Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, I rise with some relief. After 19 hours of debate, I wondered if we would ever get to this amendment, which I particularly wanted to comment on. It is worth noting that the last time I spent a whole night in Committee in Parliament was in the other place on the National Minimum Wage Bill in, I think, 1998. In that debate, Conservative MPs, who did not want to see a minimum wage in this country, spoke at length through the night over several nights in Committee to try to stop the minimum wage from being introduced, or at least to delay it. I remember—I would say ““fondly””, but it is not fondly at all—a debate around the location of the word ““and”” in the legislation. That kind of debate makes a mockery of Sittings in either place. However, the debate that we have had now for, I must admit, a very long time has in no way replicated that debate then. The quality of the debate tonight and the seriousness with which these issues have been taken does this House great credit. It is doing what it is best at: scrutinising legislation. I was pleased to hear the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. While I do not agree with much of what he said, the fact that he said it is very important. I am surprised, for a piece of legislation we have been told is so important that it cannot be split into two Bills of a more sensible size for scrutiny, that so few Government Members have attended the debate over the past 19 hours. That contrasts unfavourably with this side of the Chamber where we have heard a considerable amount of intelligent debate. It has been doing what this House is meant to do. Broadly, I welcome the two amendments. My noble friend Lord Knight of Weymouth has done his best to talk me out of it, but if I concentrate on his amendment rather than what he has been saying in the Committee, it will be easier to look to that. I have great interest in what my noble friend Lord Grocott has been saying in support of his amendment, but I might put a point to him which, if he is able to answer it when he winds up, would be helpful. What has attracted me to both amendments is that they propose a rationale for the number of Members of the other place. At Second Reading I spoke about this issue, and I have to say that I was quite shocked at the comment of the Leader of the House, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, to the effect that the reason for 600 Members of Parliament was that it was a ““nice round number””. The comment was quite funny and it worked well in the Chamber, but when you are scrutinising legislation that will make a major constitutional difference, that just does not do it for me. I expect a little more thought and explanation. I think that the Government still have time to come forward and give reasons, and indeed there may be a logic and an understanding that have passed me and other Members on this side of the Committee by, but I think that your Lordships have been quite dismayed at the lack of clarity of reasoning for and justification of the figure of 600. In a brief point I made earlier, I said that the Government are exasperated at the fact that this debate is continuing. They could end that exasperation by giving a simple reason. Both the amendments before us seek validity in the kinds of figures they propose. That makes them both attractive to me and certainly worth discussing. My noble friend Lord Howarth made a very important point in the comments he made just now. Our constitutional democracy is based on the relationship between the various parts of the legislature. It is not just about the relationship between the other place and your Lordships’ House, but also about the relationship between Parliament as a whole and the Executive. Those points have not been teased out or addressed fully in the proposals that have been put forward by the Government. My concern, which runs contrary to how the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, interprets this, is that tinkering at the edges and making changes that will have a fundamental impact while not assessing at the same time that impact on other parts of Parliament, does both this Chamber and the other place a disservice. It does not reflect an understanding of the impact that it can have. We have all seen the changes that have been made where it has been understood that there will be one impact, but that it has been far greater on this and the other place. I am concerned that we have not been given the explanations that are due to us. These two amendments offer some kind of grounding and validity for a number. We have debates around the issue of the implications of reducing the size of the other place that have centred on MPs’ workloads and financial issues. Indeed, I strongly recall the Prime Minister, David Cameron, making the case that it would save money to reduce the Members of the other place. He said that you can get more for less. In the end, you do not get more for less, and I think it does a disservice to this House to try to pretend that somehow we can squeeze more out of every Member of Parliament. My experience after 13 years in the other place is that the vast majority of Members of Parliament—there may be exceptions that others can perhaps identify—really value their role and treasure their relationship with their constituents. They work extraordinarily hard. To pick an arbitrary number and say that we will reduce by 10 per cent and go down to 600 Members undermines and undervalues the role that they play. If I was a Member of the other place at this time, I would rightly feel somewhat aggrieved by that. A point has been made about constituency issues. An MP’s relationship with their constituency is a precious