Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, I follow my noble friend Lord Grocott’s earlier remarks about the debates that we have had so far on this enormous piece of legislation. For the same reasons as my noble friend, I feel strongly about much of its content. Like him—perhaps I could put this slightly stronger than he did—I deplore the lack of speeches from the Benches opposite. Indeed, having attended every day of the Committee so far, I have to say that this is the largest attendance that I have seen from the Conservative Party. The flesh might be present, though, but the spirit is pretty weak; we are still not seeing any contributions of either support or opposition from the Conservative Benches. The Conservatives are slightly shamed by their coalition partners who are here in strength, although we are not hearing a great deal from them either, other than expressions of cynicism and impatience from one or two of them so far. It is regrettable that they cannot bring themselves to put some coherent arguments together in support of this enormous and extremely important piece of legislation. My noble friend Lord Grocott mentioned the fact that there are accusations—this has not so far been said publicly, but there have been attempts to give this impression—that there is somehow some sort of filibuster taking place on the Labour Benches. I was contacted during the Christmas Recess by someone purporting to be from the Sunday Times, not a newspaper that I am overly fond of these days. I understand that investigations were taking place into the contents of some of the speeches on this legislation from this side of your Lordships’ House. Nothing has appeared in the Sunday Times yet because, I fear, when the reporter concerned put this story together, as reporters do, they managed to give the impression that what had been happening so far was that the Labour Benches had been doing the job for which they were appointed to this House and the Benches opposite had not. That would not for a moment satisfy the editorial tendencies of the Sunday Times, so it is no wonder that we have seen no more. However, the constitutional outrages in the Bill ought to be properly reported. If we had a press in this country that reported proceedings in this House and in the other place, rather than paying braying public schoolboys to pour buckets of verbal ordure on those they consider to be their social inferiors, the country at large might be alerted to the coalition Government’s outrageous behaviour and their attempts to rig both Houses of Parliament under these proceedings. Like my noble friend Lord Grocott, I find myself in many of these arguments on the opposite side to my noble friend Lord Wills, who moved the amendment. However, it is an important and comprehensive amendment to which I hope the Front Bench opposite will give due and proper consideration. My noble friend’s amendment should certainly be considered in so far as it mentions local ties in relation to future constituency boundaries. Those of us who are old enough to remember the Local Government Act 1972 will be aware of the dismay which was caused throughout the country by some of the boundaries of the then new local authorities. Indeed, in West Bromwich East, the constituency which I had the honour to represent in the other place for 27 years, many people were never reconciled to the new borough of Sandwell, which was created by the 1972 Act. After nearly 30 years many people looked blank when that name was mentioned. Yet here we have a Bill that proposes that constituency boundaries should be drawn up while paying no attention to local sentiment or action. Imagine, again from the point of view of my former constituency, a constituency that embraced West Bromwich East and West and Walsall. There is no great love between those two areas; they have their own football teams, structures and local authorities. They do not love each other. However, under these proposals, someone will have to try to represent such a constituency. I look at the party opposite and one or two of the Conservative Benches. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, who is as diligent as ever in these matters, is in his place. Imagine what would happen in Sutton Coldfield—his former constituency, which he represented with such distinction—if it were put next to somewhere like West Bromwich, for example. The uproar would be enormous. Reconciling the respective populations to it would be extraordinarily difficult, but these are the proposals that we are asked to approve in your Lordships’ House. This is the direction in which the Bill intends to take democratic matters in the years to come. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, who is not in his place today, wrote a piece in the Times some weeks ago, to which I have referred previously, in great support of the Bill. He said—I paraphrase—that the important thing in the Bill was to ensure that constituencies were of about the same numerical strength, taking one with another. He felt that the present imbalance in constituencies—the fact that some inner city constituencies, largely represented in the other place by the Labour Party, were smaller—was unfair. In his eyes the only way forward was to equalise constituencies numerically, although he conceded that there would be some electoral advantage for the Conservative Party in this. However, reference has already been made—I think by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours—to the United States system of government. In the House of Representatives, that is exactly what happens. I do not think that the United States is in exactly a happier frame of mind because everyone in the House of Representatives represents around the same number of electors.