Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill

John Bercow Excerpts

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

[Mr Harper]

I will make a little more progress, because I think Mr Speaker would want me to do so.

The first big change in the redistribution of seats was the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885. Mr Speaker, you will be pleased to know that I will mention it only tangentially, and for one reason. The Minister who steered the Act through this House was the then President of the Local Government Board, the hon. Member for Chelsea, Sir Charles Dilke. You might not be aware, Mr Speaker, but Sir Charles Dilke had some personal issues—to put it delicately—and then ceased to be the Member for Chelsea. He then had the enormous good fortune to become the Member for the Forest of Dean, my constituency.

Sir Charles was, in some senses, more successful than me. First, in those days, constituencies apparently wrote to prospective Members inviting them to become Members of Parliament without some tough selection battle against others competing for the seat. You might remember, Mr Speaker, from my maiden speech, that Sir Charles Dilke, after getting elected and then re-elected, was fortunate, the third time he sought election, in being elected unopposed. I said in my maiden speech that that was a record worthy of emulation. I am afraid that I completely failed to be elected unopposed at the 2015 general election, but fortunately for me, despite my being opposed, I was indeed elected.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am sorry to advise the right hon. Gentleman that I do not have a verbatim recall of his maiden speech. It might greatly sadden him, but it has the advantage of being true. I gently say to him that I agreed to call him early in the debate because I was advised that he was suffering from a heavy cold and sore throat and was keen to speak sooner rather than later. From that, I deduced that he would not wish to exacerbate his malady by speaking at inordinate length. I feel confident both because of that and because at least 14 other Members wish to catch the eye of the Chair that before very long he might approach his peroration.

[Mr Harper]

That is very thoughtful of you, Mr Speaker, although I am surprised, knowing of your enormous powers of recall, that you do not have a verbatim account of my maiden speech in your head, but then, sadly, we were not blessed in 2005 with having you in the Chair; otherwise, I am sure that you would remember it.

As I said, I only wanted to spend a short time on the preamble to my speech, although I was probably a little indulgent in taking interventions. I will deal specifically now with the points that the hon. Member for North West Durham made in her speech. First, she talked about gerrymandering, which the Leader of the Opposition has also talked about and which comes from the United States of America. Of course, there is a massive difference between us and the US. In most states of the US, boundaries are not drawn by independent boundary commissions, as they are here; they are drawn by the elected representatives, who are obviously partisan. Here, we are fortunate to have boundary commissions, all four of which, Mr Speaker, you chair in an ex officio capacity, although you do not take part in their deliberations. The four deputy chairs, effectively the operational heads, are judges, so they are, of course, beyond question in their political independence. In the United States, however, gerrymandering is a problem.

Taking your advice, Mr Speaker, I will not go on at length, but, for those who are interested and want to follow this issue at length, I refer to an interesting article in the Washington Post on 15 May 2014. Obviously, in the House we are not allowed to introduce written material or pictures, but the article referred to three districts, and the descriptions of them gave a sense of the interesting boundaries in America. Maryland’s 3rd is called the “Praying Mantis”; Pennsylvania’s 7th is called “Goofy kicking Donald Duck”; and Texas’s 35th is called the “UpsideDown Elephant”. The point is that we do not have gerrymandering in this country; we have independent boundary commissions following clear rules set out by Parliament, and they are specifically not allowed to take into account the partisan or party political effect of their decisions. I wanted to knock that argument on its head straightaway.