Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill

Wayne David Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 18th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I certainly was not “the poor Minister”. I hugely enjoyed my role as Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform. I got to spend an enormous amount of time in the Chamber, with Mr Speaker frequently in the Chair, although I am not sure he enjoyed listening to the debates as much as I enjoyed speaking in them. I do not, however, recognise the origins that the hon. Gentleman mentions.

The hon. Member for North West Durham made a serious point about the accusations made about people who registered ahead of the EU referendum. A thorough piece of work has been done by a gentleman called Matt Singh, who works for an organisation called Number Cruncher Politics, an independent organisation that has looked at this issue very carefully. For this to be an issue, the 2 million extra voters would have to be unevenly distributed across the UK. If in some areas there had been a much bigger rise in the number of electors than in others, that would of course affect the distribution of the 600 seats set out in the legislation.

Interestingly, Mr Singh, in his very thorough analysis of the 2 million increase, wrote:

“The data does not support the suggestion that using the later version of the register”,

as the hon. Lady proposes doing,

“would materially alter the distribution of seats. Instead it points to a very even distribution of the 2 million newly-registered voters between”

currently held Labour and Conservative seats. If we added all the 2 million, of course we would increase the size of the register, but because the extra voters are evenly distributed across the country, we would not significantly change the distribution of constituencies. So I think that is a bit of a red herring.

As I draw towards the conclusion of my remarks, as you wanted me to, Mr Speaker, let me deal with the Bill.

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

I shall first give way to the hon. Gentleman. He and I had a lot of fun when we debated the previous legislation, particularly when we spoke about Wales. I want to give him the opportunity to intervene.

[Wayne David]

When it comes to missing voters resulting from the European referendum, the right hon. Gentleman’s analysis has been challenged by many people. I want to make that point first. My second point is about gerrymandering. The previous Government passed a piece of legislation and this Government have brought forward the date of individual electoral registration. The result, against the advice of the Electoral Commission, is to exclude 1.8 million people from the electoral register. If that is not gerrymandering, what is?

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[Andrew Gwynne]

The hon. Lady knows that the custom and practice is that when the Government increase the number of lords, other parties also have that opportunity. However—this relates to my next point—the noble Lady that the hon. Lady references is an active Member of the House of Lords and of the Labour Front-Bench team. Many Members of the other place do not make an active contribution to the work of that Chamber and that needs to be looked at.

Only yesterday, the Government announced their intention to drop proposals aimed at changing the powers of the Lords, citing that the world has changed. Well, yes, it has, and if Brexit is the reason for stepping back from curtailing the powers of the other place, it is also a sound and justifiable reason to think again about the changes proposed to this elected Chamber. Although Lords reform is not directly linked to the Bill, it is an important part of how a fully functioning democracy works. It is worth recognising that over two thirds of the public have consistently supported real reform of the other place, yet cynicism and power are all that the Government seem concerned with when overloading the other place with former spin doctors and party workers.

I am heartened, however, by the fact that other people share my concern and that we may actually have support from the most unlikely of sources. When recently asked about his responsibilities in the Lords, Baron Lloyd-Webber of Sydmonton responded:

“I was put in as an honour, not as a working peer. Not as lobby fodder. I’m fed up with the fact that I keep being asked now to go in and vote for things about which I don’t have knowledge.”

The other place is so bloated that it is second only to China’s National People’s Congress—the largest legislature in the world—which is odd considering that China has 1.2 billion more citizens than the UK. For a more learned and respected opinion, I ask right hon. and hon. Members to heed the warning of the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), who rightly stated:

“It seems perverse to reduce the number of elected representatives in this place while the Lords continues to gorge itself on new arrivals.”—[Official Report, 8 September 2016; Vol. 614, c. 502.]

[Wayne David]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the figure of 600 to which this place will be reduced is entirely arbitrary? There is no logic or common sense behind it whatsoever.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Absolutely. I can remember my hon. Friend making that point when the legislation was going through. Why 600? Why not 500 or 400? Why not 700 or 800? Nobody has actually set out a reason for 600. That is why it is right to retain the 650 Members of Parliament that we have today and have had in previous Parliaments.

