Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Renton of Mount Harry Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, the House will be aware that I moved an identical amendment in Committee. I did not seek to divide the House then but said that I would return to this issue on Report if the Government showed no sign of engaging with the issues raised in that lengthy debate. The Government have not engaged with the issues in any serious way and so, as I said I would, I now return to this amendment. In doing so, my approach is informed not only by my experience as a Minister in the previous Labour Government responsible for these issues but as someone—a member of a tiny minority in this House—who believes in the objectives of both parts of this Bill. I support a move to the alternative vote system not as a compromise or halfway house but as a desirable end in itself. I, of course, support any attempt to make the process of boundary revisions fairer and more efficient. I am certainly not opposed in principle to a reduction in the size of the House of Commons.

In Committee, I set out the case for an independent, impartial inquiry into the important and complex constitutional issues created by Part 2. I will not rehearse the case in detail again but I stress what I stressed then: this amendment does not seek to substitute my judgment for that of the Government in addressing these issues; instead, it sets up a process for an independent, fair and principled judgment to be made, which can then inform the legislation.

Over and again, as the debates on this Bill have progressed, it has become clear that the Government have not thought through the implications of their proposals. The process has been irredeemably flawed. That is all the more worrying as the measures, technical though they may often be, are of great constitutional importance. There has been no public engagement with the issues, no attempt at elucidating any underlying principles for the changes, no consideration of the implications of a referendum held after legislation, apparently no realisation that the proposals threaten community identity and no serious attempt to address the widespread belief, which has only grown as the Bill has progressed, that the Bill has been engineered to secure partisan advantage. Instead, there has been just a breakneck rush to get these half-baked proposals into law.

That, in sum, is the case for a pause—a relatively brief pause—so that an impartial inquiry can establish the principles on which these significant constitutional reforms should proceed. The Government’s response to this proposal has been, to put it at its politest, inadequate. That is why I am bringing back the amendment to the House.

In responding to my original amendment, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, said that it asked the Government to,

“wait longer to turn the Bill from a Bill that is workable and achievable into a deeply analysed but almost impossible one that would then have to be taken forward”.

He referred to,

“the dangers of a perfectionist approach”.—[Official Report, 10/1/11; cols. 1221-22.]

I believe that that accurately encapsulates the Government’s resistance to the amendment. I will happily give way to the Leader of the House if he wants to correct me. He remains seated, so I assume from that and the benign expression on his face that I have accurately encapsulated the Government’s position.

I understand this argument. In certain circumstances, it can be a valid one—for example, when there is some immutable deadline or when delay can cause greater damage than action. It is true that management textbooks often have chapters titled along the lines of “The best is the enemy of the good”, but they also tend to have chapters titled along the lines of “Better right than quick”.

The question of when speed should take precedence over deliberation is always a matter of judgment. The case has to be made every time judgment is exercised. That case has not been made here—not even remotely. The only argument for such speed that I can recall the Government making is that the Bill addresses issues that need addressing, that they have not been addressed for too long and that they must therefore be dealt with immediately. This argument does not stand up to any sort of scrutiny. It does not follow axiomatically from the fact that a problem needs a solution that the solution has to be immediate. Indeed, if a problem has persisted so long, it could equally be argued that a few months’ delay is neither here nor there, particularly when the case for further impartial deliberation rests on the real improvements that it will bring to the legislation and on the way in which it will help to ensure that the legislation endures.

There are three arguments for the value of such an inquiry that outweigh any putative disadvantage arising from delay. First, it would enable the reforms to proceed on the basis of coherent principle in a way that they manifestly do not in their current form. Secondly, it would enable them to do so following the sustained engagement with the public—whom, let us not forget, our constitutional arrangements serve—which has not been possible under the rushed timetable laid down by the Government. Thirdly, the amendment would help to deal with the corrosive suspicion that the Bill is a partisan measure, motivated not by high constitutional principle but by low self-interest. I am not in a position to make a judgment on whether that is the case, but Ministers must recognise that this suspicion was there from the start and has only grown as the Bill has progressed through both Houses of Parliament.

Let me give the House a brief example of how this might work. A principled decision on the optimum size for the House of Commons would dispel this continuing suspicion that the figure of 600 was chosen because it most advantaged the government parties. The sum of the explanations so far advanced for how this figure was decided is that both government parties were committed at the election to reducing the size of the House of Commons and so decided that the new size would be 600—a nice round number. That is a little like a child asking a parent where they came from and getting the reply, “Well, my darling, Mummy and Daddy met and fell in love, and then nine months later along you came”. It may all be true but it misses out some rather crucial details about what happened in the mean time.

Why did the Conservative Party decide to increase—not decrease or reduce—the size of the House of Commons from the 585 that it pledged in its manifesto? Who suggested it? Why did the Liberals agree to it rather than insisting in the coalition agreement that the number be lower than that? They had a figure of 500. What discussions on the appropriate figure were held within the coalition? How exactly was the figure of 600 arrived at—and so on and on? We do not know the answer to any of these questions because Ministers refuse to tell us. They airily wave away all such questions as if they are not really important. They are important. The difference of 15 seats between the figure that the Conservative Party was pledged to in the election and the figure now in the Bill is the difference between one party being in government and its not being in government. It is that important. The Government must realise that, as long as they fail to produce any coherent explanation of how this figure was arrived at and why they went back on what they promised in the election, the suspicion must remain that this decision was motivated by the pursuit of partisan advantage. That suspicion could easily be dispelled by the work of the inquiry that this amendment would establish to explore the optimum size for the House of Commons.

