Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord Robathan Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robathan (Con) [V]]

My Lords, some dozen years ago I gave David Cameron a paper entitled Reducing the Cost of Politics. I stand by most of it. It covered, for instance, the fact that there are too many councillors—often people cannot get people to stand in council seats—and too many spads, far too many researchers in the Commons hanging around Portcullis House, too many Ministers and far too many Peers.

With regard to the House of Lords, I suggested a retrospective time limit, say 17 or 22 years, which is not that far from the Burns report suggestion. Yet when I put forward the idea of retrospectivity in a debate on the Burns report, I noticed that it was not met with universal acclaim in your Lordships’ House. I also suggested a Commons of some 500 Members. I remember that David Cameron said to me that “Turkeys will never vote for Christmas”, but then, and perhaps I had some influence on this, he put in the 2010 manifesto a reduction down to 600.

The reason why that was not carried through under the coalition was that the Liberal Democrats reneged on the commitment. My memory is better than those of the noble Lords, Lord Rennard and Lord Oates: the commitment to fewer constituencies was linked to the PR vote, which they lost. The Bill was very eloquently introduced by Nick Clegg, as my noble friend Lord Young said. He then realised that his party might lose seats so he betrayed the coalition agreement. That did not actually help the Lib Dems, who went down to eight seats from 57-odd—eight too many, some would say, but I did win some money on the bet.

As a former MP of 23 years, and like my noble friend Lord Hayward, who has great experience of this matter and of psephology, I know that the arguments around Boundary Commission recommendations are based very often on personal interest or party-political interest; indeed, my noble friend Lord Dobbs referred to them as “sordid party shenanigans”. MPs are worried about their own seats and parties are worried about their chances of winning elections. We hear complete nonsense spouted about why some change or other should not happen.

After 23 years as an MP I dismiss the idea that an MP cannot deal with 100,000 constituents. Of course they can—easily. I do not claim to have been an especially brilliant MP—I am sure that nobody will be really surprised to hear that—but I never had any complaints about not dealing with constituents’ problems. Quite the opposite—although you might not always have liked my way of dealing with them. There are too many Members of the House of Commons and there are far too many Peers. They start all-party parliamentary groups because they have got to keep themselves busy somehow. I do not support the Government in keeping 650 MPs. There are too many politicians. Let us reduce the size of the Commons and the Lords, and the number of politicians all round, and the cost of politics. That might start in some way to restore the damaged faith of the British public in politics and its practitioners. We should do the right thing.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 8th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pidding (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I speak briefly against the amendments in this group.

As I said in my remarks on group 2, this Bill is about balance and fairness. It seeks to redress the inequality of constituencies. Fundamentally, the purpose of boundary reviews is to ensure that constituency boundaries are of equal size and based on updated figures. In reviewing constituency boundaries, I believe that a tolerance range of 10% strikes the right balance, allowing the Boundary Commissions to propose constituencies 5% larger or smaller than the quota. Any larger figure would simply mean that constituencies continue not to be properly equalised, perpetuating unfairness. I make these comments notwithstanding the exceptions made for protected constituencies, and with the addition of Ynys Môn.

In Committee and again today, some noble Lords have expressed a shared concern about the need for communities to be kept together within single constituencies, about particular geographies being respected, and, therefore, about greater flexibility being required in the redrawing of boundaries. This understandable sentiment has been balanced with the importance of ensuring that every elector’s vote carries the same weight; that every person has the same call on their local MP. The tolerance of 10% strikes the right balance, ensuring an approach that allows appropriate flexibility for the Boundary Commissions to consider important local factors such as geographical features and community ties, without introducing significant variability. Any greater tolerance for disparity between constituencies is totally inequitable. I ask noble Lords to consider that the elected Chamber—those Members of Parliament who are directly affected by any boundary changes—has agreed that the variance in seats of 10%, plus or minus 5%, strikes the right balance. I urge noble Lords not to support these amendments.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, these amendments are about equity and fairness—or, rather, inequity and unfairness.

I represented the people of Blaby—now South Leicestershire—for 23 years and I can tell those who have never been Members of the House of Commons that representing a constituency is a real privilege. Polling revealed that some 25% of people in each constituency know who their MP is. I was thrilled to be told that local polling said that nearly 50% of the people of Blaby knew who I was. Whether that was true, I cannot say; perhaps it was because they wanted to vote against me. However, I promise noble Lords that most people in this country are not bothered about who their constituency MP is. They are bothered about his or her politics and they want to know who that person is when they want some assistance: that is the truth. When my constituency lost a few wards, people said, “I’m sorry you’re no longer our MP”, and while they may have been sorry on a personal level, frankly, they could not care very much. I agree with my noble friend Lord Blencathra: every Boundary Commission review is plagued with party-political manoeuvring. I am afraid that I see that slightly in these amendments too, although they do not always work quite as well as they might.

Consistency in politics is a great thing, as it is in life. Of course, one can change one’s mind—circumstances change as a country evolves—but generally we should stick to what we say, say what we believe and believe what we say. We are discussing the electorate per constituency. I had meant to table an amendment to Clause 5, but with great efficiency I did not realise that it had to be done so swiftly, so I did not get it down, but I will speak on the percentages instead.

I stick with the Conservative manifesto upon which I was elected in 2010, which wanted to reduce the size of the House of Commons to 600 MPs. There was no party-political advantage in that, as far as I am aware. It was also in the Conservative manifestos of 2015 and 2017. I would love to know why it changed; perhaps the Minister can tell me. On 6 September 2010, when introducing the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, the Deputy Prime Minister pointed out that the percentage difference—which we are discussing—between Manchester Central and Glasgow North was 41%. In fact, that has got a lot worse. Glasgow North has remained approximately the same, but I looked it up today and Manchester Central has gone up by about 5,000, so it is probably about 45%. The discrepancy has grown, and that cannot be right. On this occasion, I agree with Nick.