Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dixon]

We are now getting to the main part of the Bill: the constituents. The arguments about alternative vote and first past the post will come with the referendum. I was involved in alternative vote in this House in 2003, when one of the hereditary Peers, a Deputy Chairman, died. There was a ballot to take his place. Some 423 out of 661 Members voted and the candidate who won had 151 votes. There were 81 candidates, 44 first-preference votes and 42 transferred votes—alternative votes. The person who was elected still did not even get 50 per cent of the votes that were cast. Those arguments will come out when we get to alternative vote.

The important part of the Bill is the constituencies. I have personal experience with constituency. The last change in the Jarrow constituency was in 2005. I know a little about the Jarrow constituency; I have lived there for, in a couple of weeks’ time, 82 years. The only time I was out of the constituency was when I was doing my Army service for two years in the Royal Engineers, so I know a little about the constituency. I served as councillor, mayor and MP, and am now in the House of Lords.

The Boundary Commission proposed that the Bede ward—named after the Venerable Bede—in the Jarrow constituency be transferred to the South Shields constituency and that the Pelaw and Heworth ward in Gateshead be transferred to the Jarrow constituency. That proposal looked good on paper because the difference in the size of the two constituencies would have been only 153 voters. Everyone thought that they were doing well to achieve that equalisation between the Jarrow and South Shields constituencies.

The people of Jarrow had no objection to gaining the voters of the Pelaw and Heworth ward, because Pelaw and Heworth used to be part of the Jarrow constituency. In fact, Thomas Hepburn, who was the founder of the Northumberland and Durham miners union, is buried in Pelaw cemetery. For a long time, the members of the Jarrow constituency Labour Party would put a wreath on his grave before they went to the Durham miners’ gala.

The problem that arose was with the proposed transfer of the Bede ward to the South Shields constituency. Now, Jarrow got its name from the Saxon word “Gyrwy”, which means marsh or fen, which it has been suggested refers to the Jarrow Slake that lies along St Paul’s church in Jarrow, where the Venerable Bede had his home as well as at the Wearmouth St Peter’s church. The Venerable Bede was one of early Europe’s most established scholars. I might add that none of that rubbed off on me—I left elementary school when I was 14, I started in the shipyard when I was 14 and three months and the only exam that I passed in my life was my driving exam—so I cannot claim any of St Bede’s knowledge.

On the proposed transfer of the Bede ward to the South Shields constituency, I wrote to the Boundary Commission on 6 January 2005 to make an alternative suggestion. My suggestion was that the Bede ward should remain in the Jarrow constituency, that the Pelaw and Heworth ward in Gateshead should be transferred to Jarrow and that Jarrow’s Whitburn ward, which is on the coast, should be transferred to South Shields. I was pleased to find that my suggestion was accepted by the Boundary Commission, because many in Jarrow would definitely have been upset if the Bede ward had been transferred to South Shields.

The other thing about the Bede ward in Jarrow is that, as some Members may recall, in 1936 some 200 men from Jarrow marched to London for the right to work. The Jarrow march was not for another crust or for more money on the means test—as it was then known—but for the right to work. Most of the men who marched from Jarrow lived in the East ward, which was adjacent to the Jarrow town hall. After the war, the East ward was cleared and most of the Jarrow marchers were transferred to the new estate in the Simonside ward. The Boundary Commission’s proposal would have resulted in the descendants of the Jarrow marchers of 1936 ending up in the South Shields constituency. That would have virtually caused a civil war, as it would have suggested that they were now Sanddancers rather than Jarrow people.

However, the Boundary Commission did not know any of that. The only way that the issue came out was because there was a public inquiry. The Boundary Commission accepted the proposal that Whitburn, which to my knowledge has never had a direct bus service to the centre of Jarrow, be transferred to South Shields and that the Bede ward remain in Jarrow constituency. The difference in the electorate of the two constituencies was 53, as against the difference of 179 in the Boundary Commission’s original recommendation.

I think that it is vital that local residents have some say in how the constituency boundaries are formed. That issue, I believe, is the most important issue in the Bill.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I was going to rise before my noble friend but I am grateful that I did not as I want to make only one brief point. It is partly on what he was saying about the naming as well as the defining of the boundaries, because one of the things I am most concerned about is that so many boundaries will be changed that one of the big issues will be the naming of the new constituencies and therefore the time taken. This part of the Bill will bring in more consultation than is allowed for without boundary hearings but it will also be timed. I therefore support this amendment and I urge the Government to consider, when they look at the timing of this, that one of the most political issues, even after they have defined the boundaries, will be the naming of so many new constituencies. I urge caution on that as that is where, in the words of my noble friend, civil war will break out.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, in speaking to Amendment 55, moved by my noble friend Lord Lipsey, I am obviously happy that I will not speak to or move Amendment 56, which stands in my name. We are already in 2011 and the proposal in the Bill is that we are to have a report from the Boundary Commission in a little over two and a half years. That is just impractical. If we do not see some movement on this, we are creating the conditions whereby the Boundary Commission will find it almost impossible to have any sort of meaningful process with local residents, even under the limited proposals in the Bill.

Many years ago, I lived in Coventry—a great Midlands city—and I was involved in presenting evidence to the boundary inquiry in the early 1990s; I think it was in approximately 1993. That inquiry was triggered by proposals to reduce the number of parliamentary seats from four to three. At that time there were three Labour and one Conservative Members of Parliament. Going down from four seats to three meant that it was very unlikely, however you drew the boundaries, that the Conservatives would retain a seat in the city. In producing its recommendations, the Boundary Commission produced two seats in the north of the city. It had a Coventry North West seat and a Coventry North East seat. It put the Holbrooks ward from the north-west and the Longford ward, where I lived in the north-east, into the same constituency.

