Scottish Parliament (Constituencies and Regions) Order 2010

Lord Martin of Springburn Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Lords Chamber

The homogeneity of communities must be at the core of our thinking. The concept of solidarity, community interest and pride in local areas, as a number of my local colleagues have mentioned, is extremely important. At this time it would be folly to ride roughshod over that concept.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

I first apologise, as I was unavoidably delayed. I have listened to my colleagues and friends. The case put on consultation is so important. A boundary change was to be brought in in the city of Glasgow in 1983. The noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose—I think that is who it was—mentioned the Scotland Act. The original boundary report said that there should be no more than 71 seats for Scotland. The case that Glasgow had to put in the old city hall, the Candleriggs Hall, was that it was to be no less than 71, which meant that the city of Glasgow would lose not two seats but one. That meant a great deal, as the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, will know.

Consultation was so important then, as it is now. We had a QC, the late Hugh Martin, whose brother George was in the House. Hugh put the case, and he won because the presiding sheriff accepted his arguments. At the lunch break, when we still did not know the result, we went to a restaurant and had what they call in Scotland a “fish tea”. There was Donald Dewar, myself and Bruce Millan, former Secretary of State, and we agreed to pay for Hugh Martin’s lunch—it was the decent thing to do. I tell you, it was a lunch worth paying for, because we won. Even Donald Dewar, who was known to watch his pennies, weighed in with the bill.

In the west of Scotland, unfortunately, we have had sectarian problems, and we have managed to overcome them. A late colleague of ours, Frank McElhone, was a great leader in overcoming those problems. When he asked his honourable friend for Rutherglen, the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, if the community organisations could come along, the Union of Catholic Mothers and the local Orange Lodge put the case in Frank McElhone’s constituency. That was bringing the sectarian groups together and calling for unity. They were unified that day, and they won.

I accept what the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, has said about distance. I was a union officer both in Argyll and in the Highlands, and I had not realised how lucky I was, living in Glasgow, that I could get from A to B in a short time. To go from Fort William to Inverness was a major journey in itself for a lowlander like me, and there were places further north that were even more difficult to get to, yet these places are encompassed in the same constituency boundary. The law officer himself knows this; it was a surprise for me when I went to Orkney and I spent the night on the ferry. I had not realised that it would take so long—on the map, Orkney looks so close to the mainland. In fact, I met the noble and learned Lord there the other day when I was up there.

It surprises me that the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, had a slogan throughout the general election that every vote should be equal and therefore we should have equality among the constituencies. Constituencies that are represented in the other place by Liberal Members are so far spread, yet no one even approached them and said, “Look, by putting this argument, you are destroying the argument for us to be good representatives for far-out constituencies”.

The noble Lord has mentioned Argyll. We in the west of Scotland are so fond of our country. It is lovely that within three-quarters of an hour you can go from Glasgow to the banks of Loch Lomond, but from the outskirts of Helensburgh to Campbelltown is such a distance that you could actually drive from Glasgow to Fort William quicker. By the time that you get to Campbelltown, you are further south than the town of Ayr, which my noble friend knows about—yet it is all the one constituency. This document says that it is giving us consultation, but the other place is saying, “You are not going to have consultation”.

I go back to my native city of Glasgow. People would go into Glasgow and think, “Well, it’s just one big city”. That is as naïve as going to London and saying that it is just one big city. Since I was 14, I have lived most of my life in Springburn. It is a far cry from Shawlands; it is a different world. The people of Partick feel differently from the people of Parkhead. They are different communities. In the old days they used to be boroughs in their own right, with their own police officers. I come back to what the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, said. There was an area called Grahamstown, which was named after his ancestors. In my younger days I stayed in the borders of Grahamstown and the Anderson district. The Anderson district is a far cry from the Gorbals, although the sketch writers never quite got that right. They did not know the geography of Glasgow.

I know from my experience of going to Boundary Commission hearings that even those Members of Parliament and those communities that felt they had lost out always felt, at the end of the day, that they had been given a good hearing at those boundary change tribunals. It would be a very sad day if we just threw numbers into a computer and said, “There you are. That is what your elected representatives have to fight for”.

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I will make a short intervention. I was born in Dagenham—made in Dagenham, effectively—which was then part of Essex and is now in occupied Essex, since it is occupied by the London Borough of Havering. I am interested in the debate on this order. I say to noble colleagues from Scotland: be thankful that, whatever this order and the Bill in the other House say, at the moment there is no question of boundaries crossing the Scottish-English border. I ask you to keep that in mind when it comes to other nations in the United Kingdom. Cornwall is a Celtic nation. I ask for noble Lords’ support when the other Bill comes to this House. There is a possibility of boundaries crossing the Tamar river. I ask the Government to take that into consideration as they think about the Bill before it crosses to this House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, that is clearly beyond this point. People from different political parties took different views.

I would also like to reflect on what was said by Professor Ron Johnston, who is a professor of geography at the University of Bristol whose research interests include electoral and political geography. On oral inquiries, he said that they are,

“very largely an exercise in allowing the political parties to seek influence over the Commission's recommendations—in which their sole goal is to promote their own electoral interests”.

Far be it from me to suggest that that was what happened, but I just ask noble Lords to wonder whether there might have been something of that when people needed to get lawyers—even if they had to pay for their lunch—to argue their case.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

My Lords, we were not alone in bringing in the big guns. The Liberal Democrat Party had an eminent QC called Ming Campbell. I do not know whether he got a lunch, but our QC got a decent lunch anyway.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, there is no such thing as a free lunch. I take the point that one could not say that the Union of Catholic Mothers and the other organisation to which he referred were in any way partisan.