Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Curiously enough, I shall come to the question of the Irish Republic a little later in my remarks, if the hon. Gentleman will bear with me. Although by 2000 the total number of MPs involved in Government had already gone up from 42 in 1900 to 129, the number of Cabinet Ministers has not greatly increased. It is the number of loyal, but little known and easily sackable bag carriers that has ballooned. At the election, we in the Conservative party were pledged to make Government more answerable to Parliament. How is that to be achieved by maintaining the number of Ministers and increasing the number of PPSs, yet at the same time reducing the number of MPs? At this rate, genuine Government Back Benchers will become a threatened species. There will be no more Pitts attacking Walpole, no more Disraelis attacking Peel and no young Macmillans attacking Chamberlain, yet that is part of the lifeblood of our parliamentary story. On what grounds is it claimed, historically, statistically or in terms of accommodation, that we have too many MPs? Germany, Australia and the United States, with their federal structures, have far more elected representatives, at various levels of their constitution, than we have. Over the past two centuries, our population has increased from about 16 million in 1800 to about 62 million today. We now have 650 MPs. The proposal is to reduce the number to 600. In 1801, shortly before Trafalgar, there were 658 MPs. In 1885, in the heyday of Liberalism, there were 670 MPs. In the 1918 general election, 707 MPs were elected to the House, before the southern Irish were hived off in 1922—the year in which the Back Benchers of the Tory party reasserted themselves and got rid of Lloyd George. Universal suffrage was not fully achieved until 1929, but in the two previous centuries the voteless masses were never out of the minds of wise MPs and Ministers. In 1801, the number of people, as distinct from voters, in each constituency averaged 24,000—although it varied a good deal from constituency to constituency. Today, the number is 95,000 and the majority are electors. If we reduce the number of MPs to 600, as is proposed, that average population figure will become 103,000, quadrupled from the 25,000 of 1800 when they had more MPs than we have today. Also, the demands of a constituency on its Member of Parliament have enormously increased in recent years. In my first Parliament, I shared one secretary with two other young and active MPs; now I have three secretaries working for me alone. Coalition Ministers, in their programme document, claim to hold our political system in contempt, but the strange fact is that the part of the system that undoubtedly works best is that in which the Government are least involved. The best aspect of modern politics is the close personal relationship between MPs and their constituents. Its closeness and extent is unique. Even in Switzerland, the cantonal MP is not seen as being so close and available as most MPs of all parties are seen to be by their constituents in Britain. While the media and many members of the public often express contempt for our leading political figures—but not, of course, for the Leader of the House—at grass-roots level, whatever the politics of their MP, people are more likely to say, ““My own MP does a good job in the constituency, and when I am in trouble, I know that he will do his best to help me.”” That is the strongest of all the present bulwarks of our democratic parliamentary system. At a time of economic failure, disgruntled police, fearful public servants, a neglected army and hostile trade unions, which in many countries would be regarded as a dangerous quintet, why tamper with that bulwark? When there are so many more pressing issues to be solved, why set many MPs, even of the same party—or particularly of the same party—at the political throats of their neighbours, as rumours of boundary changes begin to abound? My local press has already speculatively redrawn the six Lincolnshire constituencies and abolished one of them, to general dismay and the discouragement of activists of all parties. Why muddy the political waters with the inevitable charges of gerrymandering, which are certain to be thrown about? Very wisely, in the United States, changes to the actual constitution occur only very rarely, after years of discussion, and they require a two-thirds majority of both Houses of Congress and the approval of the Supreme Court. In this debate on new clause 7, I have spoken about only two aspects of the so-called constitutional reforms, but in my view, the wide range of constitutional and electoral changes proposed by the coalition Government, taken as a whole, and introduced so early in the life of a Parliament full of new Members, constitute an attempt at a peaceful, political coup d'état, with the sole object of securing the position of Ministers. They have no mandate for the Bill from the country. I therefore urge this Committee to accept new clause 7, and urge the House in due course to reject the whole Bill on Third Reading.