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Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Just to underline and illuminate the point that my noble friend made in passing about the south Wales valleys, I report to him the words of the late Alec Jones, who, as the noble Lord will recall, was the Member for Rhondda, having been a Member for Rhondda West, which was then brought together with Rhondda East. There was at the time of that Boundary Commission report an idea that a part of what became the Cynon Valley constituency should be grouped in with Rhondda East and Rhondda West—that is, Rhondda Fawr and Rhondda Fach, or the large Rhondda and the little Rhondda. Alec Jones’s devastating comment on that to the Boundary Commission was, ““Some bloody idiot has been using a flat map””. There is a huge danger, if the kind of amendment presented by my noble friend is not accepted and there are no clear indicators to the Boundary Commission to use its sensible discretion, that flat maps will plague a lot of constituencies, not just in Wales but in England and Scotland, that are interrupted by large geographical features that define communities. Unless proper consideration is given to that topographical reality, flat maps will come to be cursed.