House of Commons Hansard Debates for 22 Jun 1992

Mr. Darling : This group of amendments deals with the aim canvassed for the Bill--the time that should elapse between boundary reviews. The Government propose that a review should take place between eight and 12 years after

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the previous review, whereas at present it takes place between 10 and 15 years. The amendment proposes a fixed review every 12 years. Since 1945, an average Parliament has lasted about 3.8 years. The purpose of our amendment is to ensure that boundaries remain in existence for about three Parliaments. That has some importance, as there ought to be a link between Member and constituency. During the past few weeks, discussions have taken place about the appropriate method of electing Members to the House and to other places, and those discussions will continue. I feel strongly that, whatever the system, there ought to be a link between the Member and the constituency. Clearly, if the nature of a constituency changes too often, the link will diminish in importance. If the Government's amendment to the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 is carried, in some cases boundaries might remain intact for only two Parliaments, which does not seem to be a very long time.

It is interesting that there have been wide fluctuations during the history of boundary reviews. When Parliament reviewed the situation in 1944, it decided that a review period of between three to seven years would be appropriate to get rid of the anomalies that had arisen. During the 1950s, when reviews were carried out by the then boundary commission, it was decided that it was not practical to carry out a review in that short time. In 1958, the period was increased to between 10 and 15 years--quite a big jump.

The Government are proposing a compromise of between eight and 12 years. There is not much difference between three and seven years, if one consider the old upper limit of seven, and the eight-year period, which is the lowest that the Government anticipate.

When the Minister replies to the debate, it would be interesting if he could let us have the Government's thinking as to why a period of between eight and 12 years is thought appropriate. We all know that the population has changed significantly since 1976 in some areas, but I am not sure that it will continue to change that dramatically. An alternative would be a rolling register as used for the poll tax, with continuing reports instead of the occasional interim report by the boundary commission.

I wonder whether the Government are contemplating that the boundary commission will prepare several reports during the eight to 12-year programme rather than one report for the whole of the United Kingdom. It has been suggested that, even with the increased resources anticipated by the Bill, the boundary commission will find it difficult to produce a report for the United Kingdom every eight to 12 years. If it has to produce an entire report after eight years, it will require a considerable amount of work, not merely to make the report but to deal with all the local inquiries and to hear the representations required and allowed in the 1986 Act.

Are the Government considering several reports, perhaps dealing with parliamentary constituency boundaries in the same way that the Government are dealing with local authority reviews in England, where it is envisaged that reports will have five tranches--to use the Government's phrase? The Government could be proposing one report for the United Kingdom every eight to 12 years. If that is the case, I should be interested to know whether they are satisfied that it can be produced.

Our amendment suggests a fixed term of 12 years, which would have the advantage of reducing the scope for a Government to vary the term to seek political advantage.

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As became clear during debate on amendment No. 1, it has been suggested that that is what the Government plan to do. If a fixed term were chosen, the Government would not be able to advance or delay it, although they could invite the House to vote down the report, which is also an option at present.

7.15 pm

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Peter Lloyd) : It is up to the boundary commission to decide when it produces a report, within the window of years allowed by the law. It is not up to the Government to decide when it should do so.

Mr. Darling : I appreciate that, but the Government are the architect and sponsor of the Bill and I therefore wonder if they have any idea of what they want.

For example, the English boundary commission could produce one report for England within eight years, or it might decide that it could not do so, and produce two reports for a group of counties instead, thus carrying out a rolling programme. In time, all the counties would be reviewed every eight to 12 years, but not all at the same time.

If the Minister is making inquiries, could he tell me whether the piecemeal approach would be possible under the Bill as drafted? If not, I should like to know about it, because it has been suggested that it may be a tall order to expect an entire review every eight years. Perhaps the commission will decide to carry out a review every 12 years, which is the upper end of the scale, in which case it will be doing what many people think it ought to have done within the 10 to 15-year period allowed at present.

It is probably common ground that the present situation is not entirely satisfactory. One of the principal problems is that the boundary commission started work in 1976, but an election was not fought on those boundaries until about seven years later. When it was fought, the boundaries were seven years out of date. The April 1992 election was fought on boundaries that are about 15 years out of date.

