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College Park area, about which there is a meeting tonight in my constituency, which will go to Brent. The argument is neither about different services in different areas nor, I emphasise, about different political control. I do not take the view that one should never cross local borough boundaries in London because I believe that we are getting to the stage where that might be necessary. I hope I can take the Minister with me in saying that that should be a measure of last resort because the sense of community is more important. We should go for that in the first instance.I bring to the Minister's attention what the boundary commission itself recommends. To return to the railway analogy, the issue goes off the rails at this point. If we continue down this road, we shall go off the rails with the identity of interest of Members of Parliament. The commission recommended that College Park should go to Brent despite the wishes of the community.
The commission says :
"Nearly all respondents claimed to identify strongly with Hammersmith and Fulham, and to have a few connections with areas north of the Harrow Road."
The commission gives examples of that. It then says :
"We acknowledge the strength of local residents' opposition to our draft proposal ; approximately 50 per cent. of residents signed the petition opposing our draft proposal, and Hammersmith Council's survey apapeared to show a similarly high proportion of households to be against major change. We accepted that College Park was unusually self-contained for an inner London community, and that it could be said to have a distinct identity."
I emphasise that point to the Minister.
A number of hon. Members have referred this afternoon to the difference between inner-city areas and other areas in terms of the rapid turnover of population. There is a rapid turnover of population in areas such as mine. However, it is also true--we ignore this point at our peril--that a core component of the local community stay within the area for most of their lives. They have a history going back not just over one generation, but over many. To override them is not in the interests of good local government or in the interests of keeping well the link between the Member of Parliament and the constituency, unless we believe that it is desirable to cross borough boundaries when deciding the parliamentary constituency.
9.15 pm
It is interesting that the boundary commission justifies its actions by referring to simple geographical barriers, such as the Harrow road which is the main factor dividing College Park from Brent. The commission says that it is not of major importance and could be crossed.
The report continues :
"In reviewing our draft proposal, we were conscious of the points raised in particular, we bore in mind that the wishes of the people are only one of the factors which we must consider."
I take issue with that. I accept that the wishes of the people are only one factor, but I do not accept that they are minor. The report continues :
"We acknowledged the strength of feeling expressed by the considerable number of College Park residents who made their views known to us, but we had also to consider the pattern of community life and the effective operation of local authority services." I understand that there could be a cost factor if we were discussing the large constituency of the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan), but we are talking about transferring an area half a mile down the road, or perhaps a mile at most, from the rest of the constituency. I have run around the periphery of my
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constituency several times and I can do it in about two hours, but that is not true of many constituencies. I do not want us to lose sight of the fact that communities matter, and I hope that the Government will not do so.The report continues :
"Notwithstanding the views of local residents, we concluded that College Park has natural affinities with Brent."
The commission concludes that, but no one else does, and it continues :
"We realise that most local authorities are resourceful in overcoming problems",
and it states that it is perfectly possible to do so. It then refers to geographical divisions such as the Grand Union canal. Most of my constituents do not have to worry about crossing the canal because several bridges cross it, and it is therefore not difficult. There is real anger about the College Park proposal. The last meeting to discuss the proposals before they became a recommendation was attended by between 150 and 200 of the 700 residents, and I am missing a meeting tonight. They were massively opposed and no one spoke in favour. I attended a similar meeting about the proposal for the Edward Woods estate and surrounding areas. Again, no one spoke in favour, and the other local authorities are not in favour. What on earth are we doing considering amendments that the Government say must be made to ensure that the link between local authorities and the constituencies of Members of Parliament remains when all the evidence shows that the boundary commission is making decisions for geographical reasons rather than on the basis of the essence of community, which is what we should consider?
I accept that the commission should have the power to override arguments about political expediency. I want the boundary commission to be independent. If I thought that the Conservative party was fighting to get these parts of my constituency, I might be suspicious, but it is not. The proposal is apolitical in that respect. Community and a sense of it should be our highest priority, especially in inner city areas where the community is already fractured. We fracture it further at our peril. If a community wants to stay in a local authority and a constituency, that wish should be given a high rating, and should be overruled only in exceptional circumstances, not as the norm.
Mr. Home Robertson : I was alarmed to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) refer to running around his constituency. If I were to do the same, there would be a by-election before I had got 100 yards.
Mr. Maxton : What about swimming?
Mr. Home Robertson : I do not know how I would get on if I tried to swim to the Bass Rock. I think we will pass over that.
