Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Winston Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morgan]

First, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her great kindness. Secondly, I was endeavouring to say that the Speaker’s Conference and any rational detached look at the electoral system would introduce the issue of localities. That is what I was trying to say and, if I did not say it very clearly, I apologise. It is essential to segregate local and national identities. Edmund Burke said it and I say it.

[Lord Winston]

My noble friend cites 1944. Would he like to opine on whether he feels that Parliament was held in greater respect then and whether that is relevant to how it is regarded now?

[Lord Morgan]

The answer is clearly yes. If you look at the material of the Army Bureau of Current Affairs in 1944, you find that, when people were asked why they were fighting, they said that they were fighting for Parliament and the Crown in Parliament. That was in the literature. It spelt out, among other things, the imperishable doctrines of the Levellers, who were seen as pioneers of a democratic Parliament.

I am sorry if I did not make it clear, but I think that a Speaker’s Conference would introduce a subtle variety of criteria on the basis of constituencies. You would then conclude the total appropriate number for the House. This should be done in a detached, careful and scholarly way. I hope that even though the present Government are trying to destroy history with their higher education policy, with so little room for history, they will look at the way in which these matters are decided—any way other than this, which seems to me a botched non-compromise and a disgrace to democracy.

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[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I am infinitely obliged to the noble Lord. He is always rigorous and helpful to the House in exactly that respect.

[Lord Winston]

There is an important issue and I do not know whether my noble friend has addressed it. With the impending reform of the House of Lords, we may lose much expertise. For example, in my area of science and medicine, we may lose a great deal of expertise. Reducing the number of people in the House of Commons who may have that expertise, particularly scientists who might wish to stand for election, would be a grave problem.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I very much agree with my noble friend. What he says on this subject is bound to carry weight on all sides of the House. We have a scientifically illiterate democracy, but the position has improved somewhat in recent years in that we have seen more people elected to the other place with a scientific background. There has been some improvement in the capacity of the other place to debate issues of science and technology, but it must be self-evident to anyone reflecting on it that this is extremely important. If there is a deficiency in the number of Members of Parliament who are versed in science and technology and able to maintain an adequate debate in this extraordinarily important realm, that must be a worry.

The noble Lord, Lord Elton, has anticipated my point that if we reduce the size of the House of Commons it will be a lot more difficult for all those necessary functions to be carried out. My final point is that the House of Commons has also to furnish members of the Executive. That means that any comparison with legislatures in a presidential system or one in which the Executive are appointed from outside the ranks of the legislature is nonsensical.

I hasten to draw my remarks to a conclusion because I know that the House is keen to make progress. I could have said much more, but we will see how the debate develops as the evening wears on. It may be that I will have the opportunity to make some additional remarks, but for the time being I rest my case.

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[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, my noble friend has made a persuasive case that has drawn on her personal experience in a very effective way, but I am not, in fact, persuaded because I do not see what is the magic about the number 630 as against, say, 625 or 635. In my judgment, the exact number should be left to the work of the boundary commissioners, who should be given fairly strict criteria on which to work. That should be the way in which we reach a particular number.

Before going further along the approach that I would favour, I want to make one or two preliminary remarks. First, we are in some interesting and, indeed, unprecedented times. The political scientists among us—I think I saw the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, here, but he may not be in his seat—must be salivating at the way in which we are making precedents. The closure was moved and it may well be that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and other noble Lords intend to move further closures. That is unprecedented, but it may well be that we are moving along the route of virtual guillotines, as they have in the other place. That would put a very different complexion on the spirit of debates in this House. I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, will be rather like Max Boyce—whose name was mentioned by, I think, my noble friend Lord Kinnock—who used to go around great rugby games in Wales and say, “I was there”. When he is lecturing to his students about this great new precedent, the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, can say, “I was there”. He has probably gone home by now, but at least he was there at the relevant time. When the closure was moved—which could, as I say, be analogous to a guillotine—and the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, heard the Lord Speaker read out that that could happen only “in exceptional circumstances”, I was reminded of Alice in Wonderland, where “words mean what I want them to mean”. Clearly, in his vocabulary, “exceptional” is a very flexible word indeed. We are moving in this very interesting way.

Secondly, I just want to comment on the intervention made by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. Given that we had had a debate of about two hours and 45 minutes, it is normal and courteous at the end of such a lengthy debate for the speaker from the government Front Bench to give due weight to the contributions that have been made, but we had just a few minutes for that. Some might have thought that that was arrogant, but I was prepared to give the noble Lord the benefit of the doubt and assume that that was just an hors d’oeuvre—a little taster on the way—and that far more debate would be allowed, to which he would give a second and far more substantive reply. But, no, he colluded with the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, in truncating the debate at that stage. Again, that is closer to arrogance.

Finally, I think that the reason that the magic figure of 600 has been raised is due to the inflexibility that has come about as a result of the coalition. A deal has been done in a smoke-filled room—although perhaps we no longer have smoke-filled rooms—and neither party to the coalition is prepared to move one iota away from that. Clearly, that inflexibility may change. Who knows what will happen to the Liberal Party over the next four or five years? Will there be a formal merger of the two parties? In the recent Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election, there were hints that one party might make way for the other or at least tell its supporters to support, as best they can, the candidate who has the better chance. Indeed, we do not know in which party Mr Clegg will be by 2015. Things are moving along, anyway, and that may well be the reason for this inflexibility.

