Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Mark Field Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Well, I would have been absolutely delighted if any process of consultation with Labour Members had taken place on the issue of the size of Parliament. Such a process has always taken place in the past and if it had done so this time, I would have ardently supported the Bill. However, absolutely no consultation has taken place. The number has not been plucked out of the air—it is a partisan number, arrived at solely to rig the electorate so that the Government will win general elections in the future.

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

Does the shadow Minister have any evidence whatever to back up his allegation?

[Chris Bryant]

All the hon. Gentleman need do is look at the figures produced by many bodies, which make it abundantly clear.

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[Chris Bryant]

As I tried to argue earlier and will argue again, that simply is not the way in which, historically, we have put together the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I think that that is an important principle. If one is a Unionist—

[Mr Mark Field]

rose—

[Mrs Laing]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

Just one moment.

I know that the constituency of the hon. Member for Corby (Ms Bagshawe) contains many people with Scottish ancestry, but I do not think that she is entirely versed in the dangers of nationalism that exist in Scotland and Wales. I merely say to her, in a gentle way, that if she really wants to maintain the strength of the Union, we ought to proceed differently.

[Mr Mark Field]

I agree with what the shadow Minister is trying to achieve, and, if the Committee divides on the amendment, I shall vote against the reduction. However, for two reasons, I am not sure that he is making a terribly good case.

We have discussed what happened in Scotland in 2005. There was not a great Unionist upsurge there when there was a 20% reduction in the number of seats specifically in Scotland and in no other part of the United Kingdom. Does the hon. Gentleman not recognise that his is not a terribly strong argument?

The Welsh position has been maintained since we drew up the constituencies. There were 38 protected constituencies there until 1983, and 40 thereafter. The position of Wales has been protected, and it is massively over-represented. That is the reason for the move to equalise the size of electorates, which I also fully support.

[Chris Bryant]

This is what I meant by the double- whammy element. Wales is caught both by the equalisation of the number of seats—we are not debating that now, but we will when we deal with the next set of amendments—and by the reduction in the number of seats. The net effect for Wales is that the number of seats will be cut by a quarter.

That presents some specific problems for Wales. It has already proved impossible for the present Government to ensure that the Secretary of State for Wales represents a Welsh seat—although I admit that she is Welsh—and it will become increasingly difficult to do so in the future. Because Wales, unlike Scotland, has never had a separate legal system, the Welsh Affairs Committee has to do a large amount of work, and that will continue. I think that it will be difficult to meet those needs with only 30 seats.

I am not arguing for the status quo in the number of Welsh seats. I am merely trying to present an argument, and I am sorry that it does not appeal to the hon. Gentleman. I hope that further elements of my speech will appeal to him more.

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[Chris Bryant]

Several amendments in the next group refer to how one might make provision specifically for Wales, but there are other places we would like to make provision for, such as Cornwall and the Isle of Wight, rather than just the three areas the Bill covers. At present, however, I am specifically addressing the proposal to reduce the total number of seats from 650 to 600.

[Mr Mark Field]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, but I hope shortly to be able to come on to some of the arguments that he likes more than those I am addressing at present.

[Mr Field]

Given that the hon. Gentleman’s concern is that this move would lead to an increase in Welsh nationalism, will he reflect on the fact that, prior to 1997, the rationale for having a Scottish Parliament was that that would somehow snuff out Scottish nationalism? The idea was not that there should be an Administration run by Scottish nationalists within eight years of the setting up of the Scottish Parliament. Therefore, the notion that not reducing the number of seats will be in the interests of those who do not want to see an increase in nationalism has not been borne out by the facts.

[Chris Bryant]

That was never my argument in favour of devolution in Scotland or Wales. My argument in favour of devolution was simply that it is better to devolve responsibility for issues that most directly affect people to the people who are most directly affected. That is why I thought it was right to establish the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. I very much hope we will be snuffing out nationalism in Scotland come next May however, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman agrees with me on that.

There is one other reason why I think the diminution in the number of seats from 650 to 600 is a mistake, which is to do with the number of Ministers. At present, the law allows that there should be 95 Ministers, paid or unpaid, sitting in the House of Commons, and if there are any more, they are barred from sitting in the Commons. That is an important principle. The Executive, who—unusually compared with other such systems around the world—exclusively sit in Parliament, should be limited, as should the Prime Minister’s patronage. If we reduce the number of seats from 650 to 600 and do not change the number of Ministers, the proportion of Parliament—the legislature—that represents the Executive will grow.

I hope that we will be moving in the opposite direction, although part of me is being somewhat hypocritical because I was an unpaid Minister for a while when I held the post that the Deputy Leader of the House now holds. The advent of so many unpaid Ministers is a shame and the number of Parliamentary Private Secretaries has also increased dramatically in recent years. Prime Ministers have sought to find other ways of extending patronage by making people vice-chair of a committee or by all sorts of other means. That is wrong, because we should be limiting the power of patronage within the legislature, so that the legislature can do a better job—I argued that when Labour was in government and I am arguing it now. That is why reducing the number of seats from 650 to 600 without reducing the number of Ministers is a mistake.

