Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, I assume that I will not be accused of filibustering if my first remarks are not as relevant to the amendment as my later ones will be. They are to enable those who have more pressing engagements to leave the Chamber. Such very modest success as I have achieved in my life has been due to one thing only, and that is people confusing me with the genuinely world-class economist, Richard Lipsey—Lipsey being a very rare name. That name got me into Oxford, it got me out of Oxford and it got me most of the jobs for which I have applied. I assure the House that we will come to some relevance in a minute. Richard Lipsey is known to anyone who has studied economics at university as the author of An Introduction to Positive Economics, the standard textbook. However, among economists, his main reputation is founded on the paper that he wrote with Kelvin Lancaster in 1956 called The General Theory of Second Best; and, in pursuing the guru’s great career, the amendment that I put before noble Lords today concerns the practice of second best. It is a practical second-best solution to the problem that has been bugging the House throughout proceedings on this Bill. This problem, which has emerged from so many debates that by now the penny must surely have dropped, is the extreme rigidity of the Government’s proposed 5 per cent variance in constituency size. There is complete consensus in the House that there should be greater equality in the size of constituencies—that is not in question—but there is no consensus that that should be within the 5 per cent limit, under which only 36 per cent of present constituencies would qualify. I make no apology for saying again that the best solution to this issue would be to move, wholly or perhaps in part, to a 10 per cent variance, which would, at a stroke, remove nearly all the problems that we have with this Bill. No doubt it would also prolong the nights of sleep which some of us are enjoying at the moment, because it would then be a much better Bill. I say that yet again without hesitation. The second best solution is the one incorporated in this amendment. It is not a full substitute for 10 per cent. It might be a modest supplement to 10 per cent, and it is designed with that in mind. I understand from what the Leader of the House said yesterday—and very welcome it was—that discussions are taking place. I trust that that is happening and I hope that this amendment might provide some grist for that mill. The amendment starts from the chunk of the existing Bill that is rule 5. Rule 5 lays out that the Boundary Commission can take account of special geographical considerations. Those would include the following: size, shape and accessibility of a constituency; local government boundaries; local ties; any inconvenience that it would cause by change; and, mirabile dictu, as a result of the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, last night and accepted by the Government, existing constituencies. It is a very good list. I commend the Government for accepting the amendment on rule 5. It is a great improvement on similar provisions in previous Acts on this subject. I echo the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, who has referred to the British Academy’s study of the subject, which says that these are a big improvement and that they have the enormous advantage that now we do not have rules that contradict rules within the system; we have rules that make perfectly good sense and stand up. You could add one other exception to the list of exceptions. It is not a subject of this amendment, but we could consider it. It is the problem, which came to light in our earlier debates, of some seats having very low electorates compared with population. In one case the electorate was only half of the population. Therefore it would tend, under the Government’s proposal, to end up underrepresented and with an MP who has far too great a workload, but that is cavilling. I very much like the proposals set out in that list, except for this; unfortunately, they have only a very limited effect because these exceptions—and they are exceptions—can apply only within the 5 per cent limit. Whatever bizarre shape a constituency might be, however many local authorities it might include, whatever local ties will be shattered—one thinks again of the Welsh valley constituencies—and however much inconvenience the change might make, none of these counts for anything should the seat differ by one single registered elector from the 5 per cent limit laid down in the Bill. My noble friend Lord Kinnock rightly described the resulting rule as a ““eunuch rule””. It is castrated from having the effect that it should have because no exception is made to the 5 per cent rule. I was trying to devise a way around that restriction so that second best could apply and we would get some progress on the rigidity, which has been recognised from all sides of the House. This amendment would do this because, if the Boundary Commission thinks that a particular case is exceptional and cannot appropriately be accommodated within the 5 per cent rule, the special circumstances take priority over the 5 per cent. In other words, the constituency becomes an exceptional constituency, and that takes priority over the other provisions in rules 1 to 4. Where might it apply? At the moment, the Isle of Wight is dealt with directly, although it might not be when the Bill has been to the other place. The Isle of Wight is a good case, because it is one of the few anomalies that would not be dealt with by a 10 per cent rule, because the electorate is just too big. The Boundary Commission might well decide—because it would be a matter for the