My Lords, these various amendments remind us of a fundamental and inherent contradiction in a key aspect of this Bill. That is to say that, on the one hand, we are told repeatedly by the noble Lord, Lord True, and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, that the whole heart and function of the Bill is to provide as near as possible arithmetic equality in the way in which constituency boundaries are determined, and that that is the thing that matters most. Some quite elaborate language is used to describe “fair votes” and “equal votes”; I stopped jotting down the number of times that these phrases were used by Ministers but, when Hansard is available for this Committee stage, I will make a little note of them all, because this is at the heart of the justification throughout.
That is on the one hand but, on the other hand, of course, we have—as has been mentioned from time to time—the section of the Bill dealing with protected constituencies, where precisely the reverse applies. It says that mathematical accuracy is an irrelevance and that what matters are geographic matters and cultural issues, as well as issues of accessibility, natural boundaries and the rest. For the avoidance of doubt, I emphasise that I totally agree with there being constituencies in that category. All I am saying is that some of the common sense that has led to that decision should be applied to the other 645 constituencies in the United Kingdom.
Even if you take barriers and natural boundaries—the sea is one, of course—the best that Ministers could ever say was that they are all islands, but of course some of them are made up of several islands. While the sea is a barrier, so is a mountain range or a river estuary, when it is difficult to get from one side of the estuary to the other. There is nothing in the rules that prevents you having anything other than constituencies that go across river estuaries because you have to keep to the precise mathematical formula.
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What we should be trying to do, and what the amendments are trying to do, is not to try to square the circle and say that all constituencies should be excepted constituencies—and not, as the Government certainly do not say, that all 650 constituencies should have endless possibilities of variation. The amendments would provide significantly greater flexibility and thus allow for all the things that we know are important, as they always have been, in drawing constituency boundaries. This was fundamental to many of the arguments in the previous group of amendments about Scotland and Wales. You do not want to rip up communities and establish random connections just to get the electorate up by a few hundred votes. You do not want constituencies that straddle a mountain range. I could go on, as we all could, because we all know different parts of the country so well.
Whichever of the amendments is taken—I prefer the one with the largest possibility of variation—in my view, all of them are trying to attach a logic to the Bill as a whole, which the Government have failed to do. I hope that the Minister sees the sense of this and will adopt one or other of these proposals.