Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, like my colleagues, I think there are many problems with the Bill. The biggest problem is that the Government failed to consult with local people before they dreamt up their proposals. I say that because in my experience as, I hesitate to say, a local councillor for nearly 25 years, as a leader of a local authority and as a Member of Parliament for 13 years, when faced with proposals that they feel cut across their sense of community and identity as a result of a boundary review, local people feel very strongly about some of the issues that the Bill relegates to secondary importance in favour of a rigid mathematical formulation. It is a great pity that the Government did not consult local people about these proposals before they put them forward because, had they done so, they would have come up with a different formulation. It may be useful if I recount to noble Lords one such experience during those 25 years when the Boundary Commission made a proposal, which would be common with the measures in this Bill, to split my then constituency and form a new constituency in the Greater Manchester area of the north-west of England. The Boundary Commission’s proposals during my period as an MP would have taken five wards from the north of my former constituency in Old Trafford, next to Manchester City centre, and linked them with four or five wards in the neighbouring local authority of Salford. At that time there were no straightforward bus routes between those wards in the different local authorities. To get there by car one had to go over the M60 motorway, and by public transport one would have to go into the centre of Manchester and out again to get from Trafford to Salford or vice versa. The reaction of local people to the proposal from the Boundary Commission was loud and vociferous; they rehearsed many of the arguments that my noble friends have put in this Chamber. It was not because the people of Old Trafford rejected the people of Salford or vice versa but because they already identified with different communities represented by the constituencies of which they were already a part—the Old Trafford wards were part of the Trafford local authority; the Salford wards were part of Salford local authority. Those involved emphasised the importance of the communities in those areas; the differences between the communities in Old Trafford and in that part of Salford; they talked about the sense of identity and place to which my noble friend Lady Farrington referred; and they argued strongly that they wanted coherence of representation from both their local councillors and, particularly, their Members of Parliament. They wanted to feel that they shared the Member of Parliament who represented the whole area of which they were a part, and that that Member of Parliament and that constituency would reflect the history, the geography, the boundary, the proximity and other mechanisms through which people reinforce their sense of identity—local newspapers, schools and so on. It is unthinkable that wards should be split across different constituencies by boundaries being redrawn. If noble Lords think through the implications of that for political parties, local people and local authorities, they may feel it would be a chaotic situation for all concerned. In building on wards it is important that local people should feel that they have got that sense of identity and coherence in the constituency as a whole. By and large, from my experience, I believe that where possible a constituency should contain a whole local authority and not be split. Those are the direct concerns of constituents, in my experience. A second consideration—my noble friend Lord Howarth touched on this—which indirectly is also important for local people, is how easy or more difficult it is for a Member of Parliament to do their job in the situation I have described. If that had come about, the Member of Parliament would have had to relate to two local authorities—Trafford and Salford; to two primary care trusts; to two major hospitals; and to two police divisions. Indeed, given the inability of people to go from one side of the constituency to the other because of the transport difficulties I have outlined, the provision of advice services across the constituency would be very problematic. If you are a Member of Parliament you feel strongly that you want to do the best for your constituency, your area; you want to champion it; you want to chivvy at the heels of central and local government and of the government agencies that provide important services such as health, transport, security and policing. If you are doing that in relation to two different areas and you are doubling up on the number of bodies with which you have to liaise—which often have different interests, as my noble friends have outlined—you cannot do a proper job for either one of those places. In the example I have given, the proposal by the Boundary Commission would have meant a much safer Labour seat for me, combining my safest wards in Old Trafford with Salford instead of with some of the other Trafford wards. However, that was not an important factor. The important consideration was whether we could end up with a recommendation that provided the coherence of community and identity that local people wanted and make it possible for the Member of Parliament to do a good job for that area. I am happy to say that, as a result of the public inquiry, to which local people came in their droves unsolicited, and made all of these points and more to the Boundary Commission, the recommendations were changed and the principles of community and so on were upheld. That is exactly the kind of flexibility of judgment applied by the Boundary Commission to which my noble friend Lord Grocott referred. As with many other such endeavours, the issue cannot be reduced to a simple mathematical equation when you are dealing with people and their sense of place and community, and when geographical barriers and idiosyncratic issues of history and geography are involved. I shall reserve my other arguments for later when further amendments come forward. I support the amendment.