I should be grateful if the Minister would let us know why the Government chose a period of eight to 12 years. When the Select Committee on Home Affairs last considered the matter, it thought that the lower period in force during the 1940s and 1950s was far too short. It recognised some of the difficulties with a long period and came down against a fixed term of 12 years because that circumscribed room for manoeuvre. I am not sure that the Committee was right, because if there is an injunction requiring the production of a report within any fixed period, the commission has to be tied to it, especially if it is to produce one report. Clearly, if it is going to produce a rolling programme, the flexibility to do so within a four-year period allows it to do that. There is something to be said for having a fixed term, so that we know where we are and when the report will be produced and we can proceed on that basis. I do not wish to say much more on the subject. I am not sure how much interest hon. Members have in the time allowed. I think that there is far more interest in some of the other difficulties with which we have dealt and in those

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with which we shall deal later. However, there are several questions for the Government to answer and part of the purpose of the amendment is to explore them.

Mr. Maclennan : I rise to speak to amendments Nos. 18 and 19 tabled in my name and that of my right hon. and hon. Friends. The Government's purpose in changing the frequency of reviews from 10 to 15-year intervals to eight to 12-year intervals may mean that some constituencies will exist for only two Parliaments before new constituencies are formed. More frequent changes to the constituency that a Member of Parliament represents could have the not altogether desirable effect of undermining the development of a long-term relationship between a Member of Parliament and all the parts of a constituency.

A degree of stability of parliamentary constituency boundaries is desirable, even though it is obviously sensible to move towards more frequent changes than take place at present. However, if the Bill is enacted as drafted, every second Parliament some Members of Parliament may be uncertain about the boundaries that they will face at the forthcoming general election. I doubt whether that is altogether good for representation ; certainly, it would not be good for the democratic process where it involves the party organisations preparing to offer a choice at each general election.

Amendment No. 18 aims to ensure that no review can be implemented within 10 years of the date of the last general election to be based on new boundaries. Ideally, I should have preferred a differently worded amendment which would enable enactment to take place at a time that was separate from the date of the report. However, I understand that such an amendment would have offended against the long title of the Bill, so I have drafted the amendment to tackle the problem in a different way and to prevent the boundary commission from reporting if the consequence of doing so is to produce a review in fewer than 10 years. The Government are probably right to argue that infrequent reviews lead to wide discrepancies in electorates. However, stability should also be recognised as a desirable end.

Amendment No. 19 addresses another problem : reviews that are completed just before a general election and implemented almost immediately after. Changes which were finalised only late in 1982 were implemented in the 1983 general election. That is an example of the mischief with which the amendment seeks to deal. If we leave the Bill as it is, the future shape of some constituencies could be known for less than a year before a general election. That would also be detrimental to effective representation and democratic choice. I propose that we consider basing the Bill on the principle that the commission should complete a review within two years of a general election. Assuming that a Parliament lasts for four or five years --of course, that is a little longer than the average--that would allow local parties and Members of Parliament to prepare for the new boundaries. Although both my amendments inevitably refer to the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 rather than the Bill, I hope that they are clear and acceptable to the Government.

Mr. David Trimble (Upper Bann) : I wish to refer to amendment No. 14, tabled in my name and that of my right hon. and hon. Friends. The points have largely been

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made by the hon. Members for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) and for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan). It is a question of finding the right period. Indeed, the Secretary of State spoke in those terms. Obviously, the objective of moving forward what has just been referred to as the "window" within which the boundary commission has to report from between 10 and 15 years to between eight and 12 years is to allow more frequent changes to boundaries. I agree that more frequent changes are not necessarily a good thing. There is a need for a degree of stability in constituency boundaries. It is desirable to allow a degree of identity to grow up within a constituency, especially if it operates on a single-Member basis. We boast about the link that is supposed to exist between a Member of Parliament and a constituency. If the boundaries are changed too rapidly and fundamentally, that link is destroyed. It takes some time for the link to develop. If there have been major changes, it usually takes one or two elections before people become completely familiar with the new boundaries. The Government's objective seems to be that boundaries should change after every second election. That would mean that people would never become familiar with the boundaries. It is desirable to allow a little more time between changes. We have tabled our amendment to increase the window from eight to 15 years in an effort to give the boundary commission more time, largely in the hope that that will result in greater stability. I find amendments Nos. 2 and 18 equally acceptable and I would support them if there were a Division.

