The implications for Wales of the Government's proposals on constitutional reform - Welsh Affairs Committee Contents

Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-86)

Edward Lewis, John Bader and Paul Wood

13 October 2010

  Q1  Chair: Good morning. I'm David Davies, Chairman of the Welsh Affairs Committee, and these are the other members. Would you like to introduce yourselves before we start the evidence session?

  Edward Lewis: My name is Edward Lewis and I am the Secretary to the Commission.

  John Bader: John Bader, Commissioner.

  Paul Wood: Paul Wood, Commissioner.

  Q2  Chair: First, on behalf of us all, I thank you very much indeed for coming along today. We've got quite a few questions for you. We'd appreciate fairly short and concise answers, and we'll try to reciprocate with short and concise questions.

  If I may start off, you've been given a fairly difficult task, I should imagine. Can it be done?

  Edward Lewis: Yes.

  Chair: That's brief. That's great. Okay. That's wonderful. In that case, could I ask Mark to ask his question?

  Q3   Mr Williams: A very concise answer. I might require a bit more depth with my questions. If this Bill passes through the stages unamended, what is your understanding of the new considerations that you will have to take into consideration when drawing up the boundaries?

  Edward Lewis: Well, the principal change, of course, is that the issue of parity is very much centre stage. Under the current legislation, although parity is there, other factors are equally dominant in the process. So, the new Bill will actually focus on the parity issue, rather than on some of the other considerations that the Commission currently takes into account.

  Q4  Mr Williams: What are those other considerations? You have said that there is a clear emphasis on parity, but how much weight will you have? What freedom will you have to pursue matters such as the geographic considerations, the concerns of the rural communities of Wales and the local government boundaries?

  Edward Lewis: Well, we will try to take account of local government boundaries. It is our intention to use as the building blocks electoral divisions in Wales, which in England are known as wards. The advantage that we have in Wales is that the whole of Wales is also subdivided into communities, and electoral divisions can consist of one or more community. Where communities have a council and are warded for electoral purposes, there is a further possibility of breaking down numbers within that community. So, I think that we have some significant flexibility in the way in which we are structured, to create the parliamentary constituencies.

  Q5  Mr Williams: Notwithstanding, and not wishing to prejudge your deliberations, would you agree that we could assume that if this Bill goes through unaltered, the new constituencies that will presumably fight the next general election will be fundamentally different to the ones that we face now?

  Edward Lewis: Yes, it is fair to believe that, because the size of constituencies will be greater in Wales than at present. While we will be trying to take account of local government boundaries, we already know that we are going to have to cross boundaries.

  Q6  Mr Williams: It sounds peripheral, but I think it is important to a lot of constituents—you are also responsible for the naming of those constituencies, and for merging constituencies as well.

  Edward Lewis: Yes.

  Q7  Mr Williams: Very quickly—you alluded to the fact that you would be able to work within the boundaries of community council wards as well. How do you respond to the research from the Electoral Reform Society that says that, if the 5% rule is applied, that is mathematically impossible without splitting wards?

  Edward Lewis: I think it is too early to say what that means in detail. Because we know that electoral divisions are set up in many instances with communities, we are able to use those communities. It is not the practice of Commissions to split communities, if it is possible to avoid that. The exception, of course, is that where a community is warded for electoral purposes, we could use that ward to assist us in achieving the parity that we are seeking.

  Q8  Owen Smith: Thank you. I interpret what you have just said as meaning that you are going to place much greater emphasis this time on the numerical issues—the mathematical formula, if you like. Could you elucidate a little more on what sort of considerations you have taken into account hitherto? What sorts of other issues that you took into account will you not be able to pay such attention to this time round?

  Paul Wood: The issue of parity in the legislation as it is drafted at the moment is clearly the dominant factor. Issues such as local ties and historical ties, which may have had more weight previously, are clearly subsumed in the legislation to the numerical issues. So, we can take account of local ties and community ties, but the way I read it at the moment is that the dominant factor is going to be parity, within the bounds of whatever the legislation says—5%.

  Q9  Owen Smith: Are you concerned about that?

  Paul Wood: Our job is to implement what the legislation says, and if the legislation says that those are the rules, we just get on with it and do it.

  Q10  Owen Smith: Okay. When you have had local reviews of these sorts of decisions in the past, to what extent have those issues around local ties—around historical, cultural, community identities—been some of the most important, dominant issues raised when these issues have been debated at a local level?

  Edward Lewis: I would not say that they particularly dominate the situation. During the fifth general review, there were four issues that the Commission changed its mind on as a result of the consultation process. Perhaps I should say that, while these issues were raised in the local inquiries, they were also raised beforehand in the written representations. In one sense, the Commission, before the local inquiries, had in its mind that modifications were required in the draft proposals. There was one instance where the issue was the naming of the constituency.

  On the issue of names, which has been raised, we try to identify a suitable name that can be in English and Welsh. Because we are only allowed one name, we provide a bilingual name, where appropriate. In our draft proposals we will suggest names, but we would certainly be looking for suggestions from the public as to better names, if there are better names for a constituency, and we would welcome that.

  Chair: Thank you. We hope the county of Sir Fynwy will continue in one form or another.

  Q11  Jessica Morden: You said you can do it within the time scale, which is obviously quite a tight time scale, but have you got enough resources to be able to do it that quickly, and will you be getting extra resources to do that?

    Edward Lewis: Yes. We have had discussions with the Cabinet Office, and we are assured that we will have the resources necessary to undertake the work.

  Q12  Jessica Morden: A lot of the evidence that we have had so far has focused on people's real fears about their communities being divided. I know that we touched on that earlier, but do you understand the fear that is out there about that?   

  Edward Lewis: Yes we do, but one of the difficulties we have is about how we define a community. There are different viewpoints about what a community is to an individual—it could be a village or a street, or something larger. For our purposes, we will certainly consider the communities that legally exist as a starting point for our work purposes. Sometimes, of course, they might not be exactly how people in that area see the situation. You could have one village in an adjoining community that perhaps feels a greater affinity with a larger village next door. Those are the subtleties that we have to probe during the process.

  Q13  Jessica Morden: Do you think there is a danger of distancing MPs in much larger constituencies from their communities?

  Edward Lewis: We have no evidence to suggest that that will be the case. We have one or two larger constituencies in Wales, and I would have thought that Members of Parliament would be better placed to judge whether or not that causes a problem. Certainly, we will welcome evidence from everyone as to the potential problems that large constituencies might bring.

  Paul Wood: The issue of communities exists with the current boundaries. One of the things that we have been doing in our most recent meeting was to look at interim reviews of two areas, one of which was, I think, Cardiff South and Penarth. Obviously, Penarth is in the Vale of Glamorgan, and Cardiff South is in the city of Cardiff. The other one was Ogmore, where part of that is in Rhondda Cynon Taf, and part in Bridgend. You already have constituencies that cross boundaries.

  Q14  Jessica Morden: But isn't it just going to add to the confusion when there are Assembly boundaries that are different to Westminster boundaries? Do you worry about that?

  Edward Lewis: Well, it's not for us to worry about the situation; I think it's a matter for Ministers. I would assume that there will be a desire to ensure that there is a method for reviewing the Welsh Assembly constituencies once the outcome of the referendum is known.

  Q15  Glyn Davies: I understand absolutely that the main drag of this is going to be based on population. That is the main issue. Within that, however, there can be some recognition of distance. I am thinking in terms of mid-Wales. You can have a constituency meeting the arithmetical requirement that could be about 120 miles from north to south, or you can have one that is more compact. Clearly, I quite like the idea of it being rather more compact and manageable, and that being part of your consideration. Is that going to be a factor?

  John Bader: Can I just say that it is going to be registered electors, not population, that will decide that? I think we can all understand that this will, in many instances, increase the distance that constituents have to travel. Again, we can only work within the legislation as it is finally drafted.

  Q16  Glyn Davies: The worry I have is that when you do your work, to put it bluntly, you will start in Anglesey and work down. You finish up in mid-Wales and group what is left together in one, without giving much consideration to mid-Wales. That is what worries me. Then you could finish up with a constituency that, as I say, is 120 miles north to south, because it happens to fit everywhere else. That is the point that I am trying to make to you, as much as the question.

