Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

It was good of the Leader of the House to pop in during our debate to see how things were moving, because, as we all know, it is not his shift. It was a very special favour to us that he came to see what was happening. I agree with my noble friend Lord Kinnock that the basis of what we are debating is the negotiation or lack of it on these proposals, and that the only negotiation that is relevant to this debate generally appears to have been that between the two parties of the coalition. As a result of that Faustian pact, or whatever else one calls it, the Government are unwilling to listen to argument, to unblock the usual channels or to make any concessions. They fear, Samson-like, that the pillars of the temple will crumble if they make the smallest concession. I listened with great pleasure to my noble friend Lord Foulkes, as I always do. He gave us a rather joyful odyssey around his constituency. I confess that I was tempted to ask whether I might join him at some stage. I was listening to him describe all those wonderful places with strange-sounding names and wondering whether I could better him by taking him around my old city and around wonderful places such as Llansamlet, Craig-cefn-parc, Ynysforgan and Llangyfelach, and all these equally wonderful places with strange-sounding names but with a wonderful community. What impressed me during the time I had the pleasure to be there was that it was, indeed, a community. In the city of Swansea, we pride ourselves on being a series of villages held together by gossip—and the gossip is enormous. There is a real strength of feeling between the various parts of the village. It is something that I enjoyed. Of the trio who were on the Front Bench and appointed by my noble friend, I always thought of my noble friend Lord Foulkes as Mr Nice. There was the danger of having Amendments 61, 62 and 63 considered together, but they were quite properly severed. I recall that my noble friend Lord Foulkes talked of his experience on the Intelligence and Security Committee and of what he learnt about sleep deprivation. When he said that, I was wondering whether I had last spoken yesterday or today and, indeed, whether I am in serious danger of repeating myself at this stage. It is what people do when they are subject to sleep deprivation. I will go on because I seem to recall that I spoke on Amendment 61 only to make the point that I did not think it appropriate to mention a particular number. I apologise to my noble friend Lady McDonagh but I did not think that 630 was an appropriate number. Equally, I did not speak in respect of the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Snape because I had already made that point on the earlier one. I feel emboldened, however, to speak in respect of the current amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Kennedy for this good reason: that the onus is surely on those who want to make change to make the case for that change. This change, which is having an electoral quotient of 75,000 and of having 600 seats, might, or might not, be justified. However, what the Government have clearly not done is made any serious attempt at all during the course of this debate or earlier to justify those particular figures. What puzzles, surprises and, indeed, saddens me is that the Conservative Party has departed from its normal principles and, at a time when it talks about the big society and, airily, about localism, it seems very ready to sacrifice community on the alter of a mathematical formula. Some colleagues have already mentioned the carve-up of Africa at the Congress of Berlin and those straight lines that separated community. For example, the Ewe community is partly in Togo and partly in Ghana. I do not think that my noble friend Lord Boateng is here but I would invite him to go with me around the borders of Ghana or Uganda looking at the way in which tribes were separated. I think that it would not be appropriate for me to go seriatim around the borders of various African countries. Certainly, the normal pattern of Conservative thought—which is very distinguished in our history—is to have any change broadened down from precedent to precedent and to ask for an explanation for each change. I recall Lord Hailsham’s marvellous book. I already quoted him yesterday or today—I cannot remember which because of sleep deprivation. I recommend the book to every colleague. It was written in about 1948 and was called The Case for Conservatism. How well he put it in this book that, for Conservatives, politics was a second best activity. It prevents the nasties doing things and tries to keep the ship afloat—even if one did not have a particular destination. He had a wonderful sentence about the Conservatives: "““The simplest among them prefer fox-hunting—the wisest religion””." Politics was a second-best activity, which is light years away from the ideological drive of the Conservatives today, followed tamely by the Liberal Democrats, who seem to be ready to sacrifice all their principles so long as they can follow up the legacy of Lloyd George and the unfinished business of the Liberals from before the First World War. I am certainly ready to listen to all the arguments. I am far more ready to accept—as I have indicated—the amendment of my noble friend for the 650 because that is the status quo and because no serious attempt has been made to say why the status quo should be altered. Indeed, there is a serious argument, which I shall seek to deploy, for increasing the number of seats because of the increased workload of