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Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I recall distinctly that we had this debate in the House in the first place. The boundary commissions set out clearly in evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee that the reduction to 600 Members and the clearer hierarchy of rules would mean that there would be significant change across the country, except of course for the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar and one other Member, whose constituency boundaries will remain the same. Members were very clear about that at the beginning, so I do not think that that is a new piece of information. Arguments have also been advanced that this extra bit of discretion would mean that parliamentary constituency boundaries would not need to cross county boundaries where the area is a little bit over or under the 10% band of tolerance, but the Government do not consider constituencies that cross local authority boundaries to be a problem in principle—certainly not for electors, who should be the focus of our concern. The 7.5% discretion rule would not solve the problem: it would just move the line somewhere else. The Government's proposal of allowing 5% on either side of the UK electoral quota has a clear rationale: it is the closest we can get to having fair and equally weighted votes for electors while still allowing local factors to be taken into account, using wards as the building blocks in most cases. We think that is the right judgment in principle and in practice. Our reasons for disagreeing with the amendments do not detract from the usefulness of this debate, which has been valuable, but we think that the principle of one vote, one value and having more equal-sized constituencies is right. The amendments compromise that principle and would cause practical problems for the review. That is why we oppose them.