Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have stayed here for so long to enjoy my two and a half minutes of fame in this debate. The bad news is that, having already missed my last train, I might as well stay here and speak until at least three o’clock in the morning, or until whenever the café downstairs opens for breakfast.

I have enjoyed much of the debate so far. In terms of the Bill generally, I agree absolutely with the idea of reducing the size of the House of Commons. I have never been a Member of that particular House of Parliament, although I have been a Member of another Parliament. However, it seems to me that, as has been said, a reduction to 600 MPs may be rather modest. I should have thought that reducing the number to 500, staged in the manner suggested by my noble friend Lord Norton, would be a good approach to the issue, although that is not really the matter on which I wanted to speak.

One thing that comes out of the Bill is that there are a number of electoral commissions in the United Kingdom and, because of that, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will not have the problem of parliamentary constituencies crossing those boundaries.

I want to come back to the issue of natural communities, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Myners, and the opposition Front Bench. Although I believe that constituencies should be roughly the same size, as that is important for electoral democracy and equity, I do not think that the notion should be so firmly adhered to that it destroys or breaks away from natural communities. That is why, as someone who lives in Cornwall, I would also support a limited change to the second part of the Bill so as to allow some of those natural communities to be represented properly. I agree with my noble friend Lord Oakeshott about the Isle of Wight—that seems to be a sensible proposition—and it seems that a proper case can also be put with regard to Ynys Mon in Wales, as well as some additional ones in Scotland.

I thought it was a pity that the noble Lord, Lord Myners, brought a very party-political angle to the Cornish issue. If he were here—unfortunately, he is not in his place at the moment—I would say to him, as someone who co-ordinated the Keep Cornwall Whole campaign in Cornwall, that that campaign goes across all political parties, including the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, the Labour Party, Mebyon Kernow and the Greens. We are united in trying to protect the boundary of the Tamar and therefore its historical, cultural and community regions. That is something that I would like to bring forward in amendments to the Bill as it progresses through Committee.

With regard to referenda and electoral change, I say “Bring it on”. It is time that we changed the way that the country votes for its Members of Parliament. How can I as a democrat argue against giving the people that choice rather than just parliamentarians? Let us reduce the number of parliamentarians and spread power down through national Assemblies and national Parliaments and to principal local authorities. I speak as a member of the unitary authority of Cornwall.

I shall finish there. It is time that we all had our cocoa, headed for the trains and went to bed before resuming this stimulating debate tomorrow. I rest my case.

Debate adjourned until tomorrow.