Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Snape Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, I did not intend to speak on this but I will add a new example on the time element. We would not be having a debate about the time element were it not for the contents of the Bill from page 9 onwards in new Schedule 2, which deals with the rules for the redistribution of seats. I note that one of the factors that the Boundary Commission may take into account—I realise that it will be in May—is,

“local government boundaries as they exist on the most recent ordinary council-election day before the review”.

Timing and names are not unimportant given the ward building blocks in present constituencies. I represented part of the city of Birmingham when I was a Member of the other place. Birmingham had the largest building blocks in the country, with an average ward size of 19,000 electors. My figures are now out of date but were correct when I was a Member of the other place. If you then decide how many constituencies you are having and you get an odd number, and the policy is not to split wards, you end up with some Members having three wards with 60,000 people and others having four with 80,000 people. That is what happened in my case and that of colleagues. Noble Lords may say that that will not happen under the formula in the Bill and that wards will have to be split, but that is something that you avoid doing. Herein lies the problem.

One of the rules set by the Boundary Commission, which is buried somewhere among its procedures—we came unstuck on this on one occasion—stipulates that the constituency in a county borough, which Birmingham is, has to be named after one of the wards in the constituency. My former colleague Terry Davis was really upset about this because we lost the ward of Stechford and had to change the name of the constituency, which was virtually the same. If you have to split the wards because they do not make arithmetical sense in this situation, this problem may arise. Nobody wants more councillors in Birmingham; we are already at the limit with some 120 to 124 and the extra ones for Sutton Coldfield.

You cannot sort out this situation in two years. It is not just a matter of changing the boundaries; you are potentially rewriting local government boundaries in the big cities. I think that Leeds is the only other city with such large wards—there is an average of some 15,000 electors in a ward. You can see the difficulty that arises when you start moving these large building blocks around. The difficulty does not arise in London boroughs, where the wards are very small, at about a third of the size of those in Birmingham, and have better representation in terms of councillors.

This issue has to be addressed within the two-year period. It is a question not just of the building blocks but of names and the division of current local authority building blocks in our big cities. As I say, the problem will arise in Birmingham and Leeds. It applies to Manchester but to a lesser degree, as its wards are much smaller than those of Leeds and Birmingham for historical reasons. This factor means that more time will be needed to tackle this issue. As I have said before, I think that the boundaries should be equal, but the fact is that the rules in the Bill mean that the review cannot be done in two years without upsetting a lot of people through splitting wards and consequently redrawing local government boundaries while you are trying to tackle parliamentary boundaries. I do not think that you can do both together.

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, I rise to speak to my noble friend’s amendment, as I have tabled a similar one that we shall discuss later in the proceedings and I have no wish to detain your Lordships further by discussing virtually the same matter twice. Much of the debate on my noble friend’s amendment has been about numbers and electors. However, as my noble friend Lord Rooker has pointed out, other matters will have a direct impact on any redrawing of the boundaries as proposed in the Bill. Like my noble friend Lord Kennedy, who pointed out some of the difficulties that had arisen in Coventry, which were put right by a local inquiry into Boundary Commission proposals, and my noble friend and fellow sapper, Lord Dixon, who pointed out the historical arrangements in his part of the world, I encountered such a difficulty when I was a Member of the other place.

The boundaries for the then new seat of West Bromwich East, which I fought in 1974, had been drawn up by the Boundary Commission in the 1960s. The natural boundary between the constituency of West Bromwich East and that held with such distinction by the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, as she now is, was the former Great Western Railway line. Unfortunately, before I arrived on the scene, that line was closed—actually in 1972. The cutting through the centre of West Bromwich had been virtually filled in and therefore there was no natural boundary between our two constituencies. It took a local inquiry after the 1980s boundary review to point that out and the dividing line between our respective constituencies was then redrawn on to a dual carriageway that represented a much more natural break between the two seats. That was electorally advantageous to the incumbent in West Bromwich East, which just so happened to be me. It was not quite so advantageous to my then honourable friend on the other side, but I got my representations in first and congratulated that local inquiry on the common sense of its new recommendations. I am glad to say that the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, has forgiven me over the 25 years since and we are back on speaking terms. The point that I am seeking to make is that the anomaly was pointed out only because of that local inquiry. The Boundary Commission in its wisdom went purely on numbers and did not look at geography, the contours of the ground or a natural boundary between our constituencies.