The Government have concocted a number of dog's breakfasts and the Bill is certainly one. I do not doubt that they will go ahead with it--they always do--but I shall make a few comments so that I shall be able to say, "I told you so."
Mr. Maxton : My hon. Friend has done that a few times too.
Mr. Home Robertson : Yes, I have, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Maxton) and especially on the subject of the poll tax.
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I was intrigued to read reports in the Scottish press late last week that no less a person than Professor Ross Harper had been designated as the Conservative party action man on boundaries--a sort of gerrymandering officer. We shall be watching him. I hope that truly independent boundary commissioners will not let him get away with anything like that.I recognise the importance of much of what my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) said about strengthening community loyalties. The song in Musselburgh in my constituency is
"Musselburgh was a burgh when Edinburgh was nane, and Mussleburgh will be a burgh when Edinburgh's gane."
So if anyone suggests lumping Musselburgh with Edinburgh he will be in trouble.
I shall now speak to the amendment, Mr. Lofthouse. I have the honour to represent the constituency of East Lothian, which is happily coterminous with East Lothian district council. Since the last major local government review, everyone has known where the boundaries of East Lothian are. Indeed, no less a person than the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton), is a citizen of East Lothian. He should know all about East Lothian. Everyone knows where the boundaries are except the Post Office, which still uses the old county areas as postal addresses in some areas, just for the sake of confusion.
The boundaries are largely a straightforward matter. Everyone understands what the district is, who the Member of Parliament is, what the constituency is and what the local authority is. But it was not always thus. When I was first elected to Parliament in 1978 I was elected to the former constituency of Berwick and East Lothian. It was a truly historic constituency. It was first constituted in 1908 from two former counties. I make that point because it is relevant to the position that we are working ourselves into.
The former constituency of Berwick and East Lothian outlived the 1974 local government boundary review. So the constituency for which I was elected included parts of two regional council areas and no fewer than four district council areas. I had to deal with six local authorities, six chief executives, and six sets of local government officers. As other public authorities often conduct their administration on the basis of local authority areas, I also had to deal with two health boards, and two separate offices of the Department of Health and Social Security, the Department of Employment and so on.
The arrangement in my former constituency was fairly chaotic for my office but it was also confusing for many of my constituents. Ideally, indeed necessarily, local authority boundaries should be related to the boundaries of parliamentary constituencies. It is nonsense when the Government are embarking on a major review of the structure of local government in Scotland for them to move ahead of that to create new parliamentary constituencies. We shall go back to the same confusion into which I was elected with bits of local authority areas in old parliamentary constituencies. The Government tell us that they intend to make major changes to local authority areas.
Mr. Peter Lloyd : Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should address his remarks to his hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael), who said that
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he did not want any arrangements to be made for Wales that would bring the new local authorities in Wales in line with the new parliamentary constituencies as early as possible. The remarks of the hon. Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson) are diametrically opposed to those which we heard a few minutes ago from the Opposition Front Bench in respect of Wales.Mr. Home Robertson : I cannot speak for Wales but I think my hon. Friend is about to.
Mr. Michael : I am happy to do so. The Minister makes another attempt to get himself out of the mess that he has dug himself into during the day. I am happy for the new local government boundaries in Wales to be taken into account as quickly as possible. Indeed, I made that clear in my speech. That is what the Bill would do as it was originally drafted. If the amendment were accepted things would not be done as quickly as possible. The commission would be instructed to run around doing things on the basis of speculation which would be disrespectful to the House and constitutionally dubious. I do not believe that there is any difference between my hon. Friend and me, however much the Minister suggests that there is.
Mr. Home Robertson : I am relieved to hear that and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that helpful intervention.
I conclude my remarks because my message is straightforward and simple. There should be some sensible correlation between parliamentary and local authority boundaries.
The Government say that they will embark on a major restructuring of local government in Scotland. It is probably right that they should do so because the two-tier local government structure has not been a success. People do not understand it and it does not work well. There is certainly a case for a single tier local authority system and I should be inclined to support such a principle, although I am always deeply suspicious of the detail of schemes that the Government introduce.
Although the structure of local government in Scotland should be reviewed, it would be absurd to construct a whole new set of parliamentary boundaries in Scotland on the basis of existing local government boundaries if, just one or two years after that, a whole new network of local authority boundaries were superimposed on those new parliamentary constituency boundaries. I have suffered from that problem in the past and seen the confusion that it causes, not only for Members of Parliament but, more importantly, for the people whom we represent. It can give rise to chaos and I fear that the Government are drifting into that again. They should not do so.
