Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has already outed me, I begin with the confession that I was indeed the Minister in the previous Government responsible for the issues with which the Bill is concerned. Had my party been re-elected, I am sure that we would have approached these issues rather differently, but that has not led me to oppose the Bill. I oppose the Bill because a large part of it attempts to rewire our constitutional arrangements for partisan advantage; and that is unacceptable. Part 1 sets out to deliver a referendum on the alternative vote. Had the Government adopted the approach pursued by the previous Government, I might have felt able to support them on that, although I recognise that some of my colleagues in this place will differ from me on this in all conceivable circumstances. If agreed in a referendum, I believe that the alternative vote could help to tackle the problem of legitimacy created by the phenomenon of Government after Government—including the present Government—being elected to power with the support of only a minority of the electorate. The alternative vote system is not a panacea for all the problems of legitimacy faced by our political system, but it at least ensures that more MPs will be returned from their constituencies with the support of a majority of those voting. Crucially, it does so while retaining the MPs’ direct link with their constituents. Here, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who made exactly that point. That is vital for accountability in our democracy. Sadly, the Government have not followed the careful approach of the previous Government, they have pushed ahead with a process which, as we have already heard, is precipitate; it denies Parliament a proper opportunity to scrutinise such an important constitutional measure. As the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, pointed out, this referendum is post-legislative. I shall return to some other flaws with this process shortly, but I turn to Part 2. It aims to reduce the number of seats in the House of Commons and equalise the size of the constituencies that remain. It is reasonable at the very least to debate such reduction and equalisation. There is nothing axiomatically right about that Chamber's current size. As the House will know, the principle that all constituencies should be a broadly similar size is already written into legislation. However, when we examine how the Government are setting about these tasks, we see principles and practice which have long ensured the fair working of our constitution rejected in what I am afraid can only be construed as partisan self-interest. It has long been accepted, as we have heard over and over again this evening, that the boundaries of a constituency should be shaped not only by numbers but also by the specific character of the constituency, local identities and natural boundaries, such as mountains and rivers, which have throughout history helped to define communities. But in this Bill such considerations have been demoted by the Government. Nor do the Government appear to have given any consideration to other relevant factors—for example, the optimum size for a constituency; not a number plucked out of the air, like 76,000, but the optimum number, taking into account the respective role of MPs in their constituencies and their role in Parliament, and the implication for both those roles of further decentralisation of power to local authorities and, indeed, then to local councillors. Instead of a proper consideration of all these important issues, what we see is the Government claiming that the equalisation of constituency size must be elevated above all these other important considerations. Why? We are not given any satisfactory answer whatever. But then they do not uphold even this dubious principle consistently. Wales, as we have heard, is to lose in one swing of the axe 25 per cent of its parliamentary representation while Northern Ireland, for perfectly understandable reasons, is allowed to depart from the electoral quota rule. Moreover, as we heard in a previous discussion earlier today, the Bill makes an explicit and privileged exception for two Scottish seats, one of which, I am sure coincidentally, is held by the Liberal Democrat MP, the Deputy Chief Whip of the Government. And then again, as we have already heard, a further exemption from the electoral quota is given on the basis of the territorial extent of a constituency, drawn up coincidentally, I am sure, in such a way that it can have practical effect in only one area of the United Kingdom—the Scottish Highlands, where only one constituency currently falls into this special category: the seat held by the former leader of the Liberal Democrats. So why exactly does the Bill allow the factors of sparsity and geography to be given priority over electoral equality in these places but nowhere else? It is hard to find anywhere in the Bill anything that could pass as a consistently applied informing principle. The Bill abolishes the ability of local people to have any significant say in the shape of the constituency in which they live, even though local representations have significantly influenced boundary revisions in the past. As we have heard, the Boundary Commission report in 2007 found that just about two-thirds of local inquiries had led to changes in the original recommendations of the Boundary Commission. The Deputy Prime Minister has justified this change with these words—I quote them because they are worth hearing: "““The review process is lengthy and time-consuming””." Lengthy and time-consuming—exactly the same might be said for democracy itself. Administrative convenience for the Executive is never a good argument for attacking the foundations of accountable democracy. Then we have the decision on the proper size for the House of Commons. How exactly did the Government alight on the figure of 600? Both the coalition partners were committed before the election to reducing the House of Commons to below the number of 600. They had different figures but they were united in their belief that the House of Commons should be reduced to a figure below 600. So what exactly changed their minds? Will the Minister tell the House whether any modelling was done by the Government or the Liberal Democrats or the Conservative Party on the effects on those parties’ representation in the House of Commons of reducing the number of MPs below 600; and if so, what such modelling showed? Then the Deputy Prime Minister tells us—we have heard a lot about this from the government Benches already tonight—that, "““it is patently obvious that individuals' votes should carry the same weight””—[Official Report, Commons, 6/9/10; col. 35.]" That is right—but they already do. They are only counted once. Every