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[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman is right: I am referring to Stafford Cripps. The book is not one that is available in all good bookshops, but there is a copy in the Library should any hon. Member wish to read it.

I want to end with the words of Jim Callaghan, a former Prime Minister and a Member who represented south Wales:

“Constituencies are not merely areas bounded by a line on a map; they are living communities with a unity, a history and a personality of their own.”—[Official Report, 19 June 1969; Vol. 785, c. 742.]

That has always been how we have done things in this House and in this country, and I believe that it is how we should continue to do them in future. That is why I have moved this amendment, and why I hope that we will not reduce the number of seats from 650 to a fixed number of 600.

[Mr Mark Field]

I must confess that I totally accept the need to equalise electorates, which is why I have tabled amendments in a later group, which I suspect we will not get to, suggesting that we leave out of the Bill the gerrymandering—there is no other word to use—of three Scottish seats. That has occurred through a limit of 13,000 sq km being plucked out of the sky to allow Ross, Skye and Lochaber, and probably also Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, to be seen as exceptional. If we equalise constituencies it could be regrettable for such communities, but we want electorates of a similar size.

In fairness to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), I think that equal constituencies will mean that we divide the country up into 10 or 15 different areas, from which we can draw up the 600 seats, rather than suddenly realising when we get to the middle of Scotland that we are 10 or 15 seats short. I fully accept the need to equalise electorates, and it is greatly to be regretted that we are not doing that for all seats. It seems that a rather grubby little compromise has been put in place. In the modern, technological era, I disagree with the idea that the Western Isles and Orkney and Shetland, the two smallest seats in the UK, should be protected. Orkney and Shetland was part of the Wick Burghs constituency at one time during the last century, and the Western Isles were part of the Ross and Cromarty and Inverness-shire constituencies. It is a bogus argument that those constituencies somehow have great historical relevance.

[Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman said that in his view there had been a grubby little compromise. That is quite a statement to make. Would he like to explain and elaborate on exactly what he means?

[Mr Field]

I believe that the compromise was perhaps made to keep the Scottish nationalists happy—[Interruption.] Well, the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) represents virtually no constituents in this House. I respect that, but we are living in a technological age of e-mails and so on, and I do not agree with the notion that he should maintain the privileged position of representing just 23,000 constituents, when many of us have to represent not only our statutory 70,000 or so but a significant number of non-UK nationals. There is a perfectly good case to be made, but it should not override the idea of equalising communities.

[Mr MacNeil]

In one respect I would love to help the hon. Gentleman, of course, because I would be quite happy for there to be no MPs from Scotland in this House at all. In the meantime, while we have to have that situation, I remind him that my constituency is the length of Wales. He is very welcome to come with me to the Western Isles and explain his views to all my constituents whom he might meet on his visit.

[Mr Field]

I shall certainly take the hon. Gentleman up on that; and on the first part of what he said—he and I both.

[Mark Tami]

I listened to what the hon. Gentleman said about the three seats in Scotland. In Wales, there could be a seat in the middle of the country that, as I said earlier, could stretch from one side of Wales to the other with a very sparse population. Why is it okay for that to be taken into account of in the case of Scotland, but not Wales?

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[Mr Field]

I entirely agree, and I am not defending that element of the Bill.

Neither can I see any justification for a reduction in the size of the House of Commons from 650 to 600. The somewhat bogus argument that it will save £12 million a year is certainly outweighed by the fact that the alternative vote referendum will cost some £80 million to £100 million. It is also argued that our House is one of the largest legislatures, but that argument is destroyed by the fact that this Government alone have already massively increased the size of the House of Lords, by some 56 Members since May. They are now looking to stuff a whole lot more unelected Lords in there, and the proposals to make the other House even larger are an absolute disgrace, at least before there is any reform. It is entirely regrettable that there is not to be reform of the House of Commons and the House of Lords as part of the same package.

I fear, given the comments that a number of colleagues have made, that we have not been able to scrutinise the Bill properly because we have run out of time under the programme motion. It will therefore be the House of Lords that takes up the important work of examining the constitutional impact of what is being suggested. The hon. Member for Rhondda is right that nowhere in any manifesto was there a commitment to 600 seats, and all three parties committed to move to a wholly or largely elected House of Lords at the earliest possible opportunity. That now seems a long way off. I particularly regret that because it has always been the Liberal Democrats’ position to democratise, and to make the House of Lords accountable to the electorate. They now hold the novel constitutional principle that the House of Lords should somehow reflect the voting at the last election. That suggests that 200 or so peers will be added to the House of Lords—a significant number of whom will come from the Liberal Democrat party.

