Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill [HL]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to respond to this debate on behalf of the Opposition, the more so as it has been introduced by my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking, for which I thank him. He was a very distinguished memberof successive Conservative Governments who has, since coming here, kept your Lordships constantly stimulated by his tough-minded and softly and seductively advanced proposals on a range of topics. He has established himself here as one of the most dignified parts of one of the most dignified parts of our constitution just at a time, sadly, when the other place has sunk further into supine dependency on an all-powerful Executive and veers daily between a talking shop and a shouting match. Surely if any part of Parliament is in urgent need of reform, it is the other place. Until recently, that was a truth that dared not be uttered, but it is now increasingly voiced, not least by distinguished Members of the other place on both sides. It is right that my noble friend should bring his experience to this debate. Indeed, he recently leda fascinating discussion on his Bill to address the glaring constitutional imbalances resulting from the Scotland Act. To the West Lothian question, there came a Baker reply. Now, to part of the Westminster question, there comes a Baker reply, although I cannot agree with relating state assistance to political parties with the number of Members of Parliament. There is a serious point of principle in forcing the taxpayer to pay for political parties, which is a separate issue. The fact that it is left to my noble friend to initiate this debate is indicative of the complacency—some might say political cynicism and opportunism—with which the Government have ignored these issues. The present arrangements suit them very nicely, thank you. We now have a new Prime Minister-designate, chosen unopposed by the governing party, with no reference to the British people. We have come a long way since the days up to 1926, when many a new Minister used to haveto resign and seek re-election on joining the Government. There is nothing constitutionally improper in these changes, but I know that all noble Lords will look with particular interest at the Minister’s reply, knowing that it will have been cleared by the Prime Minister-designate, a man who has spoken of working to increase the respect for Parliament. I hope that the Minister will give an assurance that, in the context of that work, the ideas of my noble friend will be carefully considered. I know my noble friend will agree with me whenI say it is for Government, drawing on as wide a consensus as possible, to consider these sorts of reforms. It is not appropriate for a significant constitutional change to be affected by a Private Member’s Bill. For that reason, we will not be supporting the Bill if anyone seeks to divide the House. But I hope that no one will do so, for my noble friend touches on an area that is crying out for consideration and one which my right honourable friend Mr Kenneth Clarke is to examine in his Democracy Task Force. My noble friend is of course right in the core contention of his Bill. There are too many politicians in this country; their numbers, rewards and overall cost have been greatly increased since 1997. Within that emerging continental-style political class—a detestable concept, if I may say so—is a larger House of Commons. In 1922, after the creation of theIrish Free State, there were just 615 Members of Parliament. In 2001, we had 659. Now, even following Scottish devolution, we have 646. In 1901, when the Prime Minister spoke as a marquis from the Dispatch Box on the other side of this House, with the authority of 20 years in ministerial office and 14 as Prime Minister, and to the widest international and parliamentary respect, 591 Peers were eligible to take part in your Lordships’ House. In 1999, there were 1,211 of us. Our numbers were reduced to 666—a portentous number—by the purge of 1999, but the Prime Minister’s gay abandon in the exercise of patronage has increased our numbers to 738 today. Is the country better governed because Parliament is larger? I doubt it. Quantity and quality are never wisely confused. There is certainly a case to reduce the size of the other place, and my party has indicated that it wishes to explore that course. In discussion, Mr Clarke’s Democracy Task Force has given an indicative figure of 10 per cent, which would reduce the numbers in the other place to the level suggested by the Bill. But there is no firm commitment to that figure—indeed, at the previous election, the Conservatives called for a House of Commons of 525 Members of Parliament. There is a great deal of sympathy from these Benches for the arguments advanced by my noble friend in his Bill. However the findings of Mr Clarke’s task force and the many contributions to these discussions, not least those made in the course of this debate, should be awaited before settling on a definite figure or the right timescale for change. My noble friend should be encouraged to keep pushing at the door—he will not discover the Conservative Party piling up chairs on the other side. Let me also make it clear that those on these Benches agree with the broad premise of the second major element of the Bill that the size of the constituency which elects an individual MP should be more nearly equalised. People of all parties, except for the one that most flagrantly profits from it—the Labour Party—comment regularly about this inherent unfairness in the electoral system. How frequently do we hear polling pundits, without batting an eyelid, pontificate on the number of percentage points of lead that the Conservative Party would need to secure a bare majority over Labour because of the tendency of urban constituencies to be smaller? One answer would be for the Conservative Party to step up the pace of its march back into our cities which, with Birmingham under Conservative control and Plymouth coming under it, we are now doing. But changing party control does not redress imbalances in the system. Famously, in the 1997 election, it took nearly 60,000 voters to elect a Conservative MP and just over 32,000 to elect a Labour one. Only in the great Conservative victory of 1992, when our party won the largest popular vote ever recorded and were 2.5 million votes ahead of Labour, were the figures about equal on 42,000 votes per Member. The Liberal Democrats, when banging on about proportional representation, should recall that, with proportional representation, they would have lost seats in 1997 rather than gaining 26 as they did.