Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

As my noble friend says, everyone else does. These Members of Parliament are just beginning to find their feet, to get to know their constituencies really well, they are beginning to settle in and they face a major disruption. They could face minor alterations, as we are all used to; we accept that from time to time. As my noble friend Lord Anderson said, after every three Parliaments you accepted that there would be a relatively minor review and that was all part of the job of being a Member of Parliament. However, to have just entered Parliament and to face a review which, because Parliament is being reduced to 600, will inevitably be extensive, is really quite destabilising. I think it was my noble friend Lord Rooker who accidentally stumbled across Conservative MPs being briefed to prepare for this. He assumed that others would be doing the same and I am sure he is absolutely right to assume that Members of Parliament are preoccupied about this. It is not just that they will face competition from candidates from other parties—they first have to get selected for these new constituencies, and that is quite destabilising. I want to speak about a boundary review that I went through. I was elected in 1979 for South Ayrshire, which extended to 700 square miles—a large, rural constituency. People think of Labour MPs as representing small urban constituencies. I represented this large, rural constituency which stretched from Muirkirk in the north to Ballantrae in the south. It would take me two hours to drive across the constituency and I did not drive all that slowly. I had a huge variety of areas to represent. Muirkirk is an old mining area and there is a little village outside Muirkirk, called Glenbuck, which was the home of Bill Shankly and Bob Shankly and which had a fantastic football team, the Glenbuck Cherrypickers, probably one of the best known football teams of its time. Moving on a little, we find Auchinleck and Cumnock, both mining towns. I chose Cumnock as the territorial designation for my title. Cumnock is where James Keir Hardie lived for a while and is now buried—the cradle of the Labour movement. Mauchline was one of the places connected with Robert Burns—Poosie Nansie’s is there—and, ironically, also of the Leader of the House, who, sadly, is not with us today. I was hoping to be able to pay tribute to him and his home in Mauchline, where I used to represent him and look after his interests extremely well. He does not often return the compliment and look after my interests, but I certainly looked after his. I represented all these—the villages of Coylton and Dalrymple, of Patna and Dalmellington in the Doon Valley, of Maybole and Crosshill, between which two I now live. Maybole was the ancient capital of Carrick, a fantastic town, and there is also the seaside town of Girvan. Any Glaswegians here, or people from the central belt of Scotland will know that they used to go, ““doon the water”” to the lovely seaside resort of Girvan. All of this was 700 square miles and then the Boundary Commission added another 100 square miles—I had to represent 800 square miles after the Boundary Commission. Annbank and Mossblown came in, two mining areas, as well as Kincaidston and Belmont, parts of the outskirts of Ayr. Why am I telling you this?