Written evidence submitted by David A
G Nowell (PVSCB 23)
— A modest reduction in seats is welcome in
principle. — The reliability of electoral registers.
— The overall basis on which seats will
be allocated.
— The need not to straddle European electoral
regions.
— Problems inherent with constituencies
with very large areas.
— Ignoring significant geographical and
historical ties.
— Permutations and combinations in relation
to boundary reviews.
— The potential need to divide polling
districts.
— The nature of Alternative Vote election
results.
A MODEST REDUCTION
IN SEATS
IS WELCOME
IN PRINCIPLE
1. Ideally the size of the House of Commons
should be reduced to 500 seats, in tandem with the introduction
of elected regional assemblies for the rest of England outside
of Greater London. This proposal was set out alongside an analysis
of the different voting systems and the effect of single and multi-member
constituencies on electoral geography in my essay, "There
is more to representative democracy than simple proportionality"
(pages 62-89) in Democracy the missing element, a compilation
of essays by distinguished writers making the case for the multi-member
constituency, introduction by Charles Kennedy MP, published in
2008 by Democrat Action Group for Gaining Electoral Reform. Without
this reform the United Kingdom remains exceptional in not having
universal regional government. So while the proposed reduction
to 600 seats would not be met with the introduction of English
regional government, this would be a relatively modest step, which
in itself I do not see is worth opposing.
THE RELIABILITY
OF ELECTORAL
REGISTERS
2. The proposal to use the electoral register
published on 1 December 2010 as the basis for the allocation of
seats has not been thought through. To begin with, no publicity
campaign has been considered to remind people to register to vote:
this is a legal obligation, and under-registration skews the numbers
used for allocating constituencies. However, even estimates of
the unregistered population can be flawed. For example, in the
last boundary review for wards in the Borough of Barnet, council
officers wrongly assumed roads with more than 3% of unregistered
households should have their electorates adjusted upwards to reflect
this, so such neighbourhoods were not disenfranchised. But they
forgot that certain areas like Finchley contain large numbers
of Japanese citizens who cannot register to vote and took no account
of this.
3. The reliability of electoral registers is
further undermined by lax checks, and many EU citizens either
don't bother to register or don't tick the right box and end up
with full voting rights. Things are further complicated in areas
with high population turnover, as the previous registration is
not always cancelled even if somebody else moves into the property.
As a local political activist, I happened to spot friends who
had remained on the register for three years after they moved
out, until I alerted them. While it is assumed student populations
tend not to register to vote, they are entitled to register both
at their parents' address and at university. I would suggest double
registration is more likely among more affluent students, as their
university halls of residence and colleges tend to register them
automatically while they maintain their out of term registration.
Furthermore, second home owners and MPs routinely register at
both their main residences. Since there are roughly a quarter
of a million second homes in the UK, this could be a significant
but unknown number, as electoral registration forms don't ask
for these details. Furthermore, this undermines the policing of
general elections to ensure people only vote once, as no system
is in place (even with postal votes sent to an address in another
local authority), to undertake spot checks using the marked register
and prosecute any offenders.
THE OVERALL
BASIS ON
WHICH SEATS
WILL BE
ALLOCATED
4. While I will go into greater detail in
the subsequent paragraphs, the current proposals ignore the need
to maintain certain geographical and historic ties, and fail to
understand the underlying nature of providing balanced electoral
geography inherent in any single seat electoral system. Most fundamentally,
as the numbers of seats in a boundary review increases, the number
of potential permutations and combinations rises exponentially.
In particular, this would make it almost impossible for the boundary
commission in an undivided England to adjudicate between rival
submissions, which would straddle completely different sets of
local authority boundaries. Furthermore, the Isle of Wight should
be a named exception, and the residents of Cornwall would probably
even prefer to be under represented with only five parliamentary
constituencies than let the area around Bude share its representation
with Westward Ho!. While provision is made for constituencies
larger than 12,000 square kilometres, this is far too tight a
ceiling when dealing with the extremely lightly populated Scottish
Highlands and Islands beyond the two already named exceptions.
5. As drafted, the Bill only makes special provision
for Northern Ireland. Under the proposed system, it is likely
(especially in Wales) that it could be difficult to satisfy the
exacting requirements for all these seats to be within 5%
of the UK target of around 76,200 electors. These limits are likely
to be approximately 80,000 and 72,400 electors, using the last
general election as a guide. Given the relatively small allocation,
the average electorate for each seat in Wales could fall significantly
out of line with the UK, as the number of seats within the principality
has to be a whole number. Were this to happen without the current
Bill being amended, the ensuing boundary review could be increasingly
boxed in. The greater this discrepancy, the greater the likelihood
that more seats would appear to be geographically contrived simply
to meet this target. In any case, as I will explain, given the
need beyond named exceptions for at least one extra seat for the
Scottish Highlands and Islands, it would make sense for a handful
of additional seats to be distributed to Northern Ireland (2),
Wales (2) and Scotland (1) before the formula set out in the bill
was used to allocate the remaining unnamed constituencies. This
along with other measures I will suggest should dispense with
the need for special arrangements for allocating seats in Northern
Ireland.
