Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, in speaking to this group of amendments, I bear in mind the exchange that has just taken place in your Lordships’ House. I hope that whoever replies from the government Front Bench will accept that these are important amendments, which are worthy of discussion, particularly bearing in mind what has just been said about the need for your Lordships’ House to act as a revising Chamber. Most of the matters covered by this group of amendments were not debated in the other place for various reasons. I do not particularly blame the Government for that. Some of us who have been around for a while—at least in the other place—were not particularly happy about some of the proposals made after the 1997 general election to revise the sitting hours of the House of Commons. We pointed out that some time—that time is now but we pointed it out even back then—the Labour Party would be in opposition and might well regret that the number of hours available for debate for many of these important matters would be curtailed under those proposals to amend the hours of the other place, which were accepted. So much legislation now comes before your Lordships’ House not debated at all or, if debated, done so under a time limit and certainly without any great thoroughness. I repeat: that particularly applies to this group of amendments. I hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, will bear that in mind when he comes to reply and will acknowledge that this group contains some serious and relevant proposals for the improvement of this piece of legislation. I labelled him ““the nice Lord”” last week, which probably did not enhance his career greatly among his colleagues but I meant it anyway. On Amendment 68, the fact that so many of your Lordships have already expressed concerns about the new constituencies crossing county boundaries is worth repeating, albeit briefly. After all, the county councils—the 48 ceremonial counties, as they were known—were set up as long ago as 1888 by the Local Government Act of that year. Although further reforms took place in the back end of the 19th century, the counties were significantly formed in 1929, when many of the powers available to those county councils were increased. They were largely curtailed by the Local Government Act 1972, which led to the demise of some local authorities, such as the Ridings of Yorkshire and Westmoreland, to name but two. Concern has been expressed in your Lordships’ House over the course of the debate about the prospect of the new constituencies crossing county boundaries. I do not wish to repeat anything that was said. I understand that people in Devon and Cornwall feel very strongly about these matters, as do some Members of the other House. I indicated when I got to my feet that much of this legislation has not been properly debated in the House of Commons. However, much of it was reported on by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of the Commons, which had the following to say about constituencies crossing other boundaries, particularly as far as county councils are concerned. Page 25 of its report on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, under the heading ““Constituencies crossing other boundaries””, says at paragraph 78: "““Requiring all constituencies to be within 5% of the electoral quota would mean … the creation of constituencies crossing regional and county boundaries, not least in Cornwall and Devon. Keep Cornwall Whole, a cross-party group campaigning against this aspect of the Bill, told us””—" that is, the committee— "““that creating a constituency with a number of historical, political and geographical identities would pose a serious challenge to the local MP, and that””—" here the committee quoted Keep Cornwall Whole— "““‘there is a severe risk that elements of it will go under-represented or indeed unrepresented.’ They have stated that loosening the equalisation requirement for constituencies to within 10% of the electoral quota would mean avoiding the need for a constituency to cross the Devon-Cornwall border””." I hope that the Government will look carefully at that report and will see what they can do to prevent constituencies crossing county borders. One of the main reasons behind this part of the legislation—the new constituency sizes—was given by Her Majesty’s Government as the need to save money. Removing 50 or 60 Members of the other place would, it was said, save millions of pounds. I remind your Lordships, particularly the Conservative Members, that those of us who were active in local government in the early 1970s remember the Local Government Act 1972 because of its creation of metropolitan county councils. Many of us pointed out at the time that the creation of metropolitan county councils would be an extremely expensive exercise. So it proved to be. Chief officers of those local authorities rightly expected—and got—substantial pay increases because of the size of the population for which they were responsible. However, the Local Government Act 1972 went ahead and the metropolitan county councils were created. They came into being in 1974. Within 12 years, a Conservative Government decided to abolish the metropolitan county councils. I do not say that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, who is replying to this debate, has any responsibility for that, but it would be an interesting financial comparison if he told us how much that particular exercise—the creation of metropolitan county councils and their abolition within 12 years—cost the taxpayers of this country. I would hazard a guess that it was considerably more than the supposed savings to be made from the abolition of 50 or 60 Members of the other place. I hope that the noble and learned Lord will give us some figures so that we can compare and see just how genuine this supposed saving is going to be for the British tax payer. Amendment 69 refers to the number of local authority boundaries in the new constituencies. I plead no superiority over any other Member of your Lordships’ House who did not serve in the other place, but I know that the Minister who is replying did serve there. He knows, as I know, the difficulties of constituency Members of Parliament and the importance for them of establishing and retaining a relationship with senior officers as well as councillors in the local government area in which their constituency lies. As with noble Lords of all parties who have served in the other place, I met constituents who came to me with problems that were entirely a matter for the local authority. I said at one of our earlier debates that some of my colleagues down the Corridor, perhaps with more courage than I, would say to those constituents who came with purely local government problems: ““This is nothing to do with your Member of Parliament, take it to your local councillor””. Many of us, with some difficulty perhaps as far as our parliamentary majorities were concerned, did not see that as a proper way forward, and took up those matters on behalf of those constituents. The relationship with senior councillors and officers—directors as they became, thanks to the Local Government Act 1972—was such that I could ring, let us say, the director of some particular function in Sandwell Council, which lay in my own constituency; I would not say ““Do this”” or ““This must be done””, because Members of Parliament in the other place have no such powers, but I would say, because of the relationship I had established, ““Would you look personally at this particular case?””. Quite often I got a reply saying ““We didn’t handle that very well and this is what I propose to do””. That is entirely a normal relationship and one that noble Lords of all parties who served in the other place will be familiar with. I put it to your Lordships how much more difficult it would be to do that with two or three different local authorities in a constituency.