Parliamentary Constituencies Bill (Seventh sitting)

Debate between Maria Miller and Christian Matheson

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 30th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Mrs Miller]

There is an old adage in the business world about doing the right thing right. Yes, the commission should do the right thing right first time, and not create re-work. I note from the letter that the Boundary Commission for England wrote to the Committee that it recommends that it should give priority to mapping metropolitan areas, given the late stage we are at, and the concerns it might have about being able to map the whole country at this stage. I think that that is part of the answer, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton said, there is also room for it to look at other datasets, so that it will not be quite so focused on just one solution. I note from the submission that one member of staff was given the matter as a project. Perhaps if a little more resource was put into it, it could be turned around a little more quickly.

I am not quite sure how the Committee can put further pressure on to the boundary commission, but my ask to it would be why it is not looking at other datasets and why it cannot resource the matter more. Surely the Government, for whom the project is important, would want to look at any suggestion of additional resources that are needed to complete the work in a reasonable timeframe so that such data could be available, whether that is only for metropolitan areas or for a broader cross-section of the country.

The second issue that I wanted to turn to, briefly, is protected constituencies. Clause 6 touches on the rules in schedule 2 and I think we can be more ambitious for the Bill, in relation to using the concept of protected constituencies not just in England and Scotland but Wales. We will discuss two amendments on that later in our proceedings, when we can pick up on some of the issues raised by the hon. Member for Ceredigion and show our understanding of the importance of community. As a kingdom of islands, sometimes we need rules in place to respect that unique nature of the United Kingdom. We will come on to that shortly.

My final point is on taking into account future growth, which I raised with a couple of our evidence givers. I suppose I am thinking about constituencies like my own, Basingstoke, which has grown significantly in the past three decades, from being a sleepy market town predominantly surrounded by the most amazing and beautiful Hampshire countryside, when it was the constituency of David Mitchell, the father of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), to what it is today, which is one of the top 10 centres of employment in the south-east—still surrounded by the most amazing and beautiful Hampshire countryside.

To the west of the town is a major development area by the name of Manydown, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse). No houses have yet been built, but they will be, and to stop unnecessary change in the future it will be important for that in some way to be taken into account geographically in the setting of the boundaries.

Please do not get me wrong: I am not asking for that to be taken into account in the quotas, but surely with such major areas, which have already had many hundreds of thousands if not millions of pounds-worth of development put into planning for the future, it would be an unnecessary change pending in the future for it not to be taken into account. I am sure every single Committee member can think of somewhere in or near their own constituency where that would be the case.

Given that one of the factors in the rules—I think I have this right—is that we can look at such things for the future, I hope that the boundary commissions will be able to think about the geographical nature of what they do, not just the numerical population-based nature of it. However, I did not get a sense from their response, or from others, that that was something they were focused on yet. I hope that we can register that with them at this early stage, to stop what my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell said in his intervention on planning for the future and instead to get things right first time.

[Christian Matheson]

I find the right hon. Lady’s contributions thought-provoking and very helpful. Mr Speaker—

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[Christian Matheson]

I would not challenge the right hon. Gentleman. I take the advice that his local knowledge makes him an expert to give. We listen to each other and say, “Actually, in those circumstances it wouldn’t work.” However, the number of areas where we would not need to do that would be far fewer. I think that the Leeds issue, with wards of 17,000, is quite an extreme one. I suspect that some of those will have to be split anyway, but we make heavy weather by making the number of those instances, and their frequency, much greater as a result.

[Mrs Miller]

I am intervening only because the hon. Member referred to what I said. To be clear, what I am calling for is more rigour in the process. I do not hold with his assertion that by giving people more leeway we will get a better answer. We need more rigour in what is being done, and more detail from the boundary commission, to ensure that the commission comes up with the right answer and we get equal constituency sizes. There will always be special cases—that was the point that I was making—and they have to be recognised, but I was not calling for a more lackadaisical approach; I was calling for more rigour and detail in the system.

[Christian Matheson]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for that clarification. The point that I was making in response to her speech and other contributions was that as long as we insist on 5%, none of the other considerations that hon. Members across the Committee are calling for will be possible or indeed relevant. I believe that it is important, for example, to have community ties. Language ties had not occurred to me until they were raised by the hon. Member for Ceredigion in relation to the previous clause. I found that very thought provoking, but there has to be a balance between the aim of achieving equal-sized constituencies and achieving the community ties for which hon. Members are calling. Unfortunately, at the moment we are not hitting that balance.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill (Eighth sitting)

Debate between Maria Miller and Christian Matheson

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 30th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Christian Matheson]

I briefly seek the opinion of the Committee in discussion of the new clause. I hope that its aim is self-evident.

Most of us in Committee—my friends, the hon. Members for Glasgow East and for Ceredigion excluded—would consider themselves to be Unionists and proud to be British. I certainly would. My concern is that, as the Bill stands, the Union will be placed under unnecessary and increased strain, because the three smaller nations will take the larger hit to representation here at Westminster, in the House of Commons.

