My Lords, these are important amendments—among the most important in the Bill. I congratulate all noble Lords who have made such telling arguments about the need for flexibility so that communities and local links are retained intact, and made them with a straight face and an earnest tone. For a moment or two, I was almost convinced, then I came back to reality.
All of us in this Room may not in a technical sense be noble friends, but we are political colleagues. Let us in the closeness of this Room, with no one listening in, be honest with one another about the arguments that we have all made to inspectors hearing constituency boundary inquiries. All noble Lords who were MPs, myself included, have sat at inquiries and made the most earnest arguments that boundaries should be changed or not changed because, as I said at Second Reading, they conformed with local travel-to-work areas, social habits, local boundaries, communities, cultural norms, mountains, lakes and rivers which could or could not be crossed, motorways, shopping habits or ancient history such as the routes followed by King Edward III when he invaded Scotland in 1356.
It is always a pleasure to listen to my pal, my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock; I think that he would have made an excellent governor-general in parts of Africa
in his dress uniform and cocked, plumed hat. However, I care to bet that, at some point in his distinguished career as a Member of Parliament for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley—is that not a magnificent name?—the noble Lord would have quoted Rabbie Burns as justification for including or excluding a part of Ayrshire. After all, there were few parts of the county to which Rabbie Burns did not wander in his travel to work as an exciseman or travel for favours in pursuit of many bonnie Jeans and bonnie lassies.
I think that I had a run-in my noble friend Lord Hayward who, wearing his hat as a national Conservative Party expert on constituencies, had a plan for boundary redistribution in Cumbria. At that time, Carlisle had about 50,000 electors, while I had more than 80,000 and the largest geographical constituency in England. Thus it made sense that part of my constituency should be added to Carlisle. I opposed it on the selfish basis that I did not want to give away part of my 18,000-strong majority, and the Labour Party strongly opposed it on every ground under the sun when the real reason was that it was afraid that an influx of Tory voters would lose it the seat. I recall us arguing for the creation of a new seat in Cumbria that was more than 100 miles long and banana-shaped, stretching from Barrow-in-Furness in the south and up the west coast, taking in Maryport and Whitehaven and almost reaching Carlisle. We said in all honesty to the inspector that this was a traditional travel-to-work route and a shopping route, and that people did this for recreation et cetera. The inspector said that, in that case, he would drive it next day and check it out for himself. I do not think that the poor fellow was ever seen again, lost in the wilds around Sellafield.
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The arguments made by Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative MPs were all bogus, as everyone in this Room knows. It was happening in every constituency, not just in Cumbria. What we were all after was getting a constituency boundary with sufficient wards to give us a safe majority so we could give away enough of our own supporters so that we could take the neighbouring seat for our party. That is a perfectly legitimate aim. Let us be honest about it. Let no former MP now in this House deny that that was indeed the game—because we all played it for political advantage. Thus I do not accept that we should have all the flexibilities argued for by the movers of these amendments.
When I wrote my notes, I did not know exactly what the new theoretical average constituency size would be. I took 78,000 as an example. I now understand it will be about 76,000, but my figure is perfectly valid for the comparisons I will now make. The current law would permit constituencies to range by 10%. It is not 5%. It is 5% down and 5% up, which is a range of 10%, from 95% to 105%—or, in my calculations, from 74,100 electors to 81,900. That leeway of 10% is a considerable number: 7,800 electors. I much prefer my noble friend Lord Forsyth’s amendment, which would restrict that to a range of 76,050 to 79,950.
Amendment 15 would make the range 15%, from 72,150 to 83,850, or a range of 11,700 electors. Amendment 16 is slightly worse. It would make the
range 16%—not 8%—or from 71,760 to 84,240, or 12,480 electors’ difference. Amendment 17 is by far the most extreme, making the range 20%. If the average electorate is 78,000, this amendment, if approved, would permit deviations as low as 70,200 or as high as 85,800, or a 15,600 variation. If this amendment were to be accepted, we could have a constituency with 70,000 electors sitting next door to one with almost 86,000 electors. That is preposterous and there is no electoral justification for that. There are no legitimate arguments for having constituencies with sizes varying by almost 12,000 in Amendment 15, over 12,000 in Amendment 16 and almost 16,000 in Amendment 17.
Integrated communities of that size do not exist as coherent electoral units any more. Just as people no longer have loyalty to one supermarket—apart from some Waitrose and Ocado customers, it seems at the moment—there are no longer party loyalties. People do not care who is their MP. This talk of a relationship between electors and MPs is nonsense. If it were true, seats would not change hands.
Electors no longer think that they have to operate in strict district, county or unitary authority guidelines. Let us not kid ourselves that local ties to an MP are important. They are now irrelevant. Even if they were important, the time has come for change. Local council boundaries are not nearly so important now as in the past. My former constituency of 1,500 square miles stretched from the Irish Sea to over the Pennines. I had one county council, three district councils and, while all of it was in England, we had Scottish postal codes in some of it, as well as Cumbrian pupils going to school in Northumberland. Health trusts covered different wards from the water utilities, which were different from the gas and electricity suppliers.
The only really silly boundary I had was a little stream between Cumbria and Northumberland, which ran right through the middle of the village of Gilsland. Electoral law did not permit it to remain intact and put it wholly in Cumbria or Northumberland. That is just one reason why the Boundary Commission must have the flexibility to cross district and county lines.
The electorate will not care one way or another. They simply want someone to deal with their problems, and they do not care whether it is one MP on one side of the street or a different MP on the other. It is all irrelevant these days, especially since we have the insidious single-issue pressure groups, whereby electors bypass MPs and try to get the law changed by mass political pressure rather than by MPs taking an overall view on the balance of duties and responsibilities, freedoms and liberties.
In conclusion, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Forsyth on the points that he made about saving the union. It is nonsense to say that we should increase the number of MPs from Wales or Scotland in order to save the union. I am sure that if we increased the number of MPs from Scotland to 100 or 200, Sturgeon would not immediately stop campaigning for an independent Scotland—no way. I cannot see Scottish electors saying, “Oh well, that’s okay then. We’ve got double the number of MPs in Westminster, so we shan’t vote for independence”.
Therefore, I hope that my noble friend the Minister will reject Amendments 15, 16 and 17 as driving a coach and horses through electoral fairness. Although I like the sound of Amendment 19, I am content to stick with the current variation.