I hope that, in so far as more people are to be added to the House of Lords, close scrutiny will be paid to ensure that former Members of the Commons who were caught up in the expenses scandal are not rewarded with a life peerage. As we have seen from the difficulty with the three peers who have been suspended and the two Conservative peers who face the courts in the next few months, there is no mechanism for getting rid of people from the House of Lords. Yet, as part of the constitutional reform, we are introducing some concept of giving our constituents a recall mechanism to get rid of Members of the Commons. The position is incongruous. Until the House of Lords has been sorted out—and certainly for so long as we stuff yet more unelected peers into the other place, which we have already done since May and will continue to do—it would be wrong to reduce the size of the Commons.

[Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I rise to speak about amendments 259 and 260, which I tabled and hope to put to the vote at the end of the debate. Two features of the “General Gerrymander and Electoral Jiggery-Pokery” Bill are the most offensive. The first is the alternative vote, which is a Liberal benefit plan—Liberal Democrats hope that if we get the alternative vote, they will be everybody’s second preference. Fortunately, the alternative vote is unlikely to be carried in the referendum—I shall certainly vote against it. It is rather sad that many people with whom I have worked over the years for electoral reform seem to believe that AV is a form of electoral reform. It is not—it is the stupid person’s electoral reform. The only effective electoral reform is proportional representation.

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[John Mann]

I wish to address my remarks to amendments 364 and 227. I particularly wish to deal with the principle of having the number of Members of Parliament fixed at 600, because I find the fixed number particularly objectionable and dangerous. That contradicts the history of this country going back many centuries, because our system has evolved as a majority system. We have had first past the post—although the alternative vote is now being suggested—as a way of electing individual Members who represent individual constituencies. The moment that one moves towards a mathematical fixation determining the number of seats, the trip down the slippery slope towards proportional representation has begun. If the mindset is that there should be an equality of votes, however that is defined—of course there were important arguments yesterday about how to define the equality of voters and who defines the electorate—and that there should be a mathematical equation, the logical conclusion is that that can be taken further as things ebb and flow.

A further conclusion could be drawn from that, because if it is good enough for the House of Commons, it is good enough for other parts of the—I use this phrase lightly—British constitution. So the House of Lords should have a fixed number of seats and Members of that House should be aware of the likely logic that must follow, whatever that number might be. Some might suggest—I think I once did—that if there was a fixed number, it should be as low as 100. It might be a shock to them to go so low. However, the moment one has a fixed number, one sets in place a principle that totally and absolutely contradicts every principle in establishing constituencies that this country has had before.

This is a critical principle, which seems to have been overlooked in the debate about the precise numbers. The moment we make that change, that principle will be enshrined for ever. The Deputy Prime Minister made comparisons to the Great Reform Act of 1832. I have studied that Act quite extensively, not least because the originator, John Cartwright, came up with the concept living in the house that I now occupy and would have been a constituent of mine. The original rotten borough was East Retford, with 150 voters choosing two Members of Parliament. Following the recent boundary changes, done on the basis of equalising constituencies across the county of Nottinghamshire, I now have the privilege of representing Retford, having lost the district of Warsop.

That was part of a boundary change under the current system to numerically equalise as much as possible the size of parliamentary seats. I have 20,000 new voters and I lost 10,000. I do not object to that principle. The 10,000 who went objected vehemently, because they seemed to feel that I was a good and representative Member of Parliament, but those whom I now represent were delighted to have the opportunity to vote for or against me. That was a major redistribution on the principle of equalising size, but this rotten Bill enshrines in perpetuity the concept of a mathematical arbitrary equation that each constituency will be of the same size, which has fundamental ramifications.

[Mr Mark Field]

I very much agree with what the hon. Gentleman has to say, but does he not recognise that we have already enshrined PR in our political system to quite a large extent, through the European Parliament since 1999, through the way we elect the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and London assembly, and through the way in which local authorities are elected in Scotland? We are going down precisely that path, but it is a slippery slope that we started down quite some time ago.

[John Mann]

We have had this slippery slope with the European Parliament and with how we choose its Members. Of course, the Deputy Prime Minister, apparently, was once a representative in my area—no one seems to have realised that fact, because such Members are rather distant and remote, whether they do a good job or not, because of the size of the constituency.

The interrelationship between individual and electorate that has been the basis of democracy in this country—one that other countries have, too often, moved away from in their determination to have either proportionality or equality and to have mathematical solutions to how they build a legislature—is the foundation of participative democracy. We are not just a representative democracy in this Chamber: if we are effective, we are a participatory democracy as well. That principle would be somewhat undermined by an arbitrary mathematical solution to how many Members there should be.

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[Mr Heath]

I justify that very easily by the fact that Welsh constituencies are much smaller than constituencies in the rest of the country, and the Bill will equalise representation, as I thought we had established. As I keep on reminding the House, the existing position is that the hon. Member for Rhondda—I choose his constituency only because he happens to be sitting on the Opposition Front Bench—has 51,000 electors, my constituency has 82,000 electors and there is a difference of almost 30,000 between the two. That cannot be justified.

[Mr Mark Field]

I very much agree with everything that the Minister says about the equalisation of constituencies. Can he therefore justify why any exceptions are being made?