  John Bader: At the moment, we haven't considered the approach that we would take. Clearly, that is one option, and I suspect that we will be examining a number of options. It has to be done on an all-Wales basis. If we have a specific task that sets the parity that we are required to work within, we cannot start and just do one; we have to do the whole lot and see how it fits.

  Q17  Chair: Before I call Mr Smith, may I ask, if your prime consideration is going to be population, or registered electors, will the size of the constituency be a secondary consideration, and an important one at that, or will it not be considered at all?

  John Bader: Do you mean the geographical size?

  Chair: Yes.

  John Bader: It is not something that we have considered at this stage, because we are at a very early stage of that consideration. There are policy issues that we will have to determine and that will be one of them.

  Q18  Chair: I don't want to abuse my position by asking too many questions, but surely you could simply go on numbers, or you could go on numbers and take a view of constituency size as well? You could use that as a secondary consideration, so that we don't end up with the hypothetical situation that Mr Davies has just described with one long constituency from north to south because that is what you end up with. I know that is probably an extreme view, but do you see what I mean? You could make size a secondary consideration if you wish.

  John Bader: It is not unreasonable to see that, as Paul has said, subsumed into the primary issue, which the legislation as currently drafted indicates. Yes, we could, and we would look at communities and local authority boundaries.

  Q19  Owen Smith: We have heard what you have said about having to work within the legislation as it is currently drafted. Have you expressed any opinion to Ministers about the legislation?

  Edward Lewis: No, we haven't, because in one sense it is not our place to do so. We are the servants of Parliament and we respond to whatever Parliament decides through the legislation.

  Q20  Owen Smith: Okay. I think I heard you say earlier that, as a Commission, you are not at all worried about the extent to which absolute primacy is now associated with this notion of a mathematical formula and the way in which all the other considerations that you have previously taken into account are subservient.

  Paul Wood: Some of our colleagues from the other Commissions gave evidence to one of the other Committees here, and I think the Secretary of the Boundary Commission for England said that whatever a Boundary Commission or Committee does, people won't be happy with it, because it will involve change. As currently drafted, this legislation would involve substantial change, so in a sense we know that whatever we recommend, plenty of people will object to it. All we can do is our very best to take account of the sort of views that are being expressed here, such as the point that Mr Davies made that we don't end up with a constituency that is a leftover because we can't fit anything else in. That is a very important point for us to take away.

  Q21  Guto Bebb: Can I take you back to Jessica Morden's point about the funding implications of the work that you have to do over the next two years? You said that you have no concerns about being able to manage this process in that period, but you indicated that you are in discussions with the Cabinet Office about additional resources. Could you expand on that and give us an approximate figure?

  Edward Lewis: Yes, we have looked at the requirements for this review. You will be aware from our written evidence that the secretariat jointly serves the Local Government Boundary Commission as well as the parliamentary Commission, so we have an advantage in that we have a core of experienced people. We will then increase our staffing by seconding civil servants to assist us in the process. We have estimated that the worst case scenario is that we would need £1.9 million to complete the review, but I would expect it to be below that figure in reality, because we are able to move people between local government work and parliamentary work so that we can meet the peaks and troughs of activity.

  Q22  Guto Bebb: In effect, what you are saying is that the additional cost that is being imposed by this Bill will be in the region of £1.9 million, possibly less, but, in terms of actual cost, will that be £1.9 million in addition to what you would usually spend?

  Edward Lewis: Yes, but what you have to remember, of course, is that, as a standing secretariat, there are ongoing costs in any case to maintain the situation. But we will be expending more, because we will need additional staff to undertake this work. We are in the process of putting in place the staff and the training necessary for them.

  Q23  Geraint Davies: I should disclose an interest. As I mentioned in the corridor, my father, D. T. M. Davies, was the Secretary of the Boundary Commission for Wales between 1973 and 1984. When he did the job—and up to this point—can you confirm that the way it was done was to start with a premise of equal size and then build in the needs of community and geography to deliver effective democracy? Will you confirm that, to date, that system has served well?

  Edward Lewis: Well, yes, that was the approach. But one of the difficulties of that approach is the inequalities that resulted. I do not know whether we want to talk about some of the inequalities that have arisen through that approach.

  Q24  Geraint Davies: In the relative number of registered voters, you mean.

  Edward Lewis: Yes.

  Q25  Geraint Davies: Okay. Would you accept that, or are you concerned that, in terms of the way the system works, we will have dramatic change and will be moving from a system where we have a local inquiry enabling stakeholders to respond to changes about their communities and their geography, as well as about the population, as opposed to the number of registered voters. We will no longer have such an inquiry, but will instead have some sort of information about what is going to happen and so-called consultation. Are you concerned that this is being steamrollered through, given your experience in allowing people to have their say and trying to adjust accordingly?

  John Bader: The consultation proposals that are contained in the draft legislation are obviously different to those that have been used previously. The point you make is accurate: there will not be local inquiries, but those will be substituted with substantial consultation arrangements, which are much more robust and in-depth than previously. Certainly, there are potentially two 12-week periods for people to make written representations, which we will then assess, as a Commission, using, if necessary, assistant Commissioners to support us with an assessment of the evidence that will be contained. We would want to ensure that consultation is seen to be effective.

  Q26  Geraint Davies: But would you accept that, in the case of various communities being pushed together and there being a dominant and a submissive community, as pointed out, there will be cases where, under the previous terms of reference, the Boundary Commission would have made the judgment that there would be an adjustment to fit the needs of the community and the geography, but that will no longer happen because of the dominant and overbearing force of the number of registered voters?

  John Bader: But people will still have the same opportunity to make their representations on those issues.

  Q27  Geraint Davies: I know, but I'm talking about your interpretation and your judgment. Can you imagine a situation where, under the previous regime, you would have said, "Fair enough, we'll redraw it because we want effective democracy within this community, but now we can't, and that's the law and we're only servants and we've got nothing to say." Is that the position now?

    John Bader: As the Secretary said, in the fifth review there were five open inquiries and only four issues, ultimately, were taken into account by the previous Boundary Commission. All that information was contained in the written evidence, in any event. We would want to ensure that we analyse all that written evidence properly and appropriately and take account of it in coming to our final conclusions.

  Q28  Geraint Davies: But then ignored it. I find it amazing. Again, Edward Lewis said that they are servants who just respond to what they are being asked to do. I would have thought that your job would be to act as experienced experts who are able to give advice and counsel to Ministers who are dashing ahead with a one-size-fits-all solution, but it seems that you are just saying, "Okay, fair enough. We'll just get on with the job." Is that a reasonable characterisation of how you see your role.

  Paul Wood: Can I just take you back to the first part of your question, in which you said the present system has served us well? You said that the starting point was that constituencies should be roughly equal, but that all the other factors are taken into account. The reality is that we have a range of constituencies in terms of electorate, from three constituencies with 40,000-odd electors in them to those with 70,000-odd electors. The figures counter the suggestion that perhaps there is not a problem at all. I take account of the points you are making about local inquiries, but the present system was supposed to get roughly equal constituencies—and there is currently a huge range.

  Q29  Geraint Davies: Finally, would you accept that we should be doing this on the basis of eligible voters, not registered voters, because it discriminates against poorer areas, people who find it difficult to fill in forms, ethnic communities, and all the rest?

  Edward Lewis: I think there's a problem there. The problem is that if you use the population, the starting point for the calculation of populations is the census. The next census is in 2011. The data from that won't be available till mid-2012, which is rather late for this work. The Office for National Statistics then will project within 10 years what the population might be, and then in the following census, they will reflect back and adjust the figures for the whole decade. The difficulty with that, of course, is that I understand that the 2011 census is going to be the last one that we have. So we feel that the electoral register, because it's a rolling register, is a more robust figure to use.

  Chair: We'll be discussing that in more detail later, but I want to bring in a few more people, if I may.

