Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, we have had an interesting debate on interesting subjects, and we look forward to hearing the Minister respond. The principle behind this group of amendments matches that which motivates the next amendment, Amendment 71A, in my name and that of my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer. The stringency of the Government’s proposals as we see it—the inflexibility of the rules set out in the Bill, the strict adherence to a tight mathematical formula and the lack of discretion given to the boundary commissioners in carrying out their work—will have damaging effects on our system. The Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House reported on the proposed equalisation of constituencies in this Bill, and wrote: "““Applying the new rules as to equalisation will necessitate the creation of constituencies crossing regional and county boundaries; in addition, many more constituencies than at present will cross local authority boundaries. This has significant administrative and political consequences, in terms of such matters as electoral administration and party political organisation. The pace of change is unlikely to lessen such administrative and political challenges and, indeed, seems likely to make them more difficult to manage””." It went on: "““The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee heard evidence from Democratic Audit that the new rules as to equalisation were being imposed ‘without any attempt to form a consensus’ and without the Government having first investigated what people actually want from representation. There did not appear to be any evidence that the electorate considers equalisation to be significantly more important than, say, geographical, customary or traditional boundaries””." The committee concluded: "““Pre-legislative scrutiny and public consultation would have enabled a better assessment of whether the new rules as to equalisation are overly rigid””." It has come to be expected that those of your Lordships’ colleagues who sit on that committee—and I remind this Committee that they come from all parts of the House—are always entirely wise and sensible in their assessment. We certainly think so. The Deputy Prime Minister has made it clear that it is the Government’s intention to retain wards as the building blocks of the new constituencies. In Select Committee evidence, the Deputy Prime Minister said, "““we consulted with the boundary commissioners in great detail and they were unambiguous. We set the figure at 5 per cent because they said: ‘If you set it at any less than 5 per cent, we will not be able to use ward boundaries as the building blocks for our boundary review, and if you want us to do it by’—I forget the exact date—‘October or December 2013, we must be able to use wards as the continued building blocks of constituency boundaries. We can do that to within 5 per cent on either side of the threshold’””." The very same Boundary Commissions have also said—I am afraid in contradiction to what the right honourable Deputy Prime Minister asserted: "““The changes to the total number of constituencies, and the tighter limits on the number of electors in each constituency, will result in a complete redrawing of constituency boundaries ... The electoral parity target may require the Commissions to work with electorate data below ward level in many cases””." It may be that those two conclusions can be put together or that the Government feel a bit aggrieved at having received incorrect advice, but these two pieces of evidence cannot hide the fact that, on taking more time to assess the implication of the Government’s plans, the Boundary Commissions have been forced to change their assessment. The fact is that their belief is that wards will be split, and the notable academic, Professor Ron Johnston, agrees. Why does this matter and how much does it matter? As has been said during the course of the debate, wards are the building blocks of our constituency map and have been regarded as such for a very long time indeed. They, of course, vary in size across the United Kingdom—my noble friend Lord Rooker said that a few minutes ago—most starkly between urban centres such as Birmingham, which has always had large wards, and rural villages. Wards form the basis of community representation. Local councillors represent particular wards and clusters of wards are joined together to make up parliamentary seats. Local political parties and the key grass-root activity of leafleting are organised at ward level. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, made it clear in his speech that wards have advantages for, among others, political parties fighting elections. The problem is that the proposals contained in the Bill paint a fragmented and disjointed picture of representation. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, made an interesting comment about the present seat of Oldham and Saddleworth. Having visited it only briefly, I do not want to sound as though I am some expert on it, but the noble Lord is quite right: it contains remarkably different elements of the make-up of our country. The truth is that, apart from now having a remarkably good Member of Parliament, it also has a very strange mixture of the country within its confines. If this Bill were to become law, we would have many more seats such as Oldham and Saddleworth than we do at the moment because of the iron rule of numbers. In my view, that would be a pity. It is not an appropriate type of seat for this country. It is fine if we have one or two such seats, but to have many Oldham and Saddleworths would cause more difficulties than not. As far as these amendments are concerned, we on the Front Bench prefer the factors to guide boundary redrawing contained in our Amendment 71A, but we believe that these amendments are sensible and warrant—and I am sure will get—a proper response from the Minister.