Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Whatever the circumstances, being a Member of Parliament is not the most secure of roles. I want to make two points. First, I have added my name to Amendment 58, in the name of my noble friend Lord Martin of Springburn, which would provide for Boundary Commission reviews every eight years. Certainly in my case, that number was not just plucked from thin air. The current law provides that the period between each redistribution should be between eight and 12 years. There needs to be some compromise—there is no tablet of stone that tells us how frequently redistributions should take place—but a requirement that redistributions should take place every eight years would have some historic precedent. I hope that our recommendation of eight years would go some way towards meeting the Government’s requirement to provide, on a continuing basis, for a rough equalisation of constituency sizes—a principle to which in general terms I certainly do not object. Requiring the review to take place every eight years would at least give Members of Parliament probably two years in which they would represent the same area. Secondly, I simply want to point out the sheer practicalities of the situation that my noble friend Lord Lipsey has described as a kind of permanent revolution. Members of Parliament would not be human—we have all seen this happen—if, having discovered halfway through a Parliament that they will lose a large section of their current constituency and gain another area from another constituency after the election, they did not start concentrating some of their activities and energies on the area that was to be transferred. They would not be human if they no longer attached quite the same level of attention as they had in the past to the bit that they knew would be going somewhere else in 18 months or two years. That is just a matter of sheer common sense and no reflection on the integrity or commitment of the vast majority of MPs. I have always believed that to have been the case. Incidentally, I say to people who favour changing the electoral system that I have seen no distinction whatever in my parliamentary life between the activities of Members of Parliament in so-called safe seats—I never regard any seat as safe—and those in marginal seats. I have seen all sorts in all seats but the vast majority are assiduous in attending to the concerns of their constituents, whatever arithmetic majority they may enjoy. I can even quote from personal experience. I perhaps have more reason than most to be grateful to the dear old boundary commissioners. For a while, I had one of the most marginal seats in the country but thanks to the boundary commissioners—not to my talents—the boundaries were redrawn so that it seemed to other people to have become a safe seat. It never felt like one to me, but the fact that it went from marginal to safe made not a shred of difference to the work that I was doing. I feel that this cannot be true but I almost wonder whether whoever drew up this proposal for five-yearly redistributions can ever have represented a local government ward or a parliamentary constituency in their lives, because it is obviously deeply unsettling. Obviously, the work of an MP can never be secure but that is unsettling, particularly in terms of the balance of time that Members of Parliament can spend between Westminster and their constituencies. A good MP has to do both but, again, the MPs would not be human if they did not find that the duties that they had at Westminster became less and less important as the ground was shifting from under them in their own constituency, and was doing so for election after election. Certainly, from my perspective—I hope that the Government will not see it as an unhelpful suggestion—eight years, which is the minimum requirement under the present legislation, is a sensible period, giving as it probably does two parliamentary terms. I hope that the Government will look at that very carefully.