Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I am so glad that I gave my noble friend the opportunity to make that point, a very important point indeed. It is an extraordinary piece of neglect on the part of the Government that they have decided not to give that explicit responsibility to a single Minister. He will acknowledge—I think he did in his intervention—that quite separately from that, it is equally important that the City has some individual to go to who actually sits in the House of Commons and has constituency responsibilities, including the City. That cannot possibly be an effective role if it is divided up. We all know that a responsibility divided is a responsibility that gets neglected. It is impossible for an individual, if he or she were just to represent one corner of the City, to go to the Government or—a point very well made by my noble friend Lady Hayter—to go to the European Commission or anybody else and say, “I am speaking on behalf of the City”. It is equally important that people in the City—it may be the different trade associations or individual firms—are able to go to someone in Parliament who understands the City, who, as a matter of professional integrity, has made sure that he or she is well briefed, even if they do not have a financial background, on the major issues in the City, whose door is open and can understand representations on City-related subjects and can take them up. That is a great strength in Parliament; that is a great strength for this absolutely key economic sector in our economy. That is an asset which would be destroyed if we do not retain the City as a specifically demarcated parliamentary responsibility. So I very much support the two amendments that have been moved tonight, and I hope the Government will take these points on board and accept those amendments, or at least give us some assurance that whatever comes out of this Bill will not enable any future Boundary Commission simply to allow the City to disappear as a parliamentary responsibility.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

I rise briefly to supplement the remarks of my noble friends Lord Martin and Lord Foulkes in relation to Amendments 80 and 81 in respect of the city of Edinburgh and the area of Argyll and Bute. I speak on both from a personal viewpoint: I should declare an interest, albeit a rather removed one, in respect of Argyll and Bute. My great-grandmother came from there in the 1880s as an impoverished Gaelic speaker with no English. It is quite moving to read her Poor Law application, of which I have a copy, which she signed with just a single X—one of many thousands of islanders forced from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland by the appalling Highland clearances. An example of that is that the island of Islay, from which my great-grandmother came, once had a population of 15,000; that was in the 1830s. It is now 3,500: it dropped dramatically throughout the latter years of the 19th century, with many people going to Canada, the USA and Australia.

My wife and I regularly keep in touch with developments in our extended family through the various websites of Islay people. I think it would be wrong to say that Argyll and Bute is only about Islay—of course, that is a small part and the part I know best. But the Gaelic tradition of Islay and other islands, as well as the Western Isles, is an important consideration when it comes to parliamentary representation. Islay itself was one of the earliest islands settled. It was the home of the Lord of the Isles; it has the Gaelic Islay Columba Centre, part of the University of the Highlands and Islands, specialising in Gaelic. It is important that that is recognised in terms of its representation. Argyll and Bute itself, as a constituency of about 67,000 people, would fall short of the arbitrarily chosen figure of 75,000, give or take. As my noble friend Lord Martin said, with about 2,700 square miles, it is a massive area to be covered, and that has to be given consideration in terms not only of the coastline, which was referred to, but also of the very specific interests that have to be looked after. There are special islands allowances given by the Scottish Government to reflect that.

My noble friend Lady Liddell of Coatdyke mentioned the fact that, in terms of travelling to and from those islands, it is rarely a simple matter. Some of them, including Islay, you can fly to, but mainly you have to go there by ferry. It is very difficult to get there and back in a day; if a parliamentary representative went to one island but wanted to go to more than one, they would not be able to get back to their base on the same day. In many cases, if you go to an island on one day by ferry, you cannot get off that island for a couple of days until a ferry is going on somewhere else.

It is important to recognise that fact, and to lump Argyll and Bute together with some other part of the mainland would be unfortunate. I have to recognise—it would be unfair not to do so—that Helensburgh is part of the Argyll and Bute council area. That only came into effect some five years ago, but by and large, it is a collection of islands needing specific representation. With an electorate of 67,000, it is more than capable of qualifying for that. I hope that that will be borne in mind.

Finally, I would like to say a few words about Edinburgh. I should also declare an interest as a constituent in Edinburgh North and Leith, admirably represented—as my noble friend Lord Foulkes said—by Mr Mark Lazarowicz. The decline in the number of Edinburgh constituencies from seven to six and now to five has been against trends. We know that the most recent reduction was a reflection of the establishment of the Scottish Parliament. That has some validity on its own, but it means that the city, at a time when its population is growing, has seen a reduction in its constituencies. As things stand, if the 75,000 quota were strictly adhered to, it could well lead to Edinburgh being, in effect, farmed out to bits of Lothian—East, West and Midlothian—to make up the required figure. That is why, as my noble friend Lord Foulkes said, the 10 per cent figure would be far more valuable and would help Edinburgh maintain those five constituencies.

Although I live in the area which is part of Leith, I will not tread, either literally or figuratively, on the territory of my noble friend Lord O’Neill, who knows these matters much better than I do. As an incomer, however, I say that the people of Leith have their own pride and that must be respected. Equally, the people of Edinburgh as a city have their own pride. The historic significance of Edinburgh, not only as the capital city of Scotland but also as a major tourist attraction for all sorts of reasons at all times of the year, has to be given some consideration and not treated by the blunt instrument approach, which could well see the number of constituencies reduced from five. I very much hope that will be taken into account by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, when he responds to this debate.

[Lord Selsdon]

My Lords, I intervene when anybody mentions the word Islay, since my family comes from Islay. With a name like McEacharn, one of the biggest whiskey producers in Islay for many years, with a black labrador called Islay and with a great-grandfather who was Lord Provost of Edinburgh, I have to support the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie. But he is making a few mistakes. We, in the McEacharn family, created the Scottish Line—the only shipping line allowed to carry the Scottish flag. As things became bad, we migrated and helped the migration of people all over the world. My other great-grandfather was the first Lord Mayor of Melbourne, and one of the first Members of the Parliament there.

Therefore, what the noble Lord says now strikes a chord with me. I support him fully, but he must accept that, over time, there have been movements and migrations and changes in the economies of the various countries. If he speaks of Leith, where my family came from as well—the shipowners and others—then I congratulate him on promoting the part of Scotland that I love.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

I welcome those remarks, but at some future stage it might be possible to have a discussion on the item to which I think the noble Lord was referring when he said he disagreed with me—the Highland clearances and their effects. That would be a very interesting and worthwhile debate for some future time. He says he has relatives who come from Islay, as I do. I cannot claim to trace mine back to the Lord of the Isles, but perhaps he can.

[Lord Tyler]

I shall make a brief contribution and acknowledge that a number of very succinct and relevant points have been made in this debate, which contrast with the way in which the argument was taken forward earlier in the week. I do not in any way disrespect the cases that have been made on behalf of specific areas of the country, because I took great pride in the constituency which I had the pleasure of representing for a number of years.

I want to make two general points about this whole group of amendments. Incidentally, I understand that the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Teverson is now in a different group, so I will not address that. First, there have been a number of occasions when those who have direct experience of urban areas have suggested that somehow rural areas do not deserve the same amount of attention and that their Members of Parliament do not have as much work. Since I was the representative of a very big, scattered rural constituency during the period of both foot-and-mouth and BSE—and I know that there other Members who had this experience—I have to say that a Member of Parliament can be on 24-hour call in a rural constituency. I do not wish to pursue that. Indeed, I know of the long distances and the difficult topography in the particular case of Argyll and Bute, which I had the pleasure of visiting when I was responsible for rural policy for my party in the other House. It is important in this House that we do not create an artificial distinction between urban and rural constituencies.

I am trying to be brief.