Mr. Barnes : Government amendment No. 13 is a constitutional insult. The Government should not deal with the Bill as though it were an Act of Parliament. I do not know what precedents exist for that. I assume that they are bad precedents and I doubt whether many precedents deal with constitutional matters.
I wish to support amendment No. 3. A reform of local government boundaries should not take place alongside a reform of parliamentary boundaries because the parameters within which the commissioners are supposed to act, as provided in the Bill, place them in an invidious position.
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Considerations about changes in local government areas are affected by considerations for parliamentary boundaries, and vice-versa.Mr. Peter Lloyd : Having listened to the hon. Gentleman, I wonder which review he will cancel : the review of local government boundaries ; the review of local government structure ; or the parliamentary boundary commission review. If we cannot run any of those in parallel, something must give. Which one would the hon. Gentleman dispense with?
Mr. Barnes : I shall leave the problem of which problem to sort out first with the Minister. It would be possible to go ahead with parliamentary boundary reviews relating to existing local government structures while, at the same time, engaging in discussions about local government structures to come into place later. Obviously, the two will then be out of line but later, when a further parliamentary boundaries review takes place, the position will be adjusted according to local government boundaries. That is one way in which the problem could be tackled but one set of commissioners should not have to consult another set of commissioners about what is taking place.
Mr. Barnes : Policy guidance documents issued by the Department of the Environment say that, for the purposes of local government boundaries reviews, a number of people must be consulted. Many of the areas in which interest should be taken are reasonable, and the document says that particular account should be taken of the views of Members of Parliament. But among the people to be consulted, the document also lists the parliamentary boundary commission. That shows at least one way round the problem--in altering local government boundaries, consultations must take place with the parliamentary boundary commission.
That seems to be fraught with danger, and nowhere more so than in Derbyshire. We have often heard Conservative Members refer to David Bookbinder as a demon. Now that he has been replaced as leader, presumably Martin Doughty's name will be used instead. Martin Doughty responded to the local government boundary changes suggested for Derbyshire, which is included in the first tranche of local government authorities. The alterations to Derbyshire's local government boundaries will be taken into account when considering parliamentary boundaries. Derbyshire is not down to be considered for early parliamentary boundary changes, and is likely to be in the last tranche to be reviewed, so new arrangements will have to be made. On page 76 of County News, 14 June 1992, Martin Doughty states : "Eight of the ten authorities chosen for immediate scrutiny by the Government were either set up following the 1974 local government reorganisation, or border onto those councils.
The exceptions are the Isle of Wight which has two small districts within the county boundary, and Derbyshire which at this stage seems to stand alone".
We are told that the Derbyshire review has to take place because of concern about the county and its boundaries. Those worries had been mainly expressed by Conservative Members from Derbyshire. Pressure has been applied by the politics of Conservatism in Derbyshire to ensure that that county is included in the first tranche. That should not be a reason for including Derbyshire in the review of local
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government at the initial stage when the parliamentary boundary review and consideration of parliamentary seats are included in the arrangements.There is a considerable danger in a county such as Derbyshire being put forward for the local government review and the parliamentary boundary review. It may be that the parliamentary review will be limited to the current boundaries of Derbyshire and split that county into a number of regions, but it is possible for the local government commissioner to ask the Minister for other districts to be considered and added to the review. We would then have a problem, as some authorities in Derbyshire might begin to shrink, while others expanded. Even if that does not happen, we should not allow the Minister even to consider it. That should be set out clearly in legislation.
It should be clearly set out in legislation that boundaries constitute one parliamentary sphere and local authorities another, and the two should not be cross-referenced or alterations made to the political map that help certain groups close to the Government. The Minister should seriously consider amendment No. 3, which begins to resolve some of those problems. He should carefully respond, particularly in relation to whether clause 3 should stand part of the Bill.
Mr. Maxton : I shall try to keep my remarks brief-- [Interruption.] Conservative Members should never tempt me into making long speeches--they might get one.
I apologise for missing the Minister's earlier remarks, but I want to speak entirely about Scotland this evening. Unlike in England and Wales, no independent commission is looking into local government reform and reorganisation in Scotland. That is entirely at the whim of Ministers, who make proposals and then push through legislation. That can never be right. Even at this late stage, an independent commission should be set up.
