My Lords, I was sorry not to be in the House on Tuesday when tributes were paid to the departing Leader. What was said was very well said, I wish I had been there to say something too.
When my name appeared on this amendment, I was summoned by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, to explain myself. There was a little bit of the headmaster’s study about it, but it was done with his customary style and charm. I will explain to the House why my name is on this amendment in exactly the terms that I explained it to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. It is for reasons that are to do with Scotland. I believe that the largest threat at the moment to the constitutional settlement in these islands is the secession referendum in Scotland next year. The First Minister of Scotland is an extremely skilful politician, and one needs to be very careful of being complacent about where the public opinion polls are. The Scots, who are extremely good at grievances, have in the boundary changes and the changes to the number of constituencies, a very real grievance. Unusually for the Scots, the grievance is real. The reduction in the number of constituencies in England will be 6%, in Scotland it will be 12%.
When we were debating the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act, I argued several times that we should take due account when we were considering the size of constituencies and the size of the franchise—the 5% either way—we should take account of peripherality and sparsity, the distance from London, the difficulty of the MP’s job, and the difficulty of getting round the constituency if it was an enormous one. I remind noble Lords that the coastline of Argyll is longer than the coastline of France. If we look at the results, we see that leaving aside the four island constituencies, the two Scottish island constituencies, and the two on the Isle of Wight, the average Scottish constituency fetches up considerably larger than the average English constituency. This seems to be a perverse reading of the principles of peripherality and sparsity.
I do not wish to see this proceeded with in advance of the secession referendum in Scotland. It would be perpetually argued in the campaign that the numbers show Westminster less and less willing to listen to Scottish concerns and that defending Scottish interests requires secession, something I profoundly disagree with.
I remind noble Lords that the suggested reduction to 52 seats in Scotland is on top of the reduction from 72 11 years ago. The number went down in 2005 to 59, now it is to go down again to 52. The reason it went down in 2005 is to do with devolution. Once we have dealt with the secession threat, once we have secured the right result on the referendum, we need to come to the West Lothian question, but I do not believe that any of us in this House believe that the right answer to the West Lothian question is to make it more and more difficult for Scottish Members of the United Kingdom Parliament to do their job. I think that most of us believe that the right answer is to have Scottish MPs not voting in the Westminster Parliament on matters where they would be voting only on English, Irish or Welsh law. If we succeed, I think that we will have a chance to come back to the question. That is the moment when we should consider how many Westminster seats there should be for Scotland.
Urged by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and because I have great respect for the clerks, I have considered very carefully the question of relevance. I admit that I have considerable difficulty with a definition of “relevance” which is so narrow and so far removed from what the outside world would understand. The subject matters of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act and this Electoral Registration and Administration Bill are inextricably intertwined. The argument was explained most clearly in our earlier discussion in Committee by the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan. The intertwining is particularly close during the present transitional phase as regards registration. Every constituency in the land is changed by the PVSC and it seems quixotic to use data which are so out of date and will be so radically altered by the new registration arrangements. The matters clearly are closely connected. We see from the quotation from Erskine May circulated with the Leader’s letter that amendments relating to the purposes of the Bill, if it has only one or two purposes,
“or touching on matters closely connected with them”,
can be considered as relevant. I cannot conceive of anything more closely connected than the issues that we are talking about now.
Were we in the House of Commons, and were we being guided by Erskine May, there would be no question but that this was an admissible amendment to the Bill. After deep thought, I am encouraged to stick to my guns by the advice that we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, when she told us of her experience in handling such tricky matters in the other place. I was heartened by what she said. She urged us to rise to our responsibilities. It is for us to decide; we cannot delegate that task to the clerks to decide for us. It is for us to make up our minds, and it is in that spirit that I maintain my support for the amendment and hope that the Committee will vote for it.