It made no difference to the outcome of a future election but the Boundary Commission, by drawing up its proposals back in its London office, had missed the Coventry-Nuneaton railway line and the A444 from junction 3 of the M6 into the city. I stress again to your Lordships that where those wards ended up made no difference to the actual outcome of the election, but it had completely missed that. We had a local inquiry; local residents, community groups, Members of Parliament, the parties and the local authorities all attended. The next day, the commissioner himself drove around the city, visiting the various points that had been mentioned by residents there. He saw the merits of the case argued by people and changed the proposals accordingly so that, even today, the Holbrooks ward remains in Coventry North West and the Longford ward remains in Coventry North East.

My point is that if the Government get rid of local inquiries and only allow less than two and a half years, as proposed in the Bill, for written submissions then such things will never be picked up. We will have constituencies created that have no basis in any sort of community ties and no relationship to local residents. I want to hear from the Minister whether the Government are prepared to risk that or are they prepared, as the amendment suggests, to give a longer time than they are proposing for the Boundary Commission to consider written proposals?

--- Later in debate ---

The amendment seeks to ensure that the Electoral Commission not only spreads best practice on voter registration to all local authorities but uses young-voter registration as one way of measuring the success of local registration campaigns. That would be the effect of the amendment. It seems clear to me that, if a local authority has succeeded in getting many of its young residents on to the electoral roll, it will almost certainly have succeeded more generally in getting voters to register. Perhaps the Minister agrees with me. If so, I urge him to recognise the importance of this issue and to accept the amendment. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, not surprisingly, I support the amendment, which also stands in my name. I have a particular interest in young people voting. It is true that it comes somewhat second to my interest in women voting; nevertheless, for me it is a high priority, as the Committee will know from my, sadly, unsuccessful move to allow 16 year-olds to vote in the referendum next year. How we vote depends, of course, partly on the system, which is what the referendum will decide in due course. However, it is also a matter of when and where we vote, and of the interest that the authorities, parliamentarians and returning officers take in our votes.

As to the timing of elections, I have another interest—to allow voting at weekends and in town halls or in libraries or anywhere else and not just at one polling station. I think that that should be possible with electronic records. However, that matter is not in front of us today. Here, we are concerned about a new generation of voters—either those who first qualify to vote in the 2015 general election, or those who perhaps could have voted in 2010 but for a range of reasons did not do so. Part of the reason for that lack of voting was down to political parties: the choices that they offered, the language they used or their style of campaigning. None of those matters is in front of us today but some of them concerned the low level of registration of new, and particularly young, voters.

Part of the problem has been that there is no single body or person who has both responsibility for getting people registered and something of a vested interest in doing so. Of course, the parties want voters to register—or, if we are being really honest, they want their potential supporters to register. However, the responsibility lies with local authorities, for which there is no benefit from a high success rate in their area. Therefore, we need some carrot if no stick is to hand to ensure that someone with the responsibility for registration also has the incentive to flush out new voters and get them on to the list.

It seems to me that the new system of defining constituencies, which will be almost completely number-driven compared with our historical, more flexible approach, offers an opportunity for a fresh approach to voter registration, and I urge the Committee to seize it. We should write into the Bill that the Secretary of State will have to be satisfied that local authorities really have sought out their youthful populations and got them on to the register before the Boundary Commission starts on what will be a very demanding task. That will make it easier for the commission, as it can then be satisfied that it is not forced to ignore residents simply because they have not been registered. However, I believe it will also show the next generation of voters that the Government are serious about wanting to involve them in the democratic process and are taking steps to ensure that their voices and needs are not excluded from the arithmetic of boundary lines. I believe that such a move is needed. If we cannot use notional votes as the basis for drawing boundaries, we must find and register new voters so that they are included.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

Presumably a large part of the purpose of parliamentary reform is to refresh our parliamentary democracy, re-animate it, and re-engage the citizens of this country with it. My noble friend Lady Thornton’s amendment is particularly helpful because it addresses a problem that we all recognise to be real and disturbing, which is the poor propensity of people in the 18 to 24 year-old age group to vote. There is some evidence that the attitudes that people bring to their first opportunity to vote as young adults tend to persist through life. We must all agree that it is extremely important that we make a determined effort to ensure that there is a much fuller participation of young people in our parliamentary democracy and that they take up their right to vote.

My noble friend has tabled a helpful amendment in enjoining a particular duty on the Secretary of State. We had some discussion on Monday about our fear that local authorities, because of the reductions in their funding, will be unable to pursue electoral registration as vigorously as they should. My noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours made a powerful speech on that problem. If local authority funding is to be cut by some 28 per cent over the next four years, it must follow that any activity that is not statutorily required of local authorities will be in jeopardy. My noble friend’s amendment would insist that at least the Secretary of State was able to certify that every effort is made to bring 17 to 24 year-olds on to the register. That points in a direction that implies that the Secretary of State himself must take steps to ensure that the registration process is carried on vigorously, effectively and thoroughly.

It would be helpful if the noble and learned Lord would say something about the Government’s view on the practical prospects for improving the proportion of registration in all age groups, but particularly in this one, the behaviour of which will be so crucial to the future of our democracy. We can change the voting system and constituency boundaries, but if we fail to re-engage people to vote, those reforms are little better than a sham.