Let us examine the time scale for local government reform and its relationship to the parliamentary boundary commission. It appears that in September this year there will be a White Paper with Government proposals on Scottish local government. I am told that it will contain a series of proposals, offering choices and even various maps. We do not know if that is true, but certainly there will be no legislation this Session. It will be November 1993, the Queen's Speech, before we even know what the final proposals are. The legislation will then go through the House of Commons. The regional elections planned for May 1994 will be cancelled and the regions will be allowed to continue until the legislation becomes an Act and the new structure is put in place for May 1996. The boundary commission might therefore report in 1994 with no idea of what the new local government structure in Scotland will be. The hon. Member for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart) has come out with some very odd and vague ideas, concentrating on only one aspect--Eastwood district council should remain in existence and hell-mend the other authorities in Scotland. On the other hand, the commission might not do its job and might allow the local government boundary reforms to take place and then set up new parliamentry boundaries related to the new local government structure.
As my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson) said, the latter is the best way of
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approaching the matter. It ensures the continuing links between Members of Parliament and local government areas, so that they will not find themselves representing various parts of various local authorities. Ideally, they will represent only one--Mr. Maxton : Two would be fine, if there is a two-tier structure, but we should not have to represent a mass of local authorities. Is it impossible for the boundary commission to wait for the new local government structure in Scotland to be in place? No. I accept that the boundary commission can only begin its work ; it cannot finalise it on the basis of the first draft of the first Bill to come before the House, in November 1993. Presumably, that legislation will complete all its stages by June 1994. By then, it may have been changed and the commission will have to take account of the changes. Last time we effected a major local government reform in this place--not that I was here--the legislation was changed significantly as it went through this place and the other place.
In June 1994, the boundary commission would have to lay out its draft boundaries for the parliamentary seats in Scotland. There is nothing wrong with that. Indeed, there is nothing wrong with the final drafting and submissions not being ready until February or March 1995. After all, we have just had a general election, in April. This place works on a five-year lifespan. Therefore, at least constitutionally, the next general election will take place in April, or even May, 1997. That is when the parliamentary boundaries need to be in place unless we witness another occasion when a Prime Minister believes that he can rig the election by calling it when it suits his purpose rather than that of anyone else.
The fact is that, in constitutional theory, the next election will take place in April 1997. Why all the rush and hurry about getting the boundaries in place before then? Even if the Government decided on a four- year term rather than a five-year one, my time scale would still allow time for the boundaries to be in place by April 1996. We would then have the new parliamentary and local government boundaries in place at the same time. That is the sensible way forward and I hope that the Minister will take heed of it.
Mr. Maclennan : The different treatments given to Wales and Scotland by the Bill are understandable in view of the fact that the Secretary of State for Wales has made his intentions clear. However, it is unsatisfactory that the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland sat through the debate and kept the intentions of the Scottish Office entirely covert.
The Bill would affect Scotland, England and Wales differently. It would be reasonable to expect the Under-Secretary to explain precisely how the Bill is intended to operate in Scotland. Under the 1986 Act, Scotland is not in the same position as England and Wales. Schedule 2(4) to the Act clearly sets out that Scotland is to be treated differently and that the boundary commission in Scotland is required to have regard to local government boundaries. If the Bill becomes law and the Government amendments are accepted, the boundary commission in Scotland will have no option but to act on existing local government boundaries and to produce a report which, if the Government's intentions as expressed by the Scottish
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Office are clear, will be overtaken by structural changes as soon as they are implemented by the House. Therefore, Scottish local government and parliamentary boundaries, which should coincide or at least bear some relationship to each other, will probably be completely different. That is not satisfactory. It is up to the Under- Secretary to explain when he intends to bring forward the structural proposals for change so that we can consider them before the Bill leaves the House and assess whether a measure such as that proposed for Wales would be appropriate for Scotland. However, in Scotland, we have no proposals to consider.Although the procedure for Wales is unusual, it relates to the facts as they were spelt out by the Ministers responsible for Wales. The proposal is understandable, if novel, but the great cloud of unknowing in respect of what will happen in Scotland is unacceptable. We do not know whether the work of the boundary commission in Scotland will be accelerated, which many people would accept, or whether the boundary commission's recommendations will diverge from any that may have to be considered later in this Parliament.
