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Mr. John Maxton (Glasgow, Cathcart) : Will the Home Secretary give way?

Mr. Clarke : I give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Surbiton (Mr. Tracey) who represents the smallest English constituency.

Mr. Tracey : My right hon. and learned Friend may be out of date, because I think that Kensington fell below my numbers in the general election.

What will be the position on the London boundaries, especially the Greater London boundaries, as Greater London no longer exists since the abolition of the Greater London council? My right hon. and learned Friend is no doubt aware that the Local Government Boundary Commission has recently carried out a review, which will ultimately lead to a report by the commission, which says that, in many places, the Greater London boundaries are wholly unreal. There is a suggestion that a commission charged with more responsibilities than the Local Government Boundary Commission should correct that. Will my right hon. and learned Friend tell us something about the approach of the parliamentary review to that point?

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Mr. Clarke : My hon. Friend's point concerns the extent to which the parliamentary boundary commissioners might cross local government boundaries if some of the local government boundaries are, in my hon. Friend's view, no longer appropriate. The rules will remain unchanged by the Bill. The rules enjoin the commissioners to have regard to county council boundaries and to borough boundaries in metropolitan areas, but that is not absolute. The rules permit the commissioners to cross either borough or county boundaries where it is reasonable for them to do so to avoid unacceptable discrepancies in the size of the constituency or to enable them to get constituencies closer to the electoral quota. I appreciate that that may be an issue in London this time, but it will be a matter for the boundary commission.

Mr. Maxton : Will the Home Secretary explain how the Scottish Boundary Commission will operate in relation to clause 3? As far as we are aware, the Government intend to publish a White Paper on the future structure of local government in Scotland in September. There is no intention to introduce legislation in this Session, so there will be no legislation to reform local government in Scotland before October 1993. The Bill to introduce the new structures would hardly have passed through both Houses before the boundary commission's final date for putting its boundaries into place. How on earth is the Scottish Boundary Commission going to operate when it does not know what plans the Government have for the future structure of local government in Scotland?

Mr. Clarke : The hon. Gentleman is right. We do not yet know the legislative timetable for any local government reorganisation in Scotland, although my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland has already announced his intention to have some reorganisation, and everyone expects some reorganisation in local government there.

If we are to keep to a sensible timetable for parliamentary constituencies, there must be a deadline before which it is reasonable to expect the parliamentary commissioners to take account of changes to be made and after which it is not, unless one is to have interminable delay waiting for an evolving process of local government change.

The timing of the Scottish legislation is not within my gift ; it is all yet to be decided. My right hon. Friend will introduce his proposals in due course. The Bill makes clear what will happen in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland if local government changes take place.

For example, for the forthcoming review which is to be completed by 31 December 1994, the latest date by which changes in local government boundaries would have to take effect to feature in the final report would be 1 June 1994. We have made a provision for the sake of the Boundary Commission for Wales which provides that, for the forthcoming review only, that commission should take account of any boundary changes that are included in an Act of Parliament passed by 1 June 1994 even if those boundaries are not operative by that date.

The effect of clause 3 is to make it abundantly clear to each commission which boundaries are to be taken into account for each review. Interim reviews can still be conducted if it is felt that a local government boundary change becoming operative subsequent to a boundary

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commission report has such significance that it warrants alteration of parliamentary constituencies before the next general election. The purpose of the special provision for the Welsh commission is to allow for the strong possibility of a Welsh local government reform Bill. Were such a Bill to be passed by Parliament before 1 June 1994, the need for interim reviews would be reduced by the fact that the new boundaries had been incorporated in the previous general review. Wales is more advanced than Scotland because it has already produced a Green Paper. People are already aware of the general shape of reform in Wales.

Mr. Maxton : What about Scotland?

Mr. Clarke : Scotland may proceed more slowly than any other part of the United Kingdom on the present timetable in respect of local government change.

In addition, as I have already said, the possibility remains for all four commissions to conduct interim reviews on any section of their part of the United Kingdom, whenever the need arises. This simple and modest Bill is designed to keep the work of the four boundary commissions in the United Kingdom to the expected timetable. The current disparities in constituencies are intolerable and a similarly undesirable situation could arise in future. Therefore, the Government propose that the forthcoming reviews are kept to time and that the time scale for subsequent reviews is tightened. In order to make that feasible, the Government have proposed that funds should be made available for the payment of commissioners and have set out clearly the framework of local government boundaries on which the commissioners should base their work.