When boundaries change, a certain degree of change has to take place within constituency associations. That may not be a great problem for Members of Parliament from Great Britain because the local government units under which they operate are more sensible. Unfortunately, the legislation in Northern Ireland is such that we regularly find that when constituencies change we have to break up branches and re-form them. I hope that we shall tackle that problem when we discuss another amendment tabled in my name, which seeks to allow us to operate on more sensible local government boundaries for the purposes of the Bill. The objective of amendment No. 14 is to create a little more stability.

Mr. Peter Lloyd : I should like to deal with each amendment in turn, but before doing so I shall answer several of the questions that the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) asked. If I understood his questions correctly, I can cover them quickly. There will be four boundary commission reports--one each for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. There will not be one report for the whole of the United Kingdom. That stems from the legislative arrangements in the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986.

Mr. Darling : The purpose of the Bill is to ensure that there will be one report for each country at the same time so that all the reports are with the relevant Secretary of State at the end of 1994. It is the Government's intention that the new boundaries will be in operation before the next election. That is the point that I made. But I asked whether it would be open to the commission to produce a report every two or three years on a rolling basis for England, which is much bigger than the other countries.

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Mr. Lloyd : I was coming to that point. No, it will not be possible. Under the 1986 Act, there must be a report for the whole of England. The final report cannot be produced piecemeal, although, of course, the provisional recommendations are produced piecemeal. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central also asked why we had chosen 12 years. The best that I can do is to refer him back to what I said in reply to the Second Reading debate. We have chosen 12 years because 15 years has allowed too great a disparity between electorates as a result of population movements in that period. The size of constituencies ranges from 42,000 electors to more than 90, 000 in England, from 32,000 to 70,000 in Wales, and from 23,000 to 78,000 in Scotland. The hon. Gentleman might question whether 12 years is short enough when population movements are so substantial, but we have picked 12 years as the period which gives the continuity of constituency boundaries and Members' relations with them to which several hon. Members referred.

Indeed, we have adopted the period suggested to the Select Committee by the deputy chairman of the English boundary commission some time ago. As the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central said, amendment No. 2 requires the commission to submit its report on the twelfth anniversary of the previous report. I accept that that proposal has some attractions. It would ensure that reports were not so frequent as the new minimum period of eight years would make technically possible, and it would avoid the possibility of upheavals in constituency boundaries more than once a decade. In some ways, it would also be convenient for everyone to know in advance when D day had to be.

7.30 pm

However seductive the idea, alas I fear that such a fixed date would present some real problems for the commissions. They would feel obliged to start their work just as early as they would with the eight to 12 years rule because they would never be able to tell in advance how long they might be held up by local inquiries or judicial challenge, let alone the exigencies of their own work. The open and responsive rules that the commissions must follow mean that completion dates do not finally lie in their hands, nor can they be accurately predicted.

Indeed, a look back to the timing of previous commission inquiries and reports shows that they have usually slipped back towards the latter end of their reporting window. There is no reason to think that that would change in the future. Indeed, quite the contrary, because that built-in uncertainty in their timetable is why the commissions have always been given a period of years in which they are required to submit their reports. It gives the commissions the elbow room which experience shows that they need.

The major effect of amendment No. 2 would be to make it inevitable that the commissions would have to sit on their report for a period before presenting it. If the review had gone smoothly, that might be a year or two. If a general election were called during that time, it would have to be fought on old boundaries--out-of-date boundaries based on out-of-date registers--when more up-to-date proposals were available. That would defeat the central purpose of the Bill : to secure as up-to-date boundaries, based on the latest electoral registers, as reasonably practicable. For that reason, I ask the House to reject amendment No. 2.

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Mr. Darling : The Minister said that for each country there could be only one report under the parent Act of 1986. May I draw his attention to section 2(1) of that Act, which provides :

"For the purpose of the continuous review of the distribution of seats at parliamentary elections, there shall be four Commissions".

