My Lords, despite several years spent scrutinising legislation in your Lordships’ House—and, indeed, many bad years before that drafting amendments—I must confess that this is the first Bill that I will seek to lead through the House myself. It is a great privilege to do so, and I look forward to working with all your Lordships on it in the coming months. Looking at the speakers’ list, I see that I seem to be surrounded by people responsible for organising most of the successful and unsuccessful elections for the past 50 years, so I can be sure that your Lordships’ wisdom will have great weight.
The purpose of this legislation is straightforward and, in many ways, modest. Its central aim is to enable us to achieve the Government’s manifesto commitment of delivering updated and equal parliamentary constituencies, and to do so on the basis of there being 650 seats in the House of Commons. The Bill is about the composition of the elected Chamber, and it has been backed by the elected Chamber.
Noble Lords will surely agree that the updating of our constituency boundaries is long overdue. The last parliamentary boundary reviews to be implemented in the United Kingdom were based on data—that is, the numbers of electors—from the early 2000s. That may seem like yesterday to many of us here, but the sobering fact is that our youngest voters were not even born then. Our current constituencies reflect how the UK was almost two decades ago. In those two decades, our country has changed enormously, having undergone significant demographic and migratory change. We need updated boundaries to reflect that. We also need to get back on track with boundary reviews that happen and come into effect regularly, routinely and reliably. This Bill delivers that and, in so doing, makes a number of common-sense and technical changes to update the boundary review process and the rules under which the four Boundary Commissions operate.
We have engaged with stakeholders, including the parliamentary parties and electoral administrators, as the Bill has evolved, and the provisions reflect their input. I appreciate the conversations that I have already been able to have with a number of noble Lords.
It is important to say from the outset that this is amending legislation and there are many elements of the existing legislative framework for boundary reviews that it does not seek to alter. Those elements none the less remain of interest both here and in the other place, and I will today touch on the most significant of them, such as the rules relating to constituency size. However, let me start with the things the Bill does do—the common-sense, technical changes.
First, as I mentioned, the Bill provides that future boundary reviews will be conducted on the basis of there being 650 parliamentary constituencies. To make this measure effective, the Bill brings the 2018 boundary review, which would have been the first to be based on 600 constituencies, to a close, without being implemented. Noble Lords will remember that the decision to make that reduction to 600 was taken by the coalition Government a decade ago. Since the change was brought into law in 2011, the UK’s electorate has grown and there have been significant changes in demography. Members of Parliament are representing more constituents than ever before, and they are taking on the role of scrutinising legislation and overseeing areas of policy, such as trade and immigration, that have previously been the preserve of the European Parliament. Under these circumstances, the Government think it right that the current 650 constituencies are retained. The House of Commons has assented to that.
My Lords, I welcome the Minister introducing his first Bill and I welcome being able to say that I welcome it. Of course, it rectifies a bad mistake made by the coalition, which sought to reduce the size of Parliament without a corresponding reduction in the size of the Executive and which reduced the accountability of MPs to their constituencies by giving them larger electorates and by legislating for frequent re-boundarying, making it harder to build up the knowledge and contacts that make for effective representation.
Of course, these are matters more for the elected than for your Lordships’ House. But it was ironic that the reduction of the size of that House was to happen just as this one grew disproportionately by the addition of Members who were here for life and—like all of us —neither removable nor accountable. It was hard to understand the rationale for that, so I look forward to hearing former members of the coalition Government—particularly the seven Lib Dems due to speak today, of whom three are in the Chamber—who, as Hansard reminds me, voted against our amendment on this subject, to explain the conundrum. Regrettably, neither the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, nor the noble Lord, Lord McNally, who steered it though this House, is on the speakers’ list today. Anyway, it all means that we are of course delighted to see Clause 5, and to give it our wholehearted support.
Your Lordships would, however, expect us to look carefully at the rest of the Bill, to ensure that it achieves its objectives and to see whether there are amendments that we would like to table for consideration. Perhaps the major one is something that does affect us, because it is about the role of Parliament. Hitherto, as we have heard, Parliament has had to sign off the final proposals from the various boundary commissions. Indeed, it was, fortunately, because of this very power, and the then Government’s inability to get their proposals through the other House, that we do not now have a 600-seat Chamber at the other end of this building.