THE NEED
FOR SEATS
NOT TO
STRADDLE EUROPEAN
ELECTORAL REGIONS
6. Within England it would be sensible for
constituencies to be allocated wholly within European electoral
regions, in case elections to the European Parliament coincided
with a parliamentary by-election and to allow reliable comparison
between these elections and general elections. Trying to run two
separate elections on the same day with two different franchises,
in a parliamentary seat straddling two regions, would be a recipe
for confusion both for political parties and election officials.
Furthermore, any MP representing such a constituency would have
to liaise with two set of MEPs. In any case, the numbers of seats
within each separate boundary review has to be constrained to
reduce the potential number of permutations and combinations and
allow for the boundary commission to undertake a fair and impartial
process, and so it would be extremely illogical to allow parliamentary
seats to straddle these regional boundaries.
PROBLEMS INHERENT
WITH CONSTITUENCIES
WITH VERY
LARGE AREAS
7. As drafted, the Bill before parliament
only allows for exceptions from the 5% UK wide target if
a seat exceeds 12,000 square kilometres in area. Clearly this
rule has the current Ross, Skye and Lochaber constituency in mind
at 12,779 sq km with 51,836 electors, but unfortunately ignores
the requirements for any seat starting in Caithness. In order
for this seat to be allowed to deviate from the target electorate
it would have to extend southwards to include the Black Isle and
a large portion of the Highland Council Wester Ross, Strathpeffer
and Lochalsh ward (4,948 sq km). This would further reduce the
electorate of any seat starting with Skye, which would then have
to extend eastwards into the Badenoch and Strathspey ward (2,330
sq km) to the south of Inverness in order to reach the 12,000
sq km threshold, as enlarging it southwards beyond Oban and Mull
would be even more problematic.
8. In any case, Argyll and Bute (67,165 electors)
which includes Oban, like Orkney and Shetland (33,085 electors)
along with Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Western Isles—22,266 electors),
should be a named exception, as at 6,909 sq km it is relatively
small. The current constituency (which has already been enlarged
since 2005 to include the whole of the Argyll and Bute Council),
extends for over 160 km encompassing at least nine inhabited islands
linked by ferries, along with the Mull of Kintyre all the way
round to Helensburgh. Adding Arran would make little difference
as this island only has a population of around 5,000 and would
not bring it up to the likely 95% threshold required for its electorate.
Thus exceptions should be made for any seat exceeding 8,000 sq
km given that the current Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross
constituency is 8,752 sq km with 47,257 electors.
IGNORING SIGNIFICANT
GEOGRAPHICAL AND
HISTORICAL TIES
9. The Isle of Wight, with 109,966 electors,
has a very distinct local identity so should remain undivided.
Once the Boundary Commission has in consultation with the islanders
decided whether to allocate one (or potentially two seats if the
population were to continue to increase, as its electorate was
only 90,961 in 1979), it should be excluded from the calculation
of the UK average electorate, along with other named exceptions.
Insisting on the island sharing a seat with the mainland would
most likely result in the creation of an Eastern Isle of Wight
and Southern Portsmouth constituency or Spithead for short, given
that this end of the island is quite urban.
10. Cornwall with 418,741 electors means that,
given an UK average of 76,186 using the last general election
as a guide, this culturally unique county with its own language
would get 5.5 seats. Arrangements both with five and six seats
would, with average electorates of 83,748 (109.9 %) and 69,790
(91.6 %) respectively, fall well outside the likely limits of
around 80,000 and 72,400 electors. On this basis Cornwall should
be a named exception with a fixed number of seats and thus removed
from the calculation of the average electorate for the UK as set
out in the Bill.
11. Beyond these two most notable cases,
other slightly less significant geographical and historical ties
can be coped with in the way in which European electoral regions
should be subdivided. This is necessary in order to further reduce
the number of realistic permutations and combinations of different
constituencies to a reasonable level within each review area,
and thus allow the national boundary commissions to judge fairly
between rival submissions before making their final recommendations.
12. In any case, due to historical considerations,
many countries do not allow their equivalents of parliamentary
constituencies to straddle certain boundaries, such as De«partments
in France and Lander in Germany. Most notably, the constitution
of the United States of America allocates congressional districts
to individual states, on the basis of the national census. This
means that there are great differences between smaller states
in the numbers of people in each congressional district, depending
on whether these states have reached or just fallen short of the
number needed that time round to be allocated a second, third
or fourth seat in the House of Representatives.