Mr. Peter Lloyd : I have noted what most hon. Members have said. Some of their points have been lost in the obscurity of my handwriting, so I shall start with the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling). I should like him to confirm whether he made this following point, because it is less logical than most of his points. He appeared to want the boundary commission to ignore some changes that Parliament will have willed in local government boundaries and that will already be in operation when it makes its report. Is that so? The hon. Gentleman shakes his head. I am glad that, at least to that extent, he agrees with the Government that, if there are local government changes in operation by the time that the parliamentary boundary commissions have to make their final report, they should take those into account in their reports.
The hon. Gentleman then queried the opportunities for provisional recommendations to be taken into account before the boundaries are in operation. That will be legitimate only--except in the case of Wales--if they have been legislated for. They will not be acceptable in any final report unless they are in operation. Throughout the debate, many hon. Members have talked as if the final report could be based on recommendations that appeared only in a Bill that had had Second Reading when it can only be for recommendations that have had statutory form through becoming an Act. If the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central wishes to intervene, I would be happy to give way to him.
9.45 pm
Mr. Darling : I bet the Minister would--it was painfully obvious that he was taken by surprise when he was called to speak. I will give him this opportunity to wake up. My point was that it is conceivable, especially in England because of the way in which the Government are going about local authority changes, that there could be areas in which there were new boundaries in operation, or at least enacted and capable of being in operation, and others where they were not. I was concerned that, in such an area, the boundary commission might make recommendations that were partly based on new boundaries and partly on
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old boundaries. I would not urge the boundary commission to ignore a new local authority area. However, I am concerned about the mixture.Mr. Lloyd : With the rolling programme in which sectors of the country are taken as they will be in the local government review, that must inevitably be so if those reviews roll across the date of 1 June 1994, which is the cut-off point for the convenience of the boundary commission so that it knows what it has to take into account and what it does not have to take into account. If we accepted the hon. Gentleman's amendment, the boundary commission would be in great confusion as to what it should be taking into account. Inevitably there will be a mixture.
The hon. Gentleman also assumes that the revised local government structure will, somehow, produce more favourable circumstances, and therefore constituency changes, for the Conservative party than existing local government boundaries. I do not know how he can assert that, as he does not know what the local government commissions will be recommending. He cannot possibly make that prediction, and I suspect that he has no principled objection to the arrangements being made and does not know how they will end up but finds it a little easier to fill in his time by spraying around assertions that he cannot sustain.
Like others, the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central referred to the timing of local government restructuring in Scotland. As I said earlier, the Secretary of State has said that there will be a further consultation stage in Scotland this autumn. This will probably give some idea of how the Government will implement their manifesto commitment. The Secretary of State has not given any idea of timing. The current thinking is that there will be a Bill in the 1993-94 Session and that Royal Assent may be given in the summer of 1994. Elections for the new authorities could take place in the spring of 1995, with the new authorities coming into effect in April 1996--well after the parliamentary boundary commission will have been obliged to report.
Mr. Maxton : Did the hon. Gentleman say that there could be elections in 1995? The legislation is unlikely to be through this place much before October or November of 1994.
Mr. Lloyd : There may be a need to elect a shadow authority to take over from the existing authority for a period. If the new structure comes into effect in 1996, which is quite possible, I think that even the hon. Gentleman would accept that that will be well after the commission has to report. It would be extremely difficult for the commission to take the new local government boundaries into account two years after it had to report.
Mr. Maxton : Is the Minister confirming that the regional elections of May 1994 will be cancelled? That would appear to be the implication of what he is saying.
Mr. Lloyd : The hon. Gentleman may draw what inferences he thinks logical from what I say. These are matters for the Secretary of State for Scotland and I shall not trespass too far on matters that he will be making clearer in his consultation document later this year. My hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, West (Mr. Jones), in an interesting and well- informed speech, rightly said that local government boundaries need to be
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known before they can be taken into account by boundary commissions. That is the basic common sense that underlies this measure, but it was not adopted by the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael). The hon. Gentleman invited me to withdraw amendment No. 13, which he described as improper and presumptuous. In fact, it is entirely sensible and practicable. The hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth professed to be outraged. That was either because he had not followed the debate--he certainly had not followed clearly what is in the Bill or in the amendments--or, more likely, because he felt that he needed to generate some strong emotion to compensate for the lethargic Opposition Members sitting behind him, as well as empty Benches, while he was speaking.There is no question of the Government taking Parliament for granted. I believe that the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth was wheeled on to make the bluster that I have described. He will know that the plan is that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales will produce a White Paper in the autumn, which will set out the reform that is planned and the timetable.