My Lords, it is not my usual source for a wise text, but I shall begin with a quote from the Conservative manifesto of December 2019—significantly not repeated by the Minister this afternoon. We do believe that we should be
“making sure that every vote counts the same—a cornerstone of democracy.”
However, we remind the Government that any variance in the number of electors in UK constituencies pales into insignificance when compared with the way the first past the post electoral system cheats voters. Some party supporters have to be hugely more numerous to secure representation than others. In December 2019, it took 33 times as many to secure an MP for one party when compared with another, so the worst ratio inequality was a staggering 33:1. We will have to return to this when we have a more comprehensive opportunity to make our system more fit for purpose, perhaps when the promised constitution, democracy and rights commission is up and running.
We can agree to some features of this Bill. The retention of the 650 MPs is now logical, and so too is the eight years between each review and redistribution; that is helpful. The base date for electoral registration totals is certainly sensible, and the overall emphasis on avoiding unnecessary, frequent and disruptive changes is very welcome indeed. That is the area which requires the most improvement in the Bill. For a start, Parliament must give a firm instruction to the Boundary Commissions to avoid, wherever practicable, crossing top-tier local authority boundaries. The classic case is the historic boundary that gives unrivalled integrity to Cornwall. The River Tamar provides a much better boundary with England than either Scotland or Wales currently enjoy. Even the Conservative MPs there now seem to have lost their enthusiasm for a “Devonwall” seat.
There are other examples. Crossing city boundaries to avoid splitting wards within them is manifestly absurd, encumbering MPs, the cities themselves and their citizens with totally avoidable confusion. MPs seem to have accepted that splitting large wards is preferable to creating constituencies that straddle more than one upper-tier local authority area, but the Bill must be totally explicit on this objective.
My Lords, first, I hope that I am correct in wishing the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, a happy birthday. Secondly, I echo the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, about the sad death of Professor Ron Johnston, who would have given evidence to the Committee in the other place had he not died so tragically only a few days before he was due to do so. He was a man of great and impartial expertise, to whom the political geography of redistribution came so naturally—and so charmingly to everyone he spoke to.
Given the brevity that we are required to maintain in the debate, at this stage I intend to speak on only one aspect of the Bill: Clause 5, on the number of Members of Parliament. No doubt I will return to other more contentious matters at a later stage, such as automaticity, quotas and the like, but I should add that I broadly support the other elements of the Bill as they stand.
We have too large a political class in this country. It has inflated beyond a level that is acceptable in a modern western democracy. I am therefore disappointed to see that we are moving away from 600 MPs, a number which, as far as I was concerned, was far too many. In his opening comments, the Minister justified moving back to 650 MPs in part because of Brexit. I would have sympathy with that argument were it not for the fact that when we went into the EU, no one suggested that we should reduce the number of Members of Parliament.
When we went into the EU, and when the last EU legislation was passed in 1986, we had only two elected bodies in the United Kingdom, one in Stormont and one in Westminster. The 1986 Act states:
“The number of constituencies in Great Britain shall not be substantially greater or less than 613.”
We currently have 19 more MPs than the Act recommended, and since 1986 we have added 129 Members of the Scottish Parliament, 60 Members of the Senedd Cymru, 12 more Members at Stormont, 25 Members of the GLA, 41 police and crime commissioners, and elected mayors in Merseyside, Manchester, Watford, Bedford, Teesside and the like. Then, of course, we have 792 Members of this House which, sadly, is just about to be heavily inflated, a decision that I greatly regret, particularly given that so many of the people who will be undertaking that process had said themselves that they wanted to reduce the burden of government on individuals.
[Inaudible]—proposal for the implementation of reports of Boundary Commissions with what has been described as automaticity, without the current parliamentary approval and, therefore, it is said, without the possibility of political influence or interference at that stage. In future, unless Parliament changes primary legislation at the time of a report’s publication, it will cease to have a role. It is said we are drawing on the experience of successful examples elsewhere, in New Zealand, Canada and Australia.
