Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill

Debate between Mark Harper and Wendy Morton

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 1st December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, but I am perfectly happy to work with him on common areas of concern, even though he represents a different political party. If we change parliamentary boundaries so that a particular part of a city or area is to be represented by two different Members of Parliament, the idea that somehow they will be incapable of working together, and with their police force and local authority, to deal with an important matter such as crime and the safety of their constituents is, frankly, nonsense. That was why Members were laughing at what the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr said. They were not laughing at a serious issue; they were laughing at the idea that people cannot work together to solve such important problems.

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

I am another west midlands MP with a very small constituency, and it might be worth the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood) recognising that we also have the west midlands Mayor, Andy Street. We are very used to working together across boundaries.

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Devolution of local government also goes back to the point about workloads. Again, it demonstrates that different areas of the country are grouped together for certain purposes, and we have seen that level of devolution in the west midlands and we are seeing considerable levels of devolution in Greater Manchester under the Mayor, Andy Burnham.

Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill

Debate between Mark Harper and Wendy Morton

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 18th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Morton]

On the democratic deficit, does my right hon. Friend agree that the Bill risks us fighting the next election on the old boundaries, so seats such as mine, which has an electorate of just 60,000, would remain small and the democratic deficit would still not be properly addressed?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend is spot on. If we do not implement in time for the next election the boundary changes currently in train, the next election will be fought on constituency boundaries set according to an electoral register that is 20 years out of date. I will come to the point—on the face of it, it is a perfectly sensible one—that the hon. Member for North West Durham made about the new registrations for the referendum, but if hon. Members think that there is problem with people who have registered in the past year, I would simply point out that nearly 20 years’ worth of electors are currently missing from the registers used for parliamentary constituencies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wendy Morton]

My constituency is a good example of the democratic deficit that the Boundary Commission review is seeking to address.

[Mr Harper]

I refute the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion that this about an equation. It is not a fiction about maths; it is about making sure that our constituents’ votes are of equal weight in electing us to this Parliament. That is a fundamental democratic principle that the Chartists believed in and we should try to deliver, and my hon. Friend is setting it out very well.

[Wendy Morton]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who is absolutely right.

In the 2017 registration figures, the disparity will be even greater. The proposals in this Bill are regressive, not reforming. In the eyes of the hon. Member for North West Durham, all electors are equal, but a growing number will be more equal than others.