Parliamentary Constituencies Bill (Fifth sitting)

Maria Miller Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 25th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you very much, Mr Shelbrooke. I do not think the Clerk needs any help. I thank you for trying to help me, but as you say, these matters are not for the Chair. We have had three sittings already and some of the matters have been touched on anyway. They are subjects for discussion and debating points.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Paisley. Last Thursday, 18 June, when we were taking evidence from the Boundary Commission for England, an undertaking was given to provide evidence to the Committee about the collection of data. We gave the commission two weeks to give that evidence. Has there been any indication of when it might be forthcoming?

[The Chair]

Thank you, Mrs Miller. I thought that that was the point that Mr Spellar was going to make. It is an important one. We have asked for the evidence to be delivered here by 29 June, which is Monday, so you will have time on Tuesday and Thursday next week not only to consider it but to appeal it.

Clause 1

Reports of the Boundary Commissions

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[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

It is a great pleasure to see you back in the Chair and in charge, Mr Paisley. I repeat on the record the remarks that I made on Second Reading regarding the view of the Scottish National party. We would prefer not to be represented in this place at all, but for so long as the constitutional requirement is that Scotland remains tied to the United Kingdom, Scotland should have no fewer than the 59 seats that we have in this place.

I echo much of what the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood said regarding parliamentary approval. Our fundamental position is that we did not vote against the Bill on Second Reading because we wanted to see it come to Committee. I genuinely believe that the Minister is a thoughtful person, who will consider arguments on their merits. I hope that in the course of today’s sitting and the two sittings next week, she will take on board the amendments tabled not just by the SNP and Plaid Cymru but by the Labour party, which have been tabled with a view to making the Bill better, and making it work for our democratic process.

The hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood is right about parliamentary approval. I have difficulty with the proposal. I listened to Professor Hazell and Dr Renwick give evidence, and I have genuinely wrestled with where we should end up on parliamentary approval. I am afraid that I probably still maintain my position on Second Reading: I am uncomfortable with a process wherein Parliament does not have the final say, because of what we saw in the last Parliament, during which the Government decided that they would try to plough ahead with 600 seats. They lost their majority over the course of that Parliament, but the whole process underlined the need for Parliament to have the final say, and I wish to put that on record.

[Mrs Miller]

Reference keeps being made to the shift to 600 seats from 650. That decision was made by Parliament; it was not the result of a boundary commission review that Parliament then ratified. Does the hon. Gentleman not understand that, as Parliament made that decision, today we are discussing Parliament changing it back?

[David Linden]

I am immensely grateful to the right hon. Lady for that intervention. It is fair of her to put that on record, but the issue is the change in policy by the Conservative party. She is right that the 2011 legislation to reduce the number of seats to 600 was introduced by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition Government. I think a number of us on the Committee—some of us tried to tease this out in the evidence hearings—find it rather strange that, after the Conservative party had a very good election in December, all of a sudden its position changed from wanting to have 600 seats to wanting to have 650.

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[David Linden]

I am happy to clarify. I am referring to question 181, which can be found on the last page of Hansard for the public sitting on Tuesday 23 June.

I want to ask the Minister to comment on a point made by Professor Curtice, who said:

“I am concerned that there is some political consideration going on here. Nobody has raised the point that the next review under this is supposed to end in July 2023 rather than in October 2023. No justification is given for that in the Cabinet Office memo or in the explanatory notes. The only explanation that I can think of—maybe I am being unfair—is that somebody is wanting to pave the way to make it possible to hold a general election in autumn 2023 rather than in spring 2024. Certainly, somebody needs to explain why the next procedure is going to be foreshortened by three months for a set of boundaries that are then going to be in place for another eight years, and this is not going to happen thereafter. There is no justification so far, and I encourage the Committee to inquire further.”––[Official Report, Parliamentary Constituencies Public Bill Committee, 23 June 2020; c. 98, Q181.]

On that basis, I put that point to the Minister. I hope that in the course of her remarks she will clarify that particular point in relation to line 11 of clause 1.

[Mrs Miller]

I am very pleased to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley, and to speak to amendments 2 to 4 and that clauses 1 and 2 should stand part of the Bill. This gives us an opportunity to explore some of the important principles within this Bill to deliver fair and equal-sized constituencies for our country.

