Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Lord Maclennan of Rogart and Lord Grocott

Tuesday 15th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords—

[Lord Grocott]

I thought that I might provoke someone.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

Does the noble Lord believe in the opposite proposition—that to give power to the electorate you should not have a referendum? That might affect some of his earlier arguments about reform of this House.

[Lord Grocott]

I do not know which of the various constitutional proposals increases the power of the electorate. The noble Lord referred to reform of this House. One of the key reasons why I am opposed to this being an elected House is that it would seriously diminish the significance of a general election to the House of Commons. I hope that my argument is consistent; I will have to read it in Hansard tomorrow.

I hope that I can put this with some conviction but, according to my maths, since the 1945 election there have been 17 general elections in this country. If this Bill had been an Act, we would have had 13 general elections. I simply put this proposition: does that or does that not weaken the power of the electorate? There can be only one answer to that. The answer is yes.

I do not want to go to absurd lengths but we can all assume that, if there were no elections, that would seriously weaken the power of the electorate. I am not sure about the other end of that continuum—perhaps the Chartists with their annual elections. But there is no doubt that the convinced and settled view of the members of the Government who are voting on this Bill is that since the Second World War the British electorate have had too many general elections. Which ones should we not have had that we did have? Was it wrong in 1951 for a Labour Government who were tired to seek another mandate? Was it wrong of Mr Heath? Was it wrong of Harold Wilson, who had a majority of three in 1964, to call another election, or should he have soldiered on for another five years? Should Harold Wilson's Government in 1974 have gone on without a majority?

I would like to know the answer to a fairly simple question: why do the Government think that we have had too many general elections since the Second World War? Which ones were superfluous? There could be an interesting answer to that.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Maclennan of Rogart and Lord Grocott

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

I have finished my speech.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I cannot help but remark that, although the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan of Rogart, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness—who I assume will sum up the debate— both had long and distinguished careers representing their constituencies in London, their experience of boundary redistribution may not, I respectfully suggest, be very typical. Unless my geography is completely askew, the former constituency of the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, was surrounded on three sides by sea and the former constituency of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, was surrounded on all sides by sea. To me, that suggests a security of tenure that I would have envied.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. The reality is that the Boundary Commission added 25 per cent to the number of my electors. That did not give a sense of security.

[Lord Grocott]

Whatever the circumstances, being a Member of Parliament is not the most secure of roles.

I want to make two points. First, I have added my name to Amendment 58, in the name of my noble friend Lord Martin of Springburn, which would provide for Boundary Commission reviews every eight years. Certainly in my case, that number was not just plucked from thin air. The current law provides that the period between each redistribution should be between eight and 12 years. There needs to be some compromise—there is no tablet of stone that tells us how frequently redistributions should take place—but a requirement that redistributions should take place every eight years would have some historic precedent. I hope that our recommendation of eight years would go some way towards meeting the Government’s requirement to provide, on a continuing basis, for a rough equalisation of constituency sizes—a principle to which in general terms I certainly do not object. Requiring the review to take place every eight years would at least give Members of Parliament probably two terms in which they would represent the same area.

Secondly, I simply want to point out the sheer practicalities of the situation that my noble friend Lord Lipsey has described as a kind of permanent revolution. Members of Parliament would not be human—we have all seen this happen—if, having discovered halfway through a Parliament that they will lose a large section of their current constituency and gain another area from another constituency after the election, they did not start concentrating some of their activities and energies on the area that was to be transferred. They would not be human if they no longer attached quite the same level of attention as they had in the past to the bit that they knew would be going somewhere else in 18 months or two years. That is just a matter of sheer common sense and no reflection on the integrity or commitment of the vast majority of MPs. I have always believed that to have been the case.

Prisoners: Voting

Debate between Lord Maclennan of Rogart and Lord Grocott

Wednesday 9th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords—

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords—

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords—

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I accept that there is great expertise and a great interest in this subject. We have already heard from the opposition Benches. May we hear from the Liberal Democrats?