  Q30  Karen Lumley: I just want to go back to what Mr Lewis was saying, having been through a Boundary Commission review myself before the last general election. You were doing them on a rolling programme at that time, weren't you? How many people do you actually employ now, and how many people do you envisage employing in the next six months?

  Edward Lewis: We have 10 staff at the moment. We will be increasing that to 13 or 14. The reason for that is that as the parliamentary work increases next year, the work we're doing for the local government reviews will decrease, so we're able to redeploy the staff within the Commission from one aspect to the parliamentary work.

  Q31  Karen Lumley: Having been through this, I'm quite conscious that the actual work that we did, and, obviously, the views, are shared by our communities. Are you confident that that's enough to take the whole country on?

  Edward Lewis: Yes, because we actually undertook the fifth general review on slightly smaller numbers of staff.

  Q32  Susan Elan Jones: I'm interested in the comment you made earlier: what is a community to an individual? On one level, we're having this fairly abstract discussion, but isn't the reality that what you've effectively been told to do is to level it all out, regardless of terrain, regardless of community? We're just going to end up with constituents that are all of a certain population, regardless of the constitutional impact of this on the Welsh nation, in terms that it will have a far larger drop in seats. Aren't we bringing back, in a way, the map of several centuries ago—"For Wales, see England"—without any regard whatsoever to the constitutional implications of it? You've just got a job to do. You mentioned subtleties. It might help us with a few villages here or there, but there's not much you can do, because the legislation has basically been framed to wipe us out in terms of Westminster representation. It could have profound constitutional implications, which probably haven't been grasped in Amersham and Chesham yet.

  John Bader: In some ways—

  Susan Elan Jones: You can just say yes if you want.

  John Bader: To be perfectly frank, we really refer that back to you, because the legislation is made in this building, and we can't change it.

  Chair: We shall certainly be looking at that. We've got three very brief questions.

  Q33  Mr Williams: To go back to my original question about the weighting that you put to these considerations, you said that you will take into consideration the needs of communities, geographic considerations and local government boundaries, but my fear is that despite those points being there somewhere on the pecking order, this is totally and utterly subsumed by the number required. Though it may look good on the legislation to have these considerations nominally there, they're going to be very little, aren't they?

  Edward Lewis: The legislation provides for a tolerance of up to 5%, so in one sense the Commission can take into account specific aspects of a community, because there is 5% tolerance in the numbers.

  Q34  Jessica Morden: Very quickly, to go back to Karen's point, in my area we are going through the Local Government Boundary Commission. There is great mistrust about the process because of various bits of evidence having gone missing. Are you confident that your systems are robust enough to take on this big job?  

  Edward Lewis: Yes, because as a result of what happened in Newport, we have revised our systems. I am as confident as I can be that things will not go missing, although I cannot vouch for the Royal Mail.

  Q35  Chair: Finally, you have been very careful to make the point that you are simply following the instructions of Ministers, as civil servants do. Would you describe the plans as ambitious or challenging?

  John Bader: We would regard them as challenging in the sense of having to produce the result, yes.

  Q36  Chair: And ambitious perhaps, in terms of the time scale?

  Edward Lewis: Not for Wales. We can do it in Wales within the time scale. We worked with those in the Cabinet Office who are drafting the legislation, so in one sense we have had an opportunity to advise the drafters on issues.

  Paul Wood: Could I make a final point? You mentioned civil servants. John and I are not civil servants, and the de facto chair of our group is a High Court judge. One of the things I want to emphasise is that we come to this from a completely non-political, non-partisan front.

  Chair: And we welcome that. Thank you very much indeed for coming to give evidence today. We appreciate it.

Witnesses: John Turner, Chief Executive, Association of Electoral Administrators, Philip Johnson, Chairman, Welsh Branch, Association of Electoral Administrators, Professor Richard Wyn Jones, Wales Governance Centre, Lewis Baston, Democratic Audit, gave evidence.

  Q37  Chair: Good morning. I'm David Davies, Chairman of the Welsh Affairs Committee and these are the members. Would you like briefly to introduce yourselves? I will then ask Mr Guto Bebb to start the questions.

  Professor Wyn Jones: My name is Richard Wyn Jones, Professor Wyn Jones. I am from Cardiff university. Good morning. Bore da.

  Lewis Baston: My name is Lewis Baston, currently with Democratic Audit, formerly of the Electoral Reform Society from 2003 to 2010. I am probably the person who had the first stab at drawing a map in accordance with these rules.

  Chair: We've all seen it with great interest.

  Philip Johnson: I'm Philip Johnson. I am the electoral services manager at Newport city council and deputy returning officer. I am also chair of the AEA Wales.

  John Turner: And I am John Turner, Chief Executive of the AEA.

  Q38  Guto Bebb: I have an opening question on the fact that we are having the AV referendum on the same day as the Welsh Assembly elections. Do any of you have concerns about the fact that we will be going to the polls in Wales on the same day to vote on the AV proposals and, in two different systems, to elect people to the Welsh Assembly?

  Professor Wyn Jones: Yes, I do have some concerns. I read the House of Lords Select Committee report on referendums, which came out in April, with great interest. I thought their arguments against doing this kind of thing were very persuasive.

  Lewis Baston: I am conscious that in many countries it is normal practice to roll up referendums and have them on the same day as legislative elections. I am willing to listen to people who are involved in the administration and politics of it if they say that makes it difficult.

  My prime concern is actually 2015, when one might be in the position of fighting an Assembly and a Westminster election on different systems with sets of boundaries which will rarely match up. That is what I am most concerned about.

  Philip Johnson: First and foremost, 2015 could be horrendous. Hopefully, 2011 won't be, but it does have the capacity to be horrendous. The different franchise could lead to problems, not least confusion in the polling stations.

  I am concerned that footfall in the polling stations will be too great. Imagine a parliamentary election that has an 80% turnout. Welsh Assembly elections are usually around the mid-40s, but of course there will be two ballot papers, which actually could be a 90% turnout. Add a third ballot paper to the mix, and you are well over 100%. That could lead to problems in the polling stations, and we all know the headlines that occurred in May this year.

  John Turner: Our general position really emanates from Scotland in 2007. The review and the report that were done then clearly came down on the side of saying that electoral events, if they are of a different nature, should not take place at the same time. As a matter of policy and principle, we subscribe to that. Therefore, we have concerns about the possible implications for voters in understanding, or being confused by, the different ballot papers they are presented with for different electoral events on the same day.

  Q39  Guto Bebb: Your responses contradict to an extent the Electoral Commission, who were here on Monday. They said that the referendum could be held on the same day, with the AV referendum on the same day as the Welsh Assembly elections. However, they did have a caveat, which was that there would need to be quite an educational procedure to explain the proposals and to ensure that the people of Wales understood the difference between the AV referendum and the Assembly election. Do you accept that view? If you do, what educational materials would be required in Wales? What costs would be expected? Have you any idea?

  Chair: By the way, you don't all have to answer at length on this.

  Philip Johnson: I don't think that the public—the electorate—in Wales would have any problem grasping the concept of the fact that there was a referendum and Assembly elections. My major concern is about confusion over the procedures in the polling station leading to delays. In Newport, for example, 1,000 European voters will not be eligible to vote at the referendum. That is 1% of my total electorate, which is a significant number—it's not a small number. They will turn up at the polling station, and they might be confused about why they have only two ballot papers, instead of three, but there is also the capacity for the polling station staff to be confused as to which ballot paper should go to which elector. We have to add the whole lot into the mix. We should bear in mind that, since 2001, electors have also been able to apply for a postal vote, but at local elections only or parliamentary elections only. Electors could well come in who are entitled only to, for example, a parliamentary ballot paper, having already received the local ballot papers—that is, for the Assembly—by post, and vice versa. The capacity for confusion is immense, and I don't mean confusion about the issues in the referendum, but the procedures.

  Q40  Chair: Before I call Karen Lumley, I have a quick question for Mr Baston. Obviously, we all looked at your map and considered our own position, but could this confusion argument not be taken too far, because I feel—I wonder what you feel about this—that most people vote on party lines, not for the person. Sad for me, but that's probably the reality. Will it, therefore, be that confusing? People will go in and vote Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem, Plaid Cymru or whatever—they will not be looking at constituency boundaries. Is that a fair suggestion?

