Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Sarah Wollaston Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

The Government’s complacency on the subject of the missing 6.5 million is breathtaking, and we should see it in a wider context as well. At the same time as the size of the elected legislature is being reduced through the cutting of 50 MPs, the number of unelected peers is increasing by about 50 a year. Since 2010, 117 new peers have been created at a cost of £18 million a year. The amount that will be saved by the cutting of those 50 MPs is £13.6 million. We understand from No. 10 briefings—and the Leader of the House has confirmed today—that the creation of more peers will be announced shortly.

However, it is not just the cost that should worry us. The Government are becoming more powerful. We have more Government special advisers that at any time in our history. Moreover, these changes will reduce the size of the legislature while leaving the Executive untouched, thus making Governments more powerful at the expense of elected MPs representing their constituents. Accepting the Lords amendment would enable the reduction in the number of MPs to be delayed, which would have the added advantage of giving us time to consider the right balance between Executive and legislature.

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

rose—

[Sadiq Khan]

I will give way to the hon. Lady, who has been very patient and has risen several times.

[Dr Wollaston]

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned students. Does he think it reasonable that the MP who represents a student in, say, Bristol West represents more than 82,000 people, while just across the road in Bristol East the MP represents 13,000 fewer? It is not necessary to be a student of maths to realise that a vote there will carry far less weight. That cannot be right; it goes against all the basic Chartist principles that we would expect the right hon. Gentleman to support.

[Sadiq Khan]

I agree with the hon. Lady, as do the Electoral Reform Society and the Electoral Commission. She should join me in ensuring that those invisible citizens who should be on the register are put on the register. Let us not rush ahead with partisan boundary changes.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Thurso]

Let me deal with that precise point at the moment I arrive at it. First, I wish to deal with my third point of substance, which is the one that was not made in the debate. It is brief but it is important. A reduction in the size of this House increases the percentage of the payroll vote and thereby strengthens the grip of the Executive on Parliament, without there being an acceptable counterweight.

That leads me to my final point, which relates to the wider coalition issues. Let me make it absolutely clear that I supported the formation of this Government and I remain committed to them. As a Liberal Democrat, I entered this coalition because I believed in 2010 that the country needed a stable Government to deal with the financial crisis that was before us. As a member of the Treasury Committee in the previous Parliament, I had looked at many of the matters on the sovereign debt markets and was concerned, and I believe that the right decision was made.

However, when two very different parties come together to get agreement on an essential issue there has to be agreement on other areas. The red line issues—the ones we will not have at any cost or the ones we must have at any cost—are relatively straightforward to address, because we either agree them or we do not, and we are either there or we are not. All the other matters that are subject to negotiation, both individually, as policies, and, most importantly, collectively, as a slate, are much more difficult to deal with. The coalition agreement is not a pick-and-mix menu; it is an agreement. I agreed to the boundary changes—in many respects with a heavy heart—but I did so in the knowledge that the rest of that agreement acted as a counterweight. To my mind, that would occur mainly through Lords reform, which I judged would increase the check on the Executive and strengthen Parliament. For me, that was a fundamental point and I believe it is a fundamental point for all my colleagues.

[Dr Wollaston]

Does the hon. Gentleman not feel that there are many other ways in which we could reduce the size of the payroll vote in this House? That would have been perfectly possible to do by, for example, reducing the number of Parliamentary Private Secretaries or Ministers. His argument is therefore surely not an acceptable one.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Blomfield]

There is a bit of a difference between the two inner-city seats that the hon. Gentleman and I represent. Although there is some evidence to endorse his point, it does not explain the enormous disparity between the two seats in Sheffield.

Many of those who are excluded from the electoral register are precisely the people who form a huge proportion of my casework and I know that the situation will be the same for many Members who represent inner-city seats. More importantly, the combination of legislation means that their voice in Parliament will be reduced. If the Electoral Commission’s original concerns about the impact of the Bill came into being and were compounded by a process of redrawing boundaries based on the register as at December 2015, the gap would widen even more. If boundaries were redrawn based on an average electorate of 76,641, which was the basis for the Electoral Commission’s calculations, the actual population of Sheffield Central would be approaching 50% more than that of Sheffield, Hallam.

Some might argue that the Electoral Commission’s worst fears might no longer come true, particularly in the light of some of the concessions the Government have been forced to make. In the longer term that might be true, but crucially the next boundary review would be conducted at the low point of the registration cycle in December 2015. Let me make it clear that like those on my Front Bench I support the principle of equalisation. In so far as there is public interest in constitutional reform, that argument has enormous resonance with the public, but the people to whom I have spoken were shocked to learn that equalisation is based not on population but on the number of registered electors. The effect of the combined legislation will be not to reduce but to enhance inequity.

[Dr Wollaston]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that that is simply not always the case? In Torbay, for example, those on one side of the road are represented by a Liberal Democrat colleague who represents 76,000 voters. On the other side of the road at the Brixham end of Torbay, which is in my constituency, there are just over 67,000 voters. One vote carries 11% more weight on the Brixham side of Torbay, and when we take the populations into account, the discrepancy is even higher. It does not always ring true that using population equalises matters because, in some cases, it would make things worse. It certainly would in my constituency, where the situation is already unfair.

[Paul Blomfield]

I do not think that Sheffield is any different from many of our other large urban centres, and I think that the effect I have described in relation to Sheffield would apply to the vast majority of urban areas in this country. There might be some exceptions in Devon.

To respond to an earlier comment, my view is that we should move towards a system of genuinely equal constituencies based on boundaries drawn by population size, not by registered voter numbers, but that is clearly a debate for another time. Whether or not we go down that route, we need now to pause, to ensure that individual electoral registration does not further enhance inequity and does not further disempower our cities. If we do not pause, we risk creating a US-style democracy, with notorious under-registration, that excludes the disadvantaged and the disengaged and that focuses political parties and elections on the needs of the more privileged and in that way poisons our politics.

--- Later in debate ---

[Penny Mordaunt]

My hon. Friend is right. That is not lost on the House or on the general public. The only harm that the Liberals will do today is to themselves. They confirm what has long been suspected—that the national interest and the constituency interest come a poor second to Liberal Democrat interest.

[Dr Wollaston]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Liberal Democrats have had to get off their high horse because they have sent it to be turned into horse burgers?

[Penny Mordaunt]

My hon. Friend makes a good and amusing point.