Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, I take a somewhat flexible view on the future size of the House of Commons, although I support this amendment pending an independent inquiry on what the optimum size of the House should be. I am going to produce some information which the Government should take quite seriously. While Members have been on their feet, I have been going through the Sessional Returns for the House of Commons Session 2009-10. The relevance of the House of Commons’s Sessional Returns is that we are dealing with effort and the ability of Members of Parliament to carry out their functions properly. I think that the vast majority of the wider public would be very interested in this document, if only it were to be made available, but, of course, they would not read it. So I will extract the information which I think should be made more widely available. I shall start by referring to the contribution of my noble friend Lord Foulkes, although I was not here when he spoke because I was upstairs resting. My noble friend was a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee. The relevance of that committee is that, while it is not a committee of Parliament but of parliamentarians, it is an indicator of what happens in circumstances where a Member of Parliament is genuinely interested and is prepared to make the time available to ensure that they carry out their functions properly. I was a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee between 1997 and 2001. What characterised the committee was the high level of attendance at the committee’s proceedings. In most of our proceedings everyone turned up. While I have not seen statistics recording the incidence of attendance, I would imagine that it must be 90 per cent to 95 per cent. I should like to ask this House to consider the Sessional Returns of the House of Commons which deal with matters of attendance at its committees. One has to remember the distinction between the House of Commons and this House. In the House of Commons, Members are paid £65,000 in salary. They have substantial expenses, although IPSA is reducing them, particularly those for administrative allowances, because of the contribution that now has to be made to the pensions of employees. However, in this House, we volunteer our services. We are not remunerated or paid and we have expenses. I draw that distinction because in the House of Commons you would imagine that, because they are paid, they would therefore have the time to give to ensuring that they carry out their duties. I shall divide the committees in the House of Commons into broadly two groups. The regional committees were established by the Labour Government following demands for greater regional discussion in the House. I want to go through the returns for each of the regional committees. First, Conservative Members refused to attend them. If you want to find out why they refused to attend the committees, all you have to do is go back to the debates that took place in the House of Commons when it was establishing the regional committees. Their case was, ““We simply don’t have the time””. In other words, a committee structure was established in the House of Commons where Members were arguing that they were unable to attend. The result was that membership of these regional committees was only Labour membership. MPs of other parties felt unable to attend them because of problems of time. The result was that in the East Midlands Committee the attendance rate, which was from only Labour Members because no other members attended, was 64 per cent. In the London Committee, the rate was 73.8 per cent. Let us remember that only Labour members were attending. In the Yorkshire and Humber Committee, the rate was 86.7 per cent. In the North East Committee and the North West Committee, it was 80 per cent. In the South-East Committee, the rate was 65 per cent and in the South-West Committee it was 75 per cent. In the West Midlands Committee, it was 80 per cent. What that indicates—remember, only Labour Members were attending—is that there are conditions in which Members are committed to the work of that committee and they are prepared to commit their time to that procedural arrangement within the House of Commons. When I was first elected to the Commons, the first committee that I was put on was the Public Accounts Committee. I remember those early days. The chairman was the noble Lord—