The consequence of this change must be to move the focus of any risk of political interference to the Boundary Commission, as the final decision will no longer be for Parliament. This means that any risk of interference may move to the commission and the process of appointing it. It is therefore essential that the commission is not only independent but seen to be independent and appointed independently.
As noble Lords know, commissions are chaired by the deputy chairman in each jurisdiction, who has to be a High Court judge. In Scotland the deputy chairman is appointed by the head of the judiciary, the Lord President, and in Northern Ireland by the head of the judiciary there, the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland. However, that is not the position in England and Wales. The appointment is not by the head of the judiciary, the Lord Chief Justice, but by the Lord Chancellor, a government Minister.
For England and Wales, this anomaly—which pre-dates the change to the position of the Lord Chancellor in 2005—must be changed, in my view, so that the deputy chairman is no longer appointed by a government Minister but, as in Scotland and Northern Ireland, by the head of the judiciary. Although, of course, the Lord Chancellor consults the Lord Chief Justice, in the light of the proposed change brought about by this Bill in effecting automaticity, that is no longer sufficient. That is because it is necessary to ensure that the independence of the judiciary is not undermined by any perception of partisanship or political influence in the appointment. It must be seen to be wholly independent of the political Minister that the Lord Chancellor now is.
My Lords, I have great respect for the noble Lords, Lord Hayward and Lord Tyler, but I had difficulty following some of their points.
On the point from the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, about the size of the House of Commons, it has historically always had about 650 Members. A century ago, it was larger at 707 Members; it has come down in size over that period. I do not think it excessively large for exactly the reasons my noble friend gave: we have an unusually large Executive in this country, partly because we are a unitary state. We do not have devolved government in England. Maybe we should have a smaller Government than 100-odd members, but as long as such a large proportion of the governing party are members of the Executive—about a third of the Members of the governing party in the House of Commons are members of the Executive—I see no alternative to a House of Commons about the same size we have at the moment.
As for the House of Lords, I think the noble Lord’s memory is somewhat short. It was the last Labour Government who dramatically decreased the size of the House of Lords by removing most of the hereditary Peers. The House of Lords is now much smaller than it has been for most of recent history.
As for what the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said, I am a supporter of electoral reform. I support the mixed member system that Britain introduced into Germany after 1945 to get the best balance between directly elected constituency MPs and a proportional top-up—but we have had a referendum on that. We had a referendum in 2011, and whereas I was very open to exploring the results of the 2016 referendum, which was close and not on a precise proposition, the 2011 referendum on the alternative vote was on a very precise proposition and has been enacted by Parliament—and it was decisive; 69% voted against it.
My strong advice to my friends on the Lib Dem Benches is: do not go there. The way the progressive parties in this country will come to power in future is not by chimera ideas of electoral reform but by winning an election under the existing system. That is what we should devote our attention to doing.
My Lords, the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 was the subject of the fiercest and longest debates I have witnessed in this House. At the time my party was seeking a route to change to the AV voting system through a referendum, while the Conservative Party was seeking to address what it wrongly considered to be a bias against it in the system. My party failed to persuade people to vote for its preferred option in that referendum, and the Conservative Party failed to persuade either House of Parliament to accept the proposals for new constituency boundaries in 2013 and knew it would fail again with those of 2018—so the 2011 Act must be replaced. But to say that this Bill has been approved by the other place means only that it has been approved by the Conservative Party.
The Bill before us is better than that of 2011 in that it retains 650 constituencies and proposes reviews every eight years, not every five, but the basis of it remains flawed in at least two major respects. First, we still have a hopelessly inadequate system of voter registration, which provides the building blocks for drawing boundaries. Secondly, as we can see from the last two aborted review processes, the tiny variation of just 5% permitted to the quota for electorates in each constituency will prevent the creation of sensible constituencies based on recognised communities and will result in major disruption to many constituency boundaries with every review.