We like to pride ourselves on being a strong democracy. We stand in the mother of all Parliaments. Yet the current provisions do not give us the absolute certainty that each of our constituencies are of the same size. Our constituents do not each have the same power to elect somebody to represent them. Some seats require a larger population—for example, I have 83,000 constituents —and others require up to 30,000 or 40,000 fewer constituents within their constituency boundaries.

I want to put on record my absolute support for the Bill and the hard work that my hon. Friend the Minister has put into it. It delivers, as has been said, on an important manifesto commitment to remove the current flaws in the system. I am somewhat perplexed as to why the Labour party has tabled amendments that would surgically remove one of the important principles in the Bill, which is fairness in the way that the recommendation from the boundary commission is dealt with.

I am not the only one expressing surprise. We heard from some eminent constitutional experts in our evidence session that the current system is worse than flawed. In particular, we heard from Professor Hazell and Dr Renwick from the constitutional unit at University College London, who said in their written evidence that

“the independence of the UK’s process is currently violated at the final step”—

“violated” is quite a strong term coming from an academic—

“when parliament’s approval is required to implement the Boundary Commissions’ proposals.”

Quite simply, with its amendments, the Labour party is choosing to ignore the advice of constitutional experts by continuing to support and promote a system that violates the independence of the approval process, which fundamentally undermines what the Bill seeks to achieve. That evidence goes on:

“Parliament’s current approval role has allowed inappropriate political interference to occur three times.”

I am quite astonished that the Opposition would want to be on the record as ignoring that advice and evidence, and fundamentally changing what the Bill would achieve.

If that evidence is not enough, the OSCE report, which was cited during an evidence session, makes it very clear that when reviewing and reforming a system of legislative processes, there must be fairly and equally sized constituencies. It is not just academics in this country who say that we need to change our system, but an internationally recognised institution, which says that, if reforming, we should be trying to put in place protocols and safety clauses to ensure that constituencies are as equal as they can be.

I hope that the Opposition will provide a stronger reason for wanting to change the Bill than the reasons that they have already given. Otherwise, we run the risk of continuing with a system whereby Parliament, when it chooses, stops reviews going through. At the moment, we are dealing with boundaries based on data that is 20 years out of date. That is not just unfair to individual constituencies but, as we heard in evidence, it fundamentally undermines our democratic process.

I hope that hon. Members, regardless of party affiliation, can see the inadequacies of the amendments and will reject them, as I will, because they are fundamentally wrong for our democracy. It is wrong that the votes of voters in my constituency have less impact that those of voters in other constituencies. I urge the Opposition to withdraw the amendments, which would so badly undermine not only the Bill but our democratic system.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

What a great pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Paisley. I will respond to the questions raised by the right hon. Member for Basingstoke, whom I congratulate—although I might be doing someone else in the Committee a disservice—because I believe it was she who coined the term “automaticity”.

[Mrs Miller]

It wasn’t me!

[Christian Matheson]

Then I apologise to the coiner of that term. We learn something new every day in Committee, and “automaticity” is another term that I might try to slip into speeches from now on.

I rise to speak in favour of the amendments tabled in my name and, in particular, that of my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood. I am instinctively unhappy about anything that takes Parliament out of the review process. The buck has to stop with Parliament. I remind the Committee that not only would the House of Commons have to approve the legislation, but the House of Lords would have to do so too, so there is no self-interest there.

It is essential that we do not remove Parliament from the consideration of our democracy. Bluntly, nobody is more focused on the quality of our democracy than those of us in this House. That is seen as a negative, but I think it is absolutely a positive to be reminded that at some point, within a maximum of five years, we are going to have to go back to our electorate. To have that sword of Damocles dangling over us is always very important. When I was first elected to this place, I had a majority of 93, and my God, didn’t I know it. That makes us take our electorate and our voters seriously, because they are our ultimate employers. Removing Parliament from that consideration is something I am instinctively unhappy with.

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I will not have this House, or the motivations of most Members, denigrated by people who, because they operate in senior academic circles, might be the very people who would be drafted on to the public bodies to take the decisions. There are people setting themselves up as being in a position to overlook us and perhaps have a different view, simply because they are potentially on the other side. I do not suggest that of the individuals who gave evidence; there were some eminent academics who did so. However, we must be careful not to buy into the narrative that MPs are in it only for themselves. Most, on both sides of the House, are not. I reject that idea. I trust hon. Members to take the right collective decision. Yes, we will look for our own constituency first. Of course we will.

[Mrs Miller]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Christian Matheson]

Will the right hon. Lady indulge me a moment?

