Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord Wigley Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 15th September 2020 Grand Committee

Wales will take the biggest hit in terms of constituencies lost in the next boundary review due to the large population shifts in the last two decades, but a 5% variance will double down on that because it will have a disproportionate impact on Wales due to the unique challenges Welsh geography poses. Wales should be treated fairly and not punitively, so it is crucial that the Boundary Commission for Wales is given greater flexibility to take account of this unique geography. There will always need to be a variance, but I submit that a 15% variance strikes a balance between having constituencies that are broadly equal and ones that reflect the local community and represent their communities. I very much hope that the Minister will accept this amendment so I do not need to press it on Report.

[Lord Wigley (PC) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendment 22 in the name of my noble friend Lord Hain, who spoke so impressively in support of it. I will also address the amendment put forward by my noble friend Lord Foulkes and I particularly warmed to the case made for Cornwall. However, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, that if our amendment relating to Wales is not acceptable, there is nothing to stop similar, parallel amendments being put forward with a case for England, Scotland or, indeed, Cornwall itself. That is in the hands of noble Lords in this Committee or on the Floor of the House on Report. All I would say is that the case for Wales stands out because of the extent of the changes proposed by virtue of the rules being put forward.

I will pick up on one point that the noble Lord, Lord Hain, made about the valley communities. The noble Baroness, Lady Gale, will be familiar with this as well. When I was a councillor in Merthyr before becoming a Member of Parliament, I had good friends who had never been to the Cynon valley, the next valley to the west, or the Rhymney valley, the next valley to the east. That is the nature of the valley communities. It is not because of a closed mentality but because the geography and topology of the area dictates it.

We have already debated the number of seats that Wales should have in the House of Commons and I hope that the Government will give careful thought to that between now and Report. Amendment 22 addresses the other aspect of this issue—the factor that led to Wales having a slightly higher representation than is fair statistically. That does indeed relate to geography and topography and the nature of Wales, the distribution of our population and, in particular, our communities.

As I said at Second Reading, MPs are representatives not delegates. If they were delegates, then, arguably, the number should correspond to the number of electors on whose behalf they cast their votes in the legislative process. If that were the case, they should also reflect the political balance of their constituencies by proportional representation which, of course, the House of Commons has rejected. If MPs are not elected on such a basis, it is quite illogical that their constituencies should be determined by that very dimension.

MPs deliver a service to their constituents. That involves making themselves available to discuss, dealing with individuals and with groups of constituents, a diverse range of issues, and taking them up at Westminster. As MP for Caernarfon, I represented a range of different communities of interest in the 92 towns and villages which made up my then constituency. I had to be reasonably knowledgeable about farming and fishing, manufacturing industry and slate production, river pollution and radioactivity, tourism and higher education, as well as a whole range of social legislation and service delivery. I had 28 community councils all expecting to see me on a regular basis, and I worked very closely indeed with Gwynedd Council, the unitary authority within which my constituency was wholly located. I had to work within the twin structures of UK government departments and the Welsh Office, as then was, and deal with a plethora of all-Wales bodies. I had to discuss and correspond about such issues in two languages, since 84% of my constituents had Welsh as their first language, and I had a five-hour journey each way, each week, between Caernarfon and Westminster.

My point is this. If I had had a compact seat in London, I could have undertaken my duties as MP in far less time than was needed to do so in Caernarvon. For there to be an equivalence in the service afforded by an MP to constituents, there has to be some weighting in the structure of representation. Rural areas, communities for whom London is remote, areas where the structure of government is different and communities of a different nature to those of metropolitan England—all these should have a representational weighting to achieve an equivalence of service delivery. In practical terms, it would be ludicrous, as the noble Lord, Lord Hain, emphasised, for a county such as Powys to have only one MP. The south-east of that county looks to Newport and Cardiff for many services, the south-west to Swansea, the north-west to Aberystwyth and Bangor and the north-east to Wrexham. The commission which draws up any new Welsh constituency boundaries should start with the assumption that Powys has two MPs, and the rest should follow from there.

There should be a flexibility in the numerical size of constituencies to allow such a structure, and Amendment 22 goes a long way to provide this. There can never be a perfect answer that fits all circumstances, but I believe there should be some guarantee in both constituency service terms and the coherence of a national voice, of a de minimis representation for Wales in the House of Commons and, within that, the flexibility to make it work for its communities. Amendment 22 offers that possibility and I commend it to the Committee.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I will not repeat some of the debate on the previous grouping, when my noble friend Lord Blencathra and I made comments on a number of issues in relation to some of the localities we have discussed today and the scale of geography that different constituencies face. I merely repeat my observation that I have a Cornish father and I was born in Devon, so I have sympathy with and understanding of the emotive issues that that division may generate.

Perhaps I may clarify one point for the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, because he was not sure about the balance between the numbers game, to use his phrase, I think, and the influence of local factors. I say this with at least two glass walls between me and the Government Whip, because she may want to hit me for pointing this out. In fact, in the legislation to which I referred, Schedule 2 says that the electorate of any constituency “shall be”, in other words the number is pre-eminent, whereas the requirement to take factors into consideration is described by “may”, as the noble Lord is indicating. Therefore, one has pre-eminence over the other.