Section 3(1) says :

"Each Boundary Commission shall submit to the Secretary of State reports"

--in the plural--

"with respect to the whole of that part of the United Kingdom" --and goes on to say what those should contain. Subsection (2) also refers to reports in the plural. Given the language used, how can the Minister be so certain that the commissions cannot produce a multiple number of reports ? Whether that is desirable is another matter. Have I missed a provision that would require the commissions to produce just one report for the whole of England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland ?

Mr. Lloyd : We have both missed that provision and I shall not find it in the few seconds available to me. However, where the Act refers to parts of the United Kingdom it means England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and not parts of England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. As usual, the hon. Gentleman raises an interesting point and I shall try to supply him with the exact reference, or references, in the Act before the end of the evening.

The hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) urged on me amendment No. 14. The amendment would change the cycle of eight to 12 years to eight to 15 years. I do not know whether that is what the hon. Gentleman intended, but, if so, I must discourage him. I have some sympathy with his motive of allowing more time between reviews to place more emphasis on the continuity of connections between a Member of Parliament and his constituency and between constituency associations and their constituencies than on equal numbers. But the period of eight to 15 years that he proposes is considerably less satisfactory than the present range of 10 to 15 years.

Obviously, the commissions need elbow room for unexpected delays, complications and the unpredictable. The time-consuming process of local inquiries and possible court proceedings mean that a range of time must be allowed, but to expand that period from the current five years to seven years, rather than reduce it to four years as the Bill proposes, is to move in the wrong direction. It would increase uncertainty about when the next reorganisation would be introduced. I agree that frequent reorganisations would be unwelcome.

However, the amendment would also give an undesirable latitude to when the commissions' reports should be ready. The commissions may feel obliged to make judgments on whether it would be politic to complete their reports, thus being drawn into political controversy. For that reason, and because the amendment flies directly in the face of the intention of the Bill to ensure that the commissions' work is speeded up, I ask the Committee to join me in rejecting amendment No. 15.

The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) tabled amendments Nos. 18 and 19. As always, I listened to him carefully but especially so this time as the wording of his amendments, particularly amendment No. 19, was as complex and testing as if it had

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been drawn up by a talented and experienced Government draftsman. He explained that he wanted to protect the practice of more frequent reviews but, within that, the continuity of relationships within constituencies and between a constituency and its Member of Parliament. He also wanted to avoid changes just before a general election, but, on a quick reading of his amendments, I am not sure whether he would necessarily succeed in doing that.

I have some sympathy with the idea that there must be at least two general elections between a review and much sympathy also with the belief that there is value in continuity in the relationships between a Member of Parliament and his constituents. However, all commissions seem to report nearer to the end rather than the beginning of the time allowed, so some of the hon. Gentleman's concerns would, in practice, be answered by the commissions' behaviour, the timetable that they set themselves, and the time taken by the inquiries that they hear after receiving objections.

However, I have more substantial reasons for saying that I cannot accept the amendments. Amendment No. 18 would seek to ensure that no report could be made sooner than 10 years after the date of the first general election held on the existing boundaries. Depending on the timing of the report in relation to that first general election, that could mean that no new report would be submitted for up to 14 years. The fact that that could happen was shown when the boundary commission reported in 1969 with recommendations based on 1965 registers, but the first election under its proposals did not take place until February 1974. If the amendment had been in place then, the next proposals would have had to wait until 1984--19 years after the base date of the previous review.

The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland also proposed an amendment with the same objective. However, it, too, could delay reports for up to 14 years and possibly a little longer. I have some sympathy with what he is trying to achieve. A balance must be drawn between equality of electors in constituencies where there are rapid movements in population, and continuity between Members of Parliament and their constituents and within constituencies. I believe that we have drawn the line in the right place. In so far as the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland seeks to ensure that change is not disturbingly frequent, I agree with him, but believe that the exigencies of the process will ensure that.

My basic objection to his amendments is that they could lead to gaps and would frequently lead to gaps that were close to the present ones, which it is the Bill's intention to close. We would be back where we are now, with periods that are too long. For that reason, I invite the Committee to reject those amendments.

