UK Parliament / Open data

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

The point that I was making about the exchange between the noble Lords, Lord Wills and Lord Foulkes, was that a point was made about the Senate having 100 members and the US House of Representatives having approximately 434. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, pointed out that there are also state legislatures in 50 states. We are not comparing like with like. I took the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, that international comparisons take you only so far. The noble Lord, Lord Snape, made the point about the word ““gerrymandering”” coming from the United States and seemed to suggest, although I am sure he did not mean to, that the Boundary Commission would somehow be heavied by the Government of the day. In the United States, as the commentaries following the elections in November made clear, the new boundaries will be set by the state legislatures, not by an independent boundary commission. That is the fundamental difference. I hope that noble Lords will accept that. To elaborate further, under our proposals, the 1 December 2009 register suggests that the electoral quota for the United Kingdom would be about 76,000. More than one-third of existing constituencies are already within 5 per cent either side of that illustrative quota, so the impact of our proposals will see constituencies of a size well within existing norms. However, if the House were to have, for example, 500 Members, that would push the size of the average UK seat above 90,000, and only three existing seats would be within 5 per cent of that quota. For that size to become commonplace would perhaps be too great a departure from what Members and the public are accustomed to. We therefore thought that 600 would seem to strike the right balance without reducing by too much and having regard to the fact that one-third of existing seats would be within 5 per cent either way of the existing norm. In addition, a slightly smaller House will mean that savings can be made without, in the Government's view, losing the capacity of individual Members or the Chamber as a whole to perform their functions. Other points have been raised: for example, the fact that that should be linked to reform of your Lordships' House. I have no doubt that there will be ample opportunity to work out the implications for the reform of your Lordships' House when the draft Bill is brought forward. An important point was made first by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and picked up by several other noble Lords, including the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton. That is the relationship between the Executive and the elected House, the other place, if the number of MPs is reduced but not the number of Ministers. The Government indicated in the other place that we agree that that is indeed an issue to be considered, but we do not believe that it is one that needs to be resolved in the context of the Bill. Reduction in the size of the House will not take effect until 2015, and we should therefore consider that issue in the light of decisions on, among other things, the size and composition of a reformed second Chamber. Historically, there has not been a consistent relationship between the size of the House and the number of Ministers within it. The number of Ministers in the Commons will be determined by what is needed to carry out the Government’s parliamentary business, and will not be affected by the change in the size of the Chamber. It is not clear that legislation is the answer. If the issue is the size of the Government’s payroll vote, there are ways to address that without legislation—for example, a reduction in the number of PPSs.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
723 c1223-4 
Session
2010-12
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
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