In 2015 the Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee concluded that a variation of 7.5% or 8% would be consistent with the government aims and with avoiding these problems. We see from the 2013 and 2018 proposals how this inflexible figure of 5% results in great changes to many constituencies even though both sets of proposals were for the same number of seats. It was argued in the other place that splitting local government wards could limit this disruption, but an excellent and detailed note from the Boundary Commission for England explained very carefully and in detail why splitting wards is not practical on a widespread basis. This time we must properly address the problem of being unable to create sensible constituencies all within the 5% quota and which will otherwise often cross county and other local government boundaries and involve major disruption to boundaries, splitting up many constituencies every time a review is conducted.
I remind noble Lords of the advisory speaking time of three minutes. We must finish at 8.30 pm tonight and we have a 60-Member list, so we need to get on.
My Lords, one of the many privileges of being a Member of this place is having opportunities, such as we have this afternoon, to have a role in determining the structure and process of our democracy. As unelected Peers, this is even more of a privilege, and one that we must use with considerable care.
I welcome this Bill for many reasons, some of which have already been expressed. It seeks to learn the lessons of the ill-fated 2018 Boundary Commissions review. By streamlining the review process, not only will future reviews be concluded more efficiently, but the Boundary Commissions’ recommendations will be provided in a politically neutral pathway for implementation. Some noble Lords will find the idea of the recommendations being implemented by an Order in Council rather than by parliamentary procedure uncomfortable. However, I ask them to consider the result that party politics can have on this process, as we saw in the last Parliament. The Bill will not only allow the Boundary Commissions’ recommendations to be implemented but, as the Minister said, put us in line with our sister parliamentary democracies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand. I do not think that it will be easily argued that this process has undermined their democracies.
However, the main purpose of the Bill is not to steal good ideas from our overseas cousins, but to deliver for the British people up-to-date and equal parliamentary boundaries, as promised in the Government’s manifesto. The current parliamentary constituency boundaries are based on data that is two decades old. Given the increase in population and changing demographics experienced across the United Kingdom, we need a Parliament that reflects that change. The next review will use the latest electoral information and return the current number of constituencies, ensuring that we have a Parliament that reflects modern Britain, providing the electorate of the United Kingdom with equal and fair votes and representation, and delivering for the British people.
20 of 136 shown
Connected to this, the Bill also removes an obligation on the Government to make arrangements to review the effects of reducing the UK constituencies to 600. As that has not taken place, it cannot meaningfully be analysed.
Moving on to the frequency of parliamentary boundary reviews, the Bill provides for future reviews—after the next one, due to start next spring—to take place every eight years, as opposed to every five years, as currently. This new timetable will allow constituency boundaries to be updated regularly but with less disruption to local communities and their MPs as a result of constituencies changing at every general election. Let me add that a parliamentary boundary review generally takes two years and 10 months from start to finish: it is a significant exercise. The Government believe that every eight years is appropriate for something of this scale, as did the stakeholders consulted.
Still on the subject of timing, the Bill enables the next boundary review—on a one-off basis—to follow a slightly shorter timetable of two years and seven months. The formal start of the review will be in December of this year and the Boundary Commissions must submit their final reports by 1 July 2023 at the latest. Bearing in mind that it takes time for electoral administrators to implement new boundaries, for political parties to reflect them in their structures and for citizens to become familiar with them, this timing of July 2023 is important. It gives us the best chance of there being updated parliamentary constituencies in place ahead of the next general election, whenever that may be. The reduction in time is achieved by the Boundary Commissions expediting some of their processes and by shortening the public consultation process by six weeks, from 24 to 18.
The Bill also makes a small number of changes to the boundary review process—the nuts and bolts of what happens during a review. First, there is a change to the timing of public hearings. Every boundary review, as your Lordships know, includes extensive public consultation arranged over three separate periods. This engagement with the public and with political parties takes a variety of forms. For example, proposals can generally be viewed online, and comments submitted to the Boundary Commissions via their websites or by letter. In addition, there are public hearings, events at which individuals can make representations in person to members of their Boundary Commission. The commissions for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland must hold between two and five public hearings in their respective nations. The Boundary Commission for England must hold between two and five in each of the English regions.