That is the full extent of the Bill. It is a rather mechanical Bill for what I have described as a constitutional measure. No changes are proposed for the successful mechanism by which the commissions reach their conclusions. All recommendations and their reasons will continue to be made fully available to the public and time will continue to be set aside for local inquiries if so warranted. I believe that the United Kingdom is fortunate to have a system that works so well and to have commissioners who succeed in keeping themselves free from political controversy. It is only unfortunate that the current timetable for reviews has proved not to match the present-day movement of population. That is the only inadequacy that the Bill seeks to address.

5.6 pm

Mr. Roy Hattersley (Birmingham, Sparkbrook) : At the beginning of his speech, the Home Secretary described the measure as a constitutional Bill of sorts. I suppose that it is the only item of constitutional reform that the Government will initiate during the life of this Parliament. A Prime Minister who believes in a classless society has no proposals to make about an elected second Chamber. A Government who proclaim that they are concerned about democracy will continue to misuse the royal prerogative to avoid decisions in Parliament. There will be no consideration of electoral systems, not even the almost obligatory consideration of how we elect our Members to

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the European Parliament. There will be no examination of what I believe to be the justified demands of Scotland and Wales for devolved government.

The item of constitutional reform that I most regret that we shall not debate is the issue of parliamentary or Government patronage. I should have welcomed hearing the Secretary of State tell the House what special virtues led the Government to nominate Lord Waddington as Governor of Bermuda. Was it his intellect, his diplomacy or his well-established affection for the people of the Caribbean?

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Peter Lloyd) : All of them.

Mr. Hattersley : That is about as credible an analysis as it is possible for the Minister to provide.

In the absence of a debate on genuine constitutional matters, we must make the best of what we have. It has been widely suggested that the Government have introduced the Bill in the squalid hope of party gain. I must tell the Home Secretary that, as a general rule, I find that proposition attractive. However, I believe that that proposition does not apply with its usual force to this particular and peculiar piece of individual legislation. I believe that in practice there is very little for the Government to gain from the Bill in terms of party advantage.

Clause 2, which creates suspicion, provides that each of the boundary commissions for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland must report by 31 December 1994. Under present legislation, the English, Scottish and Welsh commissions are not required to report until 1998 ; the Northern Ireland commission is not obliged to make its submission until October 1997. Therefore, the argument runs, a Bill which requires a report almost four years earlier than is now obligatory is intended to change the boundaries to the Government's advantage before the next general election.

I am sceptical about that analysis, for a number of reasons. First, under present legislation, although the boundary commission is not required to report until 1998, it is empowered to report as early as 1993. I am one of those people whom the Home Secretary quoted who have never doubted for a moment that, with the present Government in power, the boundary commission would report at an early date, and that even without the Bill its revised proposals would be in place in time for the next general election. That is the conclusion that we should come to on the evidence.

The boundary commission announced that its general review had begun in January last year, and it has already made a number of provisional recommendations for 17 English counties. I repeat that the idea that without the Bill we shall fight the next general election on the present boundaries seems to me to be simply a mistake in judgment. One way or another, the boundaries will be revised before we next go to the polls.

There is a second reason why commentators have predicted that the Bill is politically motivated. They, mostly commentators outside the House, have judged that the result of a boundary commission's work would in some way benefit the Government. In fact, I do not believe that it is possible to come to any sensible conclusion about what the pattern of constituencies will be. That is because the pattern will be determined area by area, not for the

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country as a whole, and the eventual outcome will result from initial proposals, appeals and then revisions of initial proposals. Therefore, I say with the due humility and trepidation necessary in anyone who corrects and contradicts Mr. Jeremy Paxman that the conclusion that "Newsnight" came to on Friday does not bear very much real examination.

The Government may obtain some advantage from the Bill, but no one can be certain of that. I make my position absolutely clear. For my part, since I believe that we are to have a general review before polling day, I much prefer the new boundaries to be established well before the general election rather than immediately before it. Having already allowed party politics to intrude into the debate, I hope that I may be forgiven for putting the matter in this way : as a member of a party which expects to win a large number of marginal seats at the next election, I believe that we have everything to gain from knowing the boundaries of those marginal seats as early and as quickly as possible.

