House of Commons Hansard Debates for 14 Jun 1995

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subject of a legal action by my right hon. Friend the leader of the Labour party or by the chairman of the Conservative party. One of the major academic studies suggests that the fourth review has achieved greater electoral equality than the third review. We should bear that in mind when weighing up cases for particular areas.

It has been suggested that we are entirely sanguine about the report because we think that we have achieved some partisan advantage from it. It is important to place it on record that the best estimate of the effect of the reforms is that the Conservative party is likely to gain more seats than Labour. The suggestion by Rawlings and Thrasher, which is mentioned in research paper 95/74 in the Library, is that the Conservatives might gain seven seats, Labour might gain two and the Liberal Democrats might suffer a loss of two. Therefore, while we welcome the report, we do not do so because we think that it is to our electoral advantage.

It is also worth bearing in mind the fact that although the number of electors in Conservative seats tends to be slightly larger than in Labour seats, the number of voters required to elect a Conservative Member is slightly fewer than for the election of a Labour Member. The figures are 41,943 for a Conservative Member compared with 42,605 for a Labour Member. That again suggests, if anything, a slight bias in the system towards the Conservative party.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman (Lancaster): What about Scotland?

Mr. Straw: The order is about England, but the hon. Lady came in on cue. I am speaking about the Labour party, but she decided to speak about Scotland. At one time the Conservative party was as proud of its representation in Scotland as it was of its representation in England. In my lifetime, the Conservatives had many more seats in Scotland than the Labour party. If the hon. Lady is concerned about the small number of Conservative seats in Scotland, she should look to the collapse of the Conservative vote and the reasons for it, rather than trying to raise extraneous matters in a debate on an English order.

Perhaps the opinion that somehow we have done better from the review is based not on a serious statistical analysis of the review but on the view of those who have observed the different approach of the Labour party and the Conservative party to each of the inquiries. I should have thought that the hon. Member for Lancaster (Dame E. Kellett-Bowman) would be more concerned to ask me about the review in Lancashire. I went to that inquiry and I think that the hon. Lady was also there. We were faced with an extraordinary spectacle. There was a united Labour party, with one exception--

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Bullies.

Mr. Straw: If the Labour party wanted lessons in bullying, it could certainly take them from the hon. Lady. [Hon. Members:-- "Oh."] That is a compliment to the hon. Lady, and she knows it. I have nothing but profound affection for her, and she knows that too. The Labour party had a united front and presented coherent proposals, but the Conservative party was in utter shambles. One part of it presented proposals that were not backed by another part.

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The Home Secretary spoke about Rossendale. That was a serious matter and he was right to speak about it. He was also right to say that the representations to the commission led by Sir David Trippier were all-party. The Labour group on Rossendale district council supported Sir David, as it was fully entitled to do, and not the overall view of the Labour party in Lancashire. So as to accommodate Rossendale, the Conservative party in Lancashire sought suddenly and at the last moment to extract a couple of wards from my constituency, both of which were Conservative, so I had no objection, connect them to four miles of fields bisected by a major motorway and attach them to a bit of Accrington. It then wondered why its proposals were not backed.

That is an illustration of the difference between us and the Conservative party. Indeed, I want to place on record my appreciation of officials at John Smith house and in the regions of the Labour party, ably led by David Gardner--after original prompting from my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) when he dealt with these matters--who ensured that we took the issue very seriously indeed.

The right hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame A. Rumbold) said on "Newsnight"--I was alongside her as she said it--that we put in a better effort around the country because we were able to give central directions to our party, while Conservative central office was not. I often wondered what Conservative central office was for, except to give centralised directions. For decades, we had nothing but admiration for the way in which the Conservative party operated in respect of its local associations. Nothing has changed--

Mr. Howard rose --

Mr. Straw: Of course I shall give way in a moment. Nothing has changed in the constitution of the Labour party and its relationship with local parties over the past 15 years. We have learnt the lessons of the debacle in which we were involved in 1983, which did us no good, while the Conservative party seems to have forgotten all those lessons.

Mr. Howard: Has it not occurred to the hon. Gentleman that the difference between his party and mine is this: his party is a bunch of apparatchiks operating under centralised diktat, whereas the Conservative party believes in local democracy?