Under current legislation, public hearings take place early in the process, during the first of three consultation periods. This means that the Boundary Commissions need to decide locations and book venues before they are able to get a sense of where feeling about their proposals is strongest. During our engagement with stakeholders, we heard that this timing could be better. The Bill therefore makes provision for public hearings to take place later, during the second consultation period, allowing the commissions to consider the responses received during the initial consultation and assess where public hearings are most needed. To make this change effective, the length of the consultation periods is adjusted, allowing more time in the second period for the public hearings to occur.
Secondly, the Bill makes some practical changes in relation to the data that the Boundary Commissions use when developing their proposals. Boundary Commissions look at a variety of data sources. First and foremost, they look at numbers of electors so that they can devise constituencies that fit within the size range set by legislation. The Boundary Commissions draw information on elector numbers from the electoral register, generally deriving that data from the version of the register that exists on the 1 December at the start of a review, known as “the review date”. This date is picked because it generally falls immediately after the completion of the annual canvass, the process by which electoral registration officers verify entries on the electoral register. I should add here that annual canvasses are not required in Northern Ireland in the same way, but a revised register is still published every year by the Chief Electoral Officer for Northern Ireland. The electorate data drawn from the registers in Scotland, Wales and England is then checked further by relevant government agencies: the National Records of Scotland and the Office for National Statistics. The collated information—a complete and current picture of the number of electors in all four nations—is then published centrally by ONS. From this point it is used by the Boundary Commissions.
I hope noble Lords will see that the rationale here is that boundary reviews are based on the most up-to-date, robust and transparent information on elector numbers. This approach has been in place since the Boundary Commissions were created in 1944 and we do not seek to alter it. That said, the Bill makes one change in relation to electoral data for the next boundary review only; I hope that your Lordships will understand that it does so in direct response to Covid-19. Rather than being based on the electoral register of 1 December 2020, the next review will use the version of the register from 2 March 2020, before the pandemic. The aim is to sidestep any potential impact that Covid-19 may have on the operation of this year’s canvass or the electoral register. I am pleased to say that this one-off change has been widely supported.
Still on the topic of data, as well as elector numbers, Boundary Commissions will of course look to devise boundaries that reflect the other factors that they may take into account, including geographical features, local ties, existing parliamentary constituencies and local government boundaries.
The Bill introduces a change to the way in which the commissions take account of local government boundaries. Currently, the commissions can work only with local boundaries that have been fully brought into effect at an election before the start of a review. This means that, in places, a Boundary Commission may be looking back one, two or even three years to how the boundaries were at the time of the last local election in that area.
The Bill changes that. In future, Boundary Commissions will be able to take account of prospective local government boundaries—that is, boundaries that have been made by an order but not yet used in an election—at the review date: the 1 December formal start of the review. This measure will help keep constituency boundaries better aligned with local government boundaries, where appropriate. For the next boundary review, it will mean that new local government boundaries in London, Hertfordshire, Berkshire, Devon and Cornwall may all be taken into account where previously they might not have been.
We now come to the end of the process: the point where the Boundary Commissions have done their work and submitted their final reports. Here, the Bill introduces what in the marvellous world of policy is described as “automaticity”. Automaticity is simply the idea that the recommendations of the Boundary Commissions, developed through the meticulous and consultative process I have described, should be implemented without political influence or interference. Recommendations will still be brought into effect by an Order in Council; however, the draft order will no longer require approval by Parliament prior to making. As part of this measure, the Government’s ability to amend the draft Order in Council if rejected by Parliament is also removed.
In the other place, there was a degree of misunderstanding about the intentions of this change. I assure your Lordships that the purpose of this measure is straightforward: to bring certainty and confidence to the citizen and the elector that updated constituencies will be implemented without interference and further delay. I suspect that I am not alone in remembering what delay and interference look like; I will not touch on anybody’s sensibilities by referring to episodes in this country’s recent history.
I am sure that others will have different interpretations of the ins and outs of why boundary reviews have been delayed in the past, but I hope we can all agree that there is a vulnerability in our current legislation in this regard, and yet also an urgent need for the next review to start in good order and deliver updated boundaries promptly and reliably. Automaticity is the answer to that conundrum, and we are not the only ones to think so. In moving to this system, we draw on the experience of countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand, where a similar approach is used.