One of the reasons why the Government's motives have been suspect is because the Bill was presented, as the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) suggested, not only without consultation with the chairman of the boundary commission but without the usual--indeed, until now, invariable--consultation with the other parties. The previous major change in the rules governing the boundary commission was introduced in 1958 with a speech in which the then Home Secretary, Mr. R. A. Butler, said :

"The Government naturally thought it right in this matter of constitutional importance to discuss the proposals we had in mind with the other parties."

The present Home Secretary, in one of the more disingenuous passages of his speech, seemed to suggest that a change in the period over which the revisions were made did not justify consultation among the parties or, indeed, with the chairman of the Boundary Commission. However, the 1958 revision--about which, I repeat, Mr. R. A. Butler said :

"The Government naturally thought it right in this matter of constitutional importance to discuss the proposals we had in mind with the other parties"- -

was exactly this sort of review. It was a review of the period over which the boundary commission should revise the boundaries. Because of the new arrogance of the Tory party, such consultations have not taken place in the past 13 years on any of the matters which are appropriate for consultation between the parties in ademocracy. I must say to the Home Secretary-- [Interruption.] I hope that I can catch his attention for a moment. I was hoping that the Home Secretary might play some continued part in the debate. It is interesting that, before I had to call for the Home Secretary's attention, I was dealing with the new arrogance of the more junior members of the Tory party. I was saying that by their refusal to consult the Opposition parties on matters of constitutional importance, the Government damage themselves, damage democracy in Britain and damage the status of politics, which is diminished by such attitudes.

Mr. McCartney : Is not the Government's position even more dangerous when the Select Committee unanimously recommended that no change should be made in the time scale for the reporting of the boundary commission? The Government have rejected not merely consultation with the parties which make up the House, but the advice of the House in its last report on the matter.

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Mr. Hattersley : As my hon. Friend will understand, I support that view in this sense. While the changes should be acceptable and should not be opposed, the manner in which they have been introduced into the House is not intolerable--we have no choice but to tolerate it--but it is an improper way of conducting government. I hope that the Government will mend their ways in the years that lie ahead.

Mr. Kenneth Clarke : I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman for the fact that I was distracted by a Hansard note. As he commented on our arrogance, I hope that at this late stage in his Front-Bench career he will not slip into the pomposity and self-importance of some of the senior members of the Labour Front-Bench team. I hope that he will confirm that it is clear from what he just said that if we had spent some time consulting on the timetable of which I have spoken, he would have agreed with it. As far as I can tell, it is a matter of no controversy, and any consultation would have been superfluous on a Bill in which we seek to sustain the momentum of the review and not to slow it down.

Mr. Hattersley : The suggestion that I have only just slipped into the habits of pomposity and arrogance is one of the kindest that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has ever made. That aside, his point is really my point. There would have been agreement between the two Front Bench teams. With some qualifications, which I shall advance in a moment, we should have said that the measure was a sensible revision of the constitution. I repeat, however--pompous or not, and arrogant certainly not --that when constitutional reform is contemplated in the House there is a good case for allowing the major parties to discuss it. Not only the Government and the official Opposition but the minority parties have an interest and should have been consulted.

Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North) : As my right hon. Friend has stated, there is general acceptance among Opposition Members, as there is bound to be, of the need for boundary changes. No one would seriously argue against that. However, should we not suspect the Government's motives, bearing in mind that the Bill was trailed almost immediately after the Government were elected to office on a greatly reduced overall majority? In the last Parliament, overseas voters who had had absolutely no connection with the United Kingdom for many years were given a vote. That was obviously sharply politically motivated. In view of all those factors, and bearing in mind what my right hon. Friend said about the lack of consultation with the Opposition, why should we not be worried about what the Government seek? They seek 10 to 20 extra seats in time for the next election.