Mr. Maclennan : I am grateful to the Minister for giving some thought to my amendments. I was also pleased to hear that he accepts the underlying intention of amendment No. 18--that there should be a gap of two Parliaments before change is implemented. I find it difficult to believe that it is beyond the wit of parliamentary draftsmen to achieve the objective that he and I apparently share. If my amendment is defectively drafted, I take full responsibility as I drafted it. However, the Minister's response to that amendment is somewhat encouraging and I ask him at least to consider, between now and Report

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stage, whether it might be possible to meet our common aim of not allowing the electoral boundary map to be redrawn within a period of two Parliaments.

The purpose of amendment No. 19 was certainly not to protract the process in the manner adumbrated by the Minister. He is doubtless right in saying that it could have that effect. I readily acknowledge that part of the reason for that is the tightness of the Bill's drafting, which has made it impossible to do what I believe would be more sensible : require the Government to lay an Order in Council implementing the boundary commission's recommendation close to the date on which it is finalised. Had it been possible to do that, we could have avoided the difficulties to which he rightly drew attention.

Does the hon. Gentleman share the view that it is undesirable to produce a boundary change flat up against a general election, and that it is better for democracy and stability for those who organise elections--the political parties, all of which are equally affected--to have some time in which to operate within the new boundaries before the election date is decided?

Mr. Lloyd : I certainly think that it is more convenient for political parties to have a longer period in which to organise matters. However, I am not so sure that it is necessarily greatly in the interests of the electorate or the working of parliamentary democracy, although there are arguments both ways. If one of the amendments were adjusted--as presently drafted it would not succeed--it could ensure that there was no election within two years of a boundary commission report being produced. However, one must bear in mind--it certainly weighs heavily with the Government--that to put on ice the proposals for more up-to-date boundaries while an election is fought on older, more out-of-date boundaries is not necessarily in the interests of parliamentary democracy and the smooth running of the system.

The hon. Gentleman asked me nicely to reconsider and I shall not refuse. Although I have some sympathy with his desire for continuity, I suspect that it would be impossible to devise a way of ensuring that continuity without allowing for the period between reviews coming into effect to be drawn out to much the same length as at present. I think that he encountered that difficulty in his amendments. I shall reconsider the matter, but I am not optimistic of finding a solution that satisfies both of us.

7.45 pm

Mr. Darling : I was hoping that, by now, the Minister might have received the advice that I was seeking. While he was speaking, I thought that he received a piece of paper containing that advice. If that is not so, perhaps we shall have to wait.

Section 3 of the 1986 Act states :

"Each Boundary Commission shall submit to the Secretary of State reports"--

plural--

"with respect to the whole of that part of the United Kingdom". That means that each boundary commission will produce reports in respect of that part of the United Kingdom for which it is responsible and seems to suggest that they can produce multiple reports. If I have missed something, perhaps the Minister will intervene.

Mr. Lloyd : There was something that I missed--the arrival of a piece of paper while I was talking. If I can read

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the handwriting, I believe that it states that section 3(2) of the Act refers to a period of 10 to 15 years from the last report. Under section 3(1), each boundary commission has to submit a single report on its last periodic review. If the hon. Gentleman will wait until later in the debate, I shall check those references myself. I said that he might have the answer before the end of the evening. The night is still young and I still hope that I can oblige him. He can refer to the reference while listening to other hon. Members speak, as will I.

Mr. Darling : Subject to any ruling by you, Mr. Morris, or whoever occupies the Chair for the debate on the next group of amendments, I think that the matter might still be in order then as it relates to reports.

Subsection (2) appears to refer to reports produced in accordance with subsection (1), which does not rule out multiple reports. It states that each commission may produce reports--plural--with respect to that part of the United Kingdom for which it is responsible. Subsection (2) merely states that the commissions must report between 10 to 15 years after they last did so. That could be taken to imply that there will be only one report, but the Minister should consider that aspect.

If there is to be a possibility of reports being produced every eight years, at some stage in the future the boundary commission may say that it cannot possibly deal with the matter for the whole of England and would prefer to produce a series of reports. Such an approach has been heralded by the local government attitude and is expressly taken into account when dealing with clause 3.