[Lord Bradley]

Perhaps I may give another example. I went through two boundary changes in the city of Manchester. The Boundary Commission produced proposals that split the communities north and south of the Mersey valley, part of which was more than a mile wide. The commission had also forgotten that the M60 motorway had been built along the valley, so there was no connection between the north and south of the Mersey valley. When there was a local inquiry, that point was strongly made and on both occasions my constituency was put back together north of that natural boundary.

[Lord Snape]

Again, your Lordships will draw their own conclusions from that intervention. In fact, local knowledge makes a big difference when these boundaries, having been drawn up, are finally agreed. I hope that the Minister who replies to the amendment will accept that to lose that opportunity for a local inquiry, where anomalies such as these can be pointed out, would be a serious and retrograde step. As I have indicated, I intervene at this stage to save time and to pre-empt my later amendment. I hope that the Minister will accept that these are relevant points and will address them in his reply.

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, all three amendments that we have been discussing—the amendment that has been moved and the other two, Amendments 56 and 56A, which have been spoken to—are important. A great deal of important information has emerged as a consequence of the speeches made. I certainly do not intend to repeat those arguments, but I want to make a few short points.

First, all three amendments propose a delay to the submission of the reports of the first boundary review to be held under the new rules. From the Front Bench, we agree with that principle. I remind the Committee that on Monday we debated Amendment 54A, which also called for a delay—it was an important debate—but more implicitly than explicitly, as these amendments clearly do. We called for a delay in the boundary review process, first, until the electoral register is accurate and up to date. If I may say so, the compliment that my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours paid to my noble friend Lord Wills for his work over many years in this field is well merited. It is important that the Government listen carefully to what my noble friend Lord Wills and others say about the nature of the register and how important it is to get the data right before embarking on some sort of brave new world.

It is also key that the Boundary Commission should be given sufficient time to complete the very large task that it will undoubtedly face. This argument has been made by a number of noble Lords. In evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of the other place, the secretaries of the Boundary Commissions for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland confirmed that the timetable was achievable, but tight, and that extra resources would certainly be needed—I believe that this point, too, was spoken to on Monday. Who knows whether they are being optimistic or realistic? Obviously it is their best guess. However, by any standards, the changes envisaged in Part 2 of the Bill are substantial. Surely it must and will take time for the various Boundary Commissions to propose a new set of constituencies. Our view, which I think is common sense, is that 1 October 2013 is too tight a timetable. That is the case, simply put, and it deserves an answer from the Minister. Why does the Boundary Commission have to report by 1 October 2013? Why not make sure that it has plenty of time to produce reports that will stand the test of time?

We have heard today about public inquiries and no doubt we will have debates on the matter. From my own experience, and more importantly from that of noble Lords who have spoken today about public inquiries, I say that their value is absolutely undoubted. They may be frustrating in terms of time, but their value in making sure that parliamentary boundaries are sensible and can last has been shown time and again. We have heard this from various ex-Members of Parliament who have spoken. I speak as a non-ex-Member of Parliament who has appeared at many boundary inquiries in different parts of the country, sometimes with success and sometimes, I confess, with a substantial lack of it. However, nearly always, following the public inquiry, the decision made by the Boundary Commission, in whoever’s interest, is better than it was before the public inquiry. This issue is of fundamental importance to the Bill and we will return to it at the proper time. It is one of the most powerful parts of the argument that has been made in favour of these three amendments.