discrepancy was already being repeated. Banbury was 9,000 over the average and Sheffield Brightside was 9,000 under. Therefore, one of the faults of this Bill—one of the few faults I say to my noble friend the Leader of the House—on which I might try to move an amendment is that the Boundary Commission should have the right to look forward at potential population changes that are known about because of housing and population movement. Otherwise, the figures will be out of date before they start.

Secondly, the Boundary Commission cannot cross county and local government boundaries, which is a small price to pay for fairness. But it is illustrated again in Warwickshire where for all the time when I was a Member of Parliament we were entitled to 5.45 seats on the quota, so we got five seats. On the last boundary review, it went up by 0.07 per cent to 5.52 and we got six seats. That is nonsense. There was no difficulty in managing a constituency the size of Stratford-on-Avon. There was no need for that extra seat. But it is this ratchet in the way that the Boundary Commission works which produces an ever larger pool. The basing of electoral boundaries on electoral registers which are already many years out of date is part of the problem.

My Bill, which was introduced five years ago, sought to have a maximum 5 per cent discrepancy from the average, which I am delighted to see that this Bill has; that the rules should be the same for the whole of the United Kingdom; that the Boundary Commission should be able to cross local government boundaries; and that there should be reviews every four years, which is what I wanted, but five years would be fine if we are going to have five-year Parliaments.

Those noble Lords who talked about the disruption that this will cause are wrong. This review will be big, but after that a small review every four or five years will cause much smaller changes than a big review every 12 or 15 years, which is what we have at present, with wholesale changes of constituencies such as we saw at this election. I would like to see the use of projected population figures.

I am absolutely unconvinced about the special case for the two Scottish Highland seats. They are so much smaller than the average. I am sure that there are geographical difficulties in working in those constituencies, but there are difficulties in other seats that I am sure they do not have. I expect that they do not have huge immigration problems to deal with.

Lord Wills: My Lords—

Lord Maples: I have given way to the noble Lord once and I do not think that I will do so again. They do not have many of the problems the others seats have, such as a large seat like I had. The case for those to be so far below the quota—I think that in the case of one of them there are 22,000 voters and in the other 33,000—is very difficult to justify. If they are to have special representation for their position within Scotland, those two seats should come out of the Scottish quota and not the United Kingdom quota.

On the 2010 election, which, as I say, was based on electoral registers which were already 10 years out of date, only 218 seats were within this 5 per cent band. There were 161 between 5 per cent and 10 per cent; more than 200 between 10 per cent and 20 per cent; and 60 were more than 20 per cent out. Of those, 59 were too small, and one, the Isle of Wight, was too large. Of those 60 seats, 45 were in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Isle of Wight was the only one that was too big.

There has been a lot of argument about whether this is party political and what the advantage is. I believe that it will correct a massive unfairness in favour of the Labour Party. But of the 10 seats that are too small at the moment, only two are Conservative, three are Labour, two are Liberal Democrat and three are held by nationalists. Of the 10 that are too large, four are held by the Conservatives and six are held by Labour. One has to be slightly careful about calling where party advantage lies in all of this.

This Bill will implement that maximum 5 per cent discrepancy and reduce the House of Commons to 600, with which I have no problem at all. It could easily be reduced to 550 at an election after that, but it needs a bit of time to do that. I agree with those noble Lords who have said that that requires a reduction in the size of the Executive as well. If the House of Commons were to be reduced much below 600, an Executive of 95 in the House of Commons would be far too dominant.

I agree completely with the five-yearly reviews, crossing local government boundaries and removing the massive distortion in favour of Wales. But the Bill still looks backwards. In five years’ time, the election will be based on registers that will by then be four and a half years out of date. In the long run, 600 Members of Parliament will be too many. I do not agree with the exemptions for Orkney and Shetland, and the Western Isles. I will not attempt to pronounce the Scottish name of the constituency. I agree with reducing the size of the Executive in the House of Commons.

But the idea, as the opposition spokesman in the House of Commons said, that this Bill is gerrymandering is simply standing the truth on its head. The truth is that the current system contains a massive unfairness in favour of the Labour Party, which is unwilling to see that change and is wrapping up self-interest as high principle in a very hypocritical way.