In tabling Amendment 28A, the Government have belatedly recognised that there might be an issue here that needs to be addressed. I do not wish to pre-empt the discussion that we will no doubt have on that amendment, but it is not a substitute for this amendment. Unlike this one, that committee’s remit would be imprecise and its composition vague. It would remain in the tight grip of the Executive—there would be nothing independent or impartial about it—and it would commence its work after the new system was in place. It is another ill thought-out proposal of the sort that litter this Bill.

What if this committee that the Government propose to set up decides that 600 is not the optimum size for the House of Commons? The amendment makes no commitment to action, only to publishing its finding. Will the Government act on the findings of their own committee, so inflicting further wholesale change on the electoral system, or will they ignore them, in which case the exercise is simply cynical window-dressing? Now that the Government have conceded the case for an inquiry on this issue, which is one of the most important issues in Part 2, they should abandon their amendment and support this one, which, unlike theirs, would set up an inquiry in a fair, impartial and timely way. There should be no other way.

Moreover, the relatively short delay envisaged by this amendment would also help to address deep concerns about another important issue raised by the Bill—the Government’s proposals that the boundary revision should take place on the basis of a register that everybody, including the Government, accepts is deeply flawed because more than 3 million voters who would otherwise be eligible to vote are simply not on it. In doing this, they must recognise that they are creating suspicions that they are motivated by partisan considerations, as it is widely believed that doing the boundary revision on the basis of this flawed register will primarily disadvantage the Labour Party. A short delay would allow the measures that the previous Labour Government brought in to improve the register to take effect and would mean that an election could be held on the basis of boundaries on a new, truly comprehensive and accurate register.

Finally, there is no reason to think that if your Lordships’ House agrees to this amendment the Government will not get their legislation in this Parliament. Under the new fixed-term Parliament proposed by the Government, they will have adequate time to digest the results of the inquiry and get the legislation through before the next election. The only cost of this delay would be that the new constituency boundaries and a new system of voting—if that is what the referendum decides—would be in place not for the next general election but for the election after that. I ask the Minister what really is so wrong about that—is that really too high a price to pay for all the improvements that just a few months’ extra reflection, deliberation and public engagement could bring to this important legislation? Constitutional reforms should be built to last; they should not become subject to constant fiddling and wholesale revision from one Parliament to the next. That corrodes public trust in our democratic system because it suggests to the public that politicians are more interested in rigging the system to serve their own interests than in using it to serve the people who elect them. If these reforms are to endure, as I think they should, it should be immaterial whether they are in place for this election or the next. I ask the Government to reflect on that point.

This amendment would get the Government to the place that they want to be and with all the additional benefits that such further impartial, independent deliberation and public engagement can bring. It would help to sustain public trust in our constitutional arrangements by helping to ensure that this legislation can be viewed as genuinely principled and valuable constitutional reform rather than the product of arbitrary and partisan calculation, as so many people see it at the moment. I beg to move.

[Lord Renton of Mount Harry]

I confess that I was not proposing to speak to this amendment, but I have just listened to the noble Lord, Lord Wills, who I believe was Minister for Constitutional Affairs in another place, and I have to say to him that, frankly, I have rarely read a paragraph that horrified me as much as the one on his committee of inquiry. It seems to me that he is going down absolutely the wrong route by proposing a committee of inquiry composed of,

“a High Court judge … members of both Houses of Parliament … representatives of the principal political parties in the House of Commons as well as individuals with no party attachment, and others”.

That is a joke. The inquiry would go on for ever and would not reach sensible conclusions. We in this House and the other House are expert in what is required here.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

As the noble Lord, Lord Renton, will know, my noble friend Lord Wills’ provision states that they have to produce a report within three years. So it will not go on for ever.

[Lord Wills]

I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Falconer for pointing that out. Perhaps I may also say to the noble Lord, Lord Renton, that this committee is based on what used to be known as a royal commission. I was told by the powers in this House that I could not refer to it as a royal commission, but the royal commission, as he ought to know, has a very long and distinguished provenance. If he has read my remarks in the earlier debate on this amendment he will have seen that the period of time provided by the amendment is pretty much the average time given to the last 12 royal commissions that have reported.

[Lord Renton of Mount Harry]

The noble Lord’s amendment provides for three years after the passage of the Act, but it does so on what basis? That is what really surprises me. He has been a Member of the other place as well as a Minister in the other place. I cannot understand why he feels that a committee composed of,

“individuals with no party attachment, and others”,

is likely, even if it reports after three years, to reach a better judgment on what is needed in the two Houses than would be achieved by the Members of this House and the other place. Frankly, I think that he has no knowledge of history. Throughout history Parliament has reformed itself, starting with King John and Magna Carta; moving on, after some centuries, to 1911 when, because of the strength of Lloyd George and the Liberal Party, changes were made which stopped this House considering financial matters; and, more recently, to the 1999 Act, which greatly reduced the number of hereditary Peers. That shows the ability of both Houses to do this work sensibly themselves, and that is vitally important.