Mr. Straw: No, that thought had not occurred to me--because it happens not to be true. From a very early age, I was brought up in the Labour party being told by its organisers to admire the Stalinist way in which Conservative central office used to operate. I was asked why else it was named in that way. The Conservatives had this authoritarian machine, which ensured that the writ of the chairperson of the Conservative party was applied to the outer reaches of the United Kingdom whenever the chairman or chairwoman in his or her office in central office directed it. For a long time, that was the case. It is a mark of the profound divisions now afflicting the Tory party from top to bottom that it is not only divided on the major issues of Europe, economic policy and social policy, but on whether two wards in Rossendale should stay in the Rossendale borough or end up in Hyndburn.

Mr. Clive Soley (Hammersmith): Will my hon. Friend allow me to give him some meat for his argument? In my

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area, members of the Kensington and Chelsea Tory party are fighting each other, as are members of the Fulham Conservative party. One of the ladies from one of those parties said to me that she did not care what those apparatchiks at central office were saying, and she used the words, "We are going our own way." Apparatchiks were present in central office, but they were not very competent.

Mr. Straw: I am very grateful to my hon. Friend.

Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West): Over in the London borough of Newham, we had nothing but total admiration for the excellent way in which Labour party officials marshalled the arguments. In the end, they had to persuade the local commissioner, or whoever it was who came from the boundary commission to hear the case. It was thanks to the quality of the arguments and the way in which they were marshalled--nothing to do with this knockabout stuff--that we were able to persuade in the way that we did.

Mr. Straw: As ever, my hon. Friend makes a serious point and reproaches the rest of us for introducing an element of humour into the proceedings. [Laughter.] I accept the reproach. It is an important point because it goes without saying, before such inquiries, that political parties will have a partisan interest in the representations that they are putting forward. That is a common factor in all the representations made. What is then important is the quality of the argument advanced by the political parties and the extent to which the political parties are able to ally with other non-party groups, to ensure that their recommendations win through. It is a mark of the connection between the Labour party and its communities that its argument won through and of the decay of the Stalinist apparatus of Conservative central office that its arguments failed.

I repeat my commendation of the commission to the Secretary of State--I hope that that does not damage an otherwise fine political career, but I repeat it because he was right to bring through the recommendations intact. It is accepted on both sides of the House, however, that there could and should be improvements to the system; I shall go through some of them.

I note that the Secretary of State said that he was establishing a review and I accept that, when those have taken place in the past, every effort has been made to ensure agreement. Another aspect of the way in which we approach these matters is that, despite our partisan interests, we ensure that changes to electoral law are introduced in this House and the other place, so far as humanly possible, only by agreement. I hope that in that spirit, therefore, the Secretary of State will accept the need for agreement about the nature and scope of the review as well as its precise agenda. Perhaps his hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will deal with that in his reply. The following is not by any means an exclusive list, but it includes some of the issues that ought to be raised in the review. The first is the difficult issue of upward drift in the size of the House. It is worth mentioning that the House is not at its record size--it was larger last century, when it included Members of Parliament representing what is now the Republic of Eire--but its size has increased significantly. For reasons of obvious politics, but also for interesting reasons of arithmetic, the system has a natural bias towards increasing the size of

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the House. As the Secretary of State said, the Government did not accept the proposal of the Select Committee on Home Affairs for a fixed divisor. I have not reached a final view on the matter, but it ought to be closely examined during the review and we should take full account of the commission's recommendations and views in coming to a conclusion.