Members of Parliament. How do we define the job? This was the point made by my noble friend who has now left, the distinguished doctor. The job of a Member of Parliament has clearly altered very substantially over the years. Some colleagues have boasted about the fact that they entered the other place in 1964 or 1979. Wait for it: I entered the other place in 1966. I recall being asked at a selection conference what was my trade union. I said that it was FSBAA. Of course no one was prepared to admit ignorance as to what this particular trade union was. It was in fact the Foreign Service Branch A Association. Anyway, I was able to get over that hurdle as a result of my membership of a distinguished trade union in the foreign service. At that time the world was very different indeed. One was able to have a career in addition to being a Member of Parliament. There were some very heavy and eminent lawyers in the House at that time. I was a member of the chambers of Elwyn-Jones, who became Lord Elwyn-Jones, and of Sam Silkin—Lord Silkin—whose PPS I became from 1974 to 1979. They were able to have serious legal practices at the same time as being Members of the House. There was a wonderful piece in Elwyn-Jones’s autobiography, at the time when he had prosecuted at Nuremberg, going to his seat of West Ham and being told by the good constituents of West Ham, ““Oh, don’t bother to come for another year or so. You can just do that job in Nuremberg””. He feared that he might be going on in the caravanserai to the prosecution of Japanese war criminals and his good constituents of West Ham would have been very happy for him to spend a year or two there. I recall that my noble friend Lady Mallalieu almost followed him in that seat, when we were both in the same chambers. At that time, there were eminent members of the Bar and eminent businessmen, who were able to carry on with their position in the House of Commons part time. That would not be possible nowadays. About that time, I recall that Duncan Sandys was alleged to have said to someone who wrote to him from his constituency in Streatham, ““I am Streatham’s representative in Parliament and not Parliament’s representative in Streatham””. A story was going around about one of the Aitkens, who was a Member of Parliament, and who apparently replied to every constituent who wrote him a letter in the following terms: ““Thank you very much for your letter. With people like you, England has nothing to fear””. Alas, perhaps the world has changed. Members of Parliament do not have a pathway to Parliament through being eminent lawyers or having had a substantial career outside. Indeed, it is very difficult for parties to find an Attorney-General in the House of Commons because of the pressures of being in the House and the difficulty of finding a lawyer with sufficient standing in the legal community. I accept that, at the moment, the Conservative Party has a sufficiently heavy lawyer but it is becoming increasingly difficult because of the pressures of Parliament to find people to fill the post. Nowadays, the pathway to Parliament is normally through being a research officer for another MP. People come along without what Denis Healey would call a hinterland—someone who comes with a career from outside that they are able to use when in Parliament. Nowadays one is expected to be a social worker. There is a deluge of e-mails. The expectations of the constituents have changed and woe betide any Member of Parliament who tries to adopt the Duncan Sandys, or Aitken, approach in replying to their constituents. Indeed, there is, in my judgment, a real danger of the House of Commons being somewhat parochial. This would be exacerbated if we have these regular boundary revisions. Members of Parliament are analogous to those 435 members of the House of Representatives, who are effectively in a state of perpetual electioneering. If there is to be this recasting, like with Lego bricks—where one is often putting things together in a fairly haphazard way and certainly not looking at the importance of community—different building blocks being put together every five years or so, it is surely only natural that every Member of Parliament would be looking over his shoulder at how he can cultivate that part that will come into his constituency. It will make it very difficult indeed to find Members of Parliament who are prepared to travel, apart from coming to London. I have had the privilege of being on the executive of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and, at different times, the Inter-Parliamentary Union for over 30 years and, at times, boxing and coxing with my noble friend Lord Foulkes. It is more and more difficult to find Members of Parliament who are prepared to go abroad with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. Why? MPs are in a state of perpetual electioneering, looking over their shoulders to ask, ““Have I done well? Am I feeding the great beast? Am I giving the constituents that which they want?””. I think that it will be a sadder Parliament if there are people who do not have the experience of the outside world and instead only those who are always going back to their constituents, trying to be glorified social workers. Some will ask: what is the job description? How do we explain that a Member of Parliament should be prepared to be a member of a Select Committee, should be able to learn about foreign climes and do all these things? It will not happen. If there are these regular changes, the pressures on Members of Parliament will mean that they will be in a state of perpetual electioneering.