  Lewis Baston: Yes, it is true that a lot of people vote straightforwardly on party lines.

  Q41  Chair: Have you done any research on that? Is it 80% or 90%?

  Lewis Baston: We haven't been able to compare like with like before in this way. What I would say, though, is that there is a lot of evidence from Scotland, rather than Wales, that people vote different ways, even in the two sections—the list and the constituency. In the 2007 Welsh Assembly election, there were seven constituencies where the list vote and the constituency vote went in different directions, including Montgomeryshire. People do exercise judgment, even as regards the different bits of the Welsh Assembly, and it's perfectly reasonable to vote one way for the Welsh Assembly on Welsh Assembly issues and another way for Westminster. In fact, particularly in the case of Plaid Cymru, many people seem to vote for them to a greater extent in Wales.

  Chair: Yes, people have told me that they vote Plaid Cymru because it's Wales and UKIP for a European election.

  Q42  Karen Lumley: Do you think Wales is over-represented?

  Lewis Baston: That's a very good question. Yes, there is an argument that 40 out of 650 is too many. Welsh constituencies are systematically smaller than the UK average and smaller than in any of the other nations. There are some good reasons for that, but a lot of it is just arithmetical drift. There is a case for losing a few. Whether losing 10 or 11 is the right answer, I rather doubt.

  Professor Wyn Jones: May I make a point here? Hon. Members will forgive me for saying this, but I am not persuaded by the arguments that I have heard in favour of Welsh over-representation. Susan Elan Jones went back into history, you will forgive me for doing the same on that lead. When MPs first came from Wales to this place after the Act of Union, by 1543 they were, basically, represented on a proportionate basis. Wales was about 7% of the population of England and Wales and 7% of the MPs in this place after 1543 were from Wales. There wasn't any kind of formational deal that Wales should be over-represented by such and such. This is drift, which has happened relatively recently and I do not find—with the best will in the world—the arguments for over-representation particularly compelling.

  Another thing is that if you are going to over-represent Wales, why by the particular percentage that it is over-represented now? Again, I have yet to hear a compelling intellectual argument in favour of the particular degree of over-representation that we have.

  Q43  Guto Bebb: Can I challenge the point that you just made about drift? My understanding is that the minimum of 35 MPs was agreed by the Speaker's Conference in 1944 and has been kept ever since, so I think that the use of the word "drift" is unfortunate. I accept that the number of Welsh MPs at 40 is possibly too high, but I am not sure whether "drift" is correct in terms of the fact that there has been a scrutiny of this decision over the past 60 years.

  Professor Wyn Jones: If you go back to read the arguments from the Speaker's Conference—and these are subjective judgments—but I do not find the arguments particularly compelling. I note the way that certain MPs at the time who were noticeably anti-nationalist in their rhetoric were otherwise pretty nationalistic in their arguments in favour of Welsh over-representation back then. I accept that these are subjective judgments, but I do not personally find the arguments particularly compelling.

  Q44  Chair: If Wales's representation is reduced, do you see that, politically, it might add to arguments for Wales and the Welsh Assembly to seek further powers and perhaps even to break away from the Union?

  Professor Wyn Jones: I cannot see a change from 6% to 5% of MPs making that dramatic a difference.

  Q45  Chair: But it is a change within Wales of 40 to 30, which is 25%.

  Professor Wyn Jones: But it is hard to imagine how that has a huge impact in terms of the Welsh voice in Westminster, particularly because, on the whole, Welsh MPs do not behave en masse as a single block.

  Chair: That's certainly true.

  Q46  Susan Elan Jones: I do not want to go back to the 16th century now, but I think that you would have found that the Welsh MPs who were around at the time of Tryweryn would have disagreed with you on that.

  I am interested in what you say in terms of looking around the world. Many countries' constitutions—for example, in the States or in Germany—protect states of totally different populations from having in some cases identical, in other cases similar, sizes of representation. But you do not think that argument works for Wales within the United Kingdom.

  Professor Wyn Jones: You could try to make the argument, but then your problem is, why the particular level of over-representation that we have? Why 6% of the seats?

  Q47  Susan Elan Jones: So we could go up to 50?

  Professor Wyn Jones: These just look like post-hoc rationalisations of what we have rather than a principled argument in favour. I am sorry; I did not mean that to sound insulting at all, but they do sound like post-hoc rationalisations.

  Q48  Owen Smith: Are they, and the differential between 40,000 and 70,000, not also reflective of the particularities of Wales—of geographical, real, solid, community identities and local ties? Although there is mathematical drift, there is also history forging those constituencies and those identities, and that is not something that we should throw away.

  Professor Wyn Jones: Can I make two very quick points? I apologise to colleagues for monopolising the responses. The boundaries have changed over time. As an Anglesey boy, I would argue that the most natural community in Wales is obviously Ynys Môn. There is sea around Anglesey, but Anglesey hasn't always been one constituency. As someone who grew up in the village of Penmynydd, Bangor was the natural town that you would head to, to do what you had to do. Even though I would claim Ynys Môn as the most natural community in Wales, the questions that were raised by our colleagues in the previous session show that views of our communities are, in many ways, subjective and may vary. It is very difficult to be hard and fast about these things.

  Chair: Fascinating though this is, we have to take two quick questions on this and then move on to the others.

  Q49  Glyn Davies: My point is similar to the one made by Owen Smith. The position at the moment is that Gwent is arithmetically over-represented. The new system that is coming in suggests that it isn't. What it suggests is that the arithmetical calculations would be the same for Wales as for everywhere else. Can you think of a single reason why it should be different for Wales than for anywhere else? Clearly, if you were arguing that from a philosophical point of view, you would have to say that the differences in Wales were such that it should be larger in Wales than otherwise, except the fact that there is a link with history. Is there any reason at all why you should be mourning the loss?

  Lewis Baston: There are a few particular local peculiarities in areas of Wales. Certainly, there are more anomalies than there are in England in terms of islands and remote rural areas, and urban formations in the valleys of south Wales, which do not really have a reflection elsewhere. So, there are a few of these geographical things, and having three or four anomalies out of 30 to 40 seats is fairly significant. The number of potential anomalies in England is only about three or four, which is proportionately nothing. In terms of representation, as was noted earlier, a lot of countries use one basis of arithmetic equality for their lower house and have a rather more federal-type system for another chamber. It is a shame that we are considering representation in the Commons in isolation from the powers of the Assembly and also the representation of the different parts of the UK in the Lords. It is a shame.

  Chair: I know that this is a really interesting issue for all of us, but given that we have so much to get through, I appeal for short questions and answers.

  Q50  Geraint Davies: Will you accept that a small nation of 3 million sitting alongside a nation 17 times its size, completely reliant on funding from that much larger neighbour, has a case to be made for slight over-representation? That combined with the history, the sparsity and the geography is the glue of the Union. I am going back to the Chair's point here. Do you not accept, therefore, that if that was completely eradicated overnight with a one size fits all it would threaten not just effective democracy but the Union itself?

  Professor Wyn Jones: No, I don't. This degree of over-representation is relatively recent. I don't think the Union was in great danger—

    Chair: That's a good brief answer. Yes or no on that Union threat, gentlemen?

  Lewis Baston: Forty is too many and 30 may be too few.

  John Turner: From a general principle, we start from the position that every vote in the United Kingdom should be of equal weight. Therefore, I concur with my colleagues.

  Philip Johnson: My only concern, and it possibly ties in with some of the issues that colleagues have raised, is that as a returning officer, we have duties to involve people in the electoral process. Depending on how the new boundaries are drawn, that might become very difficult, and in some of the sparser areas of Wales almost impossible. That is my concern as an administrator or deputy returning officer.

  Chair: I would like to call on Susan Elan Jones to ask some questions about the reduction of the Executive if this goes ahead.

  Q51  Susan Elan Jones: The Deputy Prime Minister said in July, "I think we have Executive dominance; we have one of the most Executive-led forms of Government anywhere in the western world." If we are going down this route of reducing the number of Members of Parliament, do you think that the Executive should be reduced in size as well?