The second crucial issue is the size of electoral wards--a matter to which the commission drew attention. The local government ward is the basic building block, which cannot in any circumstances be broken according to rule. I believe that that is correct. The ward is the building block on which the commission has to work. In constituencies such as mine, with 15 wards for an electorate of about 75,000, each ward has an average electorate of 5,000, which does not create any serious problems for rearranging the wards to ensure electoral equality. I do not believe that that causes problems anywhere in the county of Lancashire, but in the metropolitan areas and some parts of London, the size of wards is so great as to hinder significantly the commission's ability to move the pieces of the jigsaw around. The extraordinary disparity in the size of wards in otherwise similar areas is surprising and must be looked into when considering fair representation at local government level as well as the commission's facility to redistribute boundaries fairly. I understand the concern of the hon. Member for Hendon, South because in his area the wards are on the whole large, whereas in the south of London they tend to be much smaller. The House of Commons Library tells me that Hadley in Barnet, which has 13,714 electors, is the largest ward in London, whereas the Clockhouse ward in Sutton has an eighth of that number, with 1,525.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) mentioned the enormous size of wards in Birmingham in a question to the Secretary of State. Typically, Members of Parliament representing Birmingham seats have just three wards in their constituencies. The largest ward in the country is New Hall in Birmingham, Sutton with 24,816 electors; it is five times the size of wards in my constituency. At the other end of the scale, Cantril Farm ward in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Howarth) has 4, 043 electors. The explanation for the low number in that ward might involve electoral registration, but even allowing for that, the disparity in the size of wards is unacceptably wide. I hope that the Government agree that, in looking at the size of wards, we must also look at whether wards should be represented by one, two or three councillors.

A great city such as Birmingham--this is a matter that I have thought about, and I do not doubt that Conservative Members have also done so--has a large council. Unless we wish to turn councils into chambers of legislature, there seem to be practical limits on the size of any council. Already, Birmingham has more than 100 councillors, and I do not believe that there is much scope for increasing the total number of councillors. Instead of having three councillors for each ward, we could have one or two. I happen to think--this is not a party view--that there are other advantages in doing that, as it produces a closer connection between the councillor and his ward. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Lancaster may be

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saying under her breath that there are plenty of examples in shire districts of only one or two councillors for each ward.

A great span in terms of the size of wards can be found in the shire districts, ranging from 14,774 voters in Nene Valley in Northamptonshire to just 194 in Chenies, in the Chilterns in Buckinghamshire. Both are in the home counties, so there can be no argument that one is more rural than the other. Within the borough of Milton Keynes, wards range in size from about 13,000 to 1,620. That must be examined carefully.

We must look at the commission's recommendations in respect of the process of inquiry. The commission proposes that the statutory period for objection should be extended from one to two months, and that is a sensible proposal, which needs to be examined in detail. The commission also suggested that there should be a power to define the operational scope of inquiries.

During the Lancashire inquiry--the only one with which I have had direct contact--I was pleasantly surprised by the skill that the assistant commissioner showed in conducting an orchestra, the members of which were playing from different scores and to different time. There was a grave danger that the inquiry could have turned into a tribunal, with lawyers popping up. I know, and the Home Secretary accepts, that we are a fine body of men, but even lawyers sometimes have their disadvantages. There was a grave danger that lawyers would pop up the whole time and that the inquiry would be disrupted. As it happened, the assistant commissioner got through the process quickly and expeditiously. The commission recommended that the operational scope of inquiries should be defined, and I hope that that happens. I now come to the issue of names. I took full account of what the hon. Member for Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor) said about some of the names that the commission has proposed. In my view, the mother and father of the confusion over the names of constituencies in England goes back to the ludicrous names given in the 1972 local government reorganisation process. In looking down a list of the names of districts in Surrey, for example, we see that some do relate to real places, such as Guildford and Epsom and Ewell. But there are others which, while I am not saying that they are not real places, are not very well-known real places, such as Elmbridge, Mole Valley, Waverley--easily confused with Waveney, another artificial name given to a part of Suffolk--and Spelthorne.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Is it not absurd that the word Wyre occurs in two widely different constituencies?

Mr. Straw: The hon. Lady is absolutely right. It is ludicrous, and it must cause enormous confusion. It was not until I had the benefit of campaigning in both constituencies--and confusing each with the other--that I spotted the difficulty.

Mr. Jacques Arnold (Gravesham): A singular failure.

Mr. Straw: Well, there we are. I have referred to Waveney and Waverley, and the hon. Member for Lancaster was right to refer to Wyre. I might add that it took the people of Accrington a long time to understand

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that they lived in a borough of Hyndburn. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Worsley (Mr. Lewis) thinks that Waverley is a station in Edinburgh.

Mr. Tony Banks: May I bring my hon. Friend more good news from the London borough of Newham, where there was always some feeling about that name, and say how much we welcome the boundary commissioners' recommendation to get rid of Newham, North-West and Newham, North-East and call those two constituencies West Ham and East Ham? If only the boundary commissioners were qualified to recommend the transfer of West Ham football club out of East Ham and into West Ham, that would have made more sense.

