Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I wish to speak specifically to Amendment 69, which states: "““Each constituency shall contain only whole local government wards””." I want to address that from a practical point of view, but, first, I endorse what my noble friends have said about the importance of retaining a sense of community and the significance of the relationship between the elected representative and the community that he or she works with and gets to know. I am sure that any noble Lord, whether they have been a Member of the other place or not, would acknowledge that elected representatives for a particular community achieve much more when they work together—be it at the local authority level, the devolved Administration level or the parliamentary level. Often that comes into its own in a crisis. I saw it in particular a decade ago, at the height of the foot and mouth outbreak. It did not affect my constituency but, as I was then the Secretary of State for Scotland, I saw it in the Borders of Scotland, particularly around Dumfries and Galloway. Political differences were put aside and people worked together for the good of their own community. I experienced it in my former constituency when the Boots factory was closed. For decades, all Boots’s cosmetics had been made in a factory in Airdrie when suddenly, completely out of the blue, a decision was taken to close that factory, costing more than 1,000 jobs, largely those of women. The community and the elected representatives came together. We dabble with that at our peril. It is a heartening sight to see elected representatives come together but there is also a less than positive element. If a constituency boundary divides a ward, a local councillor will have responsibility for two different parliamentary constituencies—and not always do constituencies agree. Local issues can emerge that cause conflict between one constituency and the neighbouring constituency. I am thinking specifically of issues such as the closure of part of a hospital. For example, the accident and emergency department of my local district hospital was transferred to the district hospital in the adjacent constituency, which caused an extremely fraught debate. People were distressed as a consequence because it meant a much longer journey for those who had cars, while those who did not have cars would have to go from central Lanarkshire into Glasgow and back out again. The journey for people with cars would take a quarter to half an hour, but those without cars would perhaps have to give up an entire day. I wanted the accident and emergency department to remain in the constituency of Airdrie and Shotts, whereas my colleague Frank Roy wanted it to go to Wishaw General Hospital. That kind of thing happens with astonishing regularity. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, perhaps sees that one of the few benefits of a constituency that is all islands is that it is all your own, whereas in the more urban areas such issues of conflict can arise. This is particularly true in relation to schools and we see it a lot at the moment in Scotland. Schools are often the bulwark of a community and sometimes, often for good and sound educational reasons, schools need to be merged. A councillor could be faced with the challenge of a school having to be moved from one part of his ward to another. If the move crossed the constituency boundary, it would put two adjacent Members of Parliament into conflict. It is not an edifying sight and it does not help a local community to remain coherent. There is also a problem where wards are villages. Given the way in which the Bill is drafted, in a ward that is a village a situation could arise—for example, as a consequence of a new housing development—where the village becomes too big to remain as a part of one ward. A chunk would then get taken off it and be put into a ward based in another village, even though that village might be five or six miles away. That would break down the community’s cohesion. I do not want to delay the House unduly on this matter but we need some common sense in relation to the building blocks of constituencies. We need to take into account how people do the day-to-day work of representing communities and we need to be seen to be responsive to the sense of involvement that individuals have in their communities, be it in the community organisations to which the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, referred, or in the formal structures that make up the building blocks for the Boundary Commission that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, spoke about. I urge the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, to reflect seriously on this matter, because there are practical difficulties that will cause us great distress in the future if we do not get them right now.