  Professor Wyn Jones: Well, yes. Do you want to know which jobs should go?

  Lewis Baston: I agree with the premise of the question, which is that we are reducing the number of people capable of scrutinising the Executive without actually reducing the Executive. That seems to me to be the wrong order.

  Philip Johnson: I agree.

  John Turner: I agree absolutely, although a very interesting point was raised earlier on that: if that is the case in Wales, it strengthens the case, as far as I can see, for the National Assembly having greater powers than it currently has.

  Chair: This issue of scrutiny of the Executive is quite close to home at the moment.

  Q52  Owen Smith: Yes, although I am trying to shift the debate on to a slightly different area. What is your opinion of the rationale for making this change right now, because it was born out of the very heated politics of the election? My view is that it is entirely party politically motivated and, in effect, is a piece of gerrymandering, as it is trying to reduce the number of Labour seats in Wales. What is your opinion on that?

  Professor Wyn Jones: There are people who have no obvious self-interest in this who have long argued that the different levels of representation across the UK are something of an anomaly. I understand your argument, but I am not sure that everyone who suggests that we go for more equalised constituency sizes across the UK has that self-interest. It is also clear, of course, that the first-past-the-post electoral system has tended to favour Labour and disadvantage the Conservatives, so changes of this kind probably favour the Conservatives.

  Lewis Baston: I share some of the concerns about the origins of the proposal, because the argument that the source of bias in the electoral system is mostly to do with the size of constituencies seems to have arisen in a discourse within one party. Academically, that is not the case; it is a small component. It may misfire if that is the intention; schemes that are intended to help one party often end up backfiring on their authors. That may be the case with this one. In Ireland they have the word, "Tullymander", which comes from the '70s and means a failed gerrymander that blows up in its author's face.

  In all seriousness, I am concerned about the speed with which this is being brought through. It seems to be an absolute priority to get the new boundaries in place for 2015, rather than to get them right and to consider some of the principles involved. I would much rather we did this properly. We could, for instance, use the census information, if we were willing to have the new boundaries from, say, 2020. We could use some new approaches, such as "drive-time compactness", which is a market research term, to stop straggly constituencies in the middle being too prevalent. If we want to design a good system, there are all sorts of possibilities that we have not considered.

  Chair: Mr Johnson, do you have anything to say on that?

  Philip Johnson: Looking at the current local government boundary review that the Boundary Commission for Wales is conducting and some of its proposals, and bearing in mind that the same people are doing the parliamentary review, I would put a big question mark over what will happen with the new boundaries.

  John Turner: My point is not really about the party political issue, but more about the point Mr Baston made on the undue speed with which the review is being carried out. The current system has worked well and has allowed the sorts of issue that were raised in previous questioning about local ties and communities of interests to be properly explored in a public arena at local inquiries. I have a grave concern that short-circuiting this process and almost dumbing it down will cut out the ability to make such points.

  Q53  Guto Bebb: In view of the fact that the Bill is going through at a pace—you may have a view on whether that is a good or a bad thing—there is a possibility that we will end up having two elections on the same day in 2015, which is the issue you raised. What is the experience from Scotland of having two elections on the same day, with people being in one constituency for the Scottish Parliament and in a different one for Westminster? Does that create confusion, and have you any concerns from an administrative point of view about having two constituency elections on the same day? If you thought that you might have two elections on one day—for the Welsh Assembly and for the Westminster Parliament, for example—would that be a concern from an administrative point of view?

  Philip Johnson: Absolutely. You have hit the nail on the head. Of course, it wouldn't just be the difference in the Assembly and parliamentary constituencies; there is the question whether the new parliamentary constituencies will still be coterminous with the Assembly regions, because the instruction that is proposed to the Boundary Commission is that it can look across county boundaries. At the moment, the regional boundaries tend to reflect the old county boundaries. It would cause immense problems, almost to the point of being impossible to administrate.

  John Turner: Adding to that, the experience in Scotland in 2007 showed the difficulties that can emerge. Our concern would be that it is not simply putting a parliamentary election in with an Assembly election—or indeed, as in Scotland, the two national elections—but you could have local government popping out of the woodwork as well and all sorts of other things that are now being considered. I would concur with my colleague on the point that we will get to a stage where the electoral administration, the necessary logistics and so on will just collapse under the sheer strain and pressure of what is being asked.

  Professor Wyn Jones: The Scottish example was nothing less than a scandal in democratic terms, and I find it incomprehensible to knowingly put ourselves in a situation where we could find a recurrence of that.

  Q54  Guto Bebb: Is your concern, then, with the fact that the elections are being proposed on the same day? From what I gather, you are obviously in favour of reducing, and in favour of reducing the number of Welsh MPs, because you cannot find any defence for the number of Welsh MPs. But I have also read your work, in which you say that about 60 is the minimum number of Assembly Members that we need to get the Assembly to work properly. Now, if we are going to reduce the number of Welsh MPs, clearly, if you decouple that fact from the Assembly, the confusion, which you have just described so well, is automatically going to happen.

  Professor Wyn Jones: What I am referring to in particular is the proposal to hold these things on the same day.

  Guto Bebb: So that is your main concern? Not the actual proposals.

  Chair: We have to ask a few questions about voter registration before 11.30 am, so could I ask Geraint Davies to begin with that?

  Q55  Geraint Davies: It is a simple question whether a reasonably robust prediction of the number of eligible voters wouldn't be a much fairer way of drawing the boundaries than using registered voters. That is especially so, given that there is clearly a bias away from people in ethnic communities, those in private rented accommodation and poorer people generally registering, which will be worsened with individual voting, where the one in five people who are functionally illiterate and cannot fill in forms and the people who cannot speak English won't be registered, and therefore their vote won't count.

    Surely those issues may be as big, given that there are 3.5 million people who are not registered, as the anomalies that this measure is trying to address about the differences in size. Can the panel say whether they agree that the numbers should be done on the number of eligible voters—the best estimate of that from various data sources—as opposed to the number of people registered to vote?

  Lewis Baston: Yes, I agree with that. It would be reasonably easy to do with the census data if we just waited a bit. Individual registration has observably made the number of electors in each seat in Northern Ireland bounce around quite a lot, so I expect that we shall find that this number becomes increasingly unstable as we go forward.

  John Turner: This would go back to the point that I made about timing, and therefore support what Mr Baston is saying. It seems to me that if you are going to do individual registration as well, you should do one or the other and then things follow on.

  Individual registration, therefore, perhaps ought to be the catalyst for this, and then you can use the material that is available from other data sources to verify against that which you have in terms of that transition to individual registration. So, running the new boundaries in the general election after next would seem a more sensible approach to me, simply in terms of the mechanics of switching the registration system.

  Professor Wyn Jones: There was a clear manifesto commitment from the Conservative party going into the UK general election to reduce, and the Liberal Democrats, if I recall, wanted to go down to 500. If you are going to make this change for 2015, the only way that you can do it is on the basis of what we have on the electoral register, because I think that the estimates do bounce around from year to year. They are often prone to being mistaken, and then there is increasing volatility in population movement. Pragmatically, there aren't many good options, and this might be the least bad, but I very much share the underlying concern. That is a general problem, however, which has been with us for a long time.

  Q56  Karen Lumley: What percentage of voters in Newport are registered?

  Philip Johnson: I contend that it is 100%. However, it is impossible at any one time to say, "Yes, that register as of today is accurate." For example, at the present time it is based around this magic date of 15 October. Some people sent their forms back two months ago and will have moved by that day. Others will have moved before the election. I conduct a mini-canvass every January. It is not a statutory obligation, and not all administrators do it. I write to every household stating who is registered, asking whether they have postal votes and attaching a registration form so that they can make any amendments or additions. I also tell them what elections are in the pipeline. That ticks of a lot of boxes; it helps with participation, registration and so on.

  Chair: I am well aware of the excellent job that Newport council does, for various familial reasons. We have slightly overrun, but I thank all four of you for coming here today to give evidence.