Mr. Straw: I do not mind where West Ham football club resides, provided that it keeps going. May I place on record my heartfelt thanks to West Ham football team for ensuring that Blackburn Rovers won the league championship?

We must ensure that constituency names, which after all are attached to us, are recognisable. The root of the word "Commons" is "commune". It means that we represent communities, not the common people, and it is important that the people should know which communities we represent. They should therefore not have artificial names.

The final issue that I wish to deal with is the size of the electoral register. In all the boundary commission's considerations, it is crucial that it has accurate information about the number of electors in each constituency and area under review. Ensuring that people are on the electoral register has always been challenging because some people have not wanted to be on it, and others have not been put on by landlords or landladies, or have moved away at the wrong time. Both sides of the House now accept, however, that as a result of the poll tax, for which the Secretary of State has some responsibility, although he does not often speak about it--

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: It was a jolly good tax.

Mr. Straw: The hon. Lady says that it was a jolly good tax.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: It was a very fair tax because people who demand services on Christmas day, every day of the week and twice on Sundays and do not pay for it, did pay for it under the community charge.

Mr. Tony Banks: Why did you scrap it, then?

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: I did not want it scrapped.

Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): Order. We are rapidly developing a sub-plot. Let us return to the main task.

Mr. Straw: The plot is the same. It is called "winning the election". I was only too delighted to give way to my good hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster because the more she talks about the poll tax between now and the general election, the more we are likely to win not only seats elsewhere in England but the hon. Lady's seat. This is an important issue because the poll tax led to substantial under-registration, particularly but not exclusively in inner-urban areas. Although the poll tax has now gone, many people are still not on the register as

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they lost the habit of registration. Moreover, insufficient resources have been invested in getting them back on to the register.

I have complimented the Secretary of State three times now, so even he would say that I have conducted myself in an entirely non-partisan way. I shall now revert to my normal approach and make an important partisan point. I wish to compare the amount spent on advertising registration on the electoral register for UK-based voters with the amount spent advertising registration abroad for overseas voters. I choose 1991 because it was a pre-election year, which is also why the Conservatives chose it. In 1991, £218,000 was spent on publicity on the electoral roll for UK- based residents, but £705,000--three times as much--was spent on advertising registration abroad, to get expatriates on to the register in this country. If one relates those figures to the number of electors, the difference is phenomenal: 0.5p for each UK-based resident and £22 for each elector resident overseas.

I believe that that is wrong. We participated in the 1985 arrangements in respect of overseas electors, but there must be agreement between the parties about the amount of money that is to be spent on publicity and the way in which it is to be spent, and that was an abuse.

Mr. Patrick McLoughlin (West Derbyshire): Do the figures that the hon. Gentleman quoted include the amount of money spent by local authorities, which also spend money on persuading people to sign on to the electoral register? No local authority would spend money on trying to persuade expatriates or people in other countries to register. Therefore, I do not believe that the hon. Gentleman's figures are reliable if he has not included the money that is spent by local authorities. Will he tell us whether it was included or not?

Mr. Straw: The figures that I quoted are for central Government spending, not local authority spending. I accept that. Nevertheless, it does not alter the validity of my argument, because the national publicity campaign--the national television advertising and the other advertising--is the responsibility of the Home Office, and it undertakes it.

What is more, I doubt that, even if one were to include local authorities, the amount would be anything near 50p an

elector--certainly nothing like £22. It is a marked disparity, and we believe that the Conservative party invested that extraordinary amount of money in the hope that it would achieve the registration of a large number of overseas electors in key marginal seats. It is okay for the Conservative party to do that, but it is not okay for taxpayers' money to be used for that purpose.

Mr. Tony Banks: What my hon. Friend says is absolutely correct in terms of the budget that was spent on trying to persuade people overseas to register. Would he like to tell us how it worked out, because it did not seem as if it was an especially successful campaign?

When one thinks about it, given the importance of getting people to register in a democracy, surely technology should have moved us on to a better way of getting names on to the register than going round filling it out, pieces of paper going through letter boxes and people being threatened with fines if they do not complete

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the form, but no fines ever being imposed. Surely technology can find a better way of conducting registration than that.

