Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Myners Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Myners]

My Lords, I rise to speak in support of the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lady Hayter—Amendment 85C—and I endorse the very wise observations made from the opposition Benches by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

These are now the government Benches. Perhaps the noble Lord has forgotten.

[Lord Myners]

I think that we regard you as at best temporary occupants of the Spiritual and Temporal Benches on the opposite side.

As I look to the opposite side, I see many people who, like me, have enjoyed a career as a result of the great focus of skill that we have in the City of London. I look to those who have represented the City of London, such as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, who was for many years my Member of Parliament—I may not have agreed with his politics, but he was an extremely good constituency MP—and to the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, who was a City editor.

Without wishing to inflame the views of those behind me, I would say that the City is the City of London. We do not use the term “the City” as shorthand for Birmingham, Manchester or Truro, where I come from. The City is the City of London—the square mile—which is a source of great excellence and a centre of economic prosperity. Of course, some firms based in the City have experienced recent difficulties, but we must not forget that many sectors of activity conducted within the City of London, under the supervision of the Corporation and the guidance and framework that the City of London provides, have continued to prosper. I think here particularly of fund management and of insurance.

The City is the square mile, and we cannot see this great centre of excellence divided as part of a rounding error to make weight for adjacent constituencies with wholly different profiles. To ensure continuing effective liaison among Guildhall, the City Corporation and Parliament, it is important that the City resides within a single parliamentary constituency. That is why I support the amendment of my noble friend Lady Hayter.

I was fortunate to be offered a ministerial position in the previous Government. My formal title was Financial Services Secretary to the Treasury, but the office was commonly referred to in the press and elsewhere as “the City Minister”. I endeavoured at all times to recognise that I had a particular responsibility to speak for the activities that took place in the City. Other centres such as Edinburgh, Manchester, Norwich and Bristol also have great centres of excellence and skill in financial services, but above all else that exists in the City of London and the square mile. I urge the Minister to recognise in this amendment that the City is a very special place. Frankly, it will not be understood in the City or elsewhere if the City is just parcelled out among other constituencies.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

I wish to speak to Amendment 81, on Argyll and Bute. I make no criticism of the other House when it debated this matter—far from it, as I served in that House for 30 years—but the different practices that exist in the other House are such that perhaps constituencies and the problems of them in legislation like this are not always highlighted in the way that can happen in this Chamber. Please be assured that bringing up Argyll is not a reason to delay. I just want to explain that Argyll should have the special consideration that the Minister’s former constituency is to be given because of its vastness.

I asked the Library to look at the size of other constituencies along with Argyll and Bute. Penrith and The Border was represented by David Maclean—Lord Maclean as he will now be, as he is about to come here—whom I considered a good friend regardless of the fact that we belong to different political traditions. Penrith and The Border covers 113 square miles. Anyone who has been in that part of the world will acknowledge that Penrith and The Border is a very big constituency, but in comparison Argyll and Bute is 2,751 square miles. Westmorland is 61 square miles compared with the 2,751 of Argyll and Bute.

My noble friend Lord Robertson—an Argyllshire boy, born and bred—tells me that, if you were to measure every inch of the Argyll coastline, the distance would be such that it would take you from Glasgow to New York. The islands are not small by any means. There is Mull, Jura, Islay, Colonsay, Tiree, Gigha, Coll and the beautiful and ancient Iona, where Columba brought Christianity to Scotland.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, I have listened to this debate with great interest. I listened with great sympathy to the paean of praise for Telford by my noble friend Lord Grocott. I happen to know Telford because, when I was Defence Procurement Minister, among the agencies for which I was responsible were the Defence Support Group and the Defence Storage and Distribution Agency. I visited them in Telford on more than one occasion. I watched them doing superb work repairing vehicles that had been repatriated from Afghanistan after having been extremely seriously damaged by improvised explosive devices. I was immensely moved—that is the only word that I can use—not only by the skill but by the extraordinary dedication of the people who were working on that job. They knew how enormously important it was for the military and they were proud to do the job, which they did with absolute perfection and dedication. If any group of men and women in this country deserves special electoral recognition, I should find it hard to deny it to the people of Telford.

Apart from that consideration, I had no idea that anybody was thinking of making a special concession to Telford. Neither was I aware of the attractions of the Scottish islands off the coast of Argyll. Having heard the idyllic descriptions of them from several quarters of the House this evening, I shall certainly make it a priority to visit that part of the country.

