House of Lords: Membership

Debate between Lord Maclennan of Rogart and Lord Howarth of Newport

Monday 14th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords—

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords—

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Maclennan of Rogart and Lord Howarth of Newport

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I add two considerations to the important ones already put forward by my noble friends and the noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn. One is that it is not a question of what is fair to people serving as MPs: we ought also to consider that the House of Commons itself needs continuity. It needs experience. It needs committee officers who have experience of that particular committee work. It needs its subject experts who the House learns to respect and listen to on particular matters. It needs those who are knowledgeable about procedure and people in the Whips Office who keep the show on the road. All those contributions that different individual Members of Parliament make need experience. Ministers need experience. Some Ministers will demonstrate within a short timescale that perhaps they should return to the Back Benches. Others, who will be good Ministers, need time to develop. For all those reasons, it is profoundly important that, as the amendment of my noble friend Lord Lipsey, proposes, we do not destabilise the pattern of parliamentary representation more often than is genuinely necessary to ensure that the boundaries are adequately up to date.

I will touch briefly on the other consideration that I would like to put forward because I said something about it in one of our debates on Monday and I do not want to repeat myself. Equally, it is important that local political parties should not be destabilised and upset more often than is necessary. All political parties have difficulty in attracting membership and are too prone to dissipate time and energy in the tussle for office and position within the party. They need to be able to settle to their work and do the job that they do within their communities, which is absolutely fundamental to the operation of our democracy. We should not destabilise that process gratuitously.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords, I am interested in the arguments that the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, put forward in support of his amendment. But there has been an unspoken premise throughout this short debate that the Boundary Commission will inevitably shake the kaleidoscope and the picture that emerges from it will be quite different from before. That will not necessarily be the case. Certainly, as a consequence of the reduction in the number of parliamentary seats that is proposed in the Bill, on the first occasion there will be a considerable change in the shape of constituencies. But once that position has become settled—and I do not imagine that even the most ardent constitutional reformer would anticipate that altering the size of the House of Commons would become a matter of custom—the stability of the total numbers is highly predictable.