Mr. Hattersley : I can only answer my hon. Friend in this way. If the Government seek 10 to 20 extra seats, first, the Bill will not produce that result and, secondly, they could have obtained that result in a different way, even without passing the Bill, by ensuring that the boundary commission reported immediately before the general election. That was certainly within the power of the Home Secretary. I made it clear that if the Government had chosen to discuss with the Opposition parties the intervals at which the boundary commission should report, there might well have been agreement between us. Clause 2 of the Bill

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proposes to reduce the interval from between 10 and 15 years to between eight and 12 years, but there are no precise rules by which we can determine the proper period for revision. By nature, such matters are judged by rule of thumb--by guess and estimation. It is necessary to avoid too frequent disruption, but it is also essential to ensure that, within each of the nations which make up the United Kingdom, the constituencies approximate to the same size and, in consequence, each vote has approximately the same weight and value. I do not believe that this is a matter of constituency burdens ; I do not believe that it is a question of the work done by the individual Member of Parliament. Some Members of Parliament, owing to the nature of their constituencies, will have to do more work than others. The important criterion for constituency size is the weight of the vote. I was delighted to hear the Home Secretary endorse the view that that cannot be equal among all the nations of the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland, for instance, inevitably contains constituencies that are appreciably larger than those in Scotland.

Mr. Dunn : But not larger than those in England.

Mr. Hattersley : Of course not. The hon. Gentleman is simply extending the point that I have made, and I am pleased to have his support. We have always accepted that constituencies should be of different sizes in Ireland and Scotland, England and Scotland, and Wales and Northern Ireland. [Hon. Members :-- "Why?"] For reasons endorsed by the Home Secretary --because of the different problems of representation of the three nations of the United Kingdom. Hon. Members must pursue their prejudices with their own Home Secretary, who said explicitly that the rule should continue. That is certainly our view, but it is also our view that within each nation constituencies should be of approximately the same size.

Mr. David Evennett (Erith and Crayford) : The right hon. Gentleman regards it as obvious that there should be differences. Will he explain the reasons for that?

Mr. Hattersley : The geography of the constituencies is the obvious example. I represent a constituency two and a half miles long and one mile broad. That does not pose the problems for democracy that representing constituencies such as Western Isles poses for my hon. Friends.

Mr. Dunn rose --

Mr. Hattersley : I do not intend to give way as often as the Home Secretary as I want to make progress on what both he and I regard as a comparatively modest Bill. Conservative Members who want to argue their prejudices against Scotland must do so with their own Home Secretary, whose views on these matters are identical to mine.

Mr. Rooker : Will my right hon. Friend allow me to put our prejudice the other way around? The problems of rural deprivation are hardly ever raised in the House because the burden of representing a large constituency prevents Conservative Members from representing their constituents properly. Otherwise, they would not be so quiet about the matter.

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Mr. Hattersley : We plumb deep waters. I propose to continue my remarks about the Bill, which--dare I say--deals with a rather narrower point.

The population is now more mobile, and shifts more quickly, than in 1958. I am therefore prepared to believe that the review period ought to be reduced. Ideally, I should like a fixed review period of 12 years but, as I have said, there are no absolute rules to govern and guide us. The eight to 12 years period recommended by the Government is near enough to being right to make outright opposition inappropriate, if not to justify support. It has the special advantage of having been specifically recommended by the deputy chairman of the English boundary commission, who suggested it when he gave evidence to the Select Committee on Home Affairs.

When all the processes--provisional recommendations, public consultation and final proposals--are completed, the review period will always span two general elections, and will usually span three. If we are to maintain our present electoral system--as I believe that we should, for reasons which, despite temptation, I shall not go into this afternoon--it is essential that each elector realises that his or her vote is of approximately the same value and weight as any other vote in the nation in which the vote is cast.

Clause 1 of the Bill deals with the remuneration of members of the commission. That, of course, is necessary, and we support it. I should make it clear to the Home Secretary, however--I have touched on this before-- that we expect the commissioners and those who work for them to be appointed in the normal, non-party political way. We also expect the practice of consultation about such matters to be reintroduced. That should, and will, happen. The Government, no less than the Opposition, have everything to gain from a visible demonstration of the commission's impartiality, and we shall expect the Home Secretary to do everything in his power to ensure that that is the case.

Finally, our principal and substantial reservation relates to clause 3, which deals with the boundary commission's work in relation to local government boundaries and contains at least one provision that we shall attempt to amend in Committee. The clause deals with the rules by which the commission's deliberations are guided. Rule 4 of the guidance note stipulates that counties and London boroughs are convenient units within which to conduct reviews. Rule 5 allows those boundaries to be ignored if, by respecting them, the commission would be forced to create constituencies with electorates which show what the rules describe as an excessive disparity from the normal numbers.

