Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill (Eighteenth sitting)

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Committee Debate: 18th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 14th November 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

Once again we find ourselves here, adjourning for what I think is the 17th or 18th time—I cannot remember how many. We will soon reach the one-year anniversary of this Bill’s Second Reading. I know that because it passed on the day before my birthday.

In that time, very little has happened to progress this Bill. We were told initially to wait for the Boundary Commission to report. It has reported. We are now told that we are waiting for the civil servants to draft the orders required for the vote to happen in the House, and again that has not been forthcoming. I have had my private Member’s Bill drafted from scratch in that time, so if Ministers and civil servants need help, I suggest they ask the Public Bill Office or other parts of the House to assist them, if that is what is causing the delay.

My constituents are aware that the Boundary Commission has reported. They are in great uncertainty. They ask me what is going on, and all I can say to them is that once again we are adjourning and we have no idea when the Bill will progress, whether there will be a vote and whether it will progress at all. This morning, I had a conversation with a former Cabinet Minister of this Government; she seemed quite surprised that we were still adjourning and had not resolved the matter.

All I ask is that the Minister does whatever she can to progress this Bill. There is great uncertainty; people are concerned about the fact that it is not making progress. My council is doing a boundary review of its wards now, so all that is changing and pushing it further away. It makes nonsense of our voting—or not voting—on legislation that looked at the electorate in 2015 and at boundaries that may no longer exist. For that reason, great speed is needed to progress this. I urge the Minister to do all she can to make sure that the Bill progresses, otherwise we could vote on what came forward previously from the Boundary Commission.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

I simply want to pass comment on the starting point of the Bill’s promoter, the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton. I make no comment on the United States’s politics or conduct, but in relation to the United Kingdom he made some quite unfounded insinuations about gerrymandering and voter suppression, which is, frankly, quite offensive, let alone ridiculous. That has nothing to do with the way that we conduct either our elections here, nor our independent boundary reviews, which are the subject of the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.