Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Yes, Mr Nice versus Mr Nasty at the Dispatch Box. Lord Nice, fine. We will agree to that. One or two questions were put to me, as the mover of the amendment, to which I would like to reply. First, any Member of your Lordships’ House, and certainly any ex-Member of the other place, could handle a constituency of 90,000 people, as my noble friend Lord Grocott said. However, it illustrates that, even on five-year boundary reviews there is no guarantee that a constituency that starts off at 76,000 will not end up at somewhere like 90,000. The fact that my noble friend had that difficulty when he represented The Wrekin illustrates the problems that could be caused in future years. My noble friend Lord Winston, who is not in his place, put the question to me. He actually said that the blanket rule on the size of the constituency does not make sense; and, of course, he is right. No matter how well the nice Lord strings these replies together, the fact is that a constituency of 76,000, whether in an urban or a rural area, makes no real sense. As my noble friend Lord Winston said, some of the social problems in an urban area are enormous. Those of us who served in the other place know full well the variety of constituency problems that one deals with at a surgery. I do not pretend that it is any easier for predominantly Conservative Members of the other place who represent rural areas; it certainly will not be any easier with an electorate of 76,000. You need a tank full of fuel to get round the constituency on a Saturday morning. Again, there is no real explanation from the Government as to how that figure has been arrived at and what is the common sense, if any, behind it. My noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon said, and I agree, that she disagreed with the other place, or any Government, setting numbers for constituencies. However, if we are to debate matters here, we have to table amendments like this. I am not wedded to the figure of 645; it just happened to be fairly close to the 650 proposed at present. My noble friend amply illustrated the difficulty, which will arise more and more often in bigger constituencies, of dealing with two local authorities, two health authorities and two different police forces. That makes the job far more difficult for a Member of the other place. I do not want to repeat anything that I said in moving the amendment, but seeking from public funds the proper and adequate staffing to deal with that extra workload will not be an easy task. We can rely on the Daily Mail and its fellow newspapers to talk about how expensive democracy is becoming if and when adequate resources are provided for those who are to take on the extra workload. My noble friend Lord Rooker pointed out quite correctly that there is no real definition of the job of a Member of Parliament. Knowing that I was going to participate in this debate, I was throwing out some papers from my house and found some details of a surgery I did on a Saturday morning 10 or 11 years ago before I left the other place. It was not particularly busy; it was one of five that I did that day; there were three housing cases, one about a hospital appointment, one case about bus services in the area, three immigration cases and someone seeking my assistance in getting a cherished number plate. That is a fairly wide set of skills that Members of Parliament are supposed to demonstrate on a Saturday morning.