Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 2nd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I am aware that boundary changes can make a difference to MPs and their prospects. When the boundary changes came in before the 1997 election, the ones proposed in my former seat were the best possible for me, but adverse—I would have stood and lost.

At the last moment, there was a deal between the Tory leader of Greenwich Council and the Labour leader to bring in the worst possible ones, so there was a major boundary change that allowed the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) to be elected, having not succeeded the previous time—although there is a rumour that in the previous election he held a victory party at 10 o’clock and then had to come and hear my victory speech.

The self-interest when people consider these matters is epitomised by the background paper written by the Liberal Democrats in 1982. They wanted to have multi-member constituencies, with the exception of the Orkneys and Shetland, Isle of Wight, and probably Isle of Ely as well—all three Liberal-held constituencies.

In the same way, people look at the article by Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, published in Parliamentary Affairs, volume 47, issue 3, in July 1994, in which they describe very calmly what the Labour Government tried to do in 1969, which was put through primary legislation to avoid the boundary commission proposal being implemented.

When the House of Lords blocked that, the Government were not going to take any action at all until court action forced the then Home Secretary, James Callaghan, to put it to the House of Commons; and then they had a three-line Whip on Labour Members to vote against the boundary changes. I regard that as showing that some people look at these matters in the light of self-interest.

If we had made the change to 600 MPs, the Worthing constituencies—that of my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and my own—would not have changed; we had the right number of electors. I would be disappointed if, with 650, there had to be changes, but I doubt they would be very significant.

However, the next time we have a Bill like this one, the Government may want to consider whether they really want to say to the Electoral Commission that the number has to be exactly 650 or 600-and-something, or whether they could allow a margin of appreciation if that would help to solve a particular problem. Last time, the Isle of Wight argument resulted in two proposed seats; that sort of flexibility could be useful. I am not saying that we should change the Bill now, but when we consider what to do in the future, we should do that.

My last point is perhaps the most important one. We ought to use the electoral register as the Government propose, but much, much more effort should go in to making that register full.

I have attended various discussions over the years in which people say we should use mobile phone records and other ways of checking and double checking, and actually inviting people to come on to the register, and saying that if they do not, they are not complying with the regulations and the law.

I hope that people will realise that going on the electoral register is right, necessary and helpful. Then, we will not have to face the argument that we ought to use a previous general election register, which with five-year Parliaments or anything like that would be three, four of five years out of date, instead of being as up-to date as possible.

Each of us has a great relationship with our constituents and our constituencies, I would like to mention an NHS hero, the Reverend Father Dr Biji, who for many years was the vicar of the Jacobite Syrian Orthodox church in Harold Hill in Romford, who was also a hospital chaplain on the south coast, and who has sadly died. In his memory, I use the words on his church website, which come from John 10:11:

“The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep”.