Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Mark Field Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

The Government’s rhetoric suggests that all parliamentary seats should have exactly the same size of electorate, but that is not what the Bill says. It allows for a variation of up to 5% either way from the national average and creates three special exemptions for Scottish seats, one of which is held by the Scottish National party and the other two of which are held by the Liberals. We are not opposed to those exemptions, although they look dubious in the context of the Bill’s wider attempt to strive for mathematical purity.

Our argument is that although the majority of seats should indeed be within 5% each way, there are more instances than are allowed for in the Bill where the Boundary Commission should be allowed to exercise a degree of discretion, because this country is made up not just of statistics on a map but of living communities with distinct historical, cultural and political identities that need their discrete representation in the House. A system that delivers mathematical perfection may be aseptically clean, and please the tidy utilitarian and the centralist, but it will in countless cases leave voters on the wrong side of a river, a mountain, a county or ward boundary, or cultural divide and, thereby, fail the fundamental tests that we should be setting.

Will those boundaries be readily comprehensible to ordinary voters? Will they match the political and cultural aspirations of the discrete communities of the UK? Will they render Members more or less accessible? Frankly, will they look like common-sense boundaries or seem like crazed contortions devised by a centralised desiccated calculating machine? The Government are not just insisting on their mathematical equation, of course; they are also subordinating any other considerations of whatever kind, such as local authority boundaries, to that calculation. Taken together, those measures will lead to ludicrous anomalies.

Let us consider how some instances would have applied at the last election. Wyre Forest is, quite sensibly, coterminous with its district council, but it would have had 2,131 too many electors for the 5% rule. Likewise, Shrewsbury and Atcham is coterminous with the former district of that name and unchanged after a number of reviews, but it would have had 1,552 too many electors. Bath and North East Somerset council includes two constituencies, Bath and North East Somerset, but it would have had to find 1,886 electors from a neighbouring authority. Even Forest of Dean, comprising the Forest of Dean district council and one ward from Tewkesbury district council, a seat that was completely unchanged at the last review, would have been 383 voters short. That is why we want to change the Bill.

In many cases, it would be impossible to respect county boundaries. At the last election, Cumbria would have had to find 14,296 electors from neighbouring counties in order to make up its six seats. Northumberland would have had to find 22,529 electors for four seats. Warwickshire’s six seats—Kenilworth and Southam, North Warwickshire, Nuneaton, Rugby, Stratford on Avon,and Warwick and Leamington—would have needed to find 7,991 electors.

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

How many electors would Wales have had to find to make up its full quota of 40 seats, which the hon. Gentleman would like to maintain?

[Chris Bryant]

A very large number, but I am not arguing against greater parity, as I hope I have made clear on several occasions during the Bill’s proceedings. However, I am also not in favour of one area of the country having its representation in this House cut by 25%—four times more than any other part of the United Kingdom. That seems to be a swingeing cut, and it will do no good for representation in this House.

The six seats in Oxfordshire would, on average, have been 1,907 electors over the threshold, so approximately 11,000 Oxfordshire electors would have needed to be shed so that they were in a constituency that was shared with a neighbouring county. Indeed, part of the Prime Minister’s own constituency, including the Saxon village of Burford, might have had to be shifted to Gloucestershire. Even Burford priory, the house of civil war Speaker Lenthall, would have had to be summarily moved from Oxfordshire to Gloucestershire.

In Hampshire, because the rules will not allow Isle of Wight to remain a single seat, the county would have been required to provide 40,000 electors from one or perhaps two of its existing seats. Most significantly, the historic county of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly would have had to find 13,138 electors, or an average of 2,190 per constituency, from Devon to make up the number for six seats. I believe that to be wrong. King Athelstan determined as early as 936 that the east bank of the River Tamar should be the border of Cornwall, and, although it may be true, in the words of the Prime Minister, that the Tamar is not the Amazon, it certainly is the Rubicon—a river not worth crossing.

The same is true of metropolitan areas. Warrington would have had 119 too many electors for two seats—an average of 59 per seat. The five seats in Birmingham, each comprising four wards and with electorates of between 73,731 and 75,563, would have been slightly too large and would have had to shed voters elsewhere. In London, Wandsworth would have had 3,427 electors too few for its three seats, Sutton would have had 1,119 too few electors for its two seats, Barnet would have had 371 too many electors for its three seats, and Enfield would have had 219 too few electors for its three seats.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I have not got to my peroration yet—this is just the beginning—but I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her comments. She is absolutely right. My whole argument is that some of the historical boundaries also represent historical cultural identities. We cannot just draw the lines on the map according to the numbers as if people were just statistics: we have to draw them in recognition of the communities and bonds that tie people together.

[Mr Mark Field]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I will, but I do not want to take up too much time.

[Mr Field]

Does the shadow Minister recognise that this is the self-same argument that was made, probably in this House, some 170 years ago, in the run-up to the Great Reform Act of 1832, to justify the idea of the cultural importance of maintaining all the seats in Cornwall and Suffolk that had existed since time immemorial? It is a nonsensical argument, and we now have to look towards equality. I disagree with him in that I would like to see the three Scottish seats also taken out of this consideration to ensure that we have the proper equalisation of all 650 seats that should exist in the next Parliament.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman should not try to misrepresent my argument. I am not arguing in the slightest for tiny seats. I am not even arguing that the people of Rhondda alone have the right to elect in perpetuity, even though they have only 50,000 voters. There should be much greater parity, but we need to be able to balance the needs of parity with the needs of local communities and constituencies of interest that exist around the country. There was no constituency of interest in Old Sarum in 1831 and 1832—the only interest was that of Tory Back Benchers who wanted to ensure that they were still able to dole the seat out to one of their family members. So it is an argument not against Labour but against the Conservatives.

Sheffield will almost certainly be entitled to five constituencies, but with 20 wards it would end up with three constituencies of six wards, which would be too big, and two constituencies of five wards, which would be too small. We would therefore have to split wards in Sheffield or cross the boundaries with Barnsley and Rotherham, which would be tough, as wards in Rotherham are about the same size as those in Sheffield and there are a large number of hills in the way. In the words of Professor Ron Johnston,

“They are going to have to split wards, I have no doubt about this.”

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The wards in some metropolitan areas comprise 15,000 or 20,000 voters. Consequently, if the Government push ahead with their proposed 5% leniency either way rather than the 10% that we are advocating, they will have to split wards. Contrary to what the Deputy Leader of the House said last week, and what the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) has said, there is not a single ward in England that is split between constituencies—not one. [Interruption.] The latter is chuntering very quietly, but now he is looking at his phone, so I presume he has given up on that point. He can pipe down.

The end result is that it will become impossible for wards to be used as building blocks, as they currently are without exception in England despite the fact that it is not a requirement of the rules. Voters will have to become psephological experts to know who represents them at each level of government—their councillor, their Member of Parliament and their representatives at other tiers in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Historical communities and towns will be split for negligible benefit, and because of the knock-on effects there will have to be a radical redrawing of virtually every seat in the land.

[Mr Mark Field]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman a third time, if he does not mind. We have very little time for this debate.

My final point is very important. The proposed reduction in the number of Members of Parliament will have the effect of increasing the electoral quota in all four countries, even England, where it will go up from 71,537 to roughly 75,800. Just 204 current constituencies have electorates within 5% of that number. The knock-on effects, however, mean that it is likely that barely a handful of seats will remain untouched. That was confirmed by the heads of the boundary commissions, who told the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform that the change would result in a complete redrawing of constituency boundaries.