Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I think that that is fair, and it applies to the putting together of the Welsh Assembly, the putting together of the Scottish Parliament and the reduction in the number of Scottish seats in the Westminster Parliament. As I say, I defer in every single respect to the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, in relation to what happened in Northern Ireland. We believe that the case for a 650-seat Commons has not changed since the current Prime Minister spoke in its favour—indeed, in favour of a slightly larger elected Chamber—at the 2003 Oxfordshire boundary inquiry. Opposing proposals to alter his own constituency borders, he told that inquiry: "““Somebody might take the view that at 659 there are already too many Members of Parliament at Westminster. They may take the view, depending on what happens in the European constitution, that Westminster has less to do, with less MPs—I certainly hope that is not the case. This is all some way off””." What has changed in the mean time to alter the view that there is no need for a reduction in the size of the House of Commons? The Government have failed to answer that question. Our amendment stems from a conviction that the current Commons of 650, which is broadly the figure that it has been since 1983, is the appropriate basis on which to stabilise the size of that Chamber. Although the membership of the House has been pretty stable over the past number of years, both rising and falling, concerns have been expressed about the potential for a ratchet effect resulting from the interplay of some of the existing rules for drawing parliamentary boundaries. Our amendment therefore follows the recommendation of the Home Affairs Select Committee, in its 1987 report on the rules for drawing constituency boundaries, which proposed that the UK electoral quota should be calculated using the ““fixed divisor”” method. The Committee recommended that the divisor should be fixed on the basis of a 650-seat House of Commons. Put simply, under our proposed alternative rules, an initial UK electoral quota would be calculated by dividing the total UK electorate by the fixed number of 650—in other words, not altering the current size of the House of Commons. This mechanism, which should be read alongside our other amendments, would not necessarily fix the House at 650 seats for ever. It would stabilise the House at around that size but with the mathematical rounding up or down involved in the calculation of seats in the four parts of the UK, and once special allowance is made for seats like the Scottish islands, it could be possible to see very minor fluctuations in the size of the Commons—one or two seats either side of 650. We see that as a virtue of the fixed divisor method and an advantage that it holds over the Government’s proposal for a fixed number of seats. The latter approach—the fixed number of seats adopted by the Government—was criticised by the head of the English Boundary Commission when he gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee inquiry in 1987. He warned that stipulating an exact fixed number of seats for the Commons would require the boundary commissions to use a ““Bed of Procrustes”” for drawing constituencies, stretching the borders of those that were too small and lopping parts off others that were too big. He warned the committee away from that method and instead urged the use of a fixed divisor, which would result in a broadly stable Commons while allowing the boundary commissions a bit of practical leeway. Now, of course, even if we could convince the Government of the practical benefits of our amendment, we would still need to persuade them on the issue of the most appropriate size of the Commons. Before we consider the relative merits and demerits of this amendment against the Government’s proposal for a 600-seat House of Commons, though, it is worth reminding ourselves of what the two parties opposite were saying on this subject before the election. The Liberal Democrat general election manifesto contained a commitment to creating a 500-seat House of Commons elected on the basis of the single transferable vote. The Conservative Party manifesto contained a commitment to the continuation of the first past the post system for elections to the Commons but pledged to cut the number of MPs, saying that it envisaged a 585-seat House. So why did the coalition agreement settle upon 600 seats as the perfect number, as opposed to 500 or 585? I ask the Minister, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, who I assume will be answering, to explain the reasoning behind that specific decision. In particular, why did the two coalition partners agree on a figure that was higher than both their original proposals? Compromises usually involve a meeting in the middle—what happened here? Could the proposal for a 600-seat House have had anything whatever to do with the Conservative Party’s fears that the mathematical reality of a reduction below 600 would require the loss of seats in shire counties? Or did that have no bearing on the decision? Leaving aside the reasons why the Government are so fixated on a 600-seat House, there is a broader question about what is wrong with the size of the current Commons. The Government claim that it is, to use their words, a bloated Chamber and that the UK suffers from something that they describe as ““overrepresentation””. The facts show they are wrong on both counts. The claim that Britain is overrepresented in comparison with similar-sized countries is based on simple international comparisons of numbers of elected national representatives per head of population. In fact, the extent to which the UK has more elected representatives in the national legislature per head of population can be exaggerated. As a briefing note from the House of Commons Library makes clear, the United Kingdom has roughly the same ratio as France and Italy. However, the central point is that these calculations take account only of national legislatures and do not include any reference to levels of representation beneath that tier.