My Lords, Brecon and Radnorshire, let me count the ways I love thee. It was quite a tie to come up to the House to be able to present my case for the constituency in person this afternoon when I saw the weather forecast suggesting 24 degrees today. I believe strongly that it should remain a single constituency, but perhaps more importantly, I have sought the views of the present Member, Fay Jones, as to whether it should be a single seat. All the views of existing Members of Parliament on their constituencies and boundaries have to be taken with a pinch of salt. As an invariable rule, they want no changes in the boundaries unless they think it is going to bring in a lot of extra votes for them, in which case they may well favour changes, but Fay Jones has established herself as a well-liked local representative of the people.
She writes as follows: “Brecon and Radnorshire is an outstanding constituency but it is not without its challenges”—you can say that again. “It stretches from Ystradgynlais”—did I get that right, I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter?—“in the south-west corner of the constituency 60 miles north of Swansea to Knighton in the north-east, 10 miles west of Ludlow”. Towns include, “Brecon, Crickhowell, Talgarth, Builth Wells, Llandrindod Wells, Presteigne, Knighton, Rhayader, and Ystradgynlais itself—a huge variety and more than 3,000 kilometres, which is bigger than Luxembourg. I frequently have a 63-mile drive to get from one meeting to the next, taking well over an hour and a half to drive between meetings. Considering the additional challenge of sub-standard broadband and mobile signal, it is still essential to travel to face-to-face meetings as much as possible. Covering such a large rural area takes a huge amount of time and energy and, while I hope I am still young enough to do the role justice, an even bigger constituency may reduce the quality and frequency of the service offered by the Member of Parliament.” I endorse all that.
4.30 pm
If the Minister’s position was that the 5% rule was universal and had to apply everywhere, that would be a position that I could respect, though I would not agree with it. However, the Government have driven their own coach and horses through that by designating certain constituencies that do not have to come within the 5% rule. Indeed, that list has been growing. When we started off on this process, it was just the Orkneys and the Western Isles. I know the Western Isles from when I went up as a journalist to cover Calum MacDonald’s campaign there once. It took me a lot longer to get there than it took me to research and write the piece, so I could see the point in that case, but it has since been extended to the two seats in the Isle of Wight and
to Ynys Môn. With those extensions, the case has gradually been watered down. It is a 10-minute ferry ride to the Isle of Wight: it is not like going on an airplane to Scotland and then on another one to Stornoway. For Ynys Môn, there is not even an unusual journey to be done: you just get on the Menai Bridge and you are there. If I may make the point, you have to get across the Severn Bridge to get from here to Brecon and Radnorshire. The fact that something is an island is not in itself sufficient to justify it being a separate constituency.
Moreover, Brecon and Radnorshire is a much larger constituency than nearly all of those listed as special cases. Only the Western Isles is bigger, by a smidgen. Of the Isle of Wight constituencies, the largest is 1/20th of the physical area of Brecon and Radnorshire. Furthermore, it requires less messing with electoral quotas. I do not remember the exact figure, but in the Western Isles it is about 20,000 voters. Brecon and Radnorshire would be 57,000 voters, roughly three-quarters of the electoral quota. It does not quite meet my noble friend Lord Hain’s 15% suggestion, but it is not that far out. It is wrong to suggest that it makes a difference that these others are islands, when they are linked so closely to the mainland. It does not make a difference. Compared to the amount of distortion in the Minister’s preferred option of 5% either way, the amount of distortion in the case of Brecon and Radnorshire is much less than in the case of most of those mentioned.
I am a numbers person, but there is more to local ties and local constituencies than simply square mileage. Brecon and Radnorshire has an absolutely fascinating recent political history. I first went there in 1979 as part of the entourage of Jim Callaghan, the then Prime Minister for whom I worked, in the delightful setting of the Brecon town hall, where he was supporting Caerwyn Roderick, the Labour MP for Brecon and Radnor, who unfortunately did not hold his seat. More recently, there was a by-election there in 1985; the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, would, I am sure, remember it very well. The key things I remember about it were these: first, this was an election that the official opinion polls got totally wrong. There was a poll done by a university down there that got it bang on. I pointed this out in a piece that I wrote for the Sunday Times at the time. Many Members present will recognise this. I then got a phone call from Bob Worcester, whose firm MORI had been responsible for the ghastly, wildly inaccurate poll, berating my extraordinary ignorance for congratulating the people who got it right. That conversation will remain with me for years to come, with many others from the great Bob Worcester.
Secondly, another consequence of the by-election was the return of Richard Livsey. It took some time before that came to affect my life. Richard Livsey was Lord Livsey of Talgarth when he came to this place. I was Lipsey and I lived in Talgarth, unlike him. Day after day, therefore, huge piles of post would arrive for me which were in fact intended for Lord Livsey of Talgarth. The letters did not detain me terribly long, because they were nearly all in Welsh, and I was not able to decipher them before passing them to the great Lord Livsey.
Finally, the constituency entered political history as a result of Chris Davies, the sitting Conservative MP. He was a good friend of mine, but he was unseated by his constituents after losing a legal case and was replaced by a Lib Dem. The Lib Dem was replaced by Fay Jones. This might sound like gossip, but it is a bit more than gossip. Places are a bit more than just registers in town halls. Places have a history and that is the political history of Brecon and Radnor. When you start adding bits to them which have nothing to do with that history, that history is by definition diluted, and therefore the sense of community, which is hard to create in a constituency of that size, is under threat from the additional bits that have popped on to the back of it.
I should probably draw stumps there. Fay Jones and I will be asking for a meeting with the Minister and the Cabinet Office Minister, Chloe Smith, to debate these points with them. As I said, if 5% applied everywhere, it would be difficult to make a special case for Brecon and Radnorshire. However, special cases have been recognised by the Government; there is no reason why they should be confined to islands when there are other anomalous and strong cases such as that of Brecon and Radnorshire. I therefore strongly hope that this evening, preferably—but if not this evening, before Report—the Minister will be persuaded and we shall have news that Brecon and Radnorshire is to be preserved for posterity.