If clause 3(1), lines 30 and 31, are passed into law, the commission will be allowed to take into account boundaries which the Local Government Commission is no more than contemplating. For the boundary commission to base its work on what might be, but is not yet, a county or borough boundary will lead to much confusion. It also places the Local Government Commission in a wholly invidious position. In effect, the Local Government Commission would do its work in the knowledge that what it decided would, at least in part, determine constituency boundaries at the next general election. That is not Sir John Banham's proper role. Nor do I believe that it is one that he wants to occupy. The role would be dangerous for the Local Government Commission and for the boundary commission itself. The size of the constituencies is at least to some degree determined by the size of the electorate. I hold the view

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that there are too many constituencies. That is a wholly personal view. I accept that it is not a popular one among Members who have spent years fighting to get here, have just arrived and, naturally, assume that if there were a reduction, they would be among those Members to fall by the wayside. If we are to retain a total of 651 Members, it is important that the commission should pay proper regard to the serious democratic problem of under-representation. For a variety of reasons, despite the changes that have made late registration possible, electoral roles demonstrate an increasing failure of voters to register. The Home Secretary rather brushed aside a deficit of about 5 per cent., but 5 per cent. makes a substantial contribution to the result in most

constituencies--although not in mine, I am happy to say, where it would have to be 10 times greater to affect the result which brought me here. In most constituencies 5 per cent. one way or the other on the electorate is the difference between success and failure for individual Members of Parliament. Indeed, 5 per cent. determines the Government of the country. In any event, all the evidence is that because of double registration the real shortfall is more like 7 or 8 per cent. than 5 per cent. The problem is particularly acute in the inner cities and on urban estates.

The boundary commission has a duty to take account of that effect when drawing up its recommendations. That is particularly important in the light of the certainty that massive registration campaigns will be held between now and the next general election--in effect, changing the size of some constituencies by 5 per cent. or more. Those more or less technical observations having been made, I conclude as I began : I do not believe that my right hon. and hon. Friends should oppose the Bill. If it gives the Government any advantage--and that is by no means certain--they would obtain that advantage in another way which is less convenient to all the political parties fighting the next general election. Therefore, I am perfectly prepared to see the Bill receive its Second Reading. We shall look with great interest at the point to which I referred under clause 3. If clause 3 is not amended to avoid that strange complication of the Local Government Commission influencing the decision of the boundary commission, we shall have to reconsider the matter carefully on Third Reading.

5.28 pm

Sir John Wheeler (Westminster, North) : I am glad to have this opportunity to make some brief remarks in support of the Bill. I shall touch upon some of the points made by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley). I agree with him that we should control the growth in the number of hon. Members in the House, and I shall refer to that later.

The question of parliamentary boundaries is extremely sensitive, first, because it directly impacts upon local traditions and allegiancies and, secondly, because it hangs the sword of Damocles over the heads of individual Members. As has been said, the Select Committee on Home Affairs considered the issue of the redistribution of seats in 1986-87. I shall base some of my remarks on that detailed inquiry.

Under our first-past-the-post system, it is essential to maintain the principle of parliamentary democracy by a regular review of the shifts in constituency populations. If

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the balance of seats in the House is to reflect the opinion of the country as a whole, the fact that constituency sizes vary from 101, 784 electors to 23,073 must be a matter of concern. The principal point of the Bill is to require the boundary commissions to complete their work before the end of 1994 so that the general election in 1997 takes place on the basis of a more equitable distribution of seats. If there are any delays, it would be nearly 20 years since an impartial review of this issue.

The Select Committee's report was designed to stabilise the growth in the number of seats in the House. I take up what the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook said about that. In this century, the number of seats has increased from 603 in the period from 1918 to 1935 to 651 in this Parliament. It is undesirable that the commissions should allow any further increase.

There are also considerable disparities in average electorates between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. There are obvious political difficulties in altering those disparities. They owe as much to the origin of the United Kingdom as to boundary commission rules. Rule 1 requires that Scotland shall have no fewer than 71 seats, and Wales no fewer than 35. But that leads to Scotland and Wales being over-represented, with average electors for each Member of Parliament being 54,171 and 58,382 respectively, as against nearly 70,000 for England.