I am glad that the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) raised the issue--as I did--of the frequency with which reports should be considered. Like him, and possibly the Minister--I may be stretching a point there--I think that there is something to be said for allowing constituencies to last more than two elections. If there is to be a regular review, I assume that there will not be dramatic changes such as we might see in the reports that we shall consider in two years' time, although it is conceivable that there will be. In my constituency the last time around- -it was not my constituency then--a large community was transferred from it into another constituency, and a correspondingly large community was transferred into it. Clearly, there is something to be said for fostering the links between a Member and a constituency--hence there is something to be said for leaving a constituency intact for some time.

Large rural constituencies are different. I am not sure that the boundary of Caithness and Sutherland has changed in recent memory--it has merely encompassed the two counties. But in urban constituencies such as those of my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) and myself there is a measure of community feeling and people need to identify with their Member of Parliament. That is difficult enough given the natural movement of people, but eight years is also a rather short period.

The Minister did not hold out much of change. He could more bluntly have said that there was no hope at all, but he was being nice to the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland and said that he would think again-- before rejecting the idea on Report or Third Reading. I am prepared to accept that my suggestion of fixed terms of 12 years is not without its defects, but my purpose

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was to ensure that as long as we have single- Member constituencies and set great store by the link between a Member and a constituency, a decent period is needed before they are changed.

The Minister complained legitimately that constituencies based on electorates that no longer exist undermine the whole concept, but the problem that we face arose 10 or 15 years ago when the boundary commission considered boundaries on the basis of the electorate in 1976 and the relevant constituencies did not come into force until seven years later, in 1983. So they were seven years out of date when the first election based on them was fought. The 1976 electorate was in turn based on registration in October 1975. We need to shorten the period between the start of the process and the making of the boundary commission's report. That would deal with many of the Minister's objections.

There is much to be said for dealing with each country as a single unit in boundary reviews. There is a danger in picking and choosing, selecting parts of the country which may be advantageous. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that a Conservative Home Secretary would consider it right to review the parts of the country that he thought could disadvantage his oppenents, leaving alone the areas where he considered his strength lay. There is some suggestion that that is precisely what the Secretary of State for the Environment is up to.

Whatever advice the Minister receives, I hope that he will reconsider the possibility of amending the Bill. A period of eight years represents a problem even worse than might be supposed, because half way through a second Parliament a Member might have to transfer his attention to constituents he hoped to have and away from those he already had. It is already not uncommon for Members to start canvassing people whom they know will enter their constituency, in anticipation of a review--

Mr. Lloyd rose--

Mr. Darling : I am about to say something that may stop the Minister wanting to intervene. These matters have been canvassed at some length. I readily accept that this was a probing amendment, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw it.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 3

Local government boundaries to be taken into account in reports

Mr. Peter Lloyd : I beg to move amendment No. 10, in page 2, line 17, leave out subsection' and insert subsections'.

The Chairman : With this we may also take the following : Amendment No. 3, in page 2, leave out lines 29 to 31.

Government amendment No. 11.

Amendment No. 4, in page 2, line 31, at end insert

provided that such boundaries are specified in any Act passed on or before that date whether or not that Act (or any part of it) is in force on that date'.

Amendment No. 9, in page 2, line 31, at end insert

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provided that the Boundary Commission may not publish recommendations which take account both of boundaries which are in operation and of boundaries which are not in operation at the time of publication'.

Amendment No. 7, in page 2, line 38, leave out

the Boundary Commission for Wales"

and insert a Boundary Commission'.

Government amendments Nos. 12 and 13.

Mr. Lloyd : You kindly said, Mr. Morris, that I might discuss in more detail the answer to the question asked me by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) on an earlier group of amendments. His question concerned the possibility of partial reviews of parts of the United Kingdom. I was about to intervene at the end of his speech, but I rise now to clear up the matter.