To go back to parliamentary approval is to provide a safety valve, so that the collective overall proposals are not daft or unworkable, and so that they have relevance to the communities they serve. That must be at the back of the minds of the commissioners—otherwise we end up with the Devonwall and Mersey Banks constituencies, where the numbers are all that matter, irrespective of the communities.

[Mrs Miller]

I note from the hon. Gentleman’s CV that we share the same university background, so I hope his notes about academics do not stretch as far as the London School of Economics. That would not be a good thing.

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. In the vast majority of cases, in my 15 years as an MP I have rarely questioned the motivations of individuals here. However, can he explain the comment made by one academic in evidence about the decisions in 1967 not to accept the boundary review? There was a strong indication there that it was a question of political gerrymandering—I will use that word, although I am not sure whether that is the right context—or certainly a little sleight of hand. Now, because of the process that we have in place and the blocks that are there, we are using boundaries that are 20 years out of date. How, then, can he advocate the status quo? It is not working.

[Christian Matheson]

I think it was in 1969, when I was one year old, so my memory of the politics of the time is not, perhaps, good. Maybe there were political considerations within the Wilson Government at the time.

[Mrs Miller]

It was Wilson.

[Christian Matheson]

Yes, the Wilson Government in ’69. I ask the right hon. Lady what the difference is between political considerations at the end of the process and political considerations at the start of the process, when the criteria are set out. We have to get the balance right. That bookending with a return to Parliament is a good thing.

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[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Glasgow East, because this is a serious point. We are moving approval to an unelected body, which is a strange mix of parties and balance. A load of appointees will be going to the House of Lords, and there is going to be an argument about which party is getting the most—it is a very unrepresentative body. It would be way outside the scope of this Bill to discuss Lords reform, but the problem has always been that there are 650-odd MPs who think the House of Lords needs to change, and 650 different ideas about how to do it.

The House of Lords has a role in this Bill. The Bill is setting the criteria, and it is going to the other place, where it may well get amended. It will then come back to the House of Commons, and this House will vote on it. Funnily enough, I never had a problem with the amendments passed during the Brexit debate in the House of Lords, because they were irrelevant: whether they were accepted was up to the House of Commons. People got excited about what the House of Lords was doing, but it was an irrelevant argument, because its amendments had to be accepted by the House of Commons. That is where the power lies; that is what went on. The Lords is a revising Chamber, and it may frustrate us sometimes or we may have ideological views about it, but it still has its role in this Bill.

This comes back to what the hon. Member for City of Chester said about whether the politics is at the beginning, or at the end. The answer is that it is at the beginning. The House of Commons could bring in a one-line Bill to stop this later on—that power remains with this House—but it is right that we move this process forward. If we are all honest with ourselves, the vast majority of people sat in this room are nervous about what is going to be put to us in September 2021 when the first report comes out, and about how our representations will be received in June 2022. That is the nature of human beings: people think that politicians are not like other people, but of course we are, in every respect. However, we fight for our communities not because we are worried about our jobs, but because that is why we went into politics. We all therefore ask ourselves, “Do I want to see a chunk of the community I have represented for such a long time disappear?” When that happens, it is heartbreaking.

[Mrs Miller]

My right hon. Friend is correct that we all fight for our communities, but we should be doing so on a fair footing. The assertion of the hon. Member for City of Chester that the current system is flawless is simply not borne out by the facts. I have been doing some gentle maths on my Order Paper, and I think my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury and I top the charts with 83,000 constituents in our patches—constituencies that are 50% bigger than that of the hon. Member for Ceredigion. Obviously, there are important reasons that things in Wales have been done in the way they have, but that does not mean we have to continue with them now. We missed out a round of reform in Wales that is long overdue.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I thank my right hon. Friend for those comments.

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[John Spellar]

That is a very fair and effective point. There also needs to be a check, therefore—they know that there will be a check further down the line, and that they do not ignore those guidelines or indeed ignore the realities on the ground with complete impunity. In a minute I will come to why we saw that happen, and talk about the history of the last ten years and why boundary commissions failed on two occasions.

I must divert briefly from the matter following the intervention from the right hon. Member for Basingstoke, who had clearly prepared her comments about the OSCE, or maybe she came in after I raised the point of order at the beginning of the sitting. “The Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters” clearly states that the

“maximum admissible departure from the distribution criterion…should seldom exceed 10% and never 15%, except in really exceptional circumstances”.

