Constituency Boundary Revisions

Lord Pearson of Rannoch Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

It is important to remember that there are always similar upturns in registration—for instance, ahead of a general election, as publicity and media coverage drive up registration activity. There are always peaks and troughs throughout the year and registers for the boundary reviews are necessarily a snapshot. Let us imagine the expense if we kept updating them every couple of months. A great many recent amendments to the register will be people who have moved but want to ensure that they can vote at their local polling station. Moreover, a number—we do not yet know how many—may be applications from people who have already registered and are therefore duplications.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)]

My Lords, will the Government also take steps to ensure that our electoral system becomes vaguely democratic? After all, there is not much point in messing around with the register if the system itself no longer works. I say that because at the last general election, UKIP received one-third of the Government’s vote, but only one seat in the House of Commons. Surely that proves that our first-past-the-post system, although it may have worked when we had only two parties, at the moment disfranchises two-thirds of the electorate.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

The noble Lord certainly gets top marks for pursuing the same question over and over again. My answer is the same as it has always been—there is no change. It is important to remember that equalising the size of constituencies in the boundary review means that everyone’s vote will carry weight. If we let some constituencies stay smaller than others, voters in them will have more power than people in the bigger ones, and the boundaries will be based on data that are 20 years out of date. That cannot be fair or right. The principle of equally sized constituencies was endorsed by the Committee on Standards in Public Life and will ensure the vital demographic principle of one elector, one vote.