Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Viscount Eccles Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, there was talk earlier this afternoon and last week about filibustering. I cannot believe it and defy any noble Lord to suggest in good faith that anything that has been said this afternoon—even one sentence—could possibly be regarded as filibustering. We have had six contributions in less than three quarters of an hour, which is surely a very reasonable pace. I have certainly listened to every detail that has been put forward sincerely and from direct experience.

I suppose that it is possible to despise this whole subject of how people organise themselves at local level, canvass and campaign and how political parties are structured, their relationship with local government, constituency organisations and so forth. It is possible to say, “That is the grass roots and I am only interested in the high policy issues”. There may be one or two rather haughty people in this House who take that line. That is terribly unfortunate because if you despise the grass roots of politics you are despising the whole way in which our democracy works. Without those grass roots, we would not have a thriving political democracy.

It is extraordinary that there have been no contributions from the Benches opposite on these important issues. I can hardly believe that no one on the other side of the House has any views whatever on this subject. I can hardly believe that they all despise such discussions in the way that I have indicated might be the case. I hope not, although one or two people perhaps do. I find it very difficult indeed to believe that noble Lords opposite would not stand up and defend the Government and oppose the amendments if they thought that the amendments were unreasonable. No doubt they are hoping that the Minister will bring some rabbit out of a hat at the end of the debate in the form of an argument against these reasonable amendments, but none of them seems to have come up with any objections whatever. That has been the pattern of the debates, so there is a strong sense that those who have been tabling the amendments have been winning the argument and that those who have opposed them when voting have done so on the basis of no arguments at all, or have at least been unwilling to put any forward.

[Viscount Eccles]

My Lords—

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I shall give way to the noble Viscount, as I am delighted that I may have provoked him to rise to his feet.

[Viscount Eccles]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. He would help me if he could tell me how his remarks relate to the rules that applied in the general election last year. The fifth report of the Boundary Commission for England was sent to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, and I do not believe that he had many grumbles about it at that time. I shall read out two rules. Paragraph 6.19 states:

“Rule 4 requires the boundaries of county and London boroughs to be respected as far as practicable. As explained in Chapter 2, we have crossed these boundaries to a greater extent than before, using the discretion afforded by Rule 5 to avoid excessive disparities in the electorates”.

Rule 5 is characterised in paragraph 6.20 as follows:

“Rule 5 requires electoral parity as far as is practicable”.

It also says:

“Paragraph 6.5 of this chapter sets out how we have overall brought constituency electorates closer to the electoral quota”.

The party opposite when it was in government accepted this review and fought the previous election on those rules. Therefore, my great problem is that I cannot see why it does not describe to us how it sees these rules being changed by the Bill in a material way. I completely concede that there are some material changes. The first one is that, although the fifth review suggested that there should be 613 Members of Parliament, we have now reached a rather higher number, and the Bill proposes 600. I also concede that at that time the discretion to the Boundary Commissions meant that they departed from plus or minus five to a greater extent than is proposed in this Bill. As far as I can see, those are the only major differences.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I shall answer the noble Viscount right away. As he says, it has always been the tradition and habit of the Boundary Commission to endeavour to respect county boundaries. Indeed, that is in its explicit rules. As far as I know, it has always respected ward boundaries. I have never heard of a case of wards being split. Perhaps they have but, if so, it has been extraordinarily rare. We all know that this Bill will place the Boundary Commission under very great constraints which, in practical terms, will force it to breach those important rules: the two constraints being the limitation of MPs to 600 and, particularly, the 5 per cent rule. We have had other opportunities in these debates to discuss those two rules, which have an immediate effect on the extent to which it will be possible to respect county boundaries, local government boundaries or, indeed, ward boundaries. Therefore, I strongly support my noble friends who are trying explicitly in these amendments to protect those things and to make certain that we do not cross county boundaries except in the most exceptional circumstances. Above all—I say “above all” as this is a matter of the greatest importance to me—we do not in any way want to break up wards and divide them between parliamentary constituencies. Therefore, there is now a need for explicit rules, and the purpose of these amendments is to introduce them.

