And what a pleasure it is, as always, to follow the remarks of the sage of Strangford, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), with his unrivalled love for his constituency and, may I say, for this Chamber, which he demonstrates day after day—and evening after evening.
Let me take each proposed amendment in turn. I will do my best to accommodate the comments that hon. and right hon. Members have made. If I do not manage to do justice to all of that, I will try to accommodate them in my remarks on Third Reading.
Starting with new clause 1, I am very grateful to hon. Members for all their contributions, because it was a very strong theme in Committee. It is about how much flexibility ought to be given to the boundary commissions. Let me start by outlining that 5% is the existing law—the status quo—and there are a number of reasons why the Government have chosen not to change the legislation in that area and why we therefore do not support the new clause. When we say plus or minus 5%, we are talking about a range of 10% around the electoral quota. By that token, when we talk about plus or minus 7.5%, what is being spoken about is a range of 15%. By my calculation, each percentage is over 1,000 people, and people matter in this.
We believe that a 10% range does give the boundary commissions the space that they need to take account of the other factors that they may consider. As hon. Members will know, those include local geographical features, community ties, local government boundaries and existing parliamentary boundaries. At this point, I note that my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) is right that discussions are ongoing with the Boundary Commission for England, picking up on what we did in Committee.
Some characterise 10% as overly mathematically or too constraining—I think those were the words used by the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith)—but that is not the case. It is right that the boundary commissions are able to engage in dialogue with local communities—that is very important—and are able to adjust the number of electors to reflect important community ties. The 10% range allows that,
and the proof is seen in an example from the Boundary Commission for England: in the 2016-18 review, more than 50% of its initial proposals were changed in the light of consultation and feedback.
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