Boundary Commission, not for politicians—that in view of the very strong feeling of the islanders and their MP the Isle of Wight was an exceptional case that should be exempted. That would occur under my amendment. My amendment would also deal with the Cornish problem, which we will come to later. If the Boundary Commission agreed that the case of Cornwall was as strong as the case that it has put to Members of this House, it could exempt Cornwall under these terms. It could also exempt the other very difficult problem, which I am not sure is fully recognised yet, which is that of the valley constituencies in Wales. The thought of having constituencies divided by unclimbable mountain ranges is absurd, and the Boundary Commission might well take that into account. A case has been made very well in this House for some of the big semi-island constituencies of Scotland. I also pray in aid the case of Brecon and Radnor, which I argued in this House to very widespread support, including from the Cross Benches, last night. However, this is a very narrowly drawn amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, is not in his place at the moment, sadly, but he has argued strongly for no exemptions, which is a perfectly viable point of view, although I suspect that he will not be booking his holidays in the Western Isles in the near future because he might not have the enjoyable time that we would all wish him to have. However, among those in this House who are not, like the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, absolutists about this and who agree that there should be some exemptions, this is still a very narrowly drawn provision. It is narrowly drawn for two reasons. First, it says that the cases must be exceptionally strong, not just a minor matter of a road here or a community there, and judged as such by the Boundary Commissions in their independent wisdom. The amendment then says that the provision applies only if it cannot be accommodated within the 5 per cent. If you can accommodate the exceptional circumstances within the 5 per cent, that is well and good; that is what the Boundary Commission should do, according to the amendment. I emphasise that the amendment is narrowly drawn for this reason. When faced with other amendments, including the issue of 10 per cent, Ministers have pointed out—and the first half of this point is certainly fair—that the disparity in the size of constituencies has grown despite the fact that the Boundary Commission is already supposed to aim at equality. They draw from that the implication that there will be a constant and underlying drift to more and more exceptions if the Boundary Commission is given more freedom. We can disagree about how desirable it is to allow drift, but I hope we would not disagree too strongly that it is right that the Boundary Commission should have an important say, at least in these judgments, as to how much there is. However, given the word ““exceptional””, and given that the 5 per cent must be tried for wherever possible, I really do not think that there is room for drift. I am sure that the Boundary Commission will have read carefully debates in your Lordships' House and another place and will have understood and taken on board the universal view on every side of both Houses that we need a greater equality of constituency size, taking in some of the arguments as to how that has changed over the years, so that we can now go for greater equality without prejudicing the result or affecting the rights of MPs—or, most importantly, their constituents. I do not believe that there is a serious risk that this measure will lead to unreasonable drift or that we will get a huge crop of exceptions as opposed to half a dozen or a dozen. If it did, it would be perfectly open to the Government to legislate to change the rules so that that did not happen in future. We have five-yearly reviews of constituencies. I regret that, but one advantage would be that it would not even take very long. It might be all skew-whiff once, but then the Government would no doubt get support if they said that they wanted to remove the rule in their discretion because it was being abused. In the light of the debates that we have had in both Houses, I am sure that they would get fair wind for that, but I would be astonished if it ever proved necessary to go down that line. My amendment would also fit very well with the wider 10 per cent variance, for which there has been much support throughout this House. There would be a consensus in favour of it, if a couple of people were excluded from the discussion, one of whom is probably the Prime Minister. I hope that flexibility is occurring even there. If the 10 per cent went through, this would be a partner to it, to deal with the Isle of Wight case. There might be one or two others, although it is hard to do that without the detailed figures. The amendment would also fit with another amendment if the Government were worried that this went too wide. The Government could decide to deal with the Isle of Wight by a specific exemption and go above 5 per cent if they needed to, to accommodate exceptional circumstances, but with a limit to say that they could not go beyond 10 per cent to cope with exceptional circumstances. The Government could easily bring forward amendments on Report that included the principle of this amendment, which would prevent the proposal from going too wide. This is a modest amendment, but I mean it sincerely and I hope in my heart that the Government will give it a fair wind. I have a more remote but, I hope, not empty hope that it might play some part in the kind of negotiations that are needed to resolve the dangerous impasse in which the House finds itself.