Historically, we heard in evidence that Wales and Scotland were over-represented in terms of population, but that there were historical reasons why that was the case. As devolution has progressed, we have had a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Assembly, which on the passage of recent legislation became the Senedd—I look to the hon. Member for Ceredigion for approval of the pronunciation. Powers have passed to the Parliament and the Senedd so that more decisions are taken in Holyrood and on Cardiff Bay. Plenty of decisions, including large national decisions, however, still need to be taken at Westminster, on behalf not just of England but of the United Kingdom.

The important thing now—perhaps more than ever in the 20 or so years since we have had that level of devolution —is to maintain the strength of the Union and of the voices within that Union, in number as well as volume. The hon. Gentleman needs no support in terms of volume, but with number that importance is greater than ever.

I ask Members in the Conservative party—which, I think, is back to calling itself the Conservative and Unionist party—to share my concerns about all the hit being taken by the three non-English nations. We do not know the numbers yet, but we have a good idea and could make an assessment. Potentially, by transferring Welsh voices and Scottish voices to England—theoretically, Northern Irish voices too, although under the current numbers that does not look likely—we could destabilise not just the level of representation but the level of life experience from the nations.

What about areas that are more remote from Westminster? For example, and I have said this to the hon. Member for Ceredigion before, some areas of north Wales feel a little disconnected even from the Senedd on Cardiff Bay, and some areas of northern England and perhaps some in the far west, because of geographical distance, feel a little disconnected from Westminster. The more we disconnect from the national Parliament, the less legitimacy it has, and the less legitimacy it has, the less legitimacy the Union has, I fear. The unintended consequence—I genuinely believe that it is unintended—of the proposal in the Bill to transfer strength and numbers in this place from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to England is that it will damage the Union, and damage the voices within the Union, and damage the experience that all the nations bring to this Parliament.

[Mrs Miller]

I follow the hon. Member’s argument, but surely he should reflect on the fact that Wales did not undergo the changes that it was due to undergo at the time of the creation of the Assembly, which has since become a Parliament. Those changes now have to take place, so that we can deliver the fairness that I know he and I want.

[Christian Matheson]

I absolutely agree, which is why, to develop my argument and to answer the right hon. Lady directly, the new clause in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood does not seek to maintain the current number of constituencies in Wales. We accept—as we accepted, incidentally, with regard to the previous new clause that we talked about—that there has to be some level of equalisation of constituencies.

That means that Wales and Scotland will lose seats, but in order to manage the different pressures between getting equalisation and maintaining the integrity and strength of the Union and the diverse voices within it, the new clause seeks to maintain a balance by specifying a number of constituencies that is fewer, for example, than Wales has now, but more than it would have if absolute equalisation took place. We are therefore addressing some of the points that the right hon. Lady mentioned, and trying to strike a balance that puts the interests of the Union at the heart of the Bill.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Maria Miller and Christian Matheson

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

[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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[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.

Parliamentary Constituencies bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Maria Miller and Christian Matheson

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Christian Matheson]

Q Secondly, Wales has some centres of population but it also has areas of sparsity, and some serious geographical issues that a boundary commission review would need to take into account. I made that point to Professor Wyn Jones as well, but I would be grateful for your take.

We have already heard about the south Wales valleys and there are parts of Snowdonia that are very mountainous. I suspect that Wales is more badly affected by losing so many seats because we are focusing solely on the numbers, and that the areas of sparsity and the geographical barriers would lead to much larger constituencies in area. How would you strike a balance between geography, sparsity, rurality and numbers?

Dr Larner: There is an understanding that Wales is the most rural nation in terms of population in the UK. As you say, there are very large constituencies. The issue with the plus or minus 5% rule is that these areas are badly affected. I do not necessarily have a problem with the idea of levelling up constituencies in terms of population size, but I think there are certain geographic limits to what is a manageable constituency. There could be the inclusion of an upper band for the number of square miles in a constituency, or something as simple as that. I know that is a down-the-middle answer.

[Mrs Miller]

Q Thank you, Dr Larner, for your evidence today. It is incredibly helpful in the Committee’s deliberations.

Under these provisions there are four protected constituencies, as you know: two are on the Isle of Wight, near my own constituency of Basingstoke, and two are in Scotland, but there are none in Wales. When the proposal was to reduce to 600 constituencies, it was difficult to give protection to Ynys Môn, yet under this proposal it is easier to do so and stay closer to the potential threshold for constituency sizes. I have tabled an amendment to that affect, which I do not know whether you have had a chance to look at. Can you see any problems with introducing such an amendment into this legislation? I declare an interest as I was brought up in south Wales.

Dr Larner: On the face of it, I certainly do not see any problems. I have also seen some people discussing the idea of some of the constituencies on the west coast of Wales, where there are far more Welsh speakers and very rural constituencies, being considered for something like that. Obviously, Ynys Môn is not as isolated geographically as some of the Scottish constituencies, but, when you consider that the Isle of Wight is involved in these protections, it is reasonable to suggest that Ynys Môn should be too.