Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill

Rishi Sunak Excerpts

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

[Rishi Sunak (Richmond (Yorks)) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) on securing this Second Reading debate. It is a privilege to follow so many wise and learned contributions, especially that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper). I disagree slightly with the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), because I was hanging off almost every word of my right hon. Friend’s tour de force, which drew upon his great experience of taking a similar Bill through Parliament. My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) also brought considerable experience and thought to this matter, and his contribution gave me much pause for thought.

My predecessor in this House, Lord Hague, once told many of his constituents just how uniquely our particular form of parliamentary democracy was seen by his many international counterparts. He described how, after a high-level summit, the G20 leaders could scarcely believe that the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom had to depart their supper to get on a plane and fly back to his rural north Yorkshire constituency to hold a surgery for Hawes. He explained that “Hawes” was not what they had thought and that it was in fact a rural town in Wensleydale with a small population of 1,000 people. Hilary Clinton, the US Secretary of State at the time, was shocked that senior members of the UK Government had space in their diaries for such an amazing activity on a Friday. The people from countries with proportional representation could not quite fathom the concept of a constituency, and some of the more aloof dignitaries present wondered why on earth he was meeting any members of the public in the first place.

That brief story illustrates the enduring strength of our parliamentary democracy and, in particular, the close connection to our constituents that all Members of this House are privileged to have. Ours is a robust system, underpinned by centuries of tradition and custom. Our electoral system is precious, and any changes to it must therefore be considered extremely carefully. Having spent a little time considering it, I believe that the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 made some sensible and overdue changes to that system. In discussing potential changes to that Act, I will confine my remarks to three simple points.

First, there is a strong, unarguable case for the equalisation of the number of electors. Secondly, I will turn to why I believe that modestly reducing the number of Members of this House to 600 is, on balance, sensible. Finally, I will take this opportunity to discuss my experience of the ongoing boundary review, with particular regard to one village in my constituency: Great Ayton.

Turning to the case for equalisation, as the former Deputy Prime Minister and Member for Sheffield, Hallam once put it, it is a patently obvious principle that each person’s vote should carry the same weight. The principle was similarly endorsed by the independent Committee on Standards in Public Life.

Today we find ourselves in a situation where the largest constituency has more than 93,000 electors, compared with just over 40,000 in the smallest. It cannot be fair that constituencies vary in size by as much as 100%. The outcome is that a vote in a constituency like that of my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) counts for half as much as a vote in a constituency like Arfon. Requiring constituencies to be within a narrow band of 5% of the average quota is sensible, reasonable and very fair.

Some have claimed that these adjustments are, in some way, political gerrymandering, that the Conservative party or the Government are redrawing the boundaries, but nothing could be further from the truth. These reforms are being led by the different boundary commissions of the United Kingdom. Independent bodies, the boundary commissions have always carried out their role with due diligence and impartiality. I have every confidence in the boundary commissions and their well-established independence. I am yet to hear any evidence to the contrary.

It would, in any case, be unwise to interpret any particular short-term advantage that might accrue to any particular party as fixed and immutable. Interestingly, when looking at elections by the number of people who changed their vote—a measure of electoral volatility—the last two elections, in 2015 and 2017, were the most volatile since the elections at the time of the great depression and immediately after world war one. That shows we live in an age when no party can lazily count on the fixed support of the British people. I am confident that the small changes to our boundaries and to our system will in no way stop the British people expressing their strongly held views about which party they want to represent them in government.

On the more nuanced issue of the appropriate size of this House, I acknowledge the concerns raised by Members on both sides of the House about modestly reducing the number of MPs to 600. The speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex gave many of us pause for thought and some ideas to consider. He called for a decrease in the number of Ministers to coincide with the reduction in the number of Members, thereby ensuring that the Executive can still be held to account. It is an interesting suggestion, and I am sure the Minister will bear it in mind, but I am optimistic about the capacity of this House to hold the Government to account, even with 600 Members. As with so many other things in life, it is quality, not quantity, that counts. I have been here only a short time, but I have seen time and again how just one Back-Bench MP, one Select Committee report or, indeed, one shadow Minister can scrutinise the Government at the highest level, shine light on issues and, ultimately, change the course of policy.

Another question raised by our having a smaller body is whether it would be able to handle the volume of work that Westminster is used to doing, especially with the repatriation of powers from the European Union. That is a fair question to ask but, over time, the direction of travel is unquestionably to devolve more powers away from Westminster. The other Parliaments and Assemblies of the United Kingdom have taken on more and more responsibility, as have the police and crime commissioners. Now, with the devolution that the Government are continuing, metro mayors stand to further change the distribution of power within the United Kingdom. All those moves should make it easier for a smaller House to manage as effectively as it has always done in conducting the nation’s business.

