Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Woolf Excerpts

Wednesday 26th January 2011 Lords Chamber

Our amendment is, I hope, regarded as a genuine attempt—that is what it is—to reach a proposal that the Government will find satisfactory. It does not undermine any of the principles of the Bill. At the same time, it guards against the unnecessary use of such inquiries and ensures that the Government are able to review constituency boundaries in time for the next election. I urge the Government to accept this amendment. I beg to move.

[Lord Woolf]

My Lords, I support this amendment on the grounds already put before the House by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, in opening this debate. My main concern is the effects on the courts of the removal of inquiries and the consequences that that could have for the proper workings of the Boundary Commission. I should acknowledge that that point was drawn to my attention by the right honourable Mr Straw in the other place who, of course, has been recently the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. As I understand it, he shares the same concerns as I will advance.

Before I do that, I feel that I should advise the House, on the basis of my general experience and my responsibility at one stage of my career at the Bar, of when I appeared quite regularly for the Government in inquiries which were going wrong. The problem was that the public felt that those inquiries, although they were local inquiries, did not give them the opportunity to express the strength of feeling that they had on a governmental proposal. In considering this amendment, the Government would be wise to take that possible unforeseen consequence into account. I am pleased that the proposed amendment deals with some of the problems that could arise in regard to the ability for local inquiries to take place.

The first matter was delay. I hope that the suggestion made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, for dealing with that will be considered to be satisfactory. Certainly, it seemed to me to be a constructive proposal. However, the most important reason for preserving this power for the Boundary Commission to hold a local inquiry in the form that will exist in law if this amendment is accepted is the fact that the Boundary Commission is given the key to the door as to whether there should be a local inquiry. It would have a discretion and, although there are thresholds, those thresholds do not bite on the discretion. The only situation when there would be an inquiry is where the Boundary Commission thinks that it is necessary, which, surely, is an important point that is made in this amendment.

If there is no provision for an inquiry I anticipate that there will inevitably be an increase in applications for judicial review. Applications for judicial review are a plague so far as the Government of the day are concerned. They are also a problem for the courts, albeit that the courts take great pride in the way, over the past decade and more, they have developed the ability of the public to seek the aid of the courts where they think their rights are being infringed. If this amendment is not accepted, the issues that will be sought to be raised on applications for judicial reviews are ones which the courts will find peculiar difficulty in dealing with. It is a very important part of our constitution—unwritten though it be—that there should be a relationship between the courts and Parliament which avoids Parliament trespassing on the proper province of the courts and avoids the courts trespassing on the proper province of Parliament. Matters dealing with constituency boundaries, it seems to me, are the very sorts of matters which the courts should not be required to deal with if there is a way of avoiding it. The best way of giving the public the ability to express their views is by public inquiries being held whenever the Boundary Commission considers it is appropriate.

On the basis of those two points, I urgently encourage the Government to look with sympathy on this amendment, which has so carefully been drafted to meet possible objections but achieve a very valuable safeguard for the public. It is in accord with the Government’s policy, as I understand it, of allowing the public to have a say on matters of such importance.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, I support the amendment of my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, said, we trust that the Government will be prepared to look on it with some sympathy.

I was very surprised indeed when I saw that, particularly from our Liberal Democratic friends, there was support for a change of this nature. I will say a few words about what I would class as being one of the most democratic exercises in which I have ever participated. I was on the Select Committee dealing with the hybrid Bill on Crossrail. We spent six months meeting four days a week with hundreds of businesses, taxpayers, ratepayers and individuals who had the opportunity of using the public process of petitioning against the way that the plans had been laid down for developing Crossrail. We listened to them all very carefully indeed and the noble and learned Lord the Minister will have considerably more experience than I do of petitions, with his experience in Scotland. To me it proved to be the most democratic public participative process that I have ever been involved with since I came into the House back in 1997. At the end of the day people went away. They did not necessarily get their way. In fact, the number of concessions granted was relatively small but the important point about the exercise to me was that people had had the chance to have their say, they felt they had been listened to carefully and we understood that many of them, even though they did not win their point, felt that democracy had not only been seen but had been seen to be at work and that they had had their chance.

I was surprised when we saw that, effectively, this major part of the process of our democracy is scheduled to be quite unilaterally guillotined. There has been no public consultation whatever, no Green Paper and no scrutiny across the two Houses, but we have a major change before us. My noble and learned friend Lord Falconer has bent over backwards in crafting the amendment to try to meet all the problems that were enumerated when this was debated in the other place. It is a pity that we do not have many people present in the Chamber, given that we have been told that we are filibustering and that we are not dealing sensibly and reasonably with the issues before us. If the Chamber had been full, I am sure that no one could have raised any criticisms about the way that this side of the House has endeavoured to try to meet the needs that have been expressed by the coalition Government. I hope that a very careful ear will be given to the arguments that have been advanced, and more particularly that, for the first time, there will be an indication of some movement in negotiations, which would go some way towards what we are looking for.

The other side of the coin is that if this is forced through so that public inquiries are abolished and prohibited, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, indicated, there is the distinct possibility that a very substantial number of calls for judicial review will be made in due course to try to counter the fact that people have not been given an opportunity to input their views into the way that the legislation has been developed. I should also like to hear, particularly from the Minister, a response to the point about judicial reviews: whether it is anticipated that they will arise if the Government go ahead, the scale of what may take place and how that in turn might interfere with the programme that has been set out. But I hope that the Minister will not have to address those points because he will, very sensibly indeed I trust, give a much more positive response to the amendment.