Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Baroness McDonagh and Lord Boswell of Aynho

Monday 17th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McDonagh]

I have asked for this amendment to stand alone in the group. I believe that it is right to get on with the business of looking at the number as it was adequately debated in the other place.

I believe that 630 will give the Government the ability to achieve all their aims: to reduce the number of constituencies, equalise the number of voters, and for our constituencies to represent a community of interest, which is important. This is a genuine attempt to be helpful, as was my Motion to split the Bill before the Second Reading began. I wanted the Government to be able to meet their deadline of having a referendum on 5 May and I hope that they understand that this amendment is in the same vein.

Before looking at the reasons behind having a House of 630, it is important to go through why I believe that the figure of 600 will not work. I am against setting a House of 600, because I believe that it will take away the power of the independent commissioners and put the power to draw boundaries in the hands of politicians. That is a bad thing. When you consider the number of 600 and begin to draw maps across the United Kingdom, you see that it will end up looking like the rush of the former colonial powers to carve up Africa. At the time, they thought that it was okay to carve up countries along straight lines—not to recognise a community of interest, natural borders and other interests. This will be a great mistake.

I have a previous experience of something like this happening to a constituency where I lived. My noble friend Lord Beecham referred to that example previously. In the mid-1980s I lived in a constituency called Tyne Bridge. That constituency was drawn from four local government wards in Newcastle and four in Gateshead. While I was living in that constituency, there was a parliamentary by-election. I had worked in some by-elections. I had worked in Peter Tatchell's by-election in Bermondsey and in a by-election in Mitcham and Morden during the Falklands War, so I am used to voters being forthright in their views on the doorstep. I have never had as much abuse on the doorstep as when a constituency was combined from wards from Newcastle and Gateshead, which had the River Tyne running through them. People know where they live. In that by-election, they voted with their feet. It was the first by-election for many decades when less than 40 per cent of voters turned out.

The figure of 600 will also create constituencies that are too large. There are 49 million voters in this country eligible to be registered. Therefore, the constituencies that we draw must allow for 49 million people to be in constituencies. None of us knows what the cut-off register will be at 31 December as it has not been published; and we do not know where the cut-off will be until the Bill is passed. So we need to start with the premise that constituencies will hold the number of people who are entitled to vote. With 600 constituencies, we have about 81,000 electors each. It would have been 75,000 based on the 2010 general election. That is 81,000 if all voters on the register last year are on the new register at the cut-off of 31 December.

A ceiling of 600 constituencies does not take account of any population move. I ask the Minister to answer on this point. Over the next 20 years, the population of the United Kingdom is, we are told, to exceed 70 million. That increase to the voting population will come through in any event. Over the next 20 years, it may also be added to by, for example, lowering the voting age to 16. I have only to look around in my local authority to see that the rising-fours will add 25 per cent to the primary school population. It is wrong and ill thought out to cap a number that does not allow for a movement of population. It would be much better to do it on the basis of the number of voters that you wish to see in a constituency. But if you do not do that, setting the number at 600 makes the constituencies far too large.

[Lord Boswell of Aynho]

Will the noble Baroness acknowledge that under the present arrangements, some of us, myself included, have had the privilege or the task of wrestling with an electorate approaching 90,000 already? Some of her concerns about these overlarge constituencies are less than well founded.

[Baroness McDonagh]

The difference in the situation proposed under the legislation from that which has formerly been is simply that the number of voters in a constituency is taken together with a whole series of other factors, one of which does not have primacy—so you do not split local government boundaries or county boundaries. You can take into account the geography in the Boundary Commission’s book when you know that there is going to be an increase in population. You can take into account other physical barriers, such as motorways and so on. In large constituencies you tend to have an electorate with a community of interests which it is possible to represent. A good example of that would obviously be the Isle of Wight. With this, you will go across vast areas where people do not recognise the other parts of the geographical area in the same constituency.

