Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, I seek some figures from the Minister, although he has indicated that he will not give any and has adhered to that stance so far when responding to amendments. Time and again before the election the parties that are now in government said that the reason for reducing the number of MPs was to reduce the costs of democracy. I was never able to work out how that would happen, principally because I knew the cost of a normal Boundary Commission review from Questions that I had posed to my noble friend Lord Bach when he was a Minister long before this was ever an issue. From memory, I was told that it was around £13 million. When pressed on the matter, Nick Clegg has said that the saving to the Exchequer of reducing the number of MPs by 50 would be about £12 million. As I knew that there would have to be an advanced Boundary Commission, it was obvious to me that the cost of the Boundary Commission alone would be more initially than the savings gained from that reduction in the number of MPs, so there are no savings in the costs of democracy. What I did not realise in those early stages was quite how frequently Boundary Commission reviews would be required under the legislation. We now know, should the Bill become an Act, that because the Minister rejected our various proposals to extend the period between boundary redistributions, those redistributions would be roughly twice as frequent as they are now. They now occur between every eight and 12 years; if the Bill is enacted, they will happen every five years. Unless my basic maths is completely wrong, the savings to the Exchequer from the reduction in the number of MPs will be £12 million, while the cost of a Boundary Commission review will, I assume, remain at about £13 million, but reviews will occur twice as frequently. I am even being generous to the Government in that respect, because if all these reviews are to be accelerated, they will presumably be costly. More commissioners will be needed to do things quickly. It is therefore not unreasonable—although I fear that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, appears to indicate that he thinks it is an unreasonable request—for us to know the cost of the Boundary Commission reviews, given that they will occur twice as frequently. Given that the Government’s principal justification has been to reduce the cost of democracy, we ought to bear in mind that the cost of the referendum will be about £90 million. We know well enough that all areas of public expenditure are being very closely scrutinised as to whether they are necessary, and it is reasonable to ask these questions. If I do not get a response now, I shall have to table a Parliamentary Question on the subject. If the noble Lord cannot provide the figures now, perhaps he would be kind enough to tell the Committee in due course what they are. What are the costs of the Boundary Commission? How much more will they be when the reviews are twice as frequent as they are at present? Can he confirm in passing—I am sure that it is easy for him to do—whether cost of the referendum will be £90 million? If those figures are anything like what I estimate, and I do not have the noble Lord’s resources, can I at least appeal to him and his colleagues on the Front Bench never again to say, as a justification for this legislation, that he is ““reducing the cost of democracy””?