Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Debate between Chris Ruane and Jack Straw(13 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Straw
The hon. Lady will recognise that we introduced agreed legislation on the phasing-in of individual registration. She will also know—and she is on the record as recognising—that although there were potential benefits from individual registration, there were dangers too, which were clear from the Northern Ireland experience. It had to be phased in carefully, with a large amount of resources—not rushed, as the Deputy Prime Minister now proposes.
Mr Straw
I am coming to the close of my remarks.
The right hon. Gentleman has repeatedly acknowledged that some 3.5 million people are missing from the register; the figure is from the Electoral Commission. Yet as he told the House today, and did in July, the boundary review will be based on the register published in the beginning of December. Millions will be missing from that register and, as he admitted, they will not be randomly spread. Instead, they will be concentrated among the young, private sector tenants and black and ethnic minority British residents and will be most likely to be found in metropolitan areas, smaller towns and cities and coastal areas with significant population turnover.
Given those facts, which are accepted by all, why is the right hon. Gentleman rushing to redraw all the boundaries according to an entirely new set of rules whose effect cannot be challenged in public inquiries before these missing voters are put on the electoral roll?
I should have said to the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) that I accept his point that there are likely to be many more judicial reviews, including successful judicial reviews, of the Boundary Commission proposals. The Boundary Commission will have to wade through a large number of written representations; there is no way in the world that it can give them the proper concern that would be given if there were an independent, legally qualified chair for each of the boundary inquiries.
Yes, boundaries have been reviewed in recent times on the existing registers, but that did not happen according to a rigid new electoral quota involving an arbitrary cut of 50 seats. Furthermore, those reviews were always balanced by the ability to hold public inquiries, so that account could be taken of issues such as population movement, natural boundaries and, yes, voter registration.
When this issue was debated before the election, Liberal Democrats took a very different view from the one that they now take; no surprise there. Their then spokesman, David Howarth, then the hon. Member for Cambridge, said:
“The idea that fiddling with boundaries based on out-of-date information can make the first-past-the-post system fairer is absurd.”—[Official Report, 8 April 2010; Vol. 508, c. 1217.]
Is that no longer the view of the Liberal Democrats and their leader? Are they now willing to concede a “fiddling of boundaries”—Liberal Democrat words, not mine—provided that they get a referendum on electoral reform in return?
The Liberal Democrats hawk their democratic consciences around, yet they are happy to ignore the democratic rights of millions of eligible voters who will not be part of this boundary review process. Every day in opposition they were speaking as loudly as we are about the problems of under-registration.
Mr Straw
I am about to close.
In his excellent blog on the ConservativeHome website, the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster wrote today:
“Reform to our constitution should never be made as a short term, tactical gambit.”
This is a deeply flawed and partisan Bill. It will do much harm and sow a great deal of division. I urge the Deputy Prime Minister to return to the democratic principles that his party’s Front Benchers articulated before the election and to remove the unfair boundary clauses from the Bill. If he splits the Bill, he will have our support. In the meantime, I commend our amendment to the House and urge the House to give that amendment its full support.