Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend’s Bill. He is to be congratulated onhis initiative in bringing it forward. I wish to addressthe two principal changes it seeks to achieve. The first is a reduction in the number of parliamentary constituencies. As my noble friend has explained, we are unusual in this country in the number of seats that we have in the House of Commons. By international standards, the House is extremely large. Countries such as India and the United States, with far larger populations, have smaller first Chambers. As my noble friend has touched on, there was actuallya much bigger House in the early part of the20th century when Ireland was still part of the Union; the number of seats then stood at over 700. But even with 646 seats, the House of Commons remains an extremely large elected assembly, too large in the eyes of some, including my noble friend. As my noble friend has mentioned, several bodies have looked at the issue of the size of the House of Commons. These have included the Conservative Party’s Commission to Strengthen Parliament, which reported in 2000. I chaired the commission. Other members included my noble friends Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Waldegrave. In taking evidence, we were struck by the number of witnesses who recommended a reduction in the size of the House of Commons. We concluded that the argument for reducing the size of the House was compelling. We accepted that the other place would be able to fulfil its functions more effectively if the emphasis moved from a large House to a smaller one with better resourced Members. We noted that the number of MPs put a strain on existing resources. The House of Commons is under great strain because of the demands increasingly placed on it. I have variously argued that the Members are both part of the solution and part of the problem. They are great absorbers of resources and utilise the opportunities available, such as to table Questions, to their full extent, making it difficult for the House to cope. The commission made various recommendations to strengthen MPs in the delivery of constituency services. With such changes we believed it would be possible for MPs to cope with a larger number of constituents. We also contended that there may be a beneficial impact on relations between Members and their constituents. Though it may seem counter-intuitive, large constituencies may facilitate a closer long-term relationship between Members and constituents, in that less radical changes would be required to constituency boundaries to take account of demographic changes. That, of course, relates to the other part of my noble friend’s Bill. We also argued that a reduction would make for a far more efficient House as well as having political and, as my noble friend has touched on, financial benefits. I quote from page 58 of the report: "““The creation of more layers of government leads inexorably to more elected politicians. There is understandable popular cynicism at the creation of more paid posts for politicians. Our recommendations will lead to a reduction in their number. A reduction in the number of MPs will also, in cost terms, more than offset the cost of the other recommendations that we have made””." We advanced a large number of proposals and this recommendation has to be seen, as my noble friend has alluded to, in the wider context of strengthening Parliament in calling government to account. It really should be seen as constituting part of a wider package. We therefore favoured a reduction in the size of the House. However, we did not recommend an immediate reduction. We saw considerable merit in the proposal put forward by Viscount Cranborne, now the Marquess of Salisbury, in his Parliamentary Government Bill. Under his Bill, there would be a House of 525 Members for the first general election held after 1 January 2010 and one of 400 for the first election after 1 January 2020. I do not want to get bogged down in specific numbers. I am less concerned with whether it should be the 525 figure embodied in the Parliamentary Government Bill or the figure of 581 proposed in the Bill presently before us than I am with the principle. There is a powerful case for reducing the size of the House, and for reducing it on a staggered basis. My noble friend’s Bill does not provide for a staggered reduction—he goes for the ““big bang”” approach, but retaining a fairly large House. I would favour reducing the size over time to well under the figure embodied in the Bill. It has already been argued that my noble friend is being too modest in the figure that he sets. Reducing the number over time may also facilitate the acceptance by the House of Commons of a reduction in the size of the House. Members may not rush to cut their constituencies from under them, but if it was over a longer term, a reduction may prove acceptable. I therefore put that thought before my noble friend. There is one other necessary corollary to mynoble friend’s proposal. If the size of the House of Commons is to be reduced, there also needs to be a reduction in the number of Ministers. If the number of MPs declines while the number of Ministers remains constant, then the grip of the Government on the House becomes proportionally greater. The payroll vote becomes more significant. The payroll vote, as we know, has already grown, largely by extension to people who are not paid and are not formally part of government, and we should not be doing anything that encourages that process. I appreciate that Ministers are extremely busy people, but, in evidence to the commission, Frank Field argued that the amount of work increased to occupy the time made available to Ministers. We recommended putting a cap of 20 on the size of the Cabinet and a cap of 50 on the number of junior Ministers, excluding Whips. The total number of Whips in the two Houses, we recommended, should be no more than 20. Thereis thus a case for going beyond the provisions of this Bill to limit the number of Ministers and to ensure that the Government do not benefit from a reduction in the number of parliamentary constituencies. I turn briefly to the other part of my noble friend’s Bill. The existing rules for the distribution of seats, as provided for in Schedule 2 to the 1986 Act, embody two somewhat contrasting principles: to try to achieve equality in the number of constituents in each constituency and to ensure that, as far as possible, constituency boundaries respect existing local authority boundaries. The latter has created problems in achieving the former, with the result that there have been significant variations from the electoral quota, sometimes up to and beyond 20 per cent. Existing Rule 5 gives the Boundary Commissioners tremendous latitude, in that they are required to ensure that the size of each constituency is as near to the electoral quota ““as is practical””, but leaving them to decide what is practical. The existing rules also allow for—indeed, if anything, encourage—creeping increases in the number of constituencies, a point alluded to by my noble friend. My noble friend’s proposal restricts their scope and imposes a clear limit on how much deviation there may be from the electoral quota. I appreciate the arguments that may be deployed by the Minister in relation to this provision, but I think that my noble friend is making an extremely important point. As things stand, there is a marked imbalance in constituency sizes, and that imbalance works against county constituencies to the benefit of borough constituencies. That imbalance contributes, but I appreciate is not the sole contribution, to a political bias in the electoral system. Ensuring that constituencies are more equal in size than is the case under our existing arrangements will go some way, but only some way, to addressing that bias. An essential element of equity is involved and that has to be addressed. The Bill also addresses other problems associated with the existing rules. However, I raise one problem with the current procedure which, as far as I cansee, is not addressed by the Bill. At the moment,the enumeration date is the commencement of the Boundary Commission’s review. The differences between the size of constituency electorates at the beginning of a review may be very different from those at the end of the review period. As I read it, the Bill retains the existing enumeration date. There may be a case for stipulating that the commission utilise the most recent electoral register available, or at least enabling it to utilise more up-to-date data. There is a relationship between the two parts of the Bill. Each is justifiable on its own merits, but each also complements the other. By bringing it forward, my noble friend has raised extremely important issues. As I have indicated, I am not necessarily wedded to the particular detail; that is somethingwe can pursue in Committee. I am very happy to commend the principle of the Bill and I congratulate my noble friend on having brought it before us.