Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I rise to support the Bill, although I shall talk mainly about part 2, on parliamentary boundary reviews, as somebody who was heavily involved in the boundary review in my own area of north London last time around. It was a very lengthy process that began in 2001 and ended in 2007. That is the important point—reviews are currently extremely long-winded affairs. It is crucial to understand that they are far too long and infrequent, and as a consequence we have electoral data that are far too dated to produce a modern electoral system and lead to far too many constituencies being either too small or too large when the boundary changes finally come in, as they did most recently this past May. In fact, the boundaries introduced then are based on electorates drawn up in 2000, so we have just kicked off with new boundaries that are already 10 years out of date. Under the old system, we would normally be expected to have those boundaries for up to three Parliaments, which could mean that they are in place until such a time as 2024, for example. By that time, the electoral data will be a colossal 24 years out of date. In the last Parliament, the electoral data were already 16 years out of date in 2009. It is very important that we have more frequent and thorough boundary reviews based on current data. I want to say a couple of quick words on the alternative vote, which I do not support. I will campaign for a no vote on AV, and if I had a free choice I would not put it to a referendum. However, it is clearly a constitutional matter, and it is important that such proposals should be put to referendums. I welcome the coalition Government's commitment that such questions, including a proposal to change the voting system, should be put to a referendum. As it currently stands, and as I believe the Labour party offered to the Liberal Democrats in the abortive coalition negotiations in May, any Government can come along and arbitrarily decide to change the system through legislation without having a referendum. I therefore commend the Government for seeing that the matter needs a referendum, which will set an important precedent. There are two possible objections to having more frequent boundary reviews, and especially to their being held every Parliament. One is cost, and the other is administrative inconvenience for Members of Parliament and others involved in electoral administration. Those are the only two possible objections to more frequent and regular boundary reviews, but unfortunately the Labour party has chosen not to have one of them as its grounds for objection. It is objecting, on absurd grounds, to the creation of equality for electors in a parliamentary constituency, something on which it and its predecessors have been campaigning since the early 19th century. Suddenly, Labour Members are the people defending the principle that constituents should be unequal, which is entirely wrong. It is perfectly possible to have boundary reviews much more quickly. The previous one lasted six years, but the meat of it lasted about a year and a half from the time when the first proposals were made to the time when they were approved by the Boundary Commission. Thereafter, it mainly came down to approval by Parliament.