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Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

We have accepted the case for that. We would like to do it, but it will not be in this Bill. There is a time and a place for everything. My third point is the one that the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, raised about the manifesto of the Conservative Party, which I explained. Of course, there is also another point—that the House of Commons has voted for the figure of 600. Perhaps it was not on a free vote, but who is to say that if there had been a free vote, the House of Commons would not have voted for it? We should therefore tread carefully in questioning that decision. Noble Lords made an entirely rational argument about workload. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said that his experience has shown that the type of service that MPs can give varies according to size of constituency. We have been mindful to reflect the existing range of experience. On the basis of the 2009 electoral register data, 600 seats would create an electoral quota of around 76,000. That means that around a third of seats are already within the 5 per cent variation and will therefore generate no increase in workload. A number are considerably greater than that, and they may get a reduced workload. I wholly accept also that a number of seats will be below that. While it is logical to argue that a reduction from 650 to 600 seats will mean that everyone will have to work a bit harder, the figures do not demonstrate that. This way of doing it would cause less disruption to current circumstances than would a reduction that is far outside the existing range of MPs and constituencies we are used to. Currently, some Members of the other place represent twice the number represented by other Members of that House. Our proposals for more equally sized constituencies will go some way to providing a more equitable workload for each MP, although I accept that different constituencies have different workloads depending on where they are and the different kinds of electorates they represent. There are also international comparisons to be made, and the noble and learned Lord has helpfully brought those to our attention. We should decide the size of our House of Commons primarily on the basis of what is right for the specific circumstances of the UK, but we should also not reject international trends completely. The present size of the Commons makes it the largest directly elected national chamber in the EU. Six hundred seats would put us in line with some countries with comparable populations. Germany’s Bundestag has 622 members and the Italian Chamber of Deputies has 630. I know that the noble and learned Lord was referring to the number of elected members right across the range, from locally elected officials up, whereas I have taken the figures for the respective countries’ national Parliaments. The Bill’s key principle of delivering a more equitable value to each elector’s vote in time for the next general election also informs our choosing not to provide for a sliding scale of constituencies with an independent body exercising discretion over the final number. The timetable for delivering a boundary review and all that follows it in the run-up to the general election is tight. Minimising the risk of delay for whatever reason should be our aim. Given that the UK’s population is mobile, we should now press ahead with a review before the next election, as the alternative is to fight the next election on the basis of out of date information. Noble Lords—including the noble Lords, Lord Foulkes and Lord Howarth of Newport, and the noble and learned Lord—have on many occasions asked the Government our reasons for choosing 600 as the number for constituencies. Some noble Lords have argued that it is somehow irregular for Parliament to set a finite number of constituencies. In response I would make three points. First, the Opposition’s desire to hear the reasons behind the reduction to 600 constituencies implies that we are departing from a tradition of careful and detailed weighing and benchmarking of a host of factors, including MPs’ relative workloads, to arrive at an optimum number. As I explained earlier, the rules that the commissions must apply at present are predisposed to lead to increases, because the rules require them to start from the previous number of seats. Moreover, the rules are not set out in a clear hierarchy, and the way in which they been applied in the past has also led to increases. The second point concerns Parliament setting the number of constituencies. It would similarly be useful to look more closely at the tasks given to the Boundary Commission. There are general injunctions for the number of constituencies in Great Britain not to be substantially more or less than 613, with no fewer than 25 Welsh constituencies and between 16 and 18 constituencies in Northern Ireland. However, because the commissions must approach these targets by aggregating local issues, this regional starting point means that they are effectively considering the issue from one end of the telescope, restricting their ability to take into account the overall size of the Chamber. The result is this steady upward pressure and, ultimately, inequality and unfairness between seats and nations, which we believe needs to stop. Finally, some noble Lords have argued that as the workload has increased, 650 is a better number simply because it is larger than 600 and it does matter much how it was arrived at. The Government’s position is that the results of the review that they are proposing in Amendment 28A would be a much better starting point. The noble and learned Lord did not much like that, but we shall debate it, I hope, at some stage tomorrow. Such a review would allow evidence to be gathered, weighed and made public so that many questions raised by noble Lords could be addressed while not frustrating the Bill’s aims—which are to clarify the hierarchy of rules, end the upward pressure on constituency numbers, lead by example in making savings and take better account of past domestic and present international experiences. That is a very sound basis on which to make our proposals. With this review and the Bill’s other aims in mind, I invite the noble and learned Lord to withdraw his amendment.