  I now call the next witnesses.

Witnesses: David Jones MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales, Wales Office, and Mark Harper MP, Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform, Cabinet Office, gave evidence.

  Q57  Chair: I know that we all know each other very well, but for the record will you please introduce yourselves?

  Mr Jones: I am David Jones, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales.

  Mr Harper: I am Mark Harper, Minister with responsibility for political and constitutional reform.

  Chair: Thank you very much. I am David Davies, Chairman of the Welsh Affairs Committee. Welcome back to the deputy Minister. I begin by asking Jessica Morden if she will start our question session.

  Q58  Jessica Morden: Given the huge change that the Bill will bring about, what's the rush with it, how much time do you think we'll have on the Floor of the House to discuss it next week, and why won't the Secretary of State for Wales have a Welsh Grand Committee so that we have the opportunity to discuss it there?

  Mr Harper: Ms Morden, as my constituency neighbour, albeit across the border, let me take the first part of that question; Mr Jones will take the second.

  In terms of debate on the Floor of the House of Commons, the Government think that we have allowed adequate time. The programme motion agreed by the House on Second Reading set out five days of debate in Committee. The motion that the House agreed this week gave the House an extra six hours of debate to make sure that on days when the House has statements, we protect the time available for debate. The knives that we inserted into the programme motion were specifically placed to make sure, as I promised on Second Reading, that we would have the opportunity to debate and vote on the key issues in the Bill as identified on Second Reading.

  So far, based on the first day of debate, that worked well. We had a debate, albeit that some might think it a little lengthy, on the date. We also had the chance to debate the question, and were able to vote on Government and Opposition amendments on both those matters. So far, I think that proceedings in the House have worked well, and I am confident that they will continue to do so in the remaining four days of debate in Committee.

  Q59  Jessica Morden: But my understanding is that the Welsh clauses will come on Wednesday evening, and we may not even get to them. Is that your understanding?

  Mr Harper: There is one specific Welsh clause in the Bill—clause 11, which decouples the Assembly constituencies. That will come on day four. The other clauses that you might mean are those that set the rules for the boundary review. Some of them will come on day three and some will come on day four. We will keep the timetable under review, but the Government's intention is to ensure that we have adequate time to debate each part of the Bill. It is not in our interests for it not to be debated in the elected House before it moves on to the House of Lords.

  Mr Jones: In terms of the Welsh Grand Committee, as you know, the Secretary of State did give consideration to a request made by the right hon. Paul Murphy. She decided not to grant a Welsh Grand Committee. She takes the view that there is ample time for consideration on the Floor of the House of the clauses affecting Wales specifically. You will recall also that she made arrangements for all Welsh MPs to attend a meeting at which Mr Harper was present, at which they could raise the concerns that they had about Wales in particular. Furthermore, it is always possible for representations to be made by the Opposition through the usual channels, and it may well be that such representations have been made.

  Q60  Jessica Morden: But it is pretty unprecedented not to agree to have a Welsh Grand Committee, isn't it? I have never known anyone turn down the opportunity.

  Mr Jones: I am trying to think of the precedent for a Welsh Grand Committee in these circumstances. Perhaps you could remind me of one.

  Q61  Chair: Minister, if the clause isn't reached or discussed on Wednesday—on day four—do you think the Secretary of State might change her mind and allow it to be discussed by a Welsh Grand Committee?

  Mr Jones: No, I am confident that there will be sufficient time on the Floor of the House.

  Q62  Chair: So clause 11 will definitely be reached, in your view, and will be discussed.

  Mr Jones: In my view, the timetable is sufficient to allow any concerns about clause 11 to be debated.

  Q63  Chair: If, for any reason, it is not reached, the Secretary of State might well reconsider her decision in the light of that fact.

  Mr Jones: Clearly, it is something that we will keep under review. These things are always difficult. I recall, for example, when the Planning Bill went through in the last Parliament; I was a member of that Committee. There were several Welsh clauses, which were not debated either in Committee or on the Floor of the House. This Government have done a lot more to make sure that Welsh interests are debated on the Floor of the House.

  Q64  Chair: Were the planning clauses debated by the Welsh Grand Committee?

  Mr Jones: They were not debated by the Welsh Grand Committee or in the Bill Committee.

  Q65  Owen Smith: I will continue this point, if I may. This is a question to the Wales Office Minister. As you are, no doubt, a proud Welshman, Mr Jones, are you seriously telling us that you think an hour—we are talking about an hour, or possibly an hour and a half—is enough time on the Floor of the House to debate getting rid of fully a quarter of the Welsh political representation in the House of Commons? I find that extraordinary.

  Mr Jones: I think your estimate is possibly inaccurate. In any event, I remind you, Mr Smith, that these matters were canvassed in a meeting at which I think you were present. Certainly my colleague the Minister was present. Yes, I do believe that these are constitutional matters; it is a constitutional Bill and should be taken on the Floor of the House, which is where it will be taken.

  Q66  Owen Smith: You think an hour or two will suffice.

  Mr Jones: That is a matter for Parliament, and Parliament has agreed to the programme motion.

  Q67  Owen Smith: May I ask you again, in that case, to make further representations to the Secretary of State for Wales about the need, which many in our party feel is pressing, for a Welsh Grand Committee to consider this further? We don't believe there is going to be sufficient time to consider Welsh-specific issues on the Floor, and we think that a Welsh Grand Committee is an important vehicle for doing that. There is no precedent that we can find for a Secretary of State refusing the Welsh Grand Committee on any issue.

  Mr Jones: As I put it to your colleague, Ms Morden, perhaps you could supply me with precedents to the contrary. In any event, given what you have said, I will certainly report the matter to the Secretary of State; of course I will.

  Chair: Thank you for that concise exchange. Mr Davies?

  Q68  Geraint Davies: On the same point, would you not accept that Wales is a country of just 3 million that sits alongside a country 17 times its size and is reliant exclusively on money from Westminster to fund it? Therefore, there is over-representation of Welsh MPs; that was part of the agreement, in essence, on the sustaining of the Union. Given that the proposal is to decrease the number of MPs by a full quarter, surely there must be a case for the convening of a Welsh Grand to discuss this step change in the relationship between the two nations.

  Mr Jones: What I would say is that I think that most people—electors in particular—would consider it of prime importance that there should be fairness in the system, and that a vote in one part of the country should not be worth more, sometimes considerably more, than a vote in another part of the country. I remind you, too, that the question of the reduction in the size of Parliament was a manifesto commitment of both parties in the coalition, and in fact the reduction in size that is now being proposed is actually rather less than was proposed in the manifestos.

  Q69  Geraint Davies: Yes, but the issue is that we should have this debate in the Grand Committee, because it is of such significance to Wales. I appreciate there are arguments on both sides, and you are deploying some of those arguments, but surely, historically, we are at a moment when we are looking at scrapping a quarter of the seats, and the impact that will have on the relationship and constitutional settlement between England and Wales. Is it the case that this is an emerging view? Is it a Conservative view that you would be happy to have an ongoing Conservative Administration in England at the expense of a poorer, isolated Wales that is carved up between Labour and the nationalists because they're so annoyed that they've been treated so badly? That would be reinforced by the contempt that you are showing to Wales by not having the Grand Committee discuss this.

  Mr Jones: There are several questions in that particular statement, but what I would say is no. We regard ourselves as a party of the Union—in fact, the party of the Union. We regard the Union as paramount, and think that it is essential that voters in every part of our United Kingdom should have a vote that is, so far as possible, fair and equal.

  Q70  Geraint Davies: But why are you treating us Welsh MPs so shabbily as to not allow us a proper forum for discussion?

  Mr Jones: Could I remind you, Mr Davies, that you were present also at the meeting that the Secretary of State convened? You were given the opportunity to express your views there. We've already had several days of debate on the Floor of the House, both on Second Reading and in Committee. Welsh MPs have already made their views quite clearly known on the Floor of the House, and I find it hard to see how you can possibly suggest that Welsh MPs are somehow being gagged, when they can make their points on the Floor of the House of Commons.

  Q71  Geraint Davies: For an hour.

