Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill

Debate between Afzal Khan and David Drew

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 1st December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Afzal Khan]

I understand what the right hon. Gentleman is saying, but the bottom line is that if we are trying to reduce cost, why are the Government putting more and more unelected people into the House of Lords, and appointing more and more special advisers? It does not make sense. I would prefer to have more elected people.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend accept what the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee said in 2015: if the Government of the day got their way—this Government are trying again—it would break all locational links and completely undermine the representational basis of this House? That would be a very sad day.

[Afzal Khan]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend.

Brexit legislation is passing through Parliament and we are undergoing one of the most significant constitutional changes in decades. We have already seen from our debates on Henry VIII provisions that Ministers will always attempt to extend their powers. At this point, we must fight to preserve our power of scrutiny.

MPs are taking on more and more work. We are about to lose 73 MEPs. MPs will have to absorb that workload and will be able to deliver less for our constituents. A reduction in the number of MPs is a threat to the power of Back Benchers, and to the accountability of Government. A healthy democracy requires us to fight for it over and over again. That is why my Bill would retain the number of MPs at 650.

Thirdly, accountability is an issue not just for the Government but for individual MPs. Holding boundary reviews every five years would make us less accountable to our constituents, as they may change at every election. The MP-constituency link is one of the best things about our democracy, and MPs have the chance to build a relationship with our communities that can span decades. We get to understand issues particular to our area, and we walk side by side with our communities as they change. How can constituents hold us to account if we are here today, gone tomorrow? My Bill would address that by retaining the tradition of holding boundary reviews every 10 years. That is regular enough to keep up with population changes, but not so regular that MPs become unaccountable to the people who elect us.

Fourthly, the starting point for constituencies should, as far as possible, be continuity and communities. Clearly we need to strike a balance. On the one hand, there should be the same number of voters in each constituency so that every vote counts the same but, on the other, constituency boundaries should be based around communities. The strict quota in the current review has produced some bizarre results. The coherence of a community, continuity with previous constituencies and respect for natural boundaries were given a lower priority than strict adherence to numbers.

That is clearly illustrated when we consider Crawley, a constituency that has remained unchanged for 20 years. It is now only 453 voters below the quota, so the new boundaries would include a ward from the other side of the motorway, in a different authority. Relaxing the quota to 7.5% would mean that the majority of constituencies would not change at each election. That would strike the right balance and mean that each boundary review was less disruptive. The Boundary Commission has supported that. Indeed, its submission to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee’s inquiry said that that would be the main change it asked for in any future review. The commission is keen to be given powers to balance the principles of continuity, organic nature and equality.

Finally, there will always be special cases when the rules for the rest of the country cannot reasonably be applied. The law already includes provision for the Isle of Wight and some Scottish islands. As part of the Good Friday agreement, Northern Ireland has a special status in our law. I believe that that should extend to fixing its number of constituencies. My Bill would maintain the status quo by fixing the number of Northern Ireland MPs at 18 and maintaining the current representation there. Brexit has already put Northern Ireland in an uncertain position. Without clarity on the future of the border or a host of other issues, such a measure would at least be one way to prevent further uncertainty. We must do all that we can to maintain the fragile stability in Northern Ireland, which is threatened already by Brexit.

Trust in politics is eroding, but right now we have a choice. The big opportunity I see to counter the erosion of trust is in the 2 million people who registered to vote in the EU referendum and the general election. I hope that that marks a turning point, but that will happen only if we empower new voters and encourage participation. The current boundary review ignores them entirely—what a slap in the face! My Bill would include those 2 million voters in the boundary calculations and ensure that their voices were equally represented.

The question for us now is: do we capture the energy of the recent elections, include new voters, and keep the constituency link, the powers of Back Benchers and the importance of communities, or do we plough ahead with the current boundary proposals, unpopular and unrepresentative as they are? Constituency boundaries are the physical building blocks of our democracy. They should be born from the organic growth of communities, not the cold calculation of politicians.