I speak in this debate with previous experience of the process of making electoral boundaries. As I referred to on Second Reading, I used to work for the Local Government Boundary Commission for England on periodic electoral reviews of local government boundaries, and I must declare an interest: some of my friends and colleagues moved on to work more recently for the Boundary Commission for England on parliamentary reviews.
I am pleased the Government have accepted our call to scrap the plan to cut the number of MPs to 600. A reduction would have weakened the role of Parliament to the benefit of the Executive, and recently we have seen the value and importance of a breadth of scrutiny of Government during the covid-19 pandemic. I am pleased also that the numeration date changed to 2 March 2020 to ensure maximum reflection of the electorate, rather than one impeded by covid-19.
I still have concerns, however, about the Government’s intention to remove parliamentary scrutiny from the boundary review process and the imposition of a restrictive electoral quota, so I am speaking strongly in favour of amendment 1, to remove clause 2, and of new clause 1, both tabled in the name of the Leader of the Opposition. Effective democracy is reliant on transparency and public confidence in the structures and processes, so removing parliamentary scrutiny and approval of the structure from the process raises questions about the integrity of our democracy. It would give the Government of the day unequal influence over the process, but the most important point is the one made very eloquently put by my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle). The point about democracy is that our constituents can hold us to account for the decisions we make, and the proposal takes that away.
The Government’s intention to impose a 5% electoral quota will have a detrimental impact on the democratic representation of our communities.
Flexibility must be central to our boundary review system in order to recognise community identities and connections, and to facilitate the accurate representation of different geographical areas.
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From my experience of boundary making, I have an informed understanding of how the public responds to well-made and poor boundaries, or should I say, sensible and coherent constituencies that reflect local community identity and ultimately make sense locally, and those that do not. A 5% electoral quota will restrict the
Boundary Commission’s ability to construct constituencies that protect local ties, reflect local authority boundaries and recognise the natural topography of rural and urban areas. The statistical difference in size of constituencies is marginal, but the positive impact that it will have on the functioning of our democracy is overwhelming. It would help to reduce the ratcheting effect where, to be within the tolerance of the quota, an amendment is made to one constituency which has a significant knock-on effect across multiple constituencies, resulting in a poorer sense of community identity in many constituencies simply to avoid a single constituency having only a few hundred more or fewer votes. I urge the Minister to reflect on that and agree that, in certain circumstances, it is more important that people who have common interests and live in a common identifiable community are kept together, rather than divided in order to meet these very tight constraints on the size of constituencies.
Any decent boundary geek worth their salt also knows that a higher variance is the exception, not the norm. There have been only a few occurrences when a slightly higher tolerance would facilitate better boundaries, as well as help to manage compound names, which can often agitate the public, who write in to complain more about that than with objections to boundaries.
I have one point to add to the earlier debate about the use of polling districts as building blocks. I fundamentally disagree that they should be used as building blocks because they do not have a statutory standing compared with wards, which do. Their main focus is on accessibility, and they are administrative conveniences agreed by local authorities with no statutory standing compared with ward boundaries. Some wards may have five or six polling districts compared with some that have only three or four, so it is a flawed measure in that they are not evenly distributed. They are focused on polling places, not necessarily on communities.
With that, I commend the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith), and I hope that the Minister will consider them.