Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Mike Wood Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Cat Smith]

I would argue that the wards, which are obviously drawn by the Local Government Boundary Commission, do actually reflect communities to a great extent. If we are to go down the path of splitting wards, we will end up with the ridiculous situation, like we did at the previous review, where constituencies such as Port Talbot had a shopping centre in one constituency and the high street in another constituency. My new clause seeks to minimise the chances of such ridiculous situations occurring again. Under the current Bill, the Commission will struggle to respect the factors laid out in rule five, which, of course, Members will know, are the existing constituencies, local government boundaries, local ties and geography.

During the evidence sessions of this Bill, the secretariat for the Boundary Commission for England spoke about the difficulties caused by this small tolerance, which makes it

“much harder to have regard to the other factors…such as the importance of not breaking local ties, and having regard to local authority boundaries and features of natural geography.”

He said:

“Basically, the smaller you make the tolerance, the fewer options we have…The larger you make it, the more options we have and the more flexibility…to have regard to the other factors”.––[Official Report, Parliamentary Constituencies Public Bill Committee, 18 June 2020; c. 7, Q3.]

So while the Government keep saying the boundary commissions will listen to the views of communities in the drawing of the boundaries, some communities will literally be wasting their time putting forward those arguments if the restrictive quota will mathematically prevent the commissioners from respecting their views and the community ties.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

The hon. Lady raises the case of Port Talbot in a previous review. Does she not accept that this was actually one of the reasons why it should be easier for the boundary commissions to split wards, because the whole point of the Port Talbot proposals was that they have to come to those combinations because they are working with entire wards?

[Cat Smith]

I think in the case of Port Talbot it was the 5% quota that meant that that decision had to be reached. When we are talking about quotas, we know that internationally a larger quota is used and promoted as best practice for securing fair representation. Indeed, the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission’s code of good practice in electoral matters recommends allowing a standard permissible tolerance of an average of plus or minus 10%.

As the Minister knows, there is a consensus amongst respected experts such as David Rosser and Professor Charles Pattie who agree that the 5% rule causes significant disruption to community boundaries.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Wood]

The right hon. Member will remember that the Halesowen and Selly Oak constituency was dropped by the Boundary Commission in its revised proposals. Does that not show how an independent Boundary Commission can respond well to reasoned arguments—rather better sometimes than parliamentarians?

[John Spellar]

Why did it come up with that in the first place when it was clearly such a dumb proposal? Parliament was the necessary corrective to this. It said: “This doesn’t work”, and by the way Conservative Members were still in a majority at the time. What’s even more extraordinary, in this Parliament, where the Government have a clear majority, they still do not believe they could carry the day with their own Members. There is a danger of that. There is a danger that the bureaucracy of the Boundary Commission will not pay regard to local sensitivities or communities and we will end up once again with boundaries of which Governor Gerry of Massachusetts, the founder of the gerrymander, would have been proud.

At the same time, it would be much better to go back to many of the basic principles, such as the principle, where possible, of not crossing borough or ward boundaries. In urban areas as well, these places form communities. The hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) is right about the size of some of the building blocks. That is why, within boroughs and other areas, people might have to accept some temporary disparity, but that might be a better than having one MP representing part of a particular ward and another representing the rest. Equally, there is the problem of orphan wards, which we have in many areas of the boundary review, whereby one ward is in a constituency in another borough. Inevitably, the focus of the Member of Parliament will be on the main borough. It is unnecessary and gratuitous.

It all depends on whether people believe, as I certainly do, and many Conservative Members do as well, in the fundamental principle of individual constituencies with individual Members of Parliament, not proportional list Members. If people think that Members of Parliaments’ connection to their constituencies does not matter, that is fine—just have a national list. I fundamentally do not believe that—and by the way nor did the British public when they voted it down in a referendum.

Let us be clear: we want to ensure that parliamentarians represent their constituencies and their constituency interests, and that is why we need a parliamentary override and a slightly wider area of discretion, so that anomalies can be properly dealt with and responded to, rather than the artificial constructs the Boundary Commission is forced into—maybe sometimes it goes into them a little too willingly—instead of looking at the interests of localities, particularly in urban areas.

--- Later in debate ---

In conclusion, I support the Bill and I oppose the amendments. We have to trust our judiciary and the Boundary Commission. We have to trust the fact that this is business as usual when it comes to how we make legislation, how we pass laws and I commend the Bill to the House.

[Mike Wood]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and a very happy Black Country Day to you today. As a proud Black Country man it has been an honour to represent communities in Dudley South for the past five years. I hope to have the opportunity to do so for a number of years to come. Like many other constituencies in this country, the boundaries on which I was elected were last fundamentally altered ahead of the 1997 general election, based on electorates from the early 1990s. We are literally a generation out of date on the boundaries on which many of the constituencies in the west midlands were drawn up.

Like Members on both sides of the House, I am enormously fond of all parts of my constituency. I love every last ward and polling district of it. It would be a real wrench if any of it were to be taken out of Dudley South, but we also have to recognise that, like many of the Black Country constituencies, the current size of the constituency is under the quota whether it is based on 600 or 650. Many constituencies in the Black Country will need to take in additional areas and, of course, some will be divided between constituencies. I am as likely to find myself without a constituency to represent as any other Member of Parliament, but when we are considering fundamental constitutional reform such as this one it is not about whether I have a constituency to represent. This is not about me. This is about the wider electoral system. It must be a fundamental premise of our electoral system that constituencies have to be as close to the same size as is possible.

One of the very few upsides of this horrific outbreak and lockdown has been the opportunity to spend a little more time helping my children with their schoolwork at home. My daughter is in year 7 and she is studying the people’s charter of 1838—it was referred to by my hon. Friend for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson)—which includes the campaign for constituencies based on equal numbers of electors. Many Opposition Members —and possibly even some Government Members—consider themselves the natural heirs of 19th century radicals, but instead of picking up the torch of William Lovett and Feargus O’Connor, it seems they are choosing to put themselves on the side of those arguing for representation on the basis of acres of land and for the geographic extent of a constituency to somehow override the priority of equalising the number of electors represented within. That cannot be the right way. It was not the right way in the 19th century and it is certainly not the right way in a 21st century democracy.

There is a better way, one that has been referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell); we can make sure that equal-sized constituencies can be drawn up that properly represent local constituencies if the boundary commissions are encouraged to look more favourably at dividing wards across constituencies where the alternative would be unnatural constituencies or dividing communities. That was done in the west midlands during the last review and it is one reason why the proposals by the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar)—he is not in his place—for a Halesowen and Selly Oak constituency, for Sutton Coldfield to be divided and for various other strange things in the initial recommendations were not in the final recommendations. It was precisely because in only three wards across the whole of the west midlands are they able to divide across natural boundaries within those wards, which are amalgamations of wards, and therefore have more natural boundaries across the constituency.

Let me briefly touch on the issue of automatic implementation. The right hon. Gentleman said that, as Parliament, we instruct these independent bodies to go out and draw up rules, and therefore we should be able to decide whether to implement them and whether they are the right decisions. But we also instructed the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority to draw up parliamentary pay and conditions. In the not-too-distant future, it will look as strange to people that we think we should draw the constituency boundaries on which we are elected—