Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, with this amendment, we move from Part 1 to Part 2. I shall make one important observation relevant to the case that my noble friend Lord Wills has made. In the case of Part 1, there was an inquiry—I know, because I sat on it. It was the Jenkins inquiry. It is perfectly true that the referendum will be not on the recommendation of Jenkins but on half of it; namely, the alternative vote. That inquiry did not completely crack the problem, but it moved the debate forward. As we found when we debated Part 1, all the speeches made were informed by the famously articulate report of Lord Jenkins and the analysis that it contained. Some agreed with it and some did not, but it shaped the analysis and therefore enabled us to have a much better debate.

The second advantage to flow from having a prior report is that, between the setting up of Jenkins and the introduction of this Bill, many people, whether mostly or wholly, changed their minds. There are many people, particularly in my own party, who are adamant first-past-the-posters and can still see the arguments for it today, but they are prepared to contemplate the argument set out in Jenkins for moving a little way in the other direction by having the alternative vote, which is an improvement on first past the post in the view of many of them.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords—

[A noble Lord]

A visit from the dead!

[Lord Tyler]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, for giving way. He was a very distinguished member of the commission that was set up and chaired by Lord Jenkins of Hillhead. Why does he think that, 10 years afterwards, we have had no action on its report? Does he not share our cynicism that the proposal of his noble friend is simply a way of privatising, pushing out and delegating responsibility for these important decisions so that nothing should happen? The experience that he and I have had of the complete failure of the Government whom he supported to do anything on the basis of that commission’s recommendation, makes us very cynical about asking somebody other than Parliament to take decisions on this matter.

[Lord Lipsey]

The noble Lord was very grateful that I gave way, but I am even more grateful to see him popping up to speak. The silence is broken—omertà is finished with. I am sure that we will have many contributions from him in the future.

There is no intention among anyone, I think, to stop this legislation, as considered properly, going through. Let us be clear that what will destroy the legislation is not the danger of delay but the danger of haste. The danger is that this ramshackle legislation, half considered, will be forced into law and that a subsequent Government, seeing that it is half baked, will force it out of law and we will have achieved nothing. That is the plan that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, is urging on the Committee. I beg this House, which is a great example of the benefit of the rational consideration, to reject that way forward.

I was saying before I gave way to the noble Lord that many first-past-the-posters have been converted to the alternative vote, but I take more pleasure in another form of conversion that has taken place. There were many people, and the Electoral Reform Society was in their hands, who believed in wholesale, immediate electoral reform and full-scale proportional representation. I have never been persuaded of the case made for proportional representation; I do not believe in it and I do not agree with it—nor did Jenkins. However, during those years since Jenkins, and in months and years of debate, those people have moved their position so that now the Electoral Reform Society is a very strong backer of the yes campaign in this referendum. I think that it sensibly sees that a consensus reform that goes half way is better than a wholesale reform that later gets reversed, and that it is more likely to get reform by settling for a halfway house than by holding out for ever for the whole cake.

Through the post-Jenkins process has emerged a greater level of consensus on where we are going. It is not a wholesale consensus—that would require the verdict of the people in a referendum—but there is a greater level of consensus and a greater clarity on the arguments. That makes a hugely strong and powerful case for proceeding by reflection.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

No, my Lords, I am suggesting that the noble Lord no doubt had to work 50 per cent harder to deliver the service that he regarded was appropriate at the beginning of his time in the other place. That is fine, but we ought to—

[Lord Tyler]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. He is making a very powerful case for equalising the numerical strength of each constituency.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

The case that I am making is that we have to define the appropriate numerical relationship between the electorate and the Member of Parliament. If you want to go down the route of equalisation, you should first define what the appropriate ratio is. If you do not know that, the argument is, frankly, pointless and otiose.

However, I do not necessarily believe that equalisation is the sole point that we should be looking at. One of the dogs that have not barked in this debate has been the question of what other factors are important, and the amendment provides the opportunity to consider the character of localities and their different natures. When I was the elected Member of the London Assembly for Brent and Harrow, I had the privilege of representing the most ethnically diverse local authority area in the country and, separately, the most religiously diverse. To suggest that the characters of those areas did not influence the nature of the work that I did as a public representative is, again, ludicrous. The characteristics of local constituencies matter. You will find that nearly every other jurisdiction recognises that as part of the factors that need to be taken into account when it comes to deciding where to draw boundaries.

The other dog that has not barked has been the size of the House of Commons. The issue has been brought up today but we have not had that debate. What will be the most effective size of the House of Commons to do the work that we believe it should carry out? What is the effective size for both representing constituents and scrutinising legislation? Where is that debate? We are sidestepping it because of the desire to push ahead without proper consideration of these issues.

My noble friend Lord Beecham talked earlier about the relationship with local authorities. My noble friend Lord Knight, who has just spoken, said that he was in favour of this. I have to say that I am against it. The Bill encourages, or at least would make it far easier for, constituency boundaries to cross local government boundaries. I do not believe that that is in the interests of good and effective representation. It will make it more difficult for MPs to cover the ground, and for them to have a relationship with local authorities so that in partnership they can achieve things for their constituents both at local government level and in working with central government in Parliament. Those are the issues that make talking about crossing local government boundaries in this way so inappropriate.

The final issue that I want to refer to, in terms of dogs that have not barked in this debate but that should have been allowed to be considered in detail, is the nature of the electoral data on which all this is based and the frequency with which they change. I have spent all my political life in London. London is an area in which, historically, there has often been underrepresentation because of the number of people who are registered to vote. That underrepresentation was at a particular peak when the community charge—the poll tax—was introduced, and all that went with that. A large number of residents in London chose to drop off the electoral register, as they did in many other urban areas and no doubt elsewhere. That legacy of underrepresentation remains.

We should also consider the turnover in big inner-city populations and the number who come in. At one point when I was leader of my local authority, the collection register for the community charge turned over by one-third each year, indicating a great flow of population dropping into and out of the area. That was partly a consequence of migration and partly because of the mobility of populations at that time, but it also involves the recognition of particular areas. Because the Bill is constructed around drawing up these boundaries and quotas on the basis of an already flawed electoral register, we are building into the system an inappropriate bias against areas with historic underregistration and areas with an historically very high turnover.