Queen’s Speech

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard (LD Ind)]

My Lords, when I was involved in preparing the proposed Liberal Democrat responses to the gracious Speech in previous years that preceded a general election, it was often easy to describe it as being only half a Queen’s Speech. It was clear in those years that the parliamentary programme was expected to last only half a Session and that even quite a few of the proposed Bills were never likely to reach the statute book. The uncertainty over the timing of a general election did not make for good planning of the legislative timetable. I believe that the Fixed-term Parliaments Act should help the legislative process in future.

I was, however, disappointed to hear last week the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, describe the Fixed-term Parliaments Act as gerrymandering. The principle of fixed-term Parliaments has previously been accepted by the Labour Party, and should it form a Government again I expect the principle to be retained. There are good reasons for keeping the term at five years, which I would like to explain.

The most controversial issues with which I have been involved during the course of this Parliament relate to parliamentary boundary reviews and electoral registration. Widespread concern was expressed during the many lengthy debates that we had on those issues about the millions missing from the electoral register—perhaps as many as 6 million in this country—who are effectively denied the right to vote because they are not on the electoral register. This caused major problems in our debates when it came to deciding how to redraw constituency boundaries in order to make them more equal in terms of the number of voters in each seat.

It is understandable that these issues will not be addressed again in this Parliament, but we must all learn lessons from the arguments that we had previously if we are properly and fairly to address those issues in future, as we must after next May’s general election. Therefore, a proposal that I would make to help the process of redrawing constituency boundaries would be to combine the electoral registration process and the census when it takes place every 10 years. The effort and the expense put into conducting the census would be more justified if the data were also used in that year to help compile the electoral register. Of course, many other things should also be done to improve both the completeness and the accuracy of the electoral register each and every year. The annual canvass, in my view, will remain very important; but if we have the most accurate and complete electoral register every 10 years, we should conduct the constituency boundary reviews every 10 years as well, based on those data.

It is my belief that one of the first things that Members of Parliament will want to change after the next general election is the idea of a review of parliamentary boundaries every five years. The current legislation means that no MP, when elected, can be sure that their constituency will still exist at the following general election. Conducting boundary reviews every 10 years and every two Parliaments would make much more sense, but this will also require maintaining the fixed-term Parliament principle at every five years.

I believe that all those currently involved in drawing up their parties’ proposals for the next general election and a future Parliament should look at this idea and help to try to avoid the acrimony that we saw over the issues of parliamentary boundary reviews and electoral registration earlier in this Parliament. Draft legislation that can be properly examined in advance of its introduction to both Houses would help to avoid many of the problems we saw when debating these issues and help us provide for fairer and better outcomes in the future.