I contend that it is inconsistent with the existence of the Union of the United Kingdom and our system of parliamentary democracy that the votes of electors in two of the constituent parts should, as a matter of course, carry greater weight than those of the electors in the remaining parts-- England and Northern Ireland. That is the position under existing law and, as far as I can judge, that disparity is likely to continue. Therefore, I urge my right hon. and learned Friend to give careful consideration to that, because most people in the different parts of the United Kingdom are of mixed descent and I can see no validity for such disparities to continue. Those differences cannot be justified be geographical considerations. As a matter of common sense, relatively isolated areas, such as Orkney, the Shetlands and the Western Isles, can be over- represented, but the exception cannot apply, in this age of modern communications, to the whole of Wales and Scotland. There is no moral justification why a vote cast in a Welsh constituency should be worth more than one cast in England or Northern Ireland or why a vote cast in Glasgow should be worth more than one cast in Manchester.

It is sometimes suggested that Scottish over-representation has as its basis the Act of Union 1707, when Scotland was allocated 45 Members in the enlarged Westminster Parliament. Incidentally, 45 is probably what the representation should be today, but it was agreed at a time when England and Wales had 513 Members of Parliament. That over-representation in Scotland cannot be justified on any basis and seriously distorts our system of parliamentary democracy.

Mr. Dunn : If my hon. Friend wants to take a purely political view, may I remind him that, in the 14 elections that have taken place since 1945, the Labour party has had a majority in England on only three occasions, including 1945?

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Sir John Wheeler : My hon. Friend makes a valid political point, but I have based my case on the value of votes in each constituency of the four parts of the United Kingdom. This issue should be considered on that basis.

Mr. Gerald Bermingham (St. Helens, South) : If the hon. Gentleman's argument is logical, does he agree that the distribution in London, with London boroughs, which leads to some 40,000 voters in Twickenham and more than 100,000 in Hornsey and Wood Green, is equally obnoxious?

Sir John Wheeler : I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because I was about to come to that point.

I also wish to mention clause 3 of the Government's narrowly defined Bill. If we are to achieve a better balance in the number of electors in each constituency, the commissioners will have to disregard local government boundaries. I think that that is the hon. Gentleman's point. It has been the practice not to cross boundaries of London boroughs and that has resulted in a less complicated relationship for London Members of Parliament, particularly as London has a single-tier system of local government, which serves it particularly well.

However, the time has come to adjust that policy. When doing so, the commission should have regard to making a London constituency as socially cohesive an entity as possible, with a similar consistency of population, social and economic status, as well as housing ownership. Nothing is worse than a constituency in an urban environment made up of populations of different social

characteristics, one of which is in conflict with the other. Subject to that proviso, the question of the London borough boundaries as envisaged in clause 3 must be revisited.

Mr. Rooker : I may have misunderstood the hon. Gentleman. Is he saying that, by and large, the building blocks for constituencies should be socially and economically homogenous and should not contain the variety of experience and life that exists in this country? Is he saying that we should not have constituencies with extreme wealth at one end and deprivation and poverty at the other, so that the Member of Parliament representing the area can speak with one voice for the whole of his constituency, as demanded by our single-Member constituency arrangement?

Sir John Wheeler : I am glad to have given way to the hon. Gentleman as I know that he takes an informed interest in this matter. He seems to have misunderstood the message that I sought to convey. In any urban constituency there is bound to be a great variety of life, with many differences between the citizens. The point that I was making was that a boundary commission, in establishing its urban and inner-city boundaries, should seek to do as much as it can to ensure the cohesiveness of constituencies and to ensure that the Member of Parliament is best able to represent the people who live in it. That is subtly different from what the hon. Gentleman was saying.

Mr. Robert B. Jones : I am a little mystified about what my hon. Friend described as cohesiveness. Surely as much geographical compactness as possible is the best criteria to follow. I wondered why he did not follow up the point made by the hon. Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Bermingham), who suggested that Twickenham has an

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electorate of 40,000 when it is substantially more than that, and that Hornsey and Wood Green has a constituency of 100,000 when it is substantially less. Is not accuracy vital in this matter?