PERMUTATIONS AND
COMBINATIONS IN
RELATION TO
BOUNDARY REVIEWS
13. As the number of constituencies rises
within a given area the number of possible permutations and combinations
increases exponentially, including almost endless possibilities
for straddling local authority boundaries in so many different
ways that the whole process becomes impossible to manage. For
example, in the last parliamentary boundary review for England,
which came into effect at the 2010 general election, Greater London
was divided in two, given that the River Thames acts as a natural
barrier within this region. However within both halves the Commission
quickly established that a number of boroughs had electorates
near enough to whole multiples of the target electorate for new
seats to be formed from combinations of wards exclusively within
such boroughs. Once these had been eliminated, this made concentrating
on submissions dealing with new constituencies that would have
to straddle other borough's boundaries much more straightforward
than might have been the case. If the requirement for every constituency
to be within very tight limits were to override all other considerations,
then boroughs with whole numbers of seats within these limits
could nevertheless have to be straddled with neighbouring boroughs
in order for all the new constituencies to meet these rules.
14. This can be avoided to a certain extent if
the European electoral regions are subdivided before the start
of submissions to the boundary commission. Once they are allocated
a given number of seats using the formula set out in the bill,
or a slightly amended regional method with the proviso mentioned
below, the average electorate within each sub-regional division
should be used to set its own 5% limits for electorates
within that area. This, combined with slightly greater than currently
proposed 8% (about 6,080 electors) national limits, would
rule out more extreme variations between constituencies representing
around 98.6% of the United Kingdom's total electorate who are
not covered by my suggested exceptions. This would reduce the
likelihood of potential seats being too tightly constrained by
how far their electorates can depart from sub-regional averages
before coming up against one of the UK limits. However, care would
still have to be taken not to draw up mathematically unviable
sub-regions within the rules, in terms of the average number of
electors for a given number of seats.
THE POTENTIAL
NEED TO
DIVIDE POLLING
DISTRICTS
15. In recent decades parliamentary boundary
reviews have traditionally been based on council wards which have
not been divided between proposed constituencies, even if over
time their own local electoral reviews often result in new wards
straddling existing parliamentary boundaries. For electoral administration,
local authorities often place a prefix in front of the letters
used to designate polling districts in ward sequence across a
whole authority to indicate the parliamentary constituently to
which it belongs. A suffix is used to divide up polling districts
split between existing constituencies, with the prefix used to
indicate the new constituency arrangements that will come into
force at the next general election. Thus it is possible to conduct
a by-election efficiently using the same set of registers.
16. As the bill requires seats to be within
5% of the UK average electorate, likely to be around 3,800, it
will not be possible to leave wards undivided, especially in urban
areas, and in Scotland since the introduction of Single Transferable
Vote elections for local government. Birmingham is the most extreme
example with wards ranging between 16,012 (Sheldon) and 20,208
(Springfield) local government electors. Thus in many areas it
would be assumed that the smallest unit from which new constituencies
could be devised would be the polling districts used to sub-divide
wards purely for administrative convenience. However, my own polling
district (CAB) in the Borough of Barnet just happens to have an
electorate of around 5,000 which I doubt is that exceptional.
Thus in certain places, even using polling districts could prove
extremely difficult. To expect people to manually sub-divide a
number of polling districts over a whole review area would be
unreasonable—as a local activist it was bad enough doing
this for the last local government boundary review for Barnet,
when council wards can be devised from scratch.
17. Given the short time-frame proposed
for electoral reviews, to level the playing field for parties
making less well resourced submissions the respective boundary
commissions should provide maps and detailed listings of electorates
in every polling district in each review area. These numbers will
have to be carefully compiled to discount people ineligible to
vote in Westminster elections, including those under 18 on the
relevant date. Since they are allocated polling numbers, it is
not just a case of quoting the highest polling number for each
polling district. Then if proposals with split polling districts
have to be considered, a lot of the other ground work will have
been covered by the collective resources which I have suggested
should be made freely available. Even going down to polling district
level in many places would mean that the number of potential permutations
and combinations would be greatly increased within a given boundary
review.
THE NATURE
OF ALTERNATIVE
VOTE ELECTION
RESULTS
18. To correct a misunderstanding in the
explanatory notes provided for the bill, if the Alternative Vote
is adopted after being approved by a referendum, it is quite possible
using this system for winning candidates to still be elected with
fewer than half the total votes. This is possible because voters
can decide whether or not to make further choices beyond their
first or subsequent preferences, and thus votes are usually lost
at each stage of the count as candidates are eliminated and votes
are not fully transferred. The counting system set out in the
bill uses exactly the same method as single seat elections using
Single Transferable Vote. While this is clearly stated by the
Electoral Reform Society website, these pages make the same mistaken
assertion that winning candidates will always gain the support
of more than half the people who voted. However, real examples
of how Alternative Vote elections would be counted can be seen
in recent by-election results for the Irish Dáil on the
ElectionsIreland.org website. In these single seat elections,
only one of the last six winners has got over half the votes and
"Made Quota" (as it is put) rather than simply being
"Elected" with the highest remaining vote.
1 September 2010
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