On Thursday, on an earlier group of amendments, I thought that the Minister was correcting my quotation from the Constitution Committee. In fact, he rightly questioned my assertion that it had endorsed, rather than simply noted, suggestions from others as to how to ensure that the Boundary Commissions were independent. He was right; I was wrong. I think that is 1-0 to the Minister.
However, on this amendment, the Minister is on shakier ground, but I shall to try to avoid making what the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, called a “holier-than-thou” speech, especially as I want first to turn to something more serious that the noble Lord said, when he claimed:
“Trying to link this matter to the issue of saving the union is very shoddy politics”.—[Official Report, 10/9/20; col. GC 320.]
I shall not try to pretend that I understand Scotland, but just at the moment in Wales, when the Government seem intent on weakening the devolution settlement via the internal market Bill and when again and again UK Ministers ignore the Welsh Government—indeed, even sharing the internal market Bill with Welsh Ministers two hours after it had been shared with the press—the noble Lord might note that a seismic reduction in Welsh voices in Westminster fuels separatist emotions and the feeling that Wales is a mere afterthought to this Government. I was particularly struck that the Government’s statement on the internal market Bill quoted the Scottish Secretary of State, a Scottish businessman and the Scottish Retail Consortium, with no equivalent endorsement from anyone in Wales, not even the Welsh Secretary.
I am not speaking for Scotland, but I hope that the Government do not think that chopping Welsh input into Parliament has no wider implications. As was said in an earlier debate, the Americans recognised early on that size alone did not matter, with each state being accorded proper recognition in the Senate. The UK Government should give serious thought to binding in each of the four nations if they really want to retain the United Kingdom. This does not go to the heart of these amendments, but it is a response to what the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said. Incidentally, he apologises because he has just left to chair his own Select Committee, but he has been with us thus far.
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Turning to the meat of Amendment 15 and the numbers game, I will make two points. First, some 9 million people—almost 20% of those eligible to vote —are not on the register. That is an average of 10,000 per constituency, repeating the Government’s obsession with the last 3,500, which, of course, at 5% is fewer than when we were looking at a 600-seat Chamber. It makes that obsession about the last 3,500 a little hard
to comprehend. As my noble friend Lord Lipsey reminded us, with turnout as it is, non-voters will also outnumber the figures that we are discussing within the context of variance.
Secondly, this focus on arithmetic equality ignores the fact that MPs represent communities as well as constituents based on the geography of the UK, particularly Wales, where the south and east are dominated by mountains and valleys. Beautiful they are, but good for transport they are not. My noble friend Lord Foulkes —I am afraid without the dress uniform and a cock-plumed hat imagined by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra —said that the equal votes obsession reminded him of the British imperialists drawing straight lines in Africa.
Others in the Committee might have read James Barr’s A Line in the Sand on the Middle East or seen Howard Brenton’s play “Drawing the Line” about the partition of India and Pakistan and the lawyer Sir Cyril Radcliffe who, with his pencil, divided communities. Luckily, we are in very different territory here, but Boundary Commissions need the leeway to respect communities, culture, travel patterns and history, as well as the natural boundaries described by my noble friend Lord Grocott as the sea, mountains, or a river estuary.
As my noble friend Lord Lennie, said, a 7.5% variance would allow the Boundary Commissions sufficient latitude to respond to the community or geographical needs of an area, without the knock-on or ripple effects on neighbouring seats, with changes made otherwise simply for arithmetic reasons. As the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, pointed out, Amendment 15 simply makes the margin 5,500 rather than 3,600 people. It is hardly revolutionary: it is just flexibility. We are obviously going to return to this issue, which is important for the representation of the Commons. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.