Mr. Straw: I agree with my hon. Friend. I shall discuss his argument later, but he asked me for some specific figures. They are as follows. In 1994, there were 38.5 million electors on the electoral register in England and Wales. The number of overseas electors peaked--I suggest, as a result of that publicity campaign--at 32,000 in 1991, but it has decreased since then, almost by half, to 17,500 in 1994.

My hon. Friend makes what is indeed my last argument.

Mr. Banks: I am sorry.

Mr. Straw: No. I know that my hon. Friend makes my arguments much better than I do, so I am delighted that he should do it.

Mr. Banks: Tell Tony Blair.

Mr. Straw: My hon. Friend makes my last argument, which relates to the way in which the electoral register is put together. That needs to be improved. In our opinion, there is an overwhelming case for the review to examine the introduction of rolling registers, which would be updated each month, for far more effective publicity to be given to the registration process and for far more publicity to be given to the need for people to register, especially young people, and to the fact that, if people are on the electoral register, that data can be used only for those purposes and cannot be used to set up liability for any other tax, which was the thing that so discouraged people during the short history of the poll tax.

Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North): Is it not unfortunate that, in recent elections, there has been a decline in the number of people voting? That ties up with what my hon. Friend says about the electoral register. In secondary schools and so on, should not far more emphasis--indeed, as much as possible--be placed on the duty of citizens to vote at election time? I wonder whether my hon. Friend has given any consideration to the possibility of introducing the system, used in Australia and perhaps elsewhere, of compulsory voting. Why not?

Mr. Straw: I have personally considered the idea of compulsory voting and come down wholly against it. I believe that, in a democracy, people have a right not to vote, just as they have a right to vote.

I offer the practical thought that the party that said that it would punish people for not voting would ensure a very high turnout in the election in which it stood on that platform, which would ensure that it was out of power and never did it. I therefore believe that the possibility of achieving that aim might be limited.

Mr. Howard: Surely the hon. Gentleman does not believe that that type of base consideration would play the slightest part in influencing his hon. Friend.

Mr. Straw: The right hon. and learned Gentleman is correct in spotting the fact that my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) has higher motives than me. Of course that is correct, and I congratulate the right hon. and learned Gentleman on his perspicacity. Those who hold positions similar to mine have to think about crude and vulgar matters; that is how

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we get things done. On that very important issue of principle, I believe that my hon. Friend shares my view that democracy in this country would not be advantaged by making voting compulsory. My hon. Friend raised the point about better political education in schools. When I was at school, I studied a subject called civics, which dealt with political education in an entirely non-partisan manner.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: A direct grant school.

Mr. Straw: It was a direct grant school, but there is no reason why the same sort of subject could not be taught in non-direct grant schools, for God's sake. The subject gave my classmates and me an understanding of and an interest in the mechanics of politics. It is depressing that, while the voter turnout is increasing in other countries, our voter turnout is decreasing. I believe that we should consider other measures to encourage an increase in voter numbers. It is an extraordinary idea that we should vote on a Thursday. As we can now shop and bet on a Sunday, we may be able to get dispensation from the Church to vote on a Sunday. Why can we not vote on a Saturday?

Mr. Peter Luff (Worcester): The hon. Gentleman should not be quite so pessimistic, as the voter turnout increased at the last election.

Mr. Straw: It increased a little, but I am thinking particularly about local elections. The voter turnout at local elections has decreased and there were fewer people on the electoral register at the last election.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Straw: Perhaps I may be permitted to reply to the hon. Gentleman's question before the hon. Lady interrupts again. Although voter turnout increased slightly at the last general election, the number of people on the electoral roll decreased because of registration problems.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that at the last election the number of votes in my constituency increased by 2,000 on the previous election?

Mr. Straw: Lancaster is always the exception that proves the rule, as indeed is the hon. Lady.

Mr. Howard: It is an important point. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold), who is sitting behind me, for providing the information that the total voter turnout has increased--not simply in percentage terms--every year since 1970, if my figures are correct.

Mr. Straw: I am sure that the figures are correct because they are at the back of the Conservative party diary.

