Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

The constitutional significance of the Bill cannot be overstated. It is very regrettable that there has been no pre-legislative scrutiny of a Bill on such important matters. The Government are in a pickle over this, and that is due to their way of handling the situation. That is clear in the tactics that they are deploying to try to force it through. It has been rammed through the Commons. I referred to members of the coalition in the other place who are opposed to specific measures in the Bill in my contribution on Second Reading. It is most regrettable that, despite repeated offers from the Labour Front Bench, no one has come forward to negotiate to move things forward sensibly. We will come to issues such as that of the Isle of Wight and Cornwall later, where there is much unhappiness on the coalition side of the House. The Government's whole approach to this has been wrong. I wonder what the advice of the Foreign Office would be to any Government abroad who had just been elected and said to us, ““We are considering changing the number of Members of Parliament elected to our House. Do you think that that would be a good idea?””. We have heard contributions from many noble Lords who have been Members in the other place about the work of Members of Parliament on Second Reading, and in debates on amendments moved in Committee. I have heard nothing from the government Front Bench to convince me that the work of Members of Parliament in the other place has not increased considerably. I was never a Member of the other House, but I recall, as a young Labour Party member and a constituent of Harriet Harman, helping her at her advice surgeries in the town halls in Camberwell and Walworth in the London Borough of Southwark on Friday nights nearly 28 years ago. They were packed with 60 or 70 people at a time with a whole variety of problems: housing, immigration and many other issues. That has only increased over time. That is only part of the important work that a Member of Parliament undertakes. I cannot see how any elector—any constituent—is better served by increasing the size of constituencies. The constituency of Peckham where I grew up is bounded by the constituencies of Southwark and Bermondsey, Dulwich and West Norwood, Lewisham and Deptford, and Vauxhall. All those constituencies have similar problems, and no voter living there could be served better by the proposals. I very much agree with the comment made by my noble friend Lady McDonagh about the basis on which the Government have selected the figure of 600. It is because that number benefits the Conservative Party—or it believes that it does. My amendment will ensure that county and city boundaries can be respected by the Boundary Commission. In the early 1990s, I was involved in the boundary inquiry in Coventry. I saw how the Boundary Commission got it wrong. The number of seats was being reduced from four to three, and it issued proposals putting together the Holbrooks ward of Coventry North West with the Longford ward of Coventry North East in the same constituency. It made no difference in outcome whether those two wards were in the same constituency or different constituencies. What the Boundary Commission had missed, looking at maps in London, was the Coventry to Nuneaton railway line, the A444 from junction 3 on the M6 leading into the city, and the two fields either side separating those two wards. The inquiry brought that out, the commission understood it, the proposals were changed and they remained in different constituencies. My amendment allows the commission to do that. Have the Government sought the advice of IPSA on these matters? I understand that many MPs will not have a home, an office or staff in their constituency. If the boundaries keep changing every four or five years, there could be a considerable waste of public money with people moving around all the time to ensure that they are in their constituency. I listened with great interest to the contribution of my noble friend Lady Billingham. She set out carefully the importance of community of interest. I recalled, as she spoke, the day that Donald Dewar came to support her in her election campaign in Corby. I met Donald at Kettering station and drove him to Corby. Donald was a great campaigner and we had a wonderful time. What made him chuckle was that he had travelled down from Scotland, had come to Corby and had met so many people from Glasgow and Lanarkshire. He knew some of the families and he got such a warm welcome. As my noble friend Lady Billingham said, younger people living there who had never been to Scotland in their lives spoke with what I can only describe as a Scottish accent. That was because of the nature and closeness of the community there. The proposals would ride roughshod over those communities. I worked for many years in the East Midlands. It is a wonderful place, a wonderful part of the country, but I am very worried about the effect that the proposals will have on those communities. The East Midlands is a series of principal towns or cities and rural counties. The cities of Derby, Nottingham and Leicester are unitary authorities, and the MPs in Nottingham and Leicester are coterminous there. There are county towns, such as Chesterfield and the wonderful city of Lincoln. There are coalfield communities in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire and there is the unique county of Rutland. My noble friend Lady Billingham also mentioned Northamptonshire, with its boot and shoe history—Doctor Martens in Wellingborough—and Weetabix in Kettering. The Government’s proposals will do nothing for them. In conclusion, my amendment would fix the number of seats at 650, which is a better number than that proposed by the Government. I thank my noble friends Lady McDonagh and Lord Snape.