Mr. Michael : If there was a need to wake anyone, it was the Minister. Very few Conservative Members were sitting behind him whereas the Opposition had the presence of the shadow Secretary of State for Wales, my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mr. Jones). My hon. Friends on the Opposition Back Benches have given their Front-Bench colleagues lively support. The Minister has suggested that we are divided against one another when we are not. The reality is that he is divided against himself on amendment No. 13. We say that the Bill should not proceed on the detail of a piece of proposed legislation that has not passed through the House. We certainly should not ask the Boundary Commission for Wales to do so. It is as simple as that. The Minister seems not to understand that.
Mr. Lloyd : When the hon. Gentleman was speaking I could see behind him rather better than he could. I shall return to the argument that he has reiterated when I direct my remarks to the hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson), who made the same point. He, too, let his imagination run riot while his common sense took a back seat. The only assumption that lies behind the Bill is that the Government will introduce a Welsh local government Bill sufficiently early for Parliament to determine its fate well before the Boundary Commission for Wales has prepared its final recommendations, which must depend on what an Act states rather than on what is contained in the Bill. If changes are made to the Bill, there is not a shadow of doubt that the Boundary Commision for Wales will have to take them into account when it makes its final recommendations.
Should the Bill be defeated, the commission will have to operate on the basis of current boundaries. Parliament is not being taken for granted. Instead, there is an opportunity for the Boundary Commission for Wales to take into account the sort of structure that is proposed in the Bill in the full knowledge that it will have to revise its thinking if the Bill is amended before its reaches the statute book.
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I was glad that the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) approved of the guidelines for the local government boundary commission. He said that, in London, the time had come to cross the borough boundaries. In fact, there is a principle that there should be constituencies of more or less equal size. I understood from what he said that he accepted that as a general principle, while emphasising that that does not always fit easily with respecting local government and other boundaries and social links. That tension will always be there and the boundary commission must balance that. No doubt its members will read the report of this debate and note the remarks that the hon. Gentleman and others made about the position in London. There is sufficient guidance for the boundary commission in schedule 2 of the 1986 Act--Mr. Soley : Will the Minister go a little further and tell the boundary commission that greater priority should be given to the sense of community? That is especially true if it is thinking of crossing borough boundaries. The sense of community, especially in inner-city areas, must be maintained ; it must not be subservient to the geographical lines, which often appear to override the sense of community.
Mr. Lloyd : I hear what the hon. Gentleman says and no doubt the commission will note his views. It would be wrong of me to give additional guidance to the commission on how to interpret its responsibilities. Its guidance is contained in the schedule to the 1986 Act, and it is for the boundary commission, not me, to construe that.
The hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes) recommended that we do exactly what we are planning to do in Scotland, which is not to make changes until the local government boundaries are either in statute form or in place. That is why the arrangements in the Bill for Scotland differ from those for Wales. I am sure that that makes complete sense. It is for the convenience of the boundary commissions and for the more accurate delineation of the constituency boundaries along the lines of those that are about to come into existence or that have already done so.
I ask the Committee to support the amendment and to reject the Opposition amendments.
Amendment agreed to.
Amendment proposed : No. 3, in page 2, leave out lines 29 to 31.-- [Mr. Darling.]
Question put, That the amendment be made :--
The Committee divided : Ayes 249, Noes 298.
Division No. 39] [9.58 pm
AYES
Abbott, Ms Diane
Adams, Mrs Irene
Ainger, Nick
Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE)
Alton, David
Anderson, Donald (Swansea E)
Armstrong, Hilary
Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy
Ashton, Joe
Austin-Walker, John
Banks, Tony (Newham NW)
Barnes, Harry
Battle, John
Bayley, Hugh
Beckett, Margaret
Bell, Stuart
Benn, Rt Hon Tony
Benton, Joe
Bermingham, Gerald
Berry, Roger
Betts, Clive
Blair, Tony
Boateng, Paul
Boyce, Jimmy
Boyes, Roland
Bradley, Keith
Bray, Dr Jeremy
Brown, Gordon (Dunfermline E)
Brown, N. (N'c'tle upon Tyne E)
Burden, Richard
Byers, Stephen
Caborn, Richard
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