My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North makes the valid point that voter turnout at local elections has decreased in each of the past three years. The total size of the electorate has increased, but that is not reflected in the number of people who are registered on the electoral roll. There is no doubt that under-registration is a big problem. Between 2 million and 4 million adults who should be on the electoral roll are not registered to vote. What is more--and this should appeal to Conservative

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Members--when people move house, they often cease to be able to exercise their vote for a period of six to 18 months. That is also unacceptable.

This is an important debate, which goes to the heart of our democratic system. I commend the commission and the Secretary of State's recommendation. I urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to support it.

4.53 pm

Dame Angela Rumbold (Mitcham and Morden): I am very grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate, although I am not absolutely certain that I am wise to do so. On this occasion, I do not necessarily speak in my capacity as the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden, although I always speak on behalf of my constituents. I might have made a suggestion to the commission when it conducted a review of my constituency, but it did not choose to accept our views. I shall fight another day on that issue and no doubt I shall be rather more successful.

I join the two Front-Bench spokesmen in paying tribute to the commission. It has done an exceedingly good and thorough job and I am sure that all Conservative Members would commend its work. I listened with some interest to being called, I suppose, a Conservative party apparatchik, in so far as part of my responsibilities in the Conservative party during the past three years has been to monitor the progress of the commission's work on behalf of our party. I am being partisan. As the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) knows, he and I frequently disagree and we disagreed the other evening over the methodology of the way in which the Conservative party monitors the commission as opposed to the way in which we observed that the Labour party was working.

In the Conservative party, each and every constituency has a constituency party, which is entirely autonomous. It does not take instructions from the curiously named Conservative central office or from anybody else. While we may offer advice, as we did, and give serious consideration to the issues that are raised by the commission in such an inquiry, we can do no more than say that we believe that one course of action would be the best way forward. If constituency parties do not choose to take that advice, we are completely and absolutely unable to influence them further.

To whatever extent it may be argued by the Labour party that it has a similar system, we observed that very clear instructions were given to the constituency parties and their members that there should be acceptance of the Labour party's general direction. That would not have been possible in the Conservative party, however strongly we felt about the matter. I am glad that that is the situation because, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary said, that is democracy at its very best. I would hate to see it changed. I should also like to put right a myth that has grown up in the press during the past two years or so. Frequently, when the media have spoken or written about the boundary review, they have said that the Conservative party expected to gain in the region of 21 seats as a result of the current boundary commission review. That figure was suggested by an ex-House of Commons colleague after the 1987 election and was based on the 1987 election results.

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After the 1992 general election, that same colleague, who is sadly no longer in the House, quite correctly revised downwards his view of the likely number of seats that might accrue to the Conservative party, all things being equal, as a result of the forthcoming boundary commission review. His revision took that figure down to about 10 extra seats for the Conservative party. We do not believe, given how the distribution has gone under the current review, that we have failed to live up to that expectation.

On our calculations, taking into account that there are five new seats in England and three other seats--two in Wales and possibly one in Northern Ireland--making eight in total, we do not believe that we have done especially badly. We do not therefore allow or acknowledge the statement by the press that the Labour party has done very much better than the Conservative party. We believe that about eight seats will produce new, additional Conservative Members of Parliament. That is an important point to make.

I have another observation about the course of the recent boundary commission review. It looks very much as though the review has been much more wide ranging than we had originally anticipated. In other words, considerable changes have been made to constituencies throughout England. Those changes have been far-reaching, especially in the counties. They were not so far-reaching in metropolitan and urban areas.

The hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) straight-facedly suggested--I do not accept this--that the commission was persuaded by the excellence of the arguments put forward by the Opposition as opposed to those put forward by other parties. I would say, however, that the decisions on metropolitan and urban areas depended--the hon. Member for Blackburn made this point at the end of his speech--on who was on the electoral register and the reasons they were or were not on it.

I question whether we should rely too much on the number of people who did or did not register and who did or did not vote based on the fact that they were trying to avoid being caught for one tax or another or for one purpose or another. It does not seem an especially strong or effective argument. Indeed, I am slightly surprised that it was taken into account by anyone.

Mr. Tony Banks: The commission did not take only the numbers into account; arguments about communities, links and other factors were brought into play. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) was right to say that we in the Labour party have been taught to believe that the Conservative party machine was much more efficient than ours. Many of us were pleasantly surprised--some would say shocked--by how efficient the Labour party machine and its arguments turned out to be.

