Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Indeed, as my noble friend suggests, they tug their forelocks quite obsessively. My noble friend makes the same very valid point as did my noble friend Lord Judd made so plangently in the previous debate. It is sad to see the Liberals defer to the Tories within this coalition in the way they do. None the less, the threat that the right of recall might have been be instituted has not entirely gone away because those cruel Tories might decide to bring it in, even if the Liberal Democrats have changed their mind about it for very understandable reasons. If there were to be a right of recall, that would enormously compound the uncertainty that already faces Members of Parliament in their own constituency, which would be yet further compounded by the increased uncertainty generated by the more frequent changes of boundary that the coalition proposes in this measure. Members of Parliament are naturally going to be watching their backs even more than has been the case in recent years. They will be worried that they might be recalled and worried in any case that their constituency will no longer exist, or will be so altered that they will have to spend a very great deal of time and energy salvaging their own political situation if they are to have a prospect of being returned again to the House of Commons. For those sorts of reasons, I fear that Members of Parliament in future are unlikely to give the same amount of attention and energy to their work in the House of Commons as they otherwise might have done. That seems to have a bearing on the question of how large the House ought to be. We also know—the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester drew this consideration to the attention of the House some time earlier—that the new means of communication are placing enormous additional demands and pressures on Members of Parliament. I believe that a Member who was newly elected at the last general election testified to the Hansard Society in an inquiry that, as a Member of Parliament, she had received 20,000 e-mails between last May and September. We were talking earlier about the undesirability of importing the American practice of having automatic or electronic signatures—it is pretty well inevitable that you have electronic signatures if you are responding to e-mails—but that will not do. Constituents are not going to be satisfied if they have a sense that the Member of Parliament’s staff are dealing with their representations and speaking on behalf of the Member of Parliament, to the extent that the Member is completely unaware of the representations and requests being put to the MP by his or her constituents. That is an enormous and growing demand upon Members of Parliament in their constituencies, or at any rate in their offices within the Palace of Westminster or nearby, which again will distract them and draw them away from their duties in the Chamber and in the Committee rooms. It tends to make the case for having rather more Members of Parliament than would otherwise be the case. We can also expect, in the very fraught politics of the foreseeable period, that added demands will be made upon Members of Parliament in their constituencies. We are shortly to see expenditure cuts being brought in on an unprecedented scale in this country. Their consequences will be felt not just in the relatively near term but for years ahead, and in the period after any measures that are enacted in this legislation actually apply. In particular, what is to be done to social security provision in this country will produce enormous demands on Members of Parliament in their surgeries, as well as in other activities of their constituency life. Consider, for example, what will happen to housing benefit. People are going to be removed out of neighbourhoods by the force of the new, reduced housing benefit—certainly, out of affluent neighbourhoods. They are going to be bewildered, dismayed and desperate for help. They will turn to their local councillors, who will be powerless. They will turn to their Members of Parliament, naturally and properly, who will be very busy seeking to support them. We are also about to see an assault on elective local government in this country. The so-called new localism is not a policy designed to rehabilitate and revive elective local government but one designed to marginalise and discredit it. Members of Parliament will have to work rather closely with their colleagues, who are elected members of local authorities within their constituencies, in order to sort out what the implications of that will be. Among those implications, for example, will be the drive in education policy towards the establishment of more free schools and academies. The creation of surplus places out of a budget for education which will be, if anything, contracting will lead to enormous stresses and some extremely vexed local proposals and decisions to be taken. Members of Parliament will also have to be deeply involved in those decisions. We are to see major, gratuitous and unheralded reform of the National Health Service. Let us wait and see what the politics of that turns into once the British Medical Association gets to work, putting the frighteners on the constituents of Members of Parliament. There will be some very rough and unpleasant politics, and very real issues that Members of Parliament will be wrestling with in their constituencies as they seek to rescue or retrieve a worthwhile health service out of the upheaval that the Government have decided that it is appropriate to bring in. There is going to be a new planning regime and, at the same time, there are going to be far fewer planning officers in local planning authorities. Planning issues are immensely contentious and sensitive within constituencies. While they are arguably not properly the responsibility of Members of Parliament as they are decisions that fall to be taken locally, all the same there are going to be questions that MPs will be invited to involve themselves with and any MP who cares about his constituency will certainly wish to be involved.