Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, at one point I felt that I would give up on this debate and go home, but I am glad that I stayed. The last two speeches, by the noble Lords, Lord Plant and Lord Norton, bear serious assessment by the Government and by this House. It is regrettable that the Bill before us is very partisan, but it purports to address big issues: the nature of our democracy and the standing of Parliament. We all know that neither of those can be entirely resolved simply by fiddling with the system, but we also know that the system at present neither achieves a democratic result nor improves the standing of our elected representatives.

Unlike some of my colleagues, I do not have a firm view on what the correct size of the House of Commons should be, and I am a supporter of some form of electoral reform on the grounds that my noble friend Lady Kennedy outlined earlier. However, the Bill is not suitable to address either matter. For example, surely the size of the House of Commons must take account of what other elected representatives exist, both here—when we have reformed this House—and in the devolved Administrations, and the number of councillors that we have. If we look at international comparisons, it is clear that we have roughly the same number of MPs as France and Italy and rather more per head of population than Germany. However, if you take the total number of elected representatives, we have far fewer. Unless you take this big picture into account, there is no answer to the question of how many MPs there should be.

On voting systems, I said that I am in favour of reform, but AV is not my favourite form of reform and I do not believe that it will achieve the objectives that the Liberal Democrats have been pressing on us for many years. AV reinforces swings and, by and large, region by region, reinforces the position of the top two parties. The Liberal Democrats might gain a few seats in the south-west, but in most places they would not gain. If the Bill is being put forward to keep the coalition together or to provide some advantage to the Liberal Democrats, I am afraid that that party’s Members will be seriously disappointed.

One central flaw in the Bill on which I want to concentrate is the way in which its approach to deciding the boundaries and number of MPs will, in effect, sacrifice the concept of community and replace that with one of statistical mean. Ever since the late Earl of Leicester, otherwise known as Simon de Montfort, proposed the model for Parliament that we have followed for most of the past few centuries, Parliament’s representation—or that of its lower House—has been based on the boroughs and shires of this country. They were definable communities that knew where they were. The nation is an aggregation of those communities, and Parliament should be the aggregation of the representatives of those communities.

In one sense, this issue is irrespective of the nature of the voting system. You can have one, two and three-member constituencies—or even subregional constituencies—but the members must come from a definable area where people understand what that community is—as the noble Lord, Lord Martin, and others have underlined in the course of this debate. If we move away from that principle and provide as the overriding principle for setting constituency boundaries a given figure plus or minus 5 per cent, that will override not only the sense of community but other layers of government—in particular local government—and the way in which people approach the political process. Noble Lords have talked about the way in which people became involved in inquiries. That is true in some cases but not so true in others, but people become involved on the basis of the communities in which they operate, whether they belong to voluntary organisations, political parties or churches. All sorts of people turn up to those inquiries because they wish to know who their representative is and how well the community will be represented as a constituency.

Of course the total number of voters in a constituency is important and of course we should not depart dramatically from that except in a few exceptional circumstances, but allowing a variation of 5 per cent is far too tight a definition. A figure of 20 per cent would be closer. The number of voters is not the most important factor either, because the total population of constituencies can differ dramatically from those that are on the register, as other noble Lords have pointed out. Therefore, as well as the numbers on the electoral roll, the boundary commissions should take into account other considerations such as the total population, community identities, local authority boundaries, the views of local individuals and institutions and the whole question of sparsity and accessibility for constituents. Many such issues need to be balanced out. To present this House with a system that has one overriding concept does not serve democracy well and certainly does not serve representative democracy well.

I wish to make two points from a party point of view. First, if you base this issue simply on communities, you may get a distorted aggregate picture but you adjust that by having a proportionate element built in as well, as happens in Scotland and Wales and in the post-war’s most successful democracy in Germany. If we do not do that but base constituencies simply on electoral size, which can change significantly over five years, we will have a situation where—to end up on a slightly cynical note—all parties will have Members of Parliament looking over their shoulder at how their constituency may change. A chicken run will develop and colleagues will fight each other over the nature of boundaries and over seats. In those circumstances, good government will suffer and I suspect that good coalition government will suffer even more.

I plead with the Government to look at the provisions again, both in terms of the principles of democracy and localism that the Government have enunciated and from the point of view of good governance. This Bill matches none of those objectives. I am sure that the House of Lords will give it detailed consideration, but the Government should think again.