Dame Angela Rumbold: That may be a matter on which to congratulate the Labour party. Of course arguments about local communities are taken into account, but the Labour party has mentioned frequently that it is concerned that people have not registered because they were afraid of certain taxes. The community charge was cited as a specific example of a tax that a number of people in urban and metropolitan areas were trying to avoid. The argument I have described is poor and should not be brought to bear today.

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I want now to make a more general point which I know several colleagues will also wish to raise. Important questions arise from the electoral quotas and the over and under- representation not only in England but in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I accept that today's debate relates only to the redistribution of English seats, but it is none the less relevant to draw my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary's attention to the fact that, if he is to undertake a review, he must include in it his colleagues from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to ensure that the House does not fall into the trap of continuing the imbalance of seats between the various countries. That would be unacceptable, as was pointed out in the 1991 report of the Hansard Society's commission on election campaigns. It is a legitimate point to draw to the Government's attention.

In 1992, before the general election, there were 651 Members of Parliament. If the previous reviews had been based on equal electoral quotas, there should have been 629, because Scotland would have been entitled to 57 instead of 72 and Wales would have been entitled to 32 rather than 38. The latest review has done little to make amends. There is a strong feeling among Members of Parliament who represent English seats that that is unacceptable and merits further consideration.

Even in England, as colleagues will no doubt point out, there are great variations. London continues to be allocated more seats than any other part of the country because the electoral quota is assessed borough by borough, unlike the shire counties. It has 74 seats, which is, admittedly, a considerable reduction of the number in 1979. None the less, our calculations, which were done before the review, led us to feel that London needed to lose a further three seats if it was to equate much more reasonably with the rest. The fact that the three seats were not removed from the equation means that there are discrepancies, which have been remarked on by my hon. Friends the Members for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall) and for Finchley (Mr. Booth).

Islington, South and Finsbury has an electorate of 54,443 and Islington, North has an electorate of 55,650. Bromley has three seats with electorates as follows: Beckenham, 73,653; Bromley and Chislehurst 75,388; Orpington 82,032. There is a significant discrepancy and little equity in the number of people whom individual Members of Parliament are to represent in the Greater London area. I know that the commission did not consider Greater London as a whole, but that issue must be taken into account and stressed if there is to be another review because it gives rise to considerable unrest. There are discrepancies between other constituencies, of course. For example, Copeland in Cumbria has an electorate of just over 55, 500, but that is due to special geographical conditions that are taken into account by the boundary commission. However, those special geographical considerations may lead to questions not only in English constituencies but elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

I have no difficulty in supporting the recommendations, which are thorough. As is the case with every other inquiry and review undertaken by an independent body, we have asked people to perform a task that requires the patience of Job. I certainly would not have wanted to be in their position. I know perfectly well that one cannot satisfy everyone. Indeed, I felt this afternoon that I was

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likely to get more sympathy from Opposition Members than from Conservative colleagues simply because of the special

responsibilities that I have held and because of my awareness of the political realities of working with friends as well as Labour colleagues. However, I believe that the issues that I have raised are worthy of study in any future review.

I do not believe that the Conservative party as a whole has cause for complaint. I do not think that my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary will hear any complaints about the outcome of the review other than those relating to specific constituencies. I think that the commission has done a very good job and that it deserves our commendation.

One hears a great deal from those who spend their lives--academics and others--trying to work out precisely what would happen if everyone voted the way that they voted three, eight or 12 years ago. Having been redistributed from one seat to another, those people will not make as much of a difference as they did in the place they first voted. As a result, the Labour, Conservative or Liberal party, or whichever party those people decide to mark up, would get an electoral advantage of 0.6 per cent. or 0.2 per cent if there were an election tomorrow, calculated on the basis of the same number of people going to the polls.

One could spend a great deal of time playing with the figures and being academic about them but, as one who has been involved in local and general elections for the past 20 years, I can say that the reality is that the party that is elected is the party that pleases the electorate most. Each and every one of us will discover that the next time there is a general election. It will not be decided by academics playing with points on a diagram or by boundary changes. We would do well to reflect on those points this afternoon.

5.9 pm

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