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Constitution and Home Affairs

Nobody argues that it is not important to secure electoral equality in England, Scotland and Wales—where different rules have applied, which is a separate issue—but that must also be subject to other rules involving geography and history, as I shall explain. If the hon. Gentleman looks at the data, he will see that nowadays Labour seats in Scotland and Wales are larger than the few Conservative and Liberal Democrat seats in those two nations. In England, our seats are 3% smaller than the electoral average, and those of the Conservatives are 3% larger. There are also some very large Labour seats these days, however, as well as large Conservative seats. We pursued the same rules as previous Administrations, and the reasons for the recent trends is that there has been more rapid depopulation in areas that are typically Labour, mainly inner cities, although that is now changing. What is crucial is that these changes are done in a fair way, by agreement between the parties, not in a partisan way. Professor Iain McLean, a lecturer at Oxford university and an elections expert, warned last month that"““to move straight to individual registration risks moving straight to mass disenfranchisement of the young, the urban, the mobile and ethnic minority voters””" and that it"““could make Britain in 2011 like Florida in 2000””."