one. We have heard in some of the debates tonight former Members of the other place speaking most affectionately about their constituencies and the links they still have to them. Those links continued for many years after they left the other place. Like me, many have taken their title from the constituencies that they represented. This is not a transitory, passing relationship; this is something embedded into a Member of Parliament. It is also embedded into those constituents. One part of my former constituency, over three sets of boundary changes, had been represented by three different MPs in three different constituencies. They had been moved from constituency to constituency in each set of boundary changes, and there was a lack of identity for that area. That is grossly unfair. If we propose, as in the Bill, to have boundary changes for almost every election, that sense of identity, belonging and engagement with the political process will be lost. We talk about the big society. The most important part of the big society is that constituents and the public feel engaged with the political process and able to contribute. If they do not recognise their constituency or their MP, they can hardly engage with the political process. The idea that we can draw lines on maps so that there are equal numbers and equal representation does not understand at all the relationship between the MP and the constituency, or the constituent and the MP. A point I made on Second Reading was that the size of the other place has an impact on the size and power of the Executive. If we are to reduce the overall number of Members of Parliament but not the size of the Executive, it would increase the power of the Executive. I do not think that is what the Prime Minister meant when he said that we would get more for less and costs would be reduced. It misleads people and really is unfair. It will not have that effect but it will increase the power of the Executive, which will be larger as a proportion of the Houses of Parliament as a whole. The noble Lords, Lord Knight of Weymouth and Lord Grocott, are, I think, moving away from plucking a number from thin air. If I understood where the figure of 600 came from, I might be more tolerant and give it greater validity. Not understanding it, and in the absence of any rationale, it is difficult to understand what the point of it is. The matter has been fundamentally understated in three areas: the relationship between the constituent and the Member of Parliament; the relationship between the two Houses; and the relationship between the Government, or the Executive, and Parliament. Both amendments, in their own way, seek to fill that vacuum to bring a rationale to the number of Members of Parliament that we should have in the other place. I am, perhaps, critical of these amendments and it would be helpful if noble Lords could respond at the end of the debate. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, says that instead of having a number, we should insert that the number of Members of the other place should be, "““decided once the membership and powers of a reformed House of Lords have been agreed by both Houses of Parliament””." What about the powers of the other place as well? It is all very well to talk about the powers of this House, which will be affected by the number of Members in another place. However, there is also an argument that the powers of the other place are affected by the number of Members. To enlarge on that, let us look at what the role of an MP is. We have not, as far as I have heard, discussed that so far in these debates. I have not heard the whole 19 hours, but I have heard a great proportion of them. What is the role of an MP? There is an argument that the scrutiny role of the other place has changed. It can be argued that Select Committees have greater influence and power. Chairs of Select Committees are now paid and selection has changed from being by appointment by the Whips. However, it can also be argued, with much legitimacy, that the growth of an MP’s work as a representative of their constituency has grown enormously. Look at the number of letters and the issues being raised—life is more complex for people. When I was first elected in 1997, the main issues that were brought to me included hospital waiting lists, although that died away over the course of the previous Government. There was a complexity to the issues towards the end of my time in the House of Commons. Life was complicated for people and they sometimes had difficulty managing. The first person from whom they sought help, support and advice was their Member of Parliament. That work was increasing significantly. If we think back to the 1800s, most Members of Parliament did their correspondence by hand. I am the very proud owner of several House of Commons passes from when members of the public were given a pass to attend the House of Commons that was not a printed one—issued in their thousands—but had been handwritten by individual MPs on headed notepaper. That was how one gained access to the House of Commons. In the 1800s Members would stand up in the Committee Corridor at the other end of the building and write to their correspondents by hand. They were able to do that. Then we moved into the 20th century. MPs got typewriters and some of them had secretaries. Could any Member of the other place now cope with their workload and correspondence without a fully staffed office, computers and technology? They could not. The volume of work that comes in is matched by the volume that goes out. One way to quantify this would be to look at the postage bill for Members of the other place. You would find that the number of letters in response to constituents has grown enormously.