We also heard support in the evidence sessions of the Public Bill Committee in the other place. Witness after witness spoke up for automaticity, including party representatives, the Electoral Reform Society and several academics. As they pointed out, the removal of Parliament from the end of the boundary review process in no way alters the fact that Parliament remains sovereign and continues to set the rules and parameters within which the Boundary Commissions operate. The contesting of a parliamentary constituency will always be about politics, but this Government believe firmly that the process by which that constituency is proposed, revised and implemented should never be.
I will finish by talking about aspects of the current legislation that the Bill does not fundamentally change. The key topic here is tolerance. Under existing law, the Boundary Commissions are required to propose constituencies that are within plus or minus 5% of the average UK constituency electorate, which is known as the electoral quota. This provision, which was introduced by the 2011 Act, ensures that constituencies across the United Kingdom are broadly equal in size, within a 10% range of the electoral quota. The Government are not changing this because we are committed to delivering not just updated constituencies but equal and updated ones. Both goals are crucial. Equal constituencies mean votes that carry equal weight. Our democracy relies on our electors having confidence that they are fairly represented, yet how can an elector in Milton Keynes South—one of 97,000—feel fairly represented when up the road in Northampton North, their fellow elector is one of only 59,000?
Within our broad ambition to achieve equal constituencies, we accept that there are a handful of locations in the British Isles whose unique geographies demand a greater degree of flexibility. The law therefore includes a limited number of exceptions to the tolerance rules. By and large, we are leaving these untouched. For example, the exception that exists for Northern Ireland remains in place, allowing in certain limited circumstances for a slightly wider tolerance to be applied. This recognises that nation’s small number of constituencies and the disproportionate impact that certain rounding effects that result from the allocation of constituencies to the four nations can have there.
Similarly, an exemption for very large, sparsely populated constituencies also remains in place, as do the four protected constituencies that were included in the 2011 legislation where the tolerance rules do not apply. Those four protected constituencies are Na h-Eileanan an Iar, Orkney and Shetland, and two constituencies on the Isle of Wight.
The one change we are making here, following an amendment supported by the Government, is to add a fifth protected constituency for Ynys Môn—Anglesey. This move addresses an anomaly and has been widely welcomed. All the protected constituencies are islands and Ynys Môn falls within the range they set in terms of both geographical and electoral size.
To conclude, we have before us a Bill whose core purpose is electoral equality and fairness, delivered through equal and updated parliamentary constituency boundaries. Debates and witness testimony in the other place have revealed a clear consensus that this goal needs to be met—and soon. We need constituencies that reflect the electorate as they are now, not as they were at the turn of the century.
The Bill makes sensible and supported improvements to the way boundary reviews operate. We are legislating for an appropriate number of seats, a better frequency of reviews, an improved set of review processes and a more certain method of implementation designed to enhance the independence of the impartial Boundary Commissions. The people of the UK deserve fair votes; they deserve effective representation; and they deserve to have trust and certainty in the boundary review process that delivers those things.
I commend the Bill to the House. I beg to move.
However, suddenly, in this Bill, without any prior consultation, that final backstop role of Parliament has vanished—and with it, any possibility for the Commons to pause the process. Instead, the Executive will simply, via an Order in Council, trigger the whole sweep of changes. The Government maintain that this is to keep the procedure completely free of any political input. But there will still be political input—from the Executive, who retain the ability of tabling or withholding that Order in Council, because that cannot be instigated by Parliament.
So, for the sake of argument, should the Government not like the outcome, and should they be planning an election—since they have also promised to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act—would it not be very convenient to hold back that trigger, with Parliament unable to act? The Minister will, I am sure, say that the Government could do the same now, by delaying a statutory instrument—but at least that would be Parliament’s business, and therefore open to question.
Perhaps more fundamental, however, is the idea that Parliament—or politics—is somehow a bit grubby, and should not be able to give its final approval to something of such democratic consequence. Leaving major constitutional decisions to officials, with no parliamentary oversight, is difficult to defend. So I look forward to hearing the Minister—steeped as he is in Parliament and its ways—argue why, in this unique decision, Parliament should be shut out.