  Mr Jones: No, forgive me, for more than an hour. We've already had Second Reading, and we've also had the Committee stage.

  Chair: Let's try to keep it courteous on all sides. I'll call Guto Bebb, and then Susan Elan Jones.

  Q72  Guto Bebb: I have some concerns in relation to the decision to decouple the parliamentary constituencies from the Welsh Assembly constituencies on a first-past-the-post basis. I understand exactly why that is being done; I think a number of very prominent people have argued strongly that the Welsh Assembly needs a minimum of 60 Members, and obviously if we had the same reduction in Welsh Assembly Members as we are currently proposing for Welsh MPs, the Assembly might be in some difficulty. However, my concern is with the fact that we might end up, as a result of this Bill being pushed through in time for the next general election, in a situation where we will have a very complicated election in Wales in 2015, where people will be voting in one constituency for Westminster and another constituency for the Welsh Assembly. Even more complicated is the potential for the parliamentary constituencies not to be coterminous with some of the regional constituencies that we have for the Welsh Assembly. How much consideration have the Government given to those practical problems that we might face in 2015?

  Mr Harper: Let me just deal with that first, and then Mr Jones will add some detail. We have thought that through. We wanted to decouple in the first place so that there wasn't an automatic reduction. We recognised that, depending on the decisions that the Welsh Assembly takes on how many Members it thinks are appropriate, there will be a need to legislate at a later date, and we've committed to do that. For example, we've continued in this Bill the ability of the boundary commissioners to continue their interim review, but we will have to put in place steps after that.

  The point you make about complexity is a fair one. It's already what happens, of course, in Scotland; the Scottish parliamentary constituencies are not coterminous with the Westminster parliamentary constituencies. I think that is probably a function of devolution, but we have thought that through, and we will continue the dialogue with the Welsh Assembly.

  Mr Jones: Yes, broadly speaking, the Welsh Assembly Government appear supportive of the idea of decoupling. I think they would be more concerned if there were no decoupling. What I would also say, in terms of complexity, is that you may be aware that the Presiding Officer of the Assembly wrote to the Secretary of State some time ago, welcoming multiple polls, and pressing for both referendums—the Welsh referendum and the AV referendum—as well as the next Welsh Assembly election to take place on the same day; but we have decided not to go quite that far.

  Guto Bebb: On that point, I'm actually fairly comfortable with the AV referendum being on the same day as Welsh Assembly elections in 2011. My concern is actually with 2015, because I recognise your point that we do have a situation in Scotland where Westminster parliamentary constituencies and Scottish parliamentary constituencies are not the same. The concern I am trying to express is that currently, with our fixed-term Parliaments option, we will end up with the Welsh Assembly elections and the parliamentary elections taking place on the same day. In view of the way in which the Scottish parliamentary and local government elections became quite a disaster, I have significant concerns in that area, and I am not sure whether they are being taken on board as well as they perhaps should be.

  Mr Harper: There are two separate questions there. One is about the coincidence of the dates in 2015, and you'll know, Mr Bebb, that that concern has been expressed in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. That is something that the Deputy Prime Minister acknowledged is qualitatively different from the coincidence of an election and a referendum. Ministers have been in contact with counterparts in the devolved nations, and we are thinking about what the options might be. If we accept the premise that at the moment the plan is that there will be a coincidence, the key is to make sure that you give people good time to work through the details, and to plan properly. For example, for the referendum next year, we are working with administrators across the UK to make sure that, for the polls that happen on the same day, arrangements will be in place that are practical and sensible, so that things happen smoothly. That's what you'll have to do if the elections happen on the same day. With appropriate planning, such things can be sorted out. The issue in Scotland—

  Chair: We have a short amount of time and I'd like to call Susan Elan Jones.

  Q73  Susan Elan Jones: I want to go back, if I may, to Mr Jones's answer to the question about the Welsh Grand Committee—or the lack of one. He said that there was no precedent to the contrary. My colleagues have argued that there is no precedent that we know of in which a request for a Welsh Grand Committee has been refused by a Secretary of State. Is your answer, in which you say that there is no precedent to the contrary, seriously that Secretaries of State have, in the past, not granted them when people didn't want them? If so, that was extraordinary. What do you mean by that?

  Mr Jones: I don't think I can add to what I have said already. The request for a Grand Committee has been considered by the Secretary of State, but she has decided on balance not to hold one.

  Q74  Susan Elan Jones: And that's unprecedented?

  Mr Jones: That is what you tell me. I don't know that, but if you would like to provide me with the evidence, I will be happy to consider it.

  Q75  Owen Smith: That is asking us to prove a negative, as it were, because what we're telling you is that in the experience of previous Secretaries of State, they have never refused a request for a Welsh Grand Committee—never refused one.

  Mr Jones: Forgive me, I am not asking you to prove a negative. What I am saying is that your colleague, Ms Jones, has just put a point to me and I do not know whether it is right or wrong.

  Q76  Chair: I shall call Glyn Davies, but before I do, I want to ask a question myself. If the size of the constituencies increases—we are all MPs; we all work pretty hard, I'm sure—surely the service that we offer constituents is going to go down unless more money is found to ensure that we can employ staff for longer hours.

  Mr Harper: Let me deal with that, Mr Chairman. If you look across the United Kingdom, the average electoral quota that we think will be in place based on last year's elector register will be about 76,000. About a third of the seats in the House of Commons are already that size, anyway. All Members have the same expenses regime to fund their offices and their staff. One could argue at the moment, when looking across Wales, where all the constituencies are significantly smaller, on average, that Members have more resource than in the rest of the United Kingdom to serve their constituents. All we are talking about is that seats across the UK, including Wales, will be the same size. So, I don't think that there will be an issue about Members not being able to serve their constituents. One of the reasons why we settled on 600 as the size of the Commons, rather than the Conservative manifesto commitment of 585, was in recognition of the balance between reducing the size of the House of Commons and the fact that MPs have to be able to do their job. It is not a magic number, it is a balance—we thought that 600 struck about the right balance, with constituencies being a little bit bigger, but not so big that Members would have trouble serving their constituents.

  Q77  Chair: Refresh my memory—at one of the meetings that I have attended with you, I believe that you told me that there would be some announcement about voter registration in November or December. I wonder if I remember that correctly. It was more of an informal meeting. Perhaps there is something you want to put on the record today about that.

  Mr Harper: Yes. On 15 September, when the House was sitting, I made a statement to the Commons about speeding up individual voter registration, to make individual registration compulsory before the next general election. One of the things I also emphasised was that the Government felt it very important not only to deal with the issue of voter fraud and people who were on the electoral register who should not be, but to make sure the register was complete. We have announced a number of steps that we are going to take to ensure that we deal with areas of under-registration, for example I have written to every local authority chief executive in the country to ask them to take part next year in some data matching pilots to look at public sector databases that currently exist that might help pinpoint—

  Q78  Chair: You are confident that we can have nearly 100%.

  Mr Harper: Absolutely. I am confident that we can improve it, but it is worth saying that the UK electoral registration system compares very well with comparable democracies across the world, with about 91% or 92% of eligible voters registered, which is pretty much as well as anybody else manages. But we can do better.

  Q79  Glyn Davies: My question flows very much from Mr Harper's last response. Clearly the issue that has caused concern to Welsh MPs across the board whom I have talked to about this—and we have heard quite a bit today—is that there is a greater decrease in Wales than elsewhere. Over-representation is not really the word I want to use, but arithmetical and historical over-representation is what has led to this greater decrease. I have tried to find in my own mind an intellectual reason why I should oppose the decrease, and I simply cannot find one. I cannot understand how the charge of gerrymandering that we have heard today stands up at all. I think that is just a negative word used that does not have any relevance. I have not been able to find one.

  In our evidence today, one of the witnesses said to us that in Wales the number of anomalies—this might relate to an island, or similar—is rather greater than it would be in England, and they actually gave us some numbers. That seems to be the first reason that I have ever heard from anyone that actually gives you an intellectual argument for there being a higher representation in Wales than elsewhere. I raise that with you because I would be interested in your comment on it.

