Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, over the centuries, rivers have been essential to the characters and fortunes of the cities of this country. My noble friend Lord Harris of Haringey has given an account of the significance of the Thames in the life of London. In Our Mutual Friend, Dickens compellingly describes the myriad human lives on the Thames; the power of the river is a symbol of the power of the city. The noble Lord, Lord Cavendish of Furness, suggested, as a general proposition, that rivers unite while mountains divide. However, some of the speeches in this debate have demonstrated that that is too simply an antithesis. My noble friend Lady Morgan of Huyton has described convincingly the divide that the Mersey creates. Equally, I agree with my noble friend Lord Harris that the character of London south of the river feels and is profoundly different to the character of London north of the river. On the other hand, Newport, which I had the honour to represent in the House of Commons, is a city united by its river. Notwithstanding that the River Usk has one of the largest tidal rises and falls of any river, the history of Newport as a port astride the River Usk—and its subsequent history when the port was less important to its economy—has produced a state of affairs in which the Usk unites Newport West and Newport East very satisfyingly. In Norfolk, where I now live, the fortunes of the city of Norwich grew with the commerce and traffic on the River Yare, while the fortunes of King’s Lynn depended on the traffic on the Great Ouse. The tragedy of King’s Lynn was that the Great Ouse silted up and the town’s greatness waned from that point onwards. Whether rivers unite or divide—or whether, indeed, there is no river, in which case it is not an issue—almost all our major cities and towns have grown up astride a river and, I would say, have been unified by a river. Birmingham is an oddity; it is perhaps the one great city in this country that does not have a river. I broadly accept the proposition of the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish of Furness—with the important exceptions that have already been discussed—but the point is that this matters and people have strong feelings about it. It is foolish of the Government to design legislation that will, in practice, make it difficult for the boundary commissioners to take adequate account of this extremely important factor. The Government will certainly say that, under rule 5 in Clause 11, the Boundary Commission has a measure of discretion to take account of important geographical factors. However, as we have argued almost to the point of wearying ourselves and others, because of the other constraints in the Bill it is not possible for the boundary commissioners to give proper attention to this. Given the exceptions outlined in rule 5 to take account of geographical considerations, the alignment of local authorities—presumably one of the problems about the creation of the constituency of Tyne Bridge was that the Member of Parliament representing Tyne Bridge would have to relate to different local authorities on either side of the Tyne—local ties and inconveniencies, on all the grounds set out in the rule it must be right for the boundary commissioners to be able to take account of the significance of rivers. The consideration of the significance of rivers has underlined the point that we have been making again and again. We need two things: a wider tolerance than 5 per cent either side of the numerical norm; and a continuation of the rights of people to give evidence to the boundary commissioners in public inquiries. If they were able to do so, my noble friends Lord Graham of Edmonton, Lord Dixon, from Jarrow, and Lady Armstrong of Hill Top—all of whom have spoken eloquently and with strong feeling about the significance of rivers in the parts of England that they understand intimately in political terms and about which they care deeply—would give evidence to those public inquiries and press on the boundary commissioners the fact that, while appearing to be, perhaps, an accident of geography and history, this is a factor of emotional, almost visceral, importance to the people whose lives are made on these riversides.