If we go down the other road of saying to the public, “Come on, everyone. Let us all have a voice in it”, you will have three years of muddle without any clear knowledge of what we should be doing. It is important that these matters are now taken forward quickly, and that is surely the point of the Bill before us. We may not like bits of it, but it is a serious attempt to move reform forward within the judgment of the two Houses themselves. So I have to say that a committee of inquiry with many people on it who are not in this place would be a fatal thing to do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Renton of Mount Harry]

I would like to pick up on one or two of the comments made by the noble Lords, Lord Lipsey and Lord Foulkes. I serve on the Constitution Committee, to which the Deputy Chairman and the Deputy Leader of the House of Commons came and told us, perfectly truly, as others have said, that there was no big explanation of why the figure was going down from 650 to 600. That has to be said. However, after listening to the debate—and particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, whom I knew for many years in the other place—I do not believe that it has been made clear that during the time that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and I were in the House of Commons the amount of expenses went up hugely.

I well remember that when I became a Member of Parliament in 1974—I know that to talk about one’s past in the House of Commons is not on in this debate—I had only sufficient expenses to employ a secretary for three days a week. Now we all know that Members of Parliament have expenses which, I have heard, enable them to have five or six people in their offices. It is not for me to say the precise figure or the precise number.

Certainly an awful lot of the work that I and other working MPs such as the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, did in our constituencies is now done by members of the office—and quite right, too. The prime job of a Member of Parliament is surely to be in Parliament, debating and making points there. However, the support that Members of Parliament now receive through their expenses is of very great value to them.

I do not know the precise reason for 600 rather than 650, but I can understand the view that there should now be fewer Members of Parliament because they have got so much support in their offices and in dealing with their constituencies. This takes away from them many of the jobs that burdened us. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, is about to say something. Under those circumstances, having been 25 years a Member of Parliament, I do not find the move down to 600 from 650 odd or extraordinary. I support it.

[Lord Kinnock]

My Lords, I have been tempted to enter the debate, to some extent, by the noble Lord, Lord Renton.

A couple of fundamental points need to be made in the context of the amendment of my noble friend Lord Lipsey. First, it is well known to those Members of the House who have been following this part of the debate that, since 1950, the electorate has gone up by 25 per cent and the number of Members of Parliament has gone up by 4 per cent, and we are speaking now against a background of a guaranteed further rise in the population and, therefore, a rise in the electorate. At the same time, there is to be a radical reduction of 50 seats in the other place and an equalisation of the number of constituents in the remaining seats. The only deduction that can be taken from that is that, all other things being equal, the workload of Members of Parliament will continue to increase—and increase additionally because of the reduction in their number, the point made by my noble friend Lord Lipsey.

As the noble Lord, Lord Renton, rightly said, the workload and the character of the work typically undertaken by Members of Parliament have changed substantially over the years. I was a Member of the House of Commons for 25 years and the noble Lord for 30 years, and in those long periods of time the character and the size of the case load changed radically. Like him, in the 1970s I could afford a secretary for three or three and a half days a week, which, given our individual efforts, was sufficient to ensure that the casework of our constituents was adequately covered. There was a period early in my parliamentary career when I found the time and opportunity to go to employment tribunals, with some success. I always wanted to continue doing so but the remainder of the workload made that impossible. Now, of course, I might have a caseworker in my constituency, and with a suitably qualified person I could perhaps make extra inroads into the areas of particular concern to constituents.

In any event, as the noble Lord, Lord Renton, said, accompanying the increase and change in the nature of the workload has been an increase, to some extent, in the staff support for Members of Parliament. That is welcome. However, it is far from the number that he guesses at. Typically it will be three: usually a qualified researcher, a secretary in Parliament and a caseworker in the constituency, sometimes with part-time secretarial support. That is the size of it. Some Members of Parliament, in order to guarantee the quality of service, will go into their own resources and add to the amount officially made available for staff expenditure. I used to do that and, knowing the noble Lord, Lord Renton, I guess that he would do exactly the same.

However, in this situation, no one is proposing a guaranteed increase in staffing to run in parallel with, or as a consequence of, the guaranteed increase in the workload of Members of Parliament as a result of the arbitrary reduction in their numbers. Even without that guarantee, as my noble friend Lord Lipsey suggests, if Members of the other place take account of their increased workload and put it to whatever Government of the day that their workloads have demonstrably increased, there will be additional staff. In those circumstances, any assumed savings from the reduced number of Members of Parliament will evaporate. The picture that I paint is one of a massively increased workload, a change in the quality as well as the quantity of work undertaken and a welcome increase in staff establishing a benevolent trend which will guarantee, not too far ahead in years, a further increase in staff. All that my noble friend was pleading for was the absolute dismissal of any assumed financial advantage for the public purse arising from the change in the Bill. I suggest that the House accepts the wisdom of my noble friend’s words.