Sir John Wheeler : Of course accuracy is vital when one establishes constituencies. If there is to be a change in the methodology of establishing London constituencies, the House has to consider the injustices that arise in the method used for establishing the constituencies in Scotland and Wales, which is the point to which I referred earlier.

I commend the introduction of the Bill and its narrow objective. I have touched on some of the issues that need to be addressed as a matter of urgency and which I believe to be essential for parliamentary democracy. I welcome the Government's initiative in introducing the Bill.

5.40 pm

Mr. Gerald Bermingham (St. Helens, South) : I missed the London boroughs by one--I meant those of Hackney and of Kingston upon Thames. The figures published in the review in 1983 in The Times show the vast differences not only in the London area but in different parts of the county.

I have to declare an interest in this matter, because I was involved in the legal case in 1983 and I still practise as a barrister. The 1983 case, which went almost to the House of Lords, was that the boundary commission, which had begun its deliberations in the mid-1970s, had got it wrong because it used counties as skins and divided the constituencies into them, rounding up or rounding down depending on how it felt.

There was also a series of anomalies in the 1983 results that affect what happens in clause 3. Clause 3 makes matters far worse than they were in 1983 because, to put it bluntly, the situation is wide open to manipulation by anybody who knows what he is doing. The object of the exercise must be, as the hon. Member for Westminster, North (Sir J. Wheeler) said, parity of value. We both served on the Select Committee on Home Affairs in 1986, and he knows my views on this matter as well as I know his. My view is that Scotland and Wales have particular problems. I voiced it in Committee then, and I stand by it today.

The hon. Gentleman may also recall the furore that broke out in 1986 when the threat was that the number of Scottish seats would be reduced from 72. It is obvious that, with areas such as the Orkneys, the Western Isles and the great empty spaces of central Scotland, it is necessary to have smaller electorates because there are physical limits to what a Member of Parliament can do.

Looking at some of these proposals, I wonder what the commission is up to this time. In the redistribution in Leicestershire, it has created a seat which appears to have no boundary and which is 50 miles long. That is ridiculous. The seats in Leicestershire can be redistributed, and I am certain that the agents of the Conservative party will be looking at that and briefing counsel to appear at the appropriate inquiry.

When one looks at clause 3, one has to ask : what is meant by "local government boundary"? Which boundaries are we talking about? Are we talking about the existing district and country boundaries or about the metropolitan boundaries? Are we on the rolling review

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programme that is getting rid of the metropolitan county of Avon? Are we talking about the proposed new county boundaries? That would create an enormous problem.

The city of Bristol might, for instance, be put in a new county rather than the Avon metropolitan district area on which the old boundaries were based. The constituencies might be redistributed so as to annex various rural areas which always alter the nature and quality of parliamentary seats--and which party has a better chance of winning them ? That is not likely to happen in Birmingham, except on the borders--but what will become of Birmingham as a city ? Will it go to Warwickshire or with part of Staffordshire ? If the local government boundaries are taken to be the new county boundaries, that will dramatically affect the redistribution--but the Bill tells us nothing about that. No definition is offered.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) said, lines 30 and 31 take on a whole new meaning. In Lancashire, Merseyside metropolitan county council is gone, replaced by five metropolitan districts. One of them, across the water in the Wirral, may return to Cheshire. What will happen to the others ? Will they go back to Lancashire ? Will the boundary commission keep Lancashire as redrawn, taking in part of Cumbria ; or will the local government authorities of Sefton, St. Helens and Liverpool remain the relevant entities ?

The Home Secretary will be well aware--he is a man who knows about these matters--that the split as between rural and urban areas can alter voting patterns in an area. Some examples thrown up in 1983 were disgraceful. On a whim, the boundary commission kept Cambridge as a single constituency but divided Oxford in two, annexing rural areas to it. We all know the result : three Conservative seats in 1983. Now the Oxford seats are divided one apiece between the parties.