The 1986 Act, of which I am sure everyone has a copy, states in section 3(1) :

"Each Boundary Commission shall, in accordance with subsection (2) below, submit to the Secretary of State reports with respect to the whole of that part of the United Kingdom"--

in other words, to the whole of England, the whole of Wales, the whole of Scotland, or the whole of Northern Ireland, Subsection (2) in turn states :

"Reports under subsection (1) above shall be submitted by a Boundary Commission not less than 10 or more than 15 years from the date of the submission of their last report under that subsection." Taking the two elements together, it is clear that the boundary commission for each part of the United Kingdom must submit reports to the Secretary of State within the 10 to 15 year window, and those reports must relate to the whole of its part of the United Kingdom.

Mr. Darling : I do not want to labour the point, but the Act does not speak of submitting a report to the Secretary of State. It speaks of "reports"--in the plural--which implies that it would be open to a commission to produce several reports on a part of the United Kingdom. The only qualification in subsection (2) regards the period in which the commission must submit the reports. This Act was considered by the House in 1986, within recent memory, and there must have been some reason for the use of the plural.

Mr. Lloyd : I do not remember attending the debate, and if I did, I did not pay close attention. The Act is grammatically correct. The boundary commission remains in existence and is on its fourth review, so "reports" refer to there being at least one report every 10 to 15 years. That is the reason ; it has nothing to do with breaking up the reports into sections dealing with parts of one of the nations that make up the United Kingdom.

If the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central wants to say more about this later or to see me privately I am willing to talk to him. The hon. Gentleman said on Second Reading that he and his colleagues would table amendments to clause 3, and so they have. I said then that I thought the Opposition might be interpreting the effect of clause 3 too widely and I undertook to look again at its wording to check its clarity and scope. I have done that in the amendments standing in the name of my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary, who has arrived at the magic moment. They are designed to show more clearly and to obtain with greater precision what was intended in the original wording.

I hope that I can speedily pass over amendments Nos. 10 and 12 which are technical and consequential to

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Government amendments Nos. 11 and 13. I hope that Government amendment No. 11 makes it clear that the parliamentary boundary commission may take into account in its provisional recommendations only the boundaries currently in force or prospective new boundaries--save in one instance which I shall come to later--which have already been specified in an Act, a statutory instrument, a statutory rule or measure of a Northern Ireland Assembly, but are not yet in force.

There is thus no question of pre-empting Parliament, the local government boundary commissions or the Local Government Commission. The provision is intended to give the boundary commission a degree of flexibility that will enable it to produce, conveniently for itself and everyone else, the most up-to-date boundaries. With reviews of local government boundaries around the country at different stages at any one time, it is sensible to let the boundary commission make its provisional recommendations with such prospective changes in mind. The parliamentary boundary commission makes a series of provisional county recommendations over a number of years. It must then bring them together to make a single final recommendation to the Home Secretary, the Secretary of State for Scotland or to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, in which it must have regard to the appropriate boundaries in force on 1 June 1994.

In 1992 and 1993, it would surely be unreasonable to prevent the boundary commission from taking into account, in its provisional recommendations, boundaries which it knew that Parliament had approved for 1 April 1993 or 1 April 1994. It would mean that it would have to present revised proposals later, which would increase its work. It would also oblige those making representations upon it to do so in terms of boundaries which those petitioners knew were about to be superseded. That would happen if our amendment were not accepted, and it would certainly be so if the House were to accept amendment No. 3, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central and his colleagues.

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By contrast, amendment No. 4, also tabled by the hon. Member and his colleagues, would achieve a similar effect to Government amendment No. 11, except that it would confine flexibility to boundaries that are adjusted by Act of Parliament only, and not by statutory instrument, which is the normal procedure in England. For that reason, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will drop amendment No. 4 and accept that Government amendment No. 11 would achieve more completely what I believe that he intends to achieve with amendment No. 4. I also hope that he decides that my clarification meets the worries that persuaded him to table amendment No. 9 and that he will accept that, during the course of the general review, it will certainly be possible and right to have some provisional recommendations made on boundaries that are in force at the time and on some that will be prospective. It would cause great difficulty if that were not to be the case.

Of course, the final proposals must relate to boundaries that are in force, except in the one instance to which I alluded in clause 3(3). The special exception in that subsection relates specifically to Wales because the review of local government structure in Wales is well advanced. Proposals were set out in a consultative document issued in the spring of last year, and a White Paper is due this autumn, with the intended changes recommended therein

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