Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, I support the amendment. I strongly believe that we need a larger House of Commons than 600. I recognise that, in advocating a House of Commons larger than 600, one exposes oneself to the criticism that one is not in favour of cutting the cost of politics. If that was the reason that the Government made this proposal, it is a poor one. We are trying to cut the cost of politics at the expense of better representation of remote and isolated communities and respect for the historic traditions which have always been taken into account by the Boundary Commission in setting boundaries hitherto. I illustrate that point with reference to my home county of Cumberland, now Cumbria, in which I was born in 1947. Cumbria is an interesting case. On two separate occasions, the Boundary Commission has supported the retention of six Members of Parliament for the county, even though on a strict application of the present quota there would only be justification for five. It has done so on the basis precisely of its ability as a Boundary Commission to respect community ties and historic traditions. I will expand on this point. I recognise, of course, that simply increasing the size of the House of Commons is itself insufficient to deal with this problem, but it is necessary. We must also secure amendments on the Boundary Commission’s degree of discretion in fixing constituency sizes and the criteria it should take into account. The situation in Cumbria illustrates this point. It is no good the noble Lord, Lord McNally, sneering at this point, because it is the heart of the argument about representation. It is very important that the Government explain why they feel that they can sweep aside how the Boundary Commission has operated over decades, and why they can say that they have the wisdom to substitute some arbitrary system in place of the Boundary Commission that has worked with a great degree of consensus over time. Cumberland used to have five Members of Parliament: the ancient borough of Carlisle, the industrial constituencies of Whitehaven and Workington on the west coast, and the agricultural and rural constituencies of Penrith and north Cumberland. The number of agricultural and rural constituencies was reduced to one in 1950 when the present constituency of Penrith and The Border was created which went on to be represented in a distinguished way by the late Viscount Whitelaw. In 1973, there was a similar, top-down reorganisation of things. Top-down reorganisations are never a good idea, as I am glad to see the Leader of the Labour Party, Mr Ed Miliband, now recognises. The local government reorganisation led to the creation of the county of Cumbria, merging Cumberland and Westmoreland with the Furness and Lonsdale parts of Lancashire. In the 1983 boundary review, Penrith and The Border, which had been geographically entirely within the county of Cumberland, was extended to include north Westmoreland. The constituency of Westmoreland was extended to take in parts of what had been Lancashire. That set the present pattern whereby Cumbria has six MPs. It is arguable that that represents distinct communities. There is Carlisle, Workington and Whitehaven on the west coat, the constituency of Westmoreland based on Kendal, Barrow and the Furness area in the south of the county and a big rural constituency of Penrith and The Border, based on the market towns of Appleby, Brampton, Penrith and Wigton, now represented by the able and interesting Rory Stewart. When the Boundary Commission looked at the numbers last time, as was the case the previous time the quota only gave Cumbria an entitlement to fewer than 5.5 Members of Parliament; I think the figure was 5.48. Despite being entitled to only 5.48 Members of Parliament, they none the less agreed that Cumbria should continue to have six. If we were to have 600 MPs, we would definitely only have five seats in Cumbria and the Boundary Commission would have hardly any flexibility to take into account community considerations. As a result of reducing the number of Members of Parliament in my part of the country, representation on the basis of natural communities would be completely destroyed. The city of Carlisle would have to take in a vast and different rural area around it. Barrow would have to extend outside its natural area of Furness. Westmoreland would become enormous once again, as it would have to take back the bits of Westmoreland in Appleby and that area that had gone to Penrith and The Border. The constituency of Penrith and The Border, instead of being one of the most rural and agricultural seats in England, would become a strange mish-mash of an old industrial area, probably Maryport, with some of the other market towns. I am not raising this point because I care about the political future of Rory Stewart. Actually, I do care, because he is an interesting guy. But there is the wider point that this reorganisation, which would be made inevitable by the rigidity of government by numbers that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, wants to impose on us, would completely ignore natural communities and be a great mistake. I do not understand why the Liberal Democrats have gone along with this; or I do, because it is part of a deal on AV. What I find most extraordinary is that the Conservative Party should think that it supports this kind of arrangement. The Conservative Party is completely careless with local traditions on this issue. The Conservative Party claims to speak for the big society, and is completely careless with the notion of natural communities. The Prime Minister talks about how we are all in this together but is completely careless in trying to create consensus on a local basis about what is a decent basis of representation. The Government should think again. These are serious issues, not just party political trivialities. The Government have as yet given us no credible explanation of why they think it necessary to make these changes.