With the leave of the House, I will revert to the City of London and speak in support of the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, who spoke with the historical erudition that the House will associate with him. I also support the equivalent amendment tabled by my noble friend Lady Hayter, which would have a similar, although slightly more forceful, effect. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, made a case for the historic privileges of the City and for the City of London’s right to continue to be recognised as a constituency, or as part of a constituency with that name included in it, as has been the case since Parliament existed.

I follow my noble friends Lady Hayter and Lord Myners in making a more pragmatic case. I am in no way detracting from the historical case, but I think that there is an important practical reason for continuing to ensure that one individual—one man or woman—can be described as the Member for the City of London. So that I do not get into trouble, I had better declare an interest, although it is not really a current interest. Before I entered politics, I was engaged full-time in the City of London, latterly as a director of a merchant bank. I was a colleague of the noble Earl, Lord Home, with whom I shared an office at one time. I saw him in his place a moment ago, although he has now left the Chamber. Even after I had been elected to Parliament as a Back-Bencher, I continued my role in the City and subsequently, before entering the Government, I was on the council of Lloyd’s of London, which is one of the biggest insurance and reinsurance groups in the world. However, I have no current financial interest in the City of London. I am a liveryman of the Goldsmiths’ Company, which is one of the ancient City companies, but I do not know whether that in any way constitutes a material interest.

Having said that, I recognise that it is difficult to say anything favourable about the City at the present time. Bankers and politicians are the two most unacceptable groups of humanity at the moment in this country and, indeed, elsewhere and we just have to accept that for the time being. As I have said in the House, there is no doubt that in commercial banking, which is just one area of activity that takes place in the City, serious professional mistakes were made. An awful lot of the criticism and, indeed, vituperation has, I am afraid, been all too well deserved.

Nevertheless, the City of London is much more than commercial banking or investment banking, which is my field. The City of London involves stockbroking, securities trading, fund management, international fund management—an enormously important field of activity, as my noble friend Lord Myners said—commodities trading, insurance and reinsurance, both the company market and the Lloyd's market, and shipping. The Baltic Exchange is the world's greatest centre of trading in ship charters. I do not have the figures in my head, but we all know that the City generates an enormous proportion of gross domestic product. Some people may say that it is disproportionately great, which may be true in the sense that it would be nice to have a more balanced economy, but the solution to that is not to run down the great asset and generator of wealth that we have, it is to nurture it and ensure that we are in no way inhibiting the development of other sectors of economic activity.

The City is an enormous national asset. It is the envy of Europe that we should have achieved here in London, in this time zone, far and away the greatest financial market in the world. It is a great source of employment. The latest figure which I have, which may be out of date but it sticks in my mind, is that half a million people work in the City every day. The vast majority of them come into the City. We have already heard from the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, that only about 4,000 or 5,000 people live in the City and some of them do not work there, so it is an enormous generator of wealth and employment.

I think that the House is familiar with the importance of the City to the national economy and will therefore bear with me when I say that it would be an enormous mistake to deprive the City of a representative in Parliament who is explicitly that, who is the Member of Parliament for the Cities of London and Westminster, or whatever the name might happen to be. It clearly needs to be for the City and somewhere else, and Westminster seems to fit it very well, but it must be a single Member of Parliament for the City. If the City was divided between two, three or four constituencies—the neighbouring constituencies at present—that responsibility would not fall on any one man or woman. We would not have a clearly defined interlocutor for government who could say truthfully that he or she represented the City; we would not have one person to whom the City could appeal.

Before I give way to my noble friend Lord Myners, perhaps I may say that he was an enormously distinguished Minister for the City. We need a Minister for the City and it would be nice if we could again have such an able and effective Minister as my noble friend, but the Minister for the City, by definition, is not a representative of the City; he is a member of the Government constrained by collective responsibility. There may be occasions when the Government want to do something that the City does not want, or the City wants to make representations to the Government to do something else. In those situations, it is necessary that the City has a genuine representative in Parliament in the form of a man or woman who has in his or her title the phrase “Member for the City of London”.

[Lord Myners]

I am grateful to my noble friend for his correct anticipation of my point. It is disappointing that we no longer have a City Minister. We no longer have in government a Minister who is seen to have specific responsibility for the City. Instead, the responsibility is divided between Mr Mark Hoban in the other place and the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, in your Lordships' House. It is clear that there is a dispute between the two of them as to who speaks on behalf of the City; they fight for the juicier parts of the responsibility and eschew the more burdensome ones. The need to have a powerful voice for the City should be reflected in the constituency structure. Also, I urge the Government to designate one Minister as the City Minister. That has gone unnoticed, unnoted and uncommented on at a time when the City needs representation and a direct dialogue between the Government and the City.