Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill

Patrick Grady Excerpts

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

[Mr Betts]

rose—

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

Let me just make this one point, then I will give way to the fabulous array of choices I have in front of me.

It is worth standing back for a moment and asking ourselves why we have boundary changes and why we in this country have chosen, unlike other countries, to have an independent process for them. I was thinking about how one could illustrate that in a memorable way. In the spirit of the cross-party unity that we particularly like to display on Fridays, I thought about who could illustrate this point very well. A few weeks ago at Prime Minister’s questions, the Leader of the Opposition referred to consulting great philosophers. He gave that some thought and the only one he could come up with was Baldrick, who had a cunning plan. That is relevant to this subject because you will remember, Mr Speaker—I will dilate on this only very briefly—an excellent episode of “Blackadder” about rotten boroughs and what used to happen before we had regular boundary changes. It featured an incumbent MP, Sir Talbot Buxomly, who was the Member of Parliament for Dunny-on-the-Wold. He died while visiting the Prince Regent, and Blackadder realised that Buxomly represented a rotten borough. It was a tiny plot of land, with

“three rather mangy cows, a dachshund named ‘Colin’, and a small hen in its late forties.”

There was only one voter. Blackadder chose to install Baldrick as the new MP, and bought the property to be the only voter. He amazingly cast all 16,472 of his votes for Baldrick, while also being returning officer and election agent. That was humour, but it illustrated a point: there were parliamentary constituencies very like that before we had boundary changes, rules for the distribution of seats and independent boundary commissions. That is why this subject is very important.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steven Paterson]

Indeed. It takes an hour and a half to drive across my constituency. That is manageable for me as a constituency MP, but in the case of my hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), if the southern end of his constituency were where I am standing now, the northern end would be beyond Nottingham. We have to be realistic. It is not the BBC weather map but an actual map that we need to look at if we are to understand how big some constituencies are. If they are to have proper representation, it is essential that their geographical size is taken into account. We should also bear in mind the distance of some constituencies from the seat of power here in London.

If we are to do a proper job of representing our constituents, as we are determined to do, we have to consider the size of the constituencies, as well as their population. That is why I welcome the figure of 10% as an indication of the quota. That is a reasonable suggestion that we can look at in detail, but flexibility must be built in to make it work.

The second point has been covered to some extent—I am referring to the circus that is the House of Lords. It is obscene that we continue to see that revising Chamber stuffed with yet more unelected lords and ladies with no mandate and not answerable to the people of this country. At the same time, we are entertaining a conversation about reducing the size of this elected Chamber. We really need to have a look at this. David Cameron, the former Prime Minister, put 261 new lords and ladies in the circus down the corridor, and we are exercising ourselves about reducing our numbers by 50, with all the complications and all the unpleasant and unnecessary things that that entails for democracy.

[Patrick Grady]

My hon. Friend talks about the complications that will arise from changing boundaries. The changes are supposed to be about saving the taxpayer money, but one effect will be that, irrespective of who the Members of Parliament are, a lot of constituency offices will have to move. In Glasgow, several offices, which are currently in different constituencies, will be brought within the boundaries of one or two constituencies, so there will be a massive logistical cost to implementing all of this.

[Steven Paterson]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. There are all kinds of unforeseen, untold costs that will come with these changes; they will not save the money their proponents say they will. Therefore, we should be looking at bloated undemocratic institutions such as the House of Lords along the corridor and we should start sorting that out. If we do not want to abolish the Lords all in one step—although I would—we can certainly look at time limits and limits on the numbers. We should certainly look at putting it in statute that the Lords is proportional to the size of this Chamber. We should reduce the size of that unelected Chamber along the corridor so that we never get back to the position we are in now.

I support the Bill, and I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to express my views.