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[Wayne David]

The Library has produced facts that contradict what the right hon. Gentleman has said. They show that if extra electors brought in for the purpose of the referendum were taken into account, London would have two extra constituencies, whereas the south-west and Northern Ireland would each have one fewer, so there would be a material difference.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. friend is absolutely right about that and he brings me to my next point.

Let us consider the example of London, a global city with a growing population that is expected to rise by more than 1.5 million in the next decade. Strangely, the same city is expected to lose a dozen MPs from its contingent of 73 if the current proposals go through unchecked. As my hon. Friend has said, to compound that, research from the House of Commons shows that over the six-month period from December 2015 to June 2016 the London electorate grew by 6%. That did not occur in isolation; during the same period, the south-west saw a rise of 4.7%, Yorkshire and the Humber’s rise was 4.2%, Wales’s rise was 4.1% and the increase in the west midlands was 3.2%. Those citizens are eager to play their part in the process, but for this purpose they are citizens whose voice no longer counts.

As we have heard, many of the proposed constituencies make very little geographical sense, homogenising vast swathes of rural Britain and tearing up historic counties. For example, dramatically cutting the number of Welsh MPs will do little to address the democratic deficit felt by some within rural Wales. Any constitutional changes, including in the very make-up of the constituencies we stand here to represent, should be done fairly, and everyone’s voice should be heard.

The truth about the plan to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600 is that no real reason has been given for it. As my hon. Friend said, when the original Bill was being discussed, no Minister could give a real reason for picking the 600 figure. New boundaries, a smaller House of Commons and the shift to individual electoral registration all tilt the electoral battlefield further not just towards the Conservative party, but towards the Executive. There are no plans to cut the size of the ministerial payroll, and having fewer MPs to hold Ministers to account is not good for democracy. It cannot be democratic, fair or even competent to advance this review at the same time as we are stuffing the other place with unelected and often unprepared peers. Put all this together and we face a boundary review being conducted on the basis of a completely lopsided electoral register. If we proceed as planned, we will see a huge transfer of parliamentary representation from areas that are growing to areas that have not seen the same growth.

The Opposition are confident that this Bill will significantly improve the process of drawing up new parliamentary seats on a fair and equal basis. We believe that 650 is the right number of MPs to hold the Government to account. We give our full support to this Bill in the hope that the Government pause—

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[Sir Oliver Letwin]

As my hon. Friend knows from previous conversations, I do take that view and have done so, uniquely in the Conservative party, I believe, for about the past 40 years. I shall briefly touch on that at a much later stage in my remarks, but for now I simply wish to observe that it is important that we think about this issue as grown-ups who are trying to look after the interests of our fellow citizens, not as people who happen to be sitting on these green Benches trying to look after the interests of the House of Commons, which is an artefact of no value whatsoever unless it is part of the good governance of our country in the interests of its citizens.

This is the first time I have attended a debate on a Friday for very many years, and I was surprised to discover that I was quite interested in the nature of the debate. It seems that, from time to time, there have actually been some arguments made—that is a rare thing to hear in the House of Commons. In principle, three kinds of arguments have been going on. The first is whether equalisation is the aim of the current Act governing the Boundary Commission activity or whether it is about gerrymandering. The second is about whether 600 is a better number of MPs than 650. The third is the question raised by the hon. Member for Newport West: is it right to make incremental change in pursuit of incremental improvements when large questions about the constitution as a whole also need to be addressed? I want to discuss each of those points in turn.

First, I turn to the question of whether the motive for and effect of the current Act of Parliament governing the Boundary Commission’s activities is equalisation or gerrymandering. As I would have expected, my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) dealt very effectively with the fact that the current Boundary Commission review does not include reference to the people who registered at the last moment. I was the Minister who brought to the House arrangements to ensure that people who registered at the very last moment were able to vote in the referendum, and it is certainly right that they should have been registered. My right hon. Friend dealt very well with whether the fact that they registered after the Boundary Commission figures were produced affects the outcome of the review to any significant extent.