  Mr Harper: The reduction in the number of MPs likely in Wales is obviously driven by two things. It is partly an equal reduction driven by the reduction in the size of the House of Commons, which of course is happening across the UK. The reason for the larger reduction in Wales is because we are equalising the size of the constituencies, and Wales is—without trying to use a loaded word—relatively over-represented, just in mathematical terms, compared with other parts of the UK. The Government think that we should treat all parts of the United Kingdom equally.

  We have only made two exceptions out of those 600 seats, for two particular islands in Scotland where we think the geography is exceptional, using that word in its correct meaning. If you look across the United Kingdom, other Members have made cases for exceptions, for example for the Isle of Wight, and for other constituencies, and the Government do not find that those arguments stand up. We think that the principles should be equality, fairness and votes being of equal weight. We have made those two specific exceptions which we think were exceptional, but we do not think that others are justified anywhere in the United Kingdom—we are not specifically picking on Wales. Exceptions have been proposed in England, and we do not find them compelling either.

  Chair: Thank you for that comprehensive response.

  Q80  Owen Smith: May I also refer to some of the evidence that we have heard earlier this morning? A theme that came out of it from many of the experts who spoke was that they feel, as I feel, that this legislation is being rushed through with, in the words of the phrase that was used, "undue speed". I think it is unseemly haste with which it is being railroaded through. Can you first address that question of why this needs to be done so quickly? On a related issue, why on earth are we getting rid of local inquiries? Is the reason that you simply want to railroad this through for political purposes?

  Mr Harper: There are two separate reasons. The pledge for reducing the size of the House of Commons and having a boundary review was in the Conservative manifesto—indeed, reducing the size of the House of Commons was in both of the coalition parties' manifestos. The coalition agreement wants to reform the way Members of Parliament are elected to the House of Commons. We want to give the voters a choice in the referendum and we think that should be done at an early opportunity, which obviously means that the legislation needs to be brought forward at an early stage.

  We also want to get the boundary review under way. We think that the existing process for boundary reviews, whereby they can take between eight and 12 years, is simply too slow. The last general election was fought on boundaries based on electorates from 2000—they were a full decade out of date. We simply think that that process takes far too long. Internationally, it is extraordinarily long. Other countries manage to do this much more quickly.

  So we want to get that boundary review under way and we want the referendum to take place next year. That necessitates bringing forward the legislation early. We think that we have allowed enough time for Parliament to debate it. So far, that appears to have been the case. We have added some extra time to protect the time that will be taken by statements, and we are keen to get all the key parts debated.

  Actually, I think that the balance between the referendum part of the Bill and the boundary part of the Bill was agreed through the usual channels, and I think that there is the right balance to ensure that both important parts of the Bill are debated.

  Chair: Mr Smith.

  Mr Harper: Do you want me to pick up on the inquiry point?

  Chair: Do you want to ask your next question, Mr Smith? And could we have very brief answers, please, because I also want to bring others in.

  Q81  Owen Smith: It is difficult, being a Welshman called Smith. [Laughter.] We will catch up eventually.

  I would like you to address the question about inquiries, but I would also like you to reflect on another piece of the evidence that we heard earlier today. Essentially, it is the view of the electoral administrative officers that the way in which this is going through and the way that we will see coterminosity thrown out of the window will effectively render the logistics of delivering elections almost unworkable. So my contention is that you are pushing this through very quickly, and we may find that we are repenting at leisure, having legislated with undue haste.

  Mr Harper: There are two issues there. Let me deal with the last one first.

  The issue of whether Welsh Assembly constituencies and Westminster parliamentary constituencies should be coterminous is a separate question. The non-coterminosity has already taken place in Scotland without, it seems, causing any undue problems. So that is a separate question.

  Let me deal with your question about local inquiries.

  Chair: Very briefly.

  Mr Harper: In the Bill, we have extended the time for written representations to be made, from one month to three months. We have looked at the academic evidence. All the academic evidence that we have looked at concludes that local inquiries do not add very much to the process and that they are largely an exercise in political parties trying to ensure that boundaries come out in a way to suit themselves. The academic views that we have looked at, quite widely, are that they think our process of moving to a longer period for written representations is actually an improvement and certainly not a reduction in the ability for local people to comment on the boundaries that the independent Boundary Commissions will put forward. That is why we have made those proposals in the Bill and why we will take them forward. We will obviously be able to debate them next week.

  Chair: I know that there are two more questions coming. Perhaps I can appeal for them to be very brief, with brief answers in response, and then both of you can get in.

  Q82  Jessica Morden: Very quickly, the evidence that we had from the electoral administrators this morning was that they are very concerned about the AV referendum and the Welsh Assembly elections being on the same day. They are not concerned that people will not grasp the concept of having two elections on one day, but they are concerned about the actual mechanics of getting into the polling stations and the handling of the ballot papers. Are you absolutely sure that we will not see a repeat of the scenes that we saw in the general election?

  Mr Harper: I am very clear that it will work. One of the reasons why we did not table the combination parts of the Bill, for example, and why we will do those later in the proceedings in Committee was to ensure that we worked with electoral administrators across the UK and with officials from the territorial offices, to make sure that the details for combination—whatever people think about whether or not we should combine them—work.

  For example, one of the requests that we had was to ensure that the referendum was run on the same basis as the other elections taking place. For instance, in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the areas being used will be the same as those being used for the other elections. In England, it will be done on local authority boundaries and in Wales and Scotland it will be done on the parliamentary boundaries.

  So we have looked at ensuring that the administrative arrangements are clear and sensible. The view that we have had from electoral administrators is that they are confident—as is the Electoral Commission—that the referendum can be delivered. That is what we are working towards. It is actually good planning.

  Chair: Thank you, Minister.

  Q83  Geraint Davies: To quote some of the witnesses from this morning, they said that the capacity for confusion is immense and that there are immense problems, almost to the point that it will be impossible to administrate, and that inquiries are being short-circuited and dumbed down. So those are some of the expert opinions that were given. I wonder how sensible it is to go forward with such haste, when some of the experts are saying that it will be a pig's breakfast.

  On the point about inquiries, we are talking about a massive change now. I appreciate what you said about inquiries before, but isn't the fact that we are dumbing down inquiries basically gagging communities from having their say, so that we can have effective democracy just in order to act as a straitjacket for the future in terms of one size fits all?

  Mr Harper: I don't think extending the period for written representations from one to three months, tripling the amount of time available for local people to write in with their views, amounts to gagging. It seems to me that that's exactly the opposite. We want local people to be able to write in with their views about boundary reviews. The Boundary Commissioners can then take them into account and produce revised proposals. People will then have a further three months to comment on the revised proposals before the Commissioners consider all those representations and produce their final proposals. It seems to me that that gives people ample opportunity—a lot more opportunity than now—to make sure the Boundary Commissioners are aware of local feelings and views.

  Q84  Geraint Davies: But would they not just ignore anything that isn't tidy and numerical? All the stuff about links and jobs—won't they just be ignored?

  Mr Harper: No. Parity is the most important criterion in the Bill, but they have flexibility—plus or minus 5% or around that. Also, the way they draw the boundaries will of course, as now, take into account those other things. They can take into account local authority boundaries and local ties as long as the seats are all broadly equal-sized.

  Q85  Chair: Minister, I am looking at the clock in front of me, which gives me about 30 seconds to ask you this. What is the purpose of updating the Government of Wales Act, in particular schedule 7? Are you not concerned that by doing so we are presupposing that there will be a "yes" vote in the referendum?

  Mr Jones: No. It is essentially so that when people vote in the referendum, they will know precisely what powers are proposed to be devolved to the National Assembly. Work has been proceeding quite expeditiously with the Assembly over the summer months, and we are hoping to lay the Order very shortly.

  Q86  Chair: Is that likely to, as a constitutional measure, be discussed on the Floor of the House?

  Mr Jones: That will be taken in Committee.

  Chair: In Committee. Okay. Thank you very much indeed, Ministers.

  Mr Harper: Time is so short.

  Chair: It is. We would welcome you back any time.

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Prepared 25 October 2010