Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I want to speak in support of amendment 209, tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea), as well the consequential amendment 210. It would delete proposed new section 5(2) from clause 12 so that the status quo was maintained and a public inquiry could be held by a boundary commission. As that is the purpose of my amendment, I have no difficulty in lending my support and that of my hon. Friends to amendment 15, proposed by the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan). As regards the other amendments in this group, I am happy to support amendment 194, tabled by the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan). As he said, it is a fall-back provision if the House decides to do away with the option of having local public inquiries in general. At the very least, I agree that there should be such a provision that would cover Northern Ireland as a region because of the particular circumstances that he so ably outlined. I want to make a few general comments very briefly, then a couple that relate specifically to Northern Ireland. First, we have had a very good debate. Everyone who has spoken in this and the previous one spoke against the Bill and its provisions. I have not heard many speeches in support of it, other than from those on the Government Front Bench. [Interruption.] I am sorry: the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), who has returned to her place, strongly opposed part 1 of the Bill on the alternative vote, so she is in the category of having opposed the Bill on some matters but, as she made clear, she would go much further than the Bill does on other matters. I got the clear impression that she would be happy to do away with constituencies altogether and have one great list system in which everyone voted in relation to the entire country. She might be happier with such a system, but we shall not rehearse that debate as we have already had exchanges on it. Given that no mandate has been sought by or given to either of the coalition parties on either the AV provisions or on reducing the number of seats from 650 to 600, given that there has been no Speaker's Conference and no pre-legislative consultation, and given that no cross-party consensus has been sought or given and that there has been no consultation with any of the devolved Administrations, it is all the more appalling and reprehensible that there should be no opportunity for people to give oral evidence to, or to query, the boundary commission proposals at a local public inquiry. The coalition Government talk about new politics, openness and transparency, but I think that these measures will be for ever cited as a damning indictment of their real approach to this issue. Given the scale and unprecedented nature of the changes to boundaries and constituencies and given that the measures are driven by the need to do this quickly for reasons of political expediency, it is absolutely essential that we should have public local inquiries. It is vital to ensure that people in local communities know what is going on and what is being proposed, that they are able to participate fully in the process and feel ownership of it, and that there is transparency and openness in the entire process. In my experience and that of the people I represent, the taking of such an approach has made a difference. As the hon. Member for Foyle will know, not long ago the Boundary Commission for Northern Ireland proposed to reduce the number of seats in Belfast from four to three and there was an outcry. The hon. Member for Epping Forest said that there was never an enormous outcry about constituency boundary changes, but I can tell her that there was about the prospect of the Belfast boundaries being changed. Of course, she can imagine why that might be, given what it would mean with regard to who would be representing certain people in certain areas. More recently, when it was proposed that a particular community should be moved from the Lagan Valley constituency into the Belfast West constituency, that community spontaneously and of their own volition made strenuous objections to the proposal. They went to the public local inquiry, raised their concerns, were interrogated on them and ultimately made a difference to the outcome. The effect is all the greater because some Northern Ireland constituencies are not represented in this House as their elected Members deliberately abstain from and boycott the House by not taking their seats here, so these things matter to people in Northern Ireland. That is why we need public local inquiries to take account of such local issues. As has been mentioned, the proposed constituency changes will affect representation not only in this House but in the Northern Ireland Assembly. Some of the issues pertinent to the boundary changes are therefore relevant not only to the make-up of the House of Commons and how people are represented here, by a single elected Member, but to multi-Member constituencies in the Northern Ireland Assembly. I do not underestimate the fact that people in Northern Ireland have for many years put a great premium on stability and having a consensus moving forward. Now we risk—almost as an aside, almost as an incidental of the Bill being rushed through—upsetting a delicate political equilibrium, a point that was made by the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy), the former Secretary of State, in his contribution. We risk that equilibrium being thrown into turmoil. All sorts of unintended consequences could emerge from that, so I urge caution. At the very least, if the Government are not so minded and the House does not support my amendment or amendment 15 in the name of the right hon. Member for Tooting, the Government should allow Northern Ireland, through amendment 194, to have the opportunity of its own regional inquiry. I urge the House to think carefully before it does away with the right of local public inquiries to have the oral evidence presented, to allow people to participate and to have their concerns investigated in detail.