[Viscount Eccles]

As I read these amendments, the noble Lord is not correct when he says that there are to be exceptions. There are to be no exceptions if these amendments are accepted.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

Indeed, and that is necessary in the circumstances. I do not hold to every word of these amendments, as I shall explain in a second if the noble Viscount will give me an opportunity to do so. However, their main thrust seems absolutely right, as, indeed—I do not want to anticipate the next debate—are the amendments that have been put forward by my noble friends on the Front Bench, which I hope that we will get to in the next section. In fact, the first thing I want to say on the detail of the amendments, with great respect to my noble friends Lord Snape, Lord Kennedy and Lady McDonagh, is that I wonder whether the first amendment relating to county councils achieves, technically, what they want it to achieve. The amendment states:

“Each constituency shall be wholly within a single county boundary”.

As I read that text, it means that counties that are too small to constitute a normal sized constituency would have to be a constituency on their own. I think of Rutland. That would be a very peculiar result to emerge from the amendment. That is why I fear that I cannot support that amendment in its present form if it came to the vote. However, I may have misunderstood it and the problem I have may be dealt with adequately in another context. If that is the case, I shall either give way to my noble friends on that matter now or look forward to hearing an explanation subsequently in the debate, but that aside, I am totally in favour of the spirit of that amendment for two reasons. The first concerns a matter I have already dealt with in another context in these debates, so I will not dwell on it, and that is the all-important issue of the extent to which the individual elector identifies with the constituency in which he or she finds himself or herself. Counties are enormously important. We have already heard about the great sensitivity which would arise if constituencies were spread across the traditional historic Lancashire/Yorkshire divide.

I assure the Committee that if there were any suggestion of taking bits of Lincolnshire and putting them into a constituency with parts of Nottinghamshire, Cambridgeshire or Leicestershire, there would be the most appalling outcry. I do not doubt for a moment that that would lead to some people not bothering to vote in either county council elections or parliamentary elections as a protest. That would go in the exact opposite direction from the one in which we wish to go.

Speaking from my considerable experience as a former constituency Member of Parliament, I want to make a very practical case. It is very important so far as possible to have an exclusive, or at least a limited, relationship with local authorities as it is only in that way, when one has a large agenda, a lot of give and take and when one sees the same people in different contexts, that one can effectively do business together, and where there is an atmosphere of confidence and trust, which there needs to be between a Member of Parliament and a local authority, irrespective of political party. That is enormously important. It is important to avoid the conflict of interest which could otherwise prevent local authorities, which may necessarily have a rather bureaucratic mentality, contacting a Member at all. If there are two, three, four or, God knows, more MPs with bits of a particular local authority, county, district council or whatever it is, they might well feel that they cannot possibly talk to one of those MPs without saying exactly the same thing in exactly the same circumstances, taking exactly the same amount of time, with all the others, so they would not bother to do it at all, and so the co-operation, discussion and mutual understanding would not occur. There are real practical arguments of this kind in favour of trying, wherever possible, to keep county councils within county boundaries. We are, of course, preaching to the converted with the Boundary Commission. The noble Viscount made that point. The last thing the Boundary Commission wants to do is to split counties or to incorporate in constituencies parts of different counties. That is something it has managed to avoid doing in general. However, we need to strengthen its hand to prevent it being pushed in that direction.

Even more important than counties are wards. They really are the grass roots at which politics is conducted and are the way in which individuals are brought into our political system and take an interest in civic affairs through meeting with their friends and neighbours locally to discuss common problems. It is incredibly important that a ward and a ward committee in a political party has a relationship with one Member of Parliament. Immense synergies flow from that because when you go out campaigning you want to be in a position to talk about local and national issues. All Members of Parliament have to talk about local and national issues and all their supporters ought to be in a position to do that. It is no use campaigning for a council seat when if somebody raises a national problem you say, “Actually this is not the constituency of the Member that I support and so I cannot talk about this national issue”. That is a hopeless system. It is very important that Members of Parliament know their county and district councillors, that county and district councillors know their Members of Parliament, that they tackle a common set of problems, work together, understand local issues and as far as possible have the same views on local issues. That may not always be the case but at least they feel that they have the same responsibilities which are coterminous. It is only in that way that the whole political system we have has a degree of coherence and therefore of credibility, and has in the minds of the electorate a degree of functionality and purpose. All these things would be very badly damaged by breaking up wards between different constituencies. That is the point on which I feel most strongly.