I need to go back to this issue because I feel that I can answer it. How do we end up with the number 600? I will explain why it would be right to have a House of Commons comprising 630 MPs. How do you end up with 600 MPs when one part of the coalition is suggesting 500 and the other is suggesting 585. I do not suggest that either party is innumerate, but generally you would fix somewhere around the figure of 540. You would not come up with a figure that was larger than either of the two figures suggested if it was not based on something else.

I have seen the figure published on current affairs and news items, and I have read it in the newspapers. I cannot believe that I am the only person in your Lordships’ House who reads newspapers and watches television. From examining them, I know that eminent psephologists of all political persuasions tell us that 600 is the figure that most benefits the Conservative Party. I knew that already because that is what my former counterparts at the Conservative Party head office had told me, so it was no surprise. The problem is that the figure is based on what I would describe as an obsession. There is a belief in the Conservative Party that it was robbed of the elections between 1997 and 2010, and that if only the electoral system had been different the Conservative Party would have won the election.

I will give three quotes from the debate so far. These are just examples, but I could go through Hansard and repeat them. The noble Lord, Lord Maples, said that,

“the general election in 2010 … required the Conservative Party to get 40 per cent of the vote to get an overall majority, but Labour to get only 34 per cent cannot possibly be considered fair”.—[Official Report, 15/11/10; col. 571.]

This is an example of trying to change the constituencies because of a belief that this is what prompts the differential between the numbers of votes for the parties.

The noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, said that he,

“remembers the 2001 election in which we won the vote in England … we ended up with 60 or 90 fewer seats, having received more votes in England. The whole thesis of the Opposition is to keep the situation like that”.—[Official Report, 12/1/11; col. 1522.]

I have heard some noble Baronesses opposite even say that they were robbed of three constituencies through electoral fraud. The reality is this. At the last election, the electorate decided that it no longer wanted Labour to be in government. That is clear. However, it was not sure that the Conservative Party was ready to govern. That is why the Conservative Party did not get an overall majority.

I shall give one other quote:

“The equalising of the size of constituencies would remove an unfair advantage currently enjoyed by Labour”.

That was from a publication by Andrew Tyrie MP in 2004, with a foreword by Damian Green MP, to which I think my noble friend Lord Soley has already referred. This has been going on for many years in the Conservative Party, but it is apocryphal. It is not true; it is a falsehood. Labour gets elected on fewer votes because in Labour constituencies, the voters are people who are less likely to vote because of their social and economic demographics. The reverse is true for the Conservative Party. It seems to have become a real obsession, and I believe that the Government now need to move past it.

When I was in the Labour Party during 18 years in opposition, I remember that I wanted to see my party put many Bills through the House of Commons and the House of Lords. They were on matters such as introducing a minimum wage, education reform and reducing hospital waiting lists. My personal experience was that my mother had to wait 18 months in severe pain for a hip replacement operation. I wanted to see handguns removed because of the Dunblane massacre. It is telling that one of the first Bills that the Government wish to introduce would reduce the number of constituencies from 650 to 600.

Why the figure of 630? I believe that if we introduced 630 with an eligible electorate of 78,000, that would make for reasonably sized constituencies for Members to represent. I also believe that reducing the House by 20 seats would take away some of the worst excesses of large constituencies. Like all around the House, I want as far as possible to see constituencies of the same size, and this figure would allow for that. I say again that the average size of the constituencies of all three parties—Labour, Lib Dem and the Conservatives—does not differ by the quota set out in the Bill, but a figure of 630 will allow county boundaries and local government boundaries not to be crossed. That will make the exercise of the Boundary Commission much more efficient and much quicker. It will also allow a community of interest to prevail.

I would prefer that we concentrated on the number of voters in these constituencies. I think it is important that we represent the public from the grass roots up, not from the top down. The Government have already made it clear that they are not prepared to accept that view, so I am introducing an amendment which I believe will allow them to do what they are trying to do, but in a way that will represent our communities and take the public with us.