I personally am not convinced of the case for 630. I do not know what the right number is—I am prepared to leave that to the wisdom of the Boundary Commission—but I know that any number that is chosen will have party-political consequences. If there are party-political consequences to 600, there will also be party-political consequences to 630 and to 500. In deciding on the numbers, or indeed on the approach, a Government can move in one of two ways. They can make up their own mind and bring down some figure as if on a tablet of stone, like Moses from the mountain, and say, “That is the number that we insist upon”. The problem with that is that the Government’s decision will be tainted. If we accept—as I think everyone should—that any number will have party-political consequences, people will believe that the number that the Government have chosen is the number that the Government think is to their party advantage. However, being an innocent in politics, I am sure that the Government had before them a little notice saying, “The national interest”, and that, in their judgment, the number 600 accords exactly with the national interest. However, the public and the chattering classes may be a little more sceptical than I am.

If one is serious about the numbers, surely one must adopt another device that, in so far as is practicable in the circumstances, enjoys the greatest amount of political support. Otherwise, what will happen is that, just as one Government can choose a number that—rightly or wrongly—the public believe is in the party interest of that Government, so another Government could come along and say, “We will alter the rules for our political advantage”. Surely that is wrong. It is wrong that any number should be considered to be based on partisan grounds. The only way of ensuring that the figure is believed to be legitimate and of ensuring that it has staying power in the longer term is for the Government not to impose a number but to bring in some system whereby there is an independent assessment.

Therefore, however persuasive my noble friend has been—she made a very good and plausible case—I think that her magic figure of 630, although it would be more acceptable because it would provide greater flexibility and a greater opportunity for the boundary commissioners to take account of localism and time boundaries and all the other important matters, would still lead to inflexibility. My judgment is that the boundary commissioners, subject to strict rules, should be given as much flexibility as possible to take account of all relevant criteria.

[Lord Winston]

My noble friend Lord Anderson was so quick on his feet that I did not have a chance to ask my noble friend a point that is directly related and relevant to the amendment that she has moved. I should like to ask her now, if I may. Noble Lords opposite know that I never give long speeches and I always try to speak to the point of a debate when I join it. I should like my noble friend to clarify how she arrives at the figure of 630. I genuinely do not understand why it is not, for example, 625 or 635. It would be very helpful to have the mathematics behind what she is proposing. I do not have a view about how big the House of Commons should be. I am inclined to believe that the number probably should be reduced but I do not understand how she has arrived at the figure that she is proposing.

[Baroness McDonagh]

I thank my noble friend and I shall deal with all three interventions, as well as that of the noble Lord opposite. When my noble friend Lord Anderson of Swansea said that the number of constituencies has political consequences, the noble Lord shouted back, “Of course it does. We all know that”. That is the first admission that we have had in this debate so far that there is a political reason for coming up with the figure of 600. I do not believe that that is a good reason to state what the number of seats in the other place should be.

Coming back to the three interventions, I absolutely agree with my noble friend Lady Farrington. I personally believe that it is wrong to set in law a cap for the number of seats in the other place. However, in answer to the point raised by my noble friend Lord Anderson of Swansea, because you cannot do everything that you need to do, sometimes you should do something to protect the interests of the public. I believe that setting the number of seats at 630 will allow that to happen and that we will not end up with a map of the UK on which the constituencies are marked out by straight lines.

I turn to the question asked by my noble friend Lord Winston. Under the current legislation, county boundaries are sacrosanct and constituencies are not allowed to cross them. Perhaps a small sample of us should go out and ask the public whether they believe that we should cross their county boundary. I do not know how many people here would like to come with me to Cornwall. I do not know it particularly well because it is not an area where we have had a lot of Labour constituencies. However, if we stopped people in the street and asked them whether they wanted their parliamentary constituencies to cross the county boundary to Devon, I think that we know what the answer would be.

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[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I had the temerity to touch on that, too, but I did not have time—because I did not wish to detain the House—to talk about the importance of finding people to serve on the Council of Europe and the NATO General Assembly, and for all the other important responsibilities that Members of the House of Commons, between them, all carry.

My noble friend touched on the possibility of internecine strife developing between existing Members, who might find themselves in some contest for the nomination for a future constituency. I will give way in a second. I do not think that in the Labour Party people would be so uncomradely as to engage in that, but who can say what might happen among the Members of Parliament of the parties opposite?

[Lord Winston]

I do not want to delay the House very much, but my noble friend has talked about committees. Is it not also true—I do not think this has been raised before—that Members of Parliament often deal with a large number of very technical issues? For example, as a scientist presenting to them on embryology, it was extremely difficult to get proper comprehension of the science that we were discussing and the ethical issues that were involved. MPs were eager to learn about this but it took a lot of time.

One of the problems I found, both as a Member of this House and before I joined it, was that it was very difficult to find enough Members of Parliament to attend meetings that we had organised with experts to make sure that there was a thorough recognition of the subtleties of the legislation. This certainly applied to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. That is only one of several issues. More recently, it was also true of the issues of hybrid embryos, when there was great difficulty in explaining those things. Members of Parliament would attend a committee for 15 minutes and then be off to the next job. That, I hope my noble friend will agree, is one reason why he is making a very pertinent point.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My noble friend makes an extremely important point. With the abolition of bodies such as the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which the Government seem to be contemplating, and a whole series of expert bodies that is adumbrated in the provisions of the Public Bodies Bill, we will face yet greater difficulty in ensuring that there is an informed body of knowledge among Members of Parliament to enable them to debate effectively these immensely important and sensitive issues. My noble friend Lord Winston has tempted me to explore that avenue but, in view of the time and the impatience of so many of my noble friends to make their own contributions to the debate, I ought to sit down.