My noble friend Lord Lennie, who knows a thing or two about this, will say rather more about the issue of variance later, and will explain why the very small figure of plus or minus 5% is too restrictive to enable the boundary commissions to respect communities and geography, and to minimise disruption.
I will simply say two things. First, just as, in this House last time—thanks to the Lord Speaker, I think—we respected the Isle of Wight’s geography, and this time, thanks to a Conservative MP, Ynys Môn, or Anglesey, has been preserved as a seat, so we should enable the boundary commissions to respect equally important geographical realities, particularly in Wales.
I lived in Anglesey, in Bodedern, for a time—albeit I was unable to vote for Cledwyn Hughes, later Baron Cledwyn of Penrhos, as in those bygone days the voting age was 21, which I had not yet attained. So I know the island, and I feel its identity and cohesion. But I also know this in and around my maternal home of Ystradgynlais. My noble friend Lady Gale will say more about the valleys and their identity, as well as their travel challenges, in due course—things that necessitate some extra leeway to preserve community ties.
That brings me to the second point on variance. In their determination to have numerically equal electorates per seat, the Government have forgotten that MPs represent communities, not just individuals. MPs’ understanding of their local companies and schools, the local authority, the swimming pools, the universities, the sports teams, the churches, the charities, the culture and local history, means that they are embedded in the lives of their constituencies in a way that pure numerical determination fails to understand. So we will ask the Government to think again about the degree of flexibility allowed to the boundary commissions.
There are just two other points to make. One, in the context of this attempt to reach exact figures in each seat, is to remind the Minister that some 9 million—perhaps 20%—of those entitled to vote are missing from the register. That is a rough average of 10,000 per constituency. Given how many are missing altogether, that makes the obsession with the last 3,500—that is, of course, a smaller number for the 5%, now that we have 650 seats rather than 600—a little hard to understand.
Equally important for the representation of people in the Commons is that many simply do not get the chance to vote. The Electoral Commission recommended automatic voter registration, and the Select Committee of your Lordships’ House on the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 recommended urgent action to tackle underregistration, including piloting automatic registration for attainers. So perhaps the Minister could respond to this proposal in advance of our tabling the relevant amendments.
Secondly, as we look to the future and to an election in, say, four years’ time—although the early date of the first boundary review makes me think the next election might be a little earlier—we have the space now to extend the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds, whose lives will be affected by decisions in the Commons. I urge the Government not to dismiss this call but to give very careful thought to the planet, and the country, that we will leave to them, and to whether it is right to give those 16 and 17 year-olds a say over who will take the decisions that shape their lives. But for the moment we welcome the Bill, which will rectify a bad mistake, and I look forward to the speeches that will follow today, as well as to our discussions in Committee.
However, this gives added weight to the case for more realistic and flexible tolerances. As the independent academic evidence to the Commons Public Bill Committee from Dr David Rossiter and Professor Charles Pattie, drawing on the much-respected work of the late Professor Ron Johnston, made clear,
“Ward splitting certainly helped to reduce the amount of disruption, but in our estimates it did not reduce disruption anything like as much as widening the tolerances moderately.”—[Official Report, Commons, Parliamentary Constituencies Bill Committee, 23/6/20; col. 137.]
This is the core issue. Given that updated analysis shows that the previously alleged distortion between the electorates and voting in Conservative and Labour-held constituencies is now less significant and due more to registration levels, third-party activity and turnout as much as to any other factor, the disruption factor is all-important. Again, the academic evidence given to the Commons Public Bill Committee is absolutely explicit:
“Most of the bias that has caused comment and concern in recent years has come from other sources that are nothing to do with the constituency size issue.”—[Official Report, Commons, Parliamentary Constituencies Bill Committee, 23/6/20; cols. 132-3.]
MPs on the Committee seemed to accept that and to be anxious to avoid massive pointless disruption.
I know from my own experience how important this is both for MPs and for their constituents. Between my first period in 1974 and my return in 1992, there was a massive change in Cornwall; only the long-suffering residents in the Bodmin area had to have me as their MP twice. Elementary arithmetic reveals that the tight 5% margins either side of the desirable electorate changes when—[Inaudible]—650 constituencies, compared with the 600 in the previous legislation. With a few hundred variables, the whole political geography can change. Several constituencies can experience a knock-on effect and established representation links can be arbitrarily destroyed. A 5% tolerance invites regular disruption and ever-present insecurity. No MP with integrity wants that.
