Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord McAvoy]

My Lords, I shall take a minute or so to outline the context and the background against which I shall make my remarks. When I came to the other place, quite a long time ago, I did not have much time for this place and did not understand it. I thought that this place was undemocratic, illogical, irrational and all the rest of it. That was quite a naive attitude to take and was based on a lack of knowledge of this place. When I was in the government Whips Office in the other place and there was ping-pong going on, at the third ping-pong I decided to come here to try to get a grasp of what was going on. Back and forwards the Bill went, and then the Conservative spokesperson got up and said, “Well, it’s our job to revise and to get the Government to think again, but we have asked them three times with three revisions and they have chosen not to take our point of view. However, they are the elected House and they must have their way”. That was quite a shock to the system, because the people who had the power to defeat the Government chose not to use it. That made a powerful impact on me, and since then I developed quite a bit of respect for this House long before I arrived here.

The Leader of the House, in speaking against the hybridity Motion yesterday, had some fun saying that what was happening on our side of the House was House of Commons-style. That was quite provocative and, to me, it was quite clear what he was doing. He was condemning the House of Commons style as being confrontational and partisan, with all this argy-bargy. He was creating a diversion by provoking the type of behaviour that he was condemning to show that the opposition to this Bill is based on Commons partisanship and Commons-style oppositionism. That is completely wrong, but I certainly knew what he was up to.

I accept that the role of the House of Lords is that we revise and send legislation along and ask the Government of the day to think again, but the partisanship did not start on this side of the House. David Laws blew the gaff in his account of the coalition negotiations. The bit that hit me between the eyes was when he said that the Tories came forward with their proposed reform of the constituencies to “remove Labour over-representation”. The reform was nothing to do with democracy or about over-representation being a bad thing; it was about removing Labour over-representation. As my noble friend Lord Wills proved when dealing with the over-representation argument, at the very least it is debatable that there is over-representation.

The word that I would use to describe the Bill is “gerrymandering”, which has been used quite a lot this evening and yesterday. I know that sensitive people on the other side of the House do not like that word, but it is a fact—we regard it as a fact on this side of the House. I was hoping that the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, would still be in his place and I am sorry that he has left—one thing that I have noticed about this place is the weighty contributions from speakers, on both sides, who have ability, experience and judgment, so this place impresses me—because he referred yesterday to the dangers of trading permanent changes for short-term advantage, which he said would be wrong. In the Bill, we have a collaboration or coalition Government who have come together for their own short-term party-political advantage. The Conservatives, of whom I notice that there are only two in the Chamber at the moment, can only do that with the support of—guess who?—the Liberals. Members on both sides of the House have long experience of dealing with Liberals—we know what they are like—and we can see that, from their condescending position of taking the high moral ground with their fine principles, the Liberals are now displaying hypocritical behaviour. As anyone knows who has watched this situation, they have sold their souls. And what have they sold their souls for? They have sold their souls for AV.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I have a very real affection for the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, but I recall only too well that he was the past master of the black arts in the Whips Office in the other place for many years. I have the greatest respect for his opinion, but does he really think that it is appropriate that my former constituency comprised 87,000 constituents? I wonder how many constituents he represented. Does he think that it is a gerrymander to try to level things up to provide equality of voting strength among constituencies when there is such a discrepancy? Perhaps he would like to tell us how many people he represented.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McNally]

Well, noble Lords can put their amendments down and I will debate them too. I know which way we are going on that issue, and we know which way the House of Commons is going.

[Lord Tyler]

This is a helpful one. My noble friend, in opposing any thresholds, will have the support of the Constitution Committee of this House. He will not have to rely simply on the votes at the other end of the building.

[Lord McNally]

As so often in my career, my noble friend comes over the hill like the seventh cavalry.

I turn again to the British Academy report. We heard a lot about local inquiries. It is interesting that the British Academy report says that these,

“would not significantly impair the consultation process”.

The Bill proposes a two-stage process, with 12 weeks, instead of the current four, in which the public may make representation to the commission, and another 12 weeks for the commission to revise its recommendations.

I will deal quickly with a point made by my noble friend Lord Phillips about expenses. There will be reimbursement of all reasonable expenses. We are committed to ensuring a high level of participation but we are unlikely to change the £600,000 basis for the two campaigns. On the two campaigns, several noble Lords will remember the yes/no campaign for the EU referendum. Whatever else may be said about that, the system of two groupings to fight the campaign worked. I have absolute confidence that it will work again. Therefore, I look forward to the Committee stage. I say to my noble friends behind me that I have seen redistributions and psephological calculations but I do not know who will win this referendum. I have heard people say that we are bound to lose it. I am willing to trust the people. I am willing to see this in place and then take our case to the people.