Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill (Thirteenth sitting)

Alex Norris Excerpts

Committee Debate: 13th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 12th September 2018 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Order. I am keen to hear from Back Benchers, starting with Alex Norris.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Mr Owen. Over the weekend and on Monday, I read coverage relating to this vote. One national newspaper quoted the Minister from our meeting last week, and the Committee was characterised as obscure. I am not sure whether it is a promotion or a demotion, after 13 or so weeks, to have reached the ranks of obscure. When we are still here in March, as the hon. Member for Glasgow East said, I wonder whether we will become veterans. I have not been here very long, but I wanted to become a veteran, so that will be very exciting.

What is at the nub of this and what saddens me about it is that our politics should never seek to emulate American politics. I do not think that the Americanisation of British culture in general is a great thing. However, if anyone watches American politics now, as I know lots of people in this building do with great interest and sometimes horror, they see is that everything—whether it is the colour of the napkins or the electoral system— becomes a partisan arm wrestle. Everything, whether it is appointing judges or whatever it is, becomes an exercise in narrow advantage.

I am willing to take much of what the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean says at face value. The intentions at the outset, many years ago now, were very honourable. However, this has now become—without doubt—an exercise in political advantage: “the Government want this process to happen; it would help them. We do not want it to happen; it would not help us.”

If someone is a student of British politics, as I know lots of people in this room are, they will know that that has never been the way in which we have done our boundaries. Our boundaries and the way in which we have dealt with this system has been characterised by fair play and equity. Of course, I understand that we do not want to have ballooned constituencies in some parts of the country and tiny ones in others, but at the same time we want conversations about how to set a fair system—one that gives people as equal a voice as is physically possible—without tilting the scales one way or the other, because that goes against British values and our democracy. And whether we like it or not, we are in that territory now. Nothing could make that clearer than the fact that the vote on this issue is now being kicked further down the road, because the Government are not sure that they will win it.

[Mr Harper]

I am reflecting on this from memory, so I hope the Committee will forgive me if I have not got it quite right, but I think the hon. Gentleman is putting a gloss on the way that this process perhaps worked in the past. I seem to remember that in 1968 the then Prime Minister, Lord Wilson, brought forward to the House a set of boundary proposals that were not advantageous to the Labour party and he asked the House to vote them down. As it happened, it did not work because he lost the 1970 general election. Nevertheless, the idea that this process has somehow always been conducted in the way that the hon. Gentleman suggests is perhaps not an accurate reading of the historical record.

[Alex Norris]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention; his recollection of 1968 may well be stronger than mine, for obvious reasons. Perhaps I am putting a gloss on things and maybe we are looking back, as we tend to do, through sepia or whatever, but the point is that we have never been more partisan and red state/blue state than we are today, and this process is the perfect example of that.

So for goodness’ sake, let us kill this process off. We have got complete recognition that something needs to change—the boundaries need to change—but we have got this zombie hangover from the last Parliament in front of us; well, it is not in front of us today, but it will be in many months’ time. Of course I do not mean my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton, but the boundary review.

Let us put this boundary review to bed. Let us get down to discussing what I think are pretty good first principles in this Bill and let us get to where we all want to be. It will reflect on all of us better; it will also be better for our mental wellbeing, I suspect. Ideally—this is my major goal—we might have an outcome before the baby of my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith), who has been born during these proceedings, goes to university.

[David Linden]

I forgot to say in my remarks that the first week back I will not be here, because I will have a second child by that point. In the course of this Bill Committee, two children will have been born and the money resolution has not been granted. I give advance notice and my apologies.

[Alex Norris]

I am sure that we all want to pass on our congratulations to the hon. Gentleman. Yes, let us at least get this done before those children are at university, if not at school.

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

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Owen.

What we see here is an anti-democratic process. It was 1 December 2017 when this Bill passed its Second Reading, so we are now more than nine months down the line and we have been meeting ever since, because the Government will not grant us a money resolution.

We have been given various reasons why we have not been given a money resolution. We were told that the boundary commissions’ proposals were coming and that it was best to wait for them to arrive, so that both matters could be considered together. Now we are being told that there are some complex resolutions and instruments that need to be prepared for that to happen. Surely the Government should have been ready for that. They knew when the boundary commissions would report. The proposals are the same as they were a year ago. The Government must have known what was coming—what landed on their desk cannot have been a big surprise—so it is no excuse for them to say they need more time to prepare and introduce those instruments.