However, we do not need to rely on my right hon. Friend’s view on that because the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David), who interjected from the Labour Benches, blew the whole argument out of the water when he quoted, quite sensibly, the Library figures. They showed that the total effect, even on an analysis less favourable to the argument I am making than that which was provided by the independent source for my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean—the House of Commons Library analysis—the total net difference is two extra in London and one fewer in the south-west and in Northern Ireland. There is no significant distributional impact.

[Wayne David]

The right hon. Gentleman does not mention the knock-on effect: a number of other boundaries are affected as a consequence of that change.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

As a matter of fact, very few are. Even if there were a few, the net distributional impact is very slight. That has to be put in context to be understood. This was another point that my right hon. Friend made very clearly. I will come in a moment to the point that the Bill very clearly has the purpose and the effect of ensuring that we will not proceed with redistribution before 2020. If we do not proceed with it, the disequilibrium—the lack of equivalence that Labour’s spokesman, the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), said his party favours—would be far, far greater than the discrepancy would be, even on the House of Commons Library figures, if the distributional impacts from the new registration were not taken into account. So either equalisation matters or it does not matter.

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[Sir Oliver Letwin]

No, because, as I have tried to argue in the first two parts of my speech, first, I do not think that the changes going forward at the moment are simply gerrymandering, but that they are fairer. Secondly, I do not believe that reducing the numbers reduces the quality of accountability. I therefore reject the hon. Gentleman’s argument. I accept that if it were a bad thing to do, it would be a bad thing to do piecemeal, but if it is a good thing to do, it is a good thing to do piecemeal, even though it would be better if we could—unfortunately we cannot—achieve major constitutional reform alongside it.

[Wayne David]

Surely the lesson of our discussion about Lords reform, and of the debate about boundary changes, is that the only way to bring about major constitutional change of this kind is on the basis of political consensus between all the parties.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I am afraid that I was receiving instructions to be brief while the hon. Gentleman was speaking, so I did not really gather the purport of his remarks, which I shall have to read in Hansard—I do apologise.

Even from a theoretical point of view, it is not proper for us to think that we should not make incremental changes that are to the benefit of the constitution simply because they do not achieve everything that could be achieved through full constitutional change. The reason that I do not think that that is true theoretically is that it is not how British history has proceeded. The whole of our history has been a process of incremental change of our constitution. There has not been a thoroughgoing review of our constitution since 1688, and even that was pretty ramshackle. Certainly, 1216 was extraordinarily ramshackle. If Members actually read Magna Carta, as opposed to the propaganda about it, they will see that it did very little other than enforce that the actions of the king be done through his court rather than by sole fiat. Some significant changes were made in 1688, but an awful lot was left undone. We then went through a whole series of incremental changes to create the universal franchise, which took a very long time indeed. On the arguments of the hon. Member for Newport West, we never would have had any of those changes, because we would have been waiting the whole time for a proper Bill that would have moved us immediately to a full universal franchise, which was obviously the right thing to do from the beginning.

The fact is that our constitution has evolved by slow, incremental change. I do not welcome that fact. I think that the United States is blessed in having had a constitution that was more or less fully formed from the beginning. By creating the Basic Law all in one go, I think that we did a better job in Germany after the war than we have done in Britain, but alas, that ain’t how things are done in the UK. It is in the spirit of our constitutional tradition to make incremental changes that make things fairer and enable us to proceed. That is what the current proposals do. The Bill would prevent us from doing that, so I support the Government’s rejection of it.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin). It is obvious from his appearance here on a Friday morning that the Government’s loss is the gain of Friday Back-Bench business. I sensed the lemons bristling a little when he referred unkindly to some of his fellow Back Benchers. I am sure that they will respond to him in kind.

