Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, as ever, my noble friend Lord Grocott has come forward with an ingenious plan that the Government should consider carefully. It is a constructive proposal which, as he said, seeks to tackle one of the central complaints that have been made about the current rules for drawing constituency boundaries. That complaint is that the rules have the potential to give rise to a ratchet effect, causing the total number of constituencies to increase with each review. We have heard that the size of the House of Commons has remained broadly stable since 1983 at around 650. None the less, we accept that the interplay between some of the existing rules for drawing boundaries could cause an upward trend. This was highlighted by an important 1986-87 Select Committee report, which is now quite ancient but still important, by the Home Affairs Select Committee on the rules for drawing parliamentary boundaries. It noted: "““The consequences of the application of Rules 5 and 6 is that whenever seats are awarded under those Rules above a review area’s entitlement on the basis of the electoral quota alone the number of constituencies recommended will be greater than the previous total. These new, higher, totals will in turn be used as divisors for calculating the electoral quotas at the next general review. At that review Rules 5 and 6 will again operate, so that the tendency for the numbers of seats to increase will be increasingly cumulative””." My noble friend’s amendment would address that problem by capping the House of Commons at a maximum membership of 650 and would place a downward pressure on the number of constituencies created by future reviews, by stipulating that the numbers must always be rounded down. There are some attractions to the amendment and we think it to be much preferable to the rather rigid and ill considered proposals to fix the Commons at exactly 600 seats. First, the amendment starts from the basis that 650 is a more appropriate size for the membership of the other place. The Government believe that there should be a significant departure from that position and that 600 seats would be the optimum size of the other place. However, at the risk of repeating what has been said, the Government have so far failed to advance any compelling evidence to support that position. Secondly, the amendment would provide the Boundary Commission with an element of flexibility in doing its calculations, albeit in one direction. It does not repeat the folly of the Government who, by fixing the House of Commons at an exact number, will make the task of the Boundary Commissions very difficult, not just in the next review but in the review that will follow. In any event, the Committee knows that we believe that it is wrong in principle for Parliament to set the exact figure. We see advantages in my noble friend’s amendment. However, we on the Front Bench tabled yesterday—or perhaps I should say today; it was about 24 hours ago—Amendment 58A which is a better model for addressing the same problem. I remind the Committee that our amendment would commence the process of drawing boundaries by establishing an electoral quota through the method of a fixed divisor and be based on an assumption of a House of Commons of 650 Members. The advantage is that that would anchor the House of Commons at approximately 650 Members, but allow for a small variation above or below that figure, depending on the mathematical rounding associated with the special exemptions, including certain seats in Northern Ireland—an issue which we will no doubt consider in future amendments. That was the preferred method recommended, on the advice of the Boundary Commissions, in the Home Affairs Committee report to which I referred. On this side, we think that my noble friend’s amendment is an alternative to our proposal and is certainly one which the Government should certainly take away to consider and see if it meets their requirements.