This House is frequently compared with others around the world. One comparison I have heard is that this House is larger than the US House of Representatives and the US Senate combined, which is a surprising statistic given that the United States has five times the economy and five times the population. But, as has often been pointed out, the legislature of a federal republic and that of a unitary parliamentary democracy such as ours cannot be so easily and directly compared. It may be more appropriate to touch on some of the other parliamentary democracies around the world—systems that have emulated our Westminster-style of government. Japan is one such example. It has a population of 127 million, but its House of Representatives has just over 450 Members; a Japanese Member of Parliament has, on average, 270,000 constituents. The Canadian House of Commons, again similar to ours, has only 330-odd Members, with each Canadian MP representing more than 100,000 constituents. Australia is leading the charge on having a streamlined lower House, with only 150 MPs. It was with interest that I noted the constituency of Richmond in Australia boasted 35,000 electors more than my constituency of Richmond in Yorkshire. As an aside, because we are here on a Friday, I thought it was worth noting that Richmond is the UK’s most copied international place name, with more than 55 Richmonds to be found across the world, in places as diverse as South Africa, India and Germany—

[Kevin Hollinrake]

And London.

[Rishi Sunak]

And indeed London. My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) is not in his place, but he will of course know that Henry VII, the earl of the original Richmond in Yorkshire, was so taken with the place that he decided to rename that part of London called Sheen and build a palace there in honour of the Richmond in Yorkshire—but we digress.

Even with these reforms, the point remains that our constituencies will still be much smaller than those of comparable parliamentary democracies. I acknowledge that an increase in our electorates will mean an increase in our postbags and inboxes, and that with no obvious change in our office resources to match, we will all have to work that much harder to represent our constituents. We talk a lot in this House about productivity, so it is only right that we as Members do our bit to drive up the UK’s productivity. Similarly, as we have heard, when public money is tight it is eminently reasonable that politics should not be immune from our efforts to bring the nation’s finances back under control.

[David Linden]

It is a bit ironic that the hon. Gentleman is talking about how the public purse is under huge strain; I look at the Benches where the Democratic Unionist party would be. Does not what the Government did by bribing the DUP with £1 billion in the confidence and supply agreement relate to exactly that point?

[Rishi Sunak]

On representation, I feel pretty good that the Conservative Benches are lined with colleagues participating today, unlike the Opposition Benches. The hon. Gentleman talks a lot about money for the DUP, but that is deeply insulting to the people of Northern Ireland, who are receiving any money that the UK Government are spending on regions—Scotland, Wales and Yorkshire also receive funding. When we talk about money going to the regions from this Parliament, it is going to the people of those areas, not their politicians.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Oliver Dowden) defended well how this measure will cut the cost of politics, and we would do well to heed that. Of course we do not want to see any weakening of that fundamental link between MPs and their constituents, but I do not think that increasing the size of constituencies by 10%, as the original 2011 Act does, will in any way undermine that strong connection we have today.

Thirdly, I should say that this is not just about the number of constituencies, but about where we draw the lines, so the last point I wish to make is about how the boundary review affects my constituency. Constituency boundaries must reflect the way people live their lives. Ordnance Survey maps, detailed as they are, cannot always capture the close bonds of community that have been forged between towns and villages over centuries. The village of Great Ayton, the boyhood home of Captain Cook, has been an integral part of my constituency for more than a century, taking part in the election of Richmond’s MPs in as many as 27 general elections in that time. So it is not difficult to imagine the shock of local people when the Boundary Commission originally recommended that they be transferred to the neighbouring constituency of Thirsk and Malton. In no way was that a reflection on the excellent work that my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton does; it was more about the surprise that they would be pulled out of the Richmond constituency and pushed into another, separated from them by the vast expanse of the North Yorkshire moors.

On any level, local people were puzzled by the decision. The local secondary school for children in Great Ayton is based in Stokesley, which would remain in the Richmond constituency, as would the GP services they use. The transport link—the A172, which links Great Ayton with Northallerton, our county town, which contains the businesses and travel links that everyone uses—also stays in the Richmond constituency. Any way one looked at it—from the point of view of transport, education, health, business and history—pointed to the fact that Great Ayton belonged with its cousins in Richmond.

On a personal note, I of course did not want to stop being the Member of Parliament for a community for which I have a great deal of affection, and I was struck by the number of constituents who wrote to me to express their concern. It is no wonder that the Boundary Commission noted that it had received significant opposition to its proposals. Along with broad cross-party agreement that those proposals were flawed, the commission was inundated with submissions and public meetings were packed with people coming to express their point of view.

I was delighted when the Boundary Commission accepted the case that retaining Great Ayton was compelling. The wonderful part of the country that I have the privilege to represent will remain intact. For me, this was a positive experience of the Boundary Commission doing its job diligently and constructively. It listened, engaged and did its utmost to accommodate a community’s wishes and I remain grateful to it.

I remain in support of the original 2011 Act. Constituencies with an equal number of electors are a fundamental democratic principle and a reform long overdue. Reducing the number of MPs will cut the cost of politics without endangering the critical scrutiny or constituency link that Parliament provides. Lastly, in making the changes, we should be mindful of the individual character of constituencies and encourage the Boundary Commission to listen and adjust its proposals when they do not match the reality on the ground. We are fortunate to have the electoral system that we do, and I am sure that it will continue to serve us well for generations to come.