Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alun Cairns and Chloe Smith

Wednesday 19th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith]

I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for his kind words about me. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan) will return later this week. It has been a privilege to help her by conducting her maternity cover at the highest levels.

My right hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee is correct that we set out that plan in our White Paper. We said that we anticipate introducing a statutory duty on regulators

“requiring them to have due regard to the principles”,

which I mentioned in my previous answer. He will also know that I cannot commit to the contents of the King’s Speech, but what I have already said this morning is that the Government will be returning to the House with a full update on the conclusion of the consultation on the White Paper.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend’s leadership in this policy area. The conference in the autumn will give the Government an opportunity to lay out their plans for working with international partners. Does she agree that AI cannot be blocked or stopped, and therefore an open, pragmatic approach needs to be shown to harness the benefits of AI for the economy and society in general?

[Chloe Smith]

My right hon. Friend is correct. That is what we have laid out in our approach so far. As the Prime Minister said, we intend to lead overseas and domestically, lead the charge of that opportunity in our public services and ensure that our pro-innovation approach enables the benefits of this technology to be captured sooner across the economy.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Debate between Alun Cairns and Chloe Smith

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith]

I admire the tenacity with which the hon. Lady has made that argument today. It is not the subject of the Bill, and, for what it is worth, I do not agree with the concept of automatic voter registration, but I am happy to have that conversation with her in more detail at another time. I will be more sparing in taking interventions from now on, because there is a time limit and I have much to get through.

As I understand it, the intention behind new clause 1 is to require the boundary commissions to aim for the 10% range, and only if necessary would they then use the extra 5%. That approach gives rise to a number of concerns. First, it seems to me that there is a lack of clarity, which could generate confusion; it would certainly generate ambiguity and might undermine the effectiveness of the process. One can imagine local authorities simply not knowing at the outset of the process whether their constituency would fall within the 10% range, or whether they might be a special case. A process that was previously clear and transparent would become less so.

Secondly, there is the risk of a ratchet effect. If we were to offer the boundary commissions the option to go up 7.5%, they would quickly come under pressure. That might lead to lobbying and the 15% range becoming increasingly widely used. It might be said that those who want that outcome should put it directly and courageously in an amendment, rather than saying it could be used if the commission wanted to use it.

Thirdly, and quite important, the discretion provided to the four boundary commissions would be likely to generate different approaches in different parts of the United Kingdom. That could open the door to legal challenges and a situation where the commissions’ work was made more difficult. I acknowledge the words of the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) about rule 7 and the court case there. I recognise his points, and much more detail was drawn out in that ruling, but let me say briefly now that I think rule 7 is important and it stands, notwithstanding that ruling.

In Committee, we discussed 5% versus other numbers at length. Today, I say that we should be in the business of giving the boundary commissions clear instructions. There are times when we give them room for judgment and discretion. We ask them to conduct an intense process, but this should not be one of the times when their instructions lack clarity. The matter of the tolerance is a judgment for us; it is for us in this House to set out what we think it ought to be. A balance must be struck, and no academic can tell us the right answer. Conservative Members believe in equal-sized constituencies and in being able to deliver updated and equal constituencies, and the 5% tolerance gives a better chance of achieving that and ending an unfairness that has persisted for too long.

Let me address new clause 2. I thank the hon. Members for Glasgow East (David Linden) and for Ceredigion (Ben Lake) for making this an interesting debate—one that we also had in Committee. It seems that something that is actually quite technical is being used here as a conduit for a much larger constitutional debate about the Union and how its nations relate to each other. That is important and extremely interesting, but today is rather a narrow debate and it is not necessarily the time for concluding such big questions. Let us talk about what this new clause would actually mean.

My concern is that new clause 2, by fixing a minimum number of constituencies, would effectively enshrine electoral inequality, cementing the current situation and not allowing it to develop. I can give the House lots of examples of unequal constituency sizes within and between our nations, and those are the kinds of inequality that we are trying to address in the Bill overall. Of course, it is critical that every nation and every part of the Union has a powerful voice in Westminster. They have two powerful voices here today—and across the Chamber—but there is already a sensible way of setting the nation’s participation in Westminster. The new clause would not add value in that respect.

Under the current legislation, a mathematical formula exists to do exactly the job of allocating constituency numbers to each of the four nations. It is widely used internationally and is widely thought of as being one of the fairest methods. It should be maintained because it is fair and rational. The problem with the new clause is that it suggests that the hon. Members who tabled it could be fairer and more rational in deciding what the numbers ought to be, but in effect those Members are guessing what the numbers should be and trying to lock them in. The new clause would lock in quite radical inequality between the nations of the Union in terms of the citizen-to-MP ratio that would result, and there is not a good reason for that.

[Alun Cairns]

Does the Minister recognise that new clause 2, tabled by Plaid Cymru and the SNP, almost suggests that we are a federal nation? We are not a federal nation but a proud Union.