Colchester offers another classic example. The town is an entity but, by dividing it in half and attaching parts of it to rural areas, north and south, two Conservative seats are created. One thinks of the divisions of Swindon, Reading and Plymouth. These matters can be arranged in all sorts of ways that do not serve democracy. The hon. Member for Westminster, North made a telling point--that we should at least try to attain some cohesion. I have attended enough inquiries over the years to have heard the commission say more often than I care to remember that it has to bear in mind a community of interest. What on earth is meant by that ? I can understand that a town or a part of a city has a community of interest ; I can understand that a rural area may have one. But how is a community of interest to be maintained in Colchester if the town is divided in half ? The same applies to Oxford. This a gerrymanderer's charter. Along with other right hon. and hon. Members, as a lawyer I fought the last commission's hearings before the inspectors. We all know how it is done : people get together with the vicar and the local historical society and various other interest groups and parade witnesses who sound rather appealing and convincing. The commissioner, who has probably come from chambers in London to a place whose whereabouts he did not even know before he was given a map, listens judicially. Many commissioners are honest and honourable men, but if the numbers can be made to seem right, the desired decision can be obtained.

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I appeared at the Sheffield, St. Helens, West Yorkshire, Doncaster and Leicester inquiries, and I know that this can be done, but it does not really give us an honest result.

Mr. John Carlisle (Luton, North) : I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman. I represent a town which was split in 1974 and again in 1983. Chunks of the rural area--that is the phrase the hon. Gentleman used- -were added to my constituency purely on the basis of the numbers game. The hon. Gentleman forgets that the number of people in inner-urban and inner- city areas tends to diminish. My town was shedding people from its centre and had to take in rural areas. If it is any comfort to the hon. Gentleman, I can tell him that, under the new proposals, I shall lose 20,000 of my rural constituents, which will make my constituency a marginal seat again. However, I won it in 1979 with a majority of 246, and I have no fears about winning it again.

Mr. Bermingham : The hon. Gentleman makes my case. A community of interest must be defined, and we must try to make a seat reflect its area. No doubt the Home Secretary will be advised on how the inquiry will be conducted. That is perfectly proper, but he and many other hon. Members know exactly how such inquiries are conducted. The boundary commission is not consistent. As the Americans have proved, the tolerance in an electoral district is about 1 per cent. All the seats in Northamptonshire are Conservative, although there is a considerable Labour vote there. All seats but one in Liverpool are Labour, but there is a considerable Conservative vote in that area. Neither case can be justified.

If the Bill had been drawn a little wider, it would have provided an ideal opportunity for an electoral result that represented the votes cast. That cannot be obtained if the skin is drawn too tightly. The hon. Member for Westminster, North (Sir J. Wheeler) knows that, shortly after the 1983 election, I asked the commissioner at a meeting in Oxford whether the county councils were the right skin. The Commission's proposals for Leicestershire and Devon stick to the county council areas. Will the use of the term "local government area" result in a dog's dinner at the end of the redistribution? I understand that, although some metropolitan districts will return to the shires but will remain local authorities, the Government will allow the commission to take the greater area. That will mean that Lancashire may contain parts of Cumbria and certainly its seats. That is at least four metropolitan districts. If the area is taken in its entirety, constituencies will cross metropolitan districts. There is a precedent for that, because Tynebridge crosses the river and is within two metropolitan districts. In the 1983 case, the Court of Appeal said that that was an exception. When we said that that could have been done in London to make the distribution of the seats more even, we were told that it could not be done.

There is a risk that different sets of rules will apply. If London retains its borough boundaries for seats, the rounding-up and rounding-down effect will apply. That will mean that 2.6 seats will become three seats. But a rounding down occurred in London in 1983, from 2.49 seats to two seats. That led to two large seats and three small ones in adjacent boroughs, and that cannot be right

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or fair. If an area has a larger skin than a shire county or a London borough, a seat that is more equal than others in numbers of constituents will be created.

I am extremely worried about the size of electoral rolls in particular areas. I understand that the commissioners will use the 1991 return, and as we all know that is horrendously wrong. There are those who are not on the register--for various reasons, some people have failed to register. During the general election--I am sure that all hon. Members experienced this--we heard it said, "I am not on the register. What can I do about it?" If people are not on the register in April 1992, they will not be on it if we return to the October 1991 count.

I ask the Government to say that the boundary commissions should be told that they should take into account the known registration errors. In its own way, that will affect the size of parliamentary seats, their number and how they are distributed. In an urban area, for example, there may be 5 per cent. or 10 per cent.

non-registration. That means that, when the register is brought up to date, the extra 5 per cent. or 10 per cent. will take the seat well outside the tolerance levels, as it were, before the other parts of the process even begin.

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