For example, the proposed extension of the franchise to more UK citizens overseas, which is planned to take place while this review is under way, could distort many of the new proposals, given such narrow room for manoeuvre. As more people from the EU achieve UK citizenship, that too can alter local totals. We will want to examine meticulously the case for a 7.5%, 8% or 10% tolerance, and it looks like the Labour Party will support us in re-examining those tolerance levels. My noble friends would also have wished to have emphasised the need for greater effort to improve the completeness of the register and to bring it into closer alignment with the census. They will wish to examine the special geographical factors at work in Scotland and Wales.
This Bill is an improvement in a number of respects. However, it will succeed only if a realistic approach is adopted to prevent excessive disruption, to preserve consistency and to respect historic integrity. Ironically, in a different era, that would have been described as conservatism.
Where I agree with the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, is that if we have a certain number of Members of Parliament, we should also have control over the Executive. We have much larger Houses than most other democracies. If we reduce the number of MPs to what I believe to be an acceptable level, there should be some way of acknowledging the control of the Executive. That is the job of both these Houses. But at the same time as we have been adding elected bodies in one form or another, depending on how you make the calculations we currently have 120 Ministers and Whips, a not quite record 42 Parliamentary Private Secretaries, and 109 special advisers—a number that in itself is up from 27 in 1987, almost the same point at which the legislation was passed.
We should reduce the number of people who govern this country, not just stabilise the total at 650. Given that I read the Sunday Times yesterday, I hope that soon—possibly in Committee—we might have what one might describe as a Quentin Letts amendment. We should restrict the numbers in this place and the Commons.
At the same time it seems necessary to change the appointment of the two other commissioners. Professor Hazell and Dr Renwick of the Constitution Unit at University College London set out a number of alternatives in their evidence to the House of Commons Committee in June 2020. In agreement with them, I urge that the preference should be the appointment made by an independent committee, including the deputy chairman, as is present practice. That committee should then put forward a single name to the Minister, with a power to reject only if written reasons are given. That has proved a very effective mechanism for the independent appointment of judges.
If the commission’s decisions are, in effect, to be final and binding through automaticity and protected from political interference, the appointment process must be independent and therefore seen to be free of the risk of any perception of political interference and influence.
My noble friend’s points were all well made and I agreed with them all. I amplify her final point about votes at 16. It is not clear to me what the Government’s policy is in respect of allowing the House of Commons a free vote; perhaps the Minister could elucidate that for us in his reply. It looks as if on a free vote there probably is a majority now in the House of Commons for a voting age of 16.
Not only has the time clearly come for votes at 16— the group that wants representation and has a democratic right to it that is most unrepresented in our institutions at the moment is young people, particularly 16 and 17 year-olds—but it should go hand in hand with two other reforms. First, young people should be automatically registered at their place of study, which used to happen when I was a student. Then, all universities would automatically register all their students. The move towards individual registration has served to keep a lot of young people off the electoral roll. If we are to reduce the voting age to 16, the other change I would make is to have a polling station in every place of study—every school with a sixth form, every college and every university. The combination of those three reforms—votes at 16, automatic registration and a polling booth in every place of study—would transform the representation of young people and we would be a healthier society for it.
The Bill has two changes which I particularly welcome: first, that the Boundary Commissions are mandated to redraw the constituencies every eight years; and secondly, that future reviews allow prospective local government boundaries to be considered alongside existing ones, helping to minimise the lack of alignment of council wards with parliamentary boundaries.
The Bill was passed by the other place with only two government-backed amendments, one to make Ynys Môn a protected constituency and the other to ensure that the next review is based on electoral data taken in March this year. Otherwise, the Bill was passed without further amendment—by Members who were returned by the electorate of this country only a few months ago, in a historic election in which this Government won an 80-seat majority with a promise to modernise parliamentary boundaries as part of a manifesto which this Bill is designed to deliver.