vote is only counted once. What the Deputy Prime Minister appears to mean is that on average it takes fewer votes to elect a Labour MP than a Conservative or Liberal Democrat MP. However, that is not because votes for the Labour Party weigh more than votes for other parties; it is the consequence, in part, of the fact that turnout and electoral registration are lower in Labour areas and in part it is because Labour’s vote is currently distributed more efficiently within the first past the post system. There is no inherent, systemic bias in favour of the Labour Party. The same system worked against the Labour Party throughout the 1950s and 1960s. As Liberal Democrat MPs, of all people, should know, if each vote weighing equally means that the share of the vote translates directly into an equal proportion of seats held in the House of Commons, there is only one electoral system that delivers that. We have already heard that tonight. It is proportional representation, which is not on offer in the Bill and carries with it all sorts of other problems that mean that I for one would never want to see it introduced as a method of election into the House of Commons. If the Government were really so concerned about equality among voters, they would not be seeking to redraw the electoral map on the basis of a register that fails to include over 3 million voters who would otherwise be eligible to vote. Do the Government seriously believe that any credible equalisation of boundaries can take place when some constituencies achieve nearly 100 per cent registration rates while others achieve barely half that? When we look at it, another so-called principle crumbles. Then there is the way the Bill has been introduced in a display of contempt for Parliament by the Executive. The Labour Government introduced a raft of constitutional reforms, and they always did so by seeking consensus wherever possible on the grounds that whenever constitutional changes are made, they should be made in the interests of the legitimacy of our constitutional system as a whole. This is a crucial principle. These changes should not be subject to claims that partisan advantage is being pursued. I am truly sorry that this Government have rejected this approach. In the rushed passage of the Bill through the other place, not a single Opposition or Back-Bench amendment was accepted by the Government. That is not the only example of the Government’s contempt for good practice. The Electoral Commission has consistently made clear its view that: "““The rules on how the referendum will be conducted must be clear from at least six months in advance””." For that to have happened in this case, the Bill would need to have been passed on to the statute book two weeks ago. If due process and consistent principle do not underpin the Bill, why are the Government bringing it forward? A clue might be provided by the speed with which these measures are being rushed through: speed in rushing this through the other place, speed in holding a referendum less than six months from the presumed passage of the Bill on to the statute book and unprecedented speed in completing the wholesale revision of constituency boundaries. Why the rush? Surely such important constitutional measures deserve appropriate pre-legislative and legislative scrutiny. Surely people should have the time and opportunity to have their say on the shape of the constituencies in which they live. It is clear that the reason for this haste is that the Government want to get the new system in place by the next election, but why? Important as I believe these measures to be, there is no popular clamour for them, nor any other compelling reason to rush these measures through. Why rush to draw up the boundaries on the basis of an inaccurate and incomplete register when legislation has already been passed by the previous Government—this is the answer to the charge laid by the noble Lord, Lord Baker—to task the Electoral Commission to make the register comprehensive and accurate by 2015 and gave it new powers to do that? The Governments that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, so illuminated in his time in the other place never did anything like that to achieve a proper register. The date selected in that legislation was 2015 because it was judged that that time was needed successfully to compete the task, not least because the key to guaranteeing that the register is comprehensive and accurate is going to be using the results of the 2011 census, the most up-to-date figures we have on the population, to validate it. Such an analysis is unlikely to be available before 2014. So why are the Government rushing it through before that crucial analysis is available? Why could the Government not wait just a few months longer to be sure that boundary revisions can take place only on the basis of a comprehensive and accurate electoral register, which is the only fair basis on which such revisions can be conducted? The only reason can be that the new boundaries would not be in place for the next general election, but constitutional changes of this significance should be drafted to endure for generations. In this context, whether they are in the place for the coming general election or the one after that really should not weigh in the balance. Why, after all this, might the Government still be so anxious to get these measures in place by the time of the next election? They must have foreseen these criticisms. I am sure that they did. But why are they proceeding like this nevertheless? Is it too cynical to suspect that it is because they expect to benefit from them? It is widely accepted that revising the boundaries when millions of eligible voters are missing from the register is likely to damage the Labour Party most. Let me quote from a prominent Conservative, Mr Mark Field, Member of Parliament for the Cities of London and Westminster. On his website, which is available to all Members of this House, noble Lords can read that, "““the current proposals for AV and the reduction in number of parliamentary constituencies are being promoted by Party managers as an expedient way to prevent our principal political opponents from recapturing office””." That is the purpose of this legislation in the words of Mr Mark Field MP. It should not need me to say that political expediency for one party is an unacceptable basis for constitutional change. This is not the new politics we were promised. It is an old politics where constitutional arrangements are subverted for partisan advantage, which should have no place in our democracy. Far from restoring legitimacy to our politics, as the Government claim, this Bill will damage it further. It is a bad Bill. I hope that this House will do its duty in making all the changes necessary to make it a better one.