Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Amendment 56A, in my name, covers much same ground as the two amendments that have been briefly discussed today, so I do not intend to speak to it when we reach it. My suggestion is that the Boundary Commission should be required to report by 2017. It is not a date that I have picked out of thin air; it was chosen in anticipation of the time that a Boundary Commission would normally take to complete its work. Lest the Committee should think that I am a Johnny-come-lately on these issues, I point out that I am an obsessive. When you have had the experience, as I have had, of representing a constituency with an electorate of around 90,000 when your majority is around 360, you look very closely at parliamentary boundaries. As soon as I saw in 2009 that the Conservative Opposition, as they were then, were thinking of reducing the number of MPs, my mind flew to how the boundaries would be drawn. I asked the then Minister—a splendid Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Bach—in a Written Question how long it took to conduct a boundary review. He said in his Answer of 3 November 2009 that the previous boundary review for England had taken six years and eight months and that for Northern Ireland it had taken three years and five months. I know from my experience of various Boundary Commission changes—many other people in this Committee will have had the same experience—that consulting local people and discussing whether their community should be split, joined or divided is a lengthy process. The job has been very well done by Boundary Commissions in the past and the time taken has been reasonable. Although I knew that the Conservative Party was likely to go ahead with its pledge when it came into government, I did not think that it would substantially short-circuit the period of time required for a proper boundary review. I have proposed 2017 because I anticipate that the Bill will become an Act this year, which will give the Boundary Commission six years to do its work. I do not think that is an unreasonable period. Anyone who has been an MP knows that boundary redistributions are pretty uncomfortable and difficult processes, as are the consequences of Boundary Commission proposals, which often mean colleague fighting against colleague from the same party for nomination for a seat. If you believe in first past the post, as I strongly do, you obviously have to accept that constituencies should be broadly similar in size and that they should be reviewed, because populations and their distribution change. However, they should not be conducted with phenomenal regularity. I think I am right in saying that the House of Commons has an unusually, if not unprecedentedly, large number of new MPs. When they have settled into the euphoria of becoming a new MP—and it is a pretty euphoric experience—they will discover that they had not bargained for the fact that within a few months someone will come along and change the boundaries of their constituencies, probably substantially. That will put them in conflict with neighbours and all the rest of it. What is more, that will happen every five years. I almost plead with the Government for their own sake that that is not a good idea. You will not make MPs of whatever party—this is not a Labour Party partisan plea—very happy if you put them in a continual state of uncertainty about the democratic base on which they stand.