We overwhelmingly support the Bill promoted by the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass), and we will do what we can to ensure that it progresses through Parliament and becomes legislation. In fact, we debated the issue a few weeks ago, when we invited the Government to reconsider their plans to reduce the number of MPs, and encouraged them to have a look at what is actually going on in our democracy and Parliament.

We profoundly believe that there is no case whatsoever for increasing the number of unelected Lords in that absurd institution down the corridor while cutting the number of parliamentarians elected by the people. It is simply absurd that, in this mother of Parliaments, more parliamentarians are appointed by a Prime Minister than are directly elected by the people. That is the cornerstone of our objection to what the Government are doing with the boundaries.

Of course, we do not want any Members from Scotland to have to come down to this Parliament. We have a slight hankering that the Scottish people are probably better placed than the Westminster Tories to run the nation of Scotland, and that the people of England could just about muddle along without us coming down every week to involve ourselves in their affairs. That is our starting point, but, as long as we are part of a UK unitary Parliament, and as long as this House exercises significant and real powers over our nation, it is right and proper that we have the correct number of parliamentarians from Scotland to look after the vital interests of our nation and our institutions.

[Wayne David]

I agree with much of the hon. Gentleman’s criticism of the House of Lords, but does he want the second Chamber to be abolished or reformed?

[Pete Wishart]

It needs to be abolished. It is unreformable. It is an absurd circus. I am not a unicameralist: I believe that a nation as complex as the United Kingdom requires a scrutinising Chamber. Some of my hon. Friends take a different view, but my personal view is that we need a scrutinising Chamber that is properly elected.

What an embarrassing humbling the Government received yesterday when they had to withdraw the Strathclyde review. You cannot take on the boys in ermine and get done like that! The Government will have to reflect on their overwhelming and embarrassing defeat at the hands of the House of Lords. They took on the aristocrats. Those guys won battles in the medieval ages to exercise their right to rule over us. The Government sent the bumptious Lord Strathclyde to try to tame them and that is the result.

I hope that the Government reconsider their approach to the Lords. All they are going to do is increase the number of peers. We now face the prospect over the next few days of having the dark lord Farage. The bad Baron Boot-Them-out-of-Here is going to be a feature of our democracy. Someone who has been beaten eight times in Westminster contests might find himself a parliamentarian through the back door.

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[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

My comments will be brief. I begin with a fundamental point: the number of people on the electoral register is central to our discussion today. Some 1.75 million people who registered just before the European referendum are not included in the calculations for the new boundaries, which is profoundly wrong. Importantly, it is not only morally wrong; it has a practical effect, too.

The House of Commons Library has stated clearly that the largest increase in the electorate was in London, where there was a 6% increase. If that figure was taken forward under the legislation providing for 600 seats, there would be an extra two constituencies in London and an extra seat in the south-west. Other parts of the UK would lose out. That is important in itself, but we must realise that it would have a knock-on effect on those regions. The parliamentary boundaries would be very different from those being suggested.

The Government, against the explicit advice of the Electoral Commission, brought forward the date for full implementation of individual electoral registration by one year from December 2016 to December 2015, and the register is only 85% complete. In other words, 1.8 million people have been deliberately excluded from the electoral register, preventing them from voting and taking them out of the calculations of the new boundaries. If that is not gerrymandering, I do not know what is. It is a quite deliberate political act by this Conservative Government. Most of those who are not on the register—those who have been excluded—are young people, many of whom live in private rented accommodation, which has a political implication that many of us know only too well.

It is important to recognise that the legislation on the statute book is politically motivated. It was dreamt up by Conservative party central office, enacted in large part by the coalition Government and refined to the detriment of the Labour party by this Administration. This Bill can be put into effect. It may need tweaking in Committee and the Boundary Commission may require extra resources to implement it, but it is entirely practicable in principle. If the Bill is passed and reaches the statute book, it would help to restore fairness and the idea that communities are central to our parliamentary democracy. That is why I support it.