I am not sure whether the Deputy Chairman is inviting me to say everything I am about to say twice, but I will try to refrain from doing so.
I welcome this debate. It illustrates the fallacy of trying to achieve arithmetic equivalence with no recognition of geography, travel habits, infrastructure, community or even the work of an MP in representing her or his constituents and constituency—I make that distinction between the two. We are talking here of a constituency of 3,000 square kilometres—it is larger than Luxembourg—so representing it is already a challenge, not just for the MP who has a 60-mile drive between meetings but for political parties which need to function along constituency lines. Brecon and Radnorshire may have a small number of voters, but it is very big not just in its heart but in geography, as its MP said, from my home town of Ystrad in the south to Knighton in the north-east, much of it with scant access to public transport. I have never done it myself, but my noble friend Lady Gale says it is about a 300-mile round trip. I hope she was not enjoying our views too much when she was driving at that time. So it is very different from my present home in Hackney where it is still possible to beat the bounds, albeit I do it on a bicycle these days—a mode of transport that now defeats me in Wales.
It is already difficult, as we have heard, for the MP to serve this constituency as it is. A larger one would not only be more challenging travel-wise but would break the pattern of travel, which, as we have heard, is currently up and down the valleys and not across mountains. Organising meetings with constituents, interest groups, local councillors and Senedd Members—or organising elections—would be near impossible, with simply no public transport reaching across the constituency.
As I said earlier today and emphasised at Second Reading, MPs do not just represent constituents but communities. An expansion which took the constituency into different places of work with different schools, served by different local authority areas with different histories and even different dominant languages would make relating to all the relevant interest groups and organisations really hard to achieve—particularly when involving different local authorities and a greater spread of elected representatives. Understanding the community, its rhythms, employments, schools, charities, welfare clubs—where we come from it is choirs—is as vital a part of MPs’ work as the casework they turn to every weekend. That is partly because, as I said earlier, dealing with that casework means you need to know the organisations in your constituency.
It is a very rural area, as we have heard, and has a low population. To achieve the quota, even if it were amended, it would have to cover very different areas, possibly Montgomery, as was suggested last time.
As has been said by others, it has been accepted that islands are a special case and that constituencies should not cross water. I have to say, mountains are as high as rivers are deep, and communities have been built up along valleys, not across hills. I look forward to hearing from the Minister—I wonder whether she will take up the suggestion to come and visit the place—how an even larger constituency will serve the needs of the good people of Brecon and Radnorshire.