Therefore, it does not prescribe mathematical equality, nor indeed straining the system in order to achieve that mathematical equality.

[Mrs Miller]

The right hon. Gentleman will, if he looks back at what I said, see that I was talking about the principles set out in that report from that organisation, which explicitly say that deviation away from equality undermines suffrage. It is, of course, an international organisation so it is perhaps having to deal with many sorts of democratic systems, but I was referring to that principle.

[John Spellar]

Actually, if I look back at the earlier clause for which that was a note, it was referring to constituencies that had 10,000 eligible voters and another one with 100,000. The OSCE was not referring to the circumstances described when it said such situations should be avoided. But it laid down clear parameters, recognising that there would be all sorts of reasons in all sorts of countries for having a reasonable range in order to deal with ethnic or religious divisions—as it pointed out—as well as geographical factors in other areas.

I will move onto the issue of what is the mischief that actually the legislation seeks to remedy. That comes down to how we got here. Everyone accepts that population changes. Nobody—except perhaps some Conservative Members on the other side of the Committee—would want to go back to the Old Sarum system in which a dozen voters had a vote while the populations of the great growing urban areas of the 19^th century were unrepresented. Obviously, therefore, we need to recognise population movement that is probably greater now than it was previously. Frankly, we got into this position because of a shallow and superficial gimmicky decision by the previous Prime Minister, David Cameron, for a strapline of saving money by cutting the number of politicians. We have, in fact, been representing far more constituents. In fact, we represent far more constituents now than at any other time in British history. He got a cheap headline, and some people may have bought it, but it was absolutely irrelevant in terms of GDP and Government spend. However, that then imposed huge constraints on the boundary commissions.

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What we are discussing here is why we hand over to a commission. I assure Committee members that, absent the constraint that it has to be acceptable to Parliament, the bureaucrats will look at just numbers, not community or geography. The constituencies that were created last time were absolutely bizarre shapes.

[Mrs Miller]

The right hon. Gentleman is advocating the current situation as if it is some utopia. Can he explain why anybody should be happy that he has a third fewer constituents than I do in my constituency? If he is looking for checks and balances if the boundary commission or its advisers abuse their position, surely they are that the House of Commons can change the legislation in future if the situation is abused. I have to say, there is more evidence that it has been abused under the current situation, and he is advocating to keep it that way.

[John Spellar]

I must repeat what I just said: everybody accepts that population change, growth and reduction, urban clearances and so on have an impact. That has changed somewhat, because the traditional pattern was that slum clearances in the inner cities meant that people moved to the suburbs and, subsequently, to the fringe towns. I expect that is what is happening in the constituency of the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell. Everyone accepts that that takes place.

It was the actions of the former Prime Minister—first, in attempting to reduce the number to 600 and secondly, proposing to change the margin of variation to 5%—that created an unacceptable framework, which then created completely unrecognisable constituencies that completely lacked community. The borough of Sandwell would probably have gone down to three seats.

The other problem is that the rigid mathematical formula, along with no imagination from the boundary commission, creates a huge number of orphan wards. Those are areas that are parts of someone’s constituency but have no connection with the rest of it. Inevitably, the Member then focuses on the bulk of their constituency. That is not good for democracy.

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[Shaun Bailey]

First, I accept the point that the right hon. Gentleman raises about the boundary commission not understanding communities, but with representations from those communities those points are then corrected. The issue of Halesowen was raised with the boundary commission at the last minute and it was corrected.

[Mrs Miller]

I am listening very carefully. As somebody who was born in the Black Country, I am astonished that anybody would ever think that it was possible to conflate those two communities. I have listened to my hon. Friend’s thoughtful speech. It is important to remember that the legislation gives pre-eminence to equality of constituencies. Everything he talks about is important, but it is really important that equality comes first and foremost, with community ties coming after that. Whatever we might say in this debate today, constituency boundaries are an artificial construct. Their nature is by definition artificial, and we have to make sure that they do not overwhelm the need for more equality as between constituency sizes.

[Shaun Bailey]

My right hon. Friend is, of course, absolutely correct in her analysis. Although equality is obviously the foremost consideration, it does not eliminate those links with communities either. I think she definitely said that in her contribution. She has made the point time and again. I represent a seat with 65,500 constituents and she represents a seat with 83,000. The figures speak for themselves, so I do not think I can add to what my right hon. Friend has said.