[Chloe Smith]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. He knows that the Conservative party and the Government are absolutely committed to strengthening our Union and we do not believe that that would be achieved through new clause 2, which would undermine in many ways what ought to be an equality in the assessment of the voices in the Union and an equality between citizens that can be enjoyed across the nation.

I absolutely recognise the wider debate about what our nations and our Union consist of, although the hon. Member for Glasgow East would love to have nothing more to do with that debate—he would love to be nowhere near here today, and that breaks my heart. As much as I may say that I would love to see the back of him, of course I would not. I cannot wait to spend even more time discussing exactly this point with him and with anybody else who would like to join me in the debate about how to strengthen our Union, how to maintain excellent intergovernmental relations, how to help our nations work best together and how to help people across the nation to be as prosperous as they can. But new clause 2 is not the place to do that.

I thank the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) for tabling new clause 3. She was honest and sincere about what she is seeking to do with the amendment, which is to open up a valuable broader debate. I will talk a little about why the new clause would not quite do what is right, but let me say that the hon. Member’s instincts are admirable. We should all share the goal of being able to do the utmost for our constituents, whether they are registered to vote or not. Furthermore, we should all share the goal of wanting as many people on our electoral registers as possible. That is notwithstanding the fact that the Government believe that it is an important principle that our constituencies are based on the electoral registers.

On what we are doing to ensure that the registers are as accurate and complete as possible, the introduction of online registration has made it simpler and faster for people to register to vote; it takes as little as five minutes. This benefits everybody, including anybody who may previously have found it harder to make an application to register. We have developed a range of resources to promote engagement with our democracy and to encourage people to register to vote, all of which are available on gov.uk and are aimed widely—at registration officers, civil society groups, teachers and more.

We are also in the process of implementing changes to the annual canvass of all residential properties in Great Britain, which will improve its efficiency greatly and will allow officers to focus their efforts on those who they may traditionally have found harder to get to register. That is important for accuracy and completeness. Since the introduction of individual electoral registration, the registers in Great Britain are as complete and more accurate than before; that is an important base of the record.

I share the intentions of the hon. Member for North East Fife of wanting to see more people registered and to see us listening to all in our community, so let me turn to why new clause 3 would not necessarily work as well as might be wished. Its core problem is that it deals with estimates and moves away from facts. It asks the Electoral Commission to do a very large job of estimation when, in fact, we already have firm data that the process can be based on. It would be a huge and unnecessary task to set off, bringing further elements of risk and challenge to the work of the Boundary Commissions.

The work of the Boundary Commissions should be based on those who have registered as electors. That principle counts those who want to have their views represented in Parliament. That is what a Member of Parliament is for and that is what voting for Parliament is for. It is a good principle that that is the basis on which we work, and it is not new, having been the case since 1944.

We should encourage more people to register to vote. I think the new clause does a slightly different thing. I welcome the fact that the hon. Lady referred to it as a probing amendment, and I hope she will not press it to a Division. Before I move on, I welcome her support for our overseas voters. She will know that there is much work to do to enable more overseas voters to register The Government are committed, as I hope she is, to ending the injustice of the abrupt disenfranchisement that they face after 15 years overseas.

Finally, I cannot support the intention of amendment 1. The effect of clause 2, which amendment 1 would remove, is to bring much-needed certainty to the boundary review process. It gives confidence that the recommendations of the independent boundary commissions will be brought into effect without interference or delay. They develop their proposal through a robust process that lasts over a two to three-year period with extensive public consultation. Those impartial recommendations ought to be brought into effect promptly without any further wastage of public money and without any question of their independence. Clause 2 provides for that, and it does so by a very normal mechanism.

I just want to pick up one point that was made. The hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood tried to go to town on the nature of an Order in Council. Let me break it to her, in case she is not aware, that the last Labour Government used more than 300 of them between 1997 and 2010. They are a normal constitutional legislative instrument. They should be recognised as being part of the status quo. She is either misreading the Bill or wilfully misrepresenting it—I do not know which. She did so in Committee, and she is doing so again today.

The Order in Council is not the villain that the hon. Lady makes it out to be, and nor is there an increase in powers in the Bill for the Executive. The opposite is the case. Countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand use similar approaches. A string of respected academics voiced their support for this change during Committee when giving evidence. Memorably, one in particular said:

“It is probably better that MPs set the terms of the exercise for the Boundary Commission behind a veil of ignorance…without knowing exactly what the particular outcomes would be for them as individual MPs.”––[Official Report, Parliamentary Constituencies Public Bill Committee, 18 June 2020; c. 57, Q117.]

The Government believe that clause 2 is an important and principled change. It will ensure that expert recommendations are brought into effect independently with no further delay.

It provides a better outcome for people, and I urge the hon. Lady not to press the amendment to a Division.