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Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, what it means is that there is a difficult and delaying process at that stage because there is the interposition of the public inquiry; that is, with a public hearing as proposed by the Government, there is a hearing which is essentially, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, explained, an evidence- and argument-gathering procedure, orally in public, prior to a decision-making process by the Boundary Commission which, as I say, we should trust. The government amendments quite properly exclude this unhappy intermediate stage in the decision-making process. Furthermore, the cost of the public inquiry proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, is considerable. It cuts out a substantial and essential element of transparency from the system proposed by the government amendments. The opposition amendments would remove the requirement to publish the records of public hearings to enable informed public comment. In terms of timing, the proposals of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, and the noble Lord, Lord Bach, would total 26 weeks in cases where there were proposals to revise recommendations—six for written submissions, 16 or 17 for public inquiries and then four for further inquiries. The proposals of the government amendments are much shorter overall—12 weeks for written submissions and public hearings, four for a period of secondary consultation and eight if revisions are proposed: so, 16 weeks rising to a maximum of 24 weeks. However, the amendments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, keep his timetable down to 26 or 27 weeks only by cutting from 12 weeks to six the period for public written submissions; by cutting entirely the four-week secondary consultation period proposed by the Government and by allowing only four weeks instead of eight for the public to make written representations on any revised proposals. At the heart of our position on these amendments is the notion that members of the public are more likely to make written representations than they are to attend long public inquiries, which would largely be the forum of the political parties. The amendments proposed by the Opposition favour a return to a long, cumbersome, legalistic and expensive decision-making process of public inquiries going before the Boundary Commission’s recommendation, a process whose status is entirely uncertain because its effect on the final decision is not clear. Finally, an entirely lawyerly point, Amendment 27GH of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, inserts a reference to subsection (4)(b) of government Amendment 27G which, by Amendment 27GD, they have entirely deleted. That is a small point by comparison with the central point. The public hearings proposed by the Government amendments are essentially creatures of the public with longer timescales for written representations and a shorter, simpler arrangement for public hearings with all the evidence and all the argument then